Thoughts I had When I Took a Break from Writing
trying to buy less, focus more, and wander aimlessly in both errands and travel
I’m back after taking a long, extended summer hiatus.
Maybe at some point in my life I’ll write about the summer of 2025 which was one for the books. It was the Summer I turned happy then really sad then happy again and always the summer i turned pretty which is where we find ourselves today.
That’s as much detail as I’ll share in this moment because as Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy said, “I have three lives: public, private and secret” and this Substack here is my public life which does not mix with my private and certainly not my secret life.
But anyway, moving on, because what good is knowing that there’s a secret you can’t know about.
Some thoughts I’ve had this summer that maybe you’ll find interesting.
1. New Years should be in the autumn
And yes, I want to use the word autumn.
It’s weird that New Years is in January.
We don’t do anything in January.
You can’t do anything in January.
Autumn is the natural time for New Years to fall (hehe) - you’re coming off of summer with a renewed outlook on life. You’ve often done your traveling and soul searching and can hit reset.
Start forming all of the habits you want to be in a good cycle for through the winter now. Create morning rituals, go to bed early. Whatever it is.
My focus for October and beyond is around getting back to my core being. Finding homeostasis and equilibrium. They are all the trite things that you’d expect to find in a New Year’s resolution list - I started writing some of mine down and then realized it was too personal. But make a little list of guidelines. Don’t be so stringent or else it’ll be impossible to keep up.
2. Travel somewhere you can’t normally be
This sounds SO obvious but it’s kind of not so let me explain.
I, for example, live in New York City - a great city but a city that’s filled with chain stores, the best restaurants, coffee shops - basically all of the commerce one could imagine.
If I have access to any place I can consume constantly, why would I go out of my way to be in another city (albeit on different continents) that is also filled with the same commerce - e.g. Zaras, Louis Vuittons, H&Ms, Nike, etc., etc., etc.?
I shouldn’t.
I should aim to go to starkly contrasting places.
Otherwise, how could my aperture on life and experiences expand?
I want to go to pastures and water and mountains and more pastures and farms and deserts. I don’t want to see stores or people. I see that everyday.
There is of course a time and a place to go to London, Seoul, Paris, LA but for now, I’m going to do my best to be in the countryside.
3. We don’t need more stuff
I love stuff. Any type of shoppy shop. Shoes, clothes, bags. Provisions shops. Furniture shops. Book shops (which actually are exempt from this because I think you can always acquire more books and that’s a great way to spend money).
But I don’t need more stuff and you probably don’t either.
When you look back at the eons of style icons, timeless pieces, and beautiful places, you realize they held up in history because of the perspective they had.
We too can be like those things.
We can decide it’s cool to wear the same things every day and have a personal sense of style versus chasing the next trend. We can decide it’s cool to watch YouTube videos or use ChatGPT to get workouts and not go to the $40 workout class everyday. We can decide it’s really cool to go for a morning walk with a mug and not a plastic coffee cup.
Of course, there will be a time and a place to replace things and buy things while you’re out but we’ve lost the thread with conscious spending.
The amount of plastic, polyester, junk we are acquiring without thought is not sustainable. This is a little bit of a pep talk to myself because as I mentioned, I love stuff, but I can’t help but look around in all my closets (yes, multiple) and think of how many millions of permutations of outfits I could put together using the exact things I have. I often find things in my closet that I don’t even know I have.
You’re not one miracle product away from being happier or hotter. Unless it’s a mini face lift after the age of 40.
Okay, pep talk to myself over. And pep talk to you also over.
4. We need to train our attention spans
This kind of goes with my Fall New Years resolutions but with one of my goals being less screen time, I’ve been doing what I call - training my attention span :) Kind of like sleep training for babies except we’re adults and trying to be off our phones.
Training my attention span includes activities such as:
Baking and cooking without the use of my phone and rather printing out recipes or using a cook book
Going on walks, also without my phone - though this one is painful because I love tracking my steps (probably unhealthy orthorexic behavior)
Watching movies, especially movies from before 2010s era when our attention spans began rapidly declining and movies starting cutting scenes every few seconds
This is different than watching a 23 minute episode of The Office - it requires focus and attention
Reading isn’t included because I already read a lot but of course this can be part of training your attention span. Things like crossword puzzles and journaling can be here too. Anything that doesn’t require your phone and requires a deeper, longer period of concentration can be part of attention span training.
5. Not everything needs to be optimized or efficient
Sometimes the activity can be that - the activity. The thing you do throughout the day.
This is probably a topic that’s better served to be extrapolated into two separate points but my fingers start getting tired of typing right around this time so I’m not going to share two separate thoughts and pray they find a way to connect.
When you have a ton of errands to do throughout the day, they can just come as they may. It’s okay to go from uptown to downtown to Brooklyn then back downtown. Obviously that is not the best use of time but that’s okay! And bringing friends with you to accompany you on your errands makes it double fun. You have adventures along the way - seeing some weird people on the subway, falling up the stairs, getting a scoop of ice cream.
And also you don’t have to be the most efficient. Take your time. Soak it in. Enjoy the hiccups and the barriers that often happen in not being efficient and taking the easiest path.
Life is what happens when you’re planning it - this isn’t the actual quote but you know which one I’m talking about right?
Not everything has to be hyper efficient and often, when it’s not, it’s more fun.
That’s it. Those are the five things I thought about while I didn’t write all summer. Hoping to be back to a better cadence.
Okay, we’re done here. Bye.
I swear my soul needed this read today!
could you do book recs!!