Hi friends! I’ve done “daily check-ins” on one social media platform or another since November 2016. Within the past couple of years, I’ve done them only on Twitter. They’ve morphed from a “Daily check-in. How are you?” invitation for sharing to more of a “Daily check-in. Time for a stretch and some water and some time away from the internet” or something similar each day. What it ends up being is not only something that I think my followers might need to hear, but primarily, what I, myself, need to hear.

Similarly, often what I write about in this newsletter is not only what I think that you might benefit from, but also it’s a bit of navel-gazing and figuring out what I need to hear, too. I figure if I need to hear it, then at least one other person might need to hear it too. We’ll circle back to this.

Earlier this week I was filling out the long intake questionnaire for my new therapist and one of the questions was something along the lines of “What do you do for fun?” and, I gotta tell ya, I drew a blank. What DO I do for the care and feeding of my well-being? I think part of the problem lately is that I haven’t been doing any of the things that I love that bring me joy that would answer this question. I’ve not been baking. I’ve not been writing snail mail. I haven’t picked up my ukulele in months and I haven’t done archery in years.

I ended up answering with reading because I read a lot and I fucking love reading and reading is my self-care. But I also get paid to read and I have to read on a schedule and the books I pick out have parameters and yes, I totally am able to (mostly) read the books I want to read anyway.