The One With How It's Going

Hello! Every so often, we'll take a break from crazy informative posts with science and charts and rampant theorizing, and we'll just give a family update. Here's our first! If this isn't your thing, great! Join us next week when we discuss the effects of caffeine on fertility :)

For family update posts, we're divvying up the content a little more. Below is Ted typing - since it's a lot I'm not going to set it aside as a quote.

For obvious reasons, we’re doing our best to just hang in there. We have good days and bad days. On good days, we do more than battle covid depression and infertility blues.Since the pandemic and lockdowns hit (and became real for us), we’ve tried to keep moving and maintain some semblance of normalcy. Some days are very hard and we remember to go easy on ourselves, because dammit things are tough. Some days feel easier and we remember to invest in tomorrow. So we’d like to share some of the things we’ve done in 2020 to make things a little better.

Rebecca is a great artist who loves to make our home more beautiful and calming. We added some art to our walls, some of which she painted and some is publicly available from JPL! I love that our living room is themed to show destinations and adventures, especially while we’re stuck at home.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCbxbqyj5Sg/

Animal Crossing kept us sane through May or so. We got to escape to A Lagoon (our island) and build it just right with an orchard empire balanced by a bamboo grove, funded by our turnip tycoon fortune on the stalk market. We may or may not have settled it like Catan. So we beat the game, albeit slightly unconventionally.

Our backyard was a sad, desolate wasteland of dirt and deck remnants. That was less than ideal, and we had loads of time at home, so bit by bit and brick by brick we converted it into more of a garden of chill…which is better. As it turned out, the Lowe’s Garden Center was a great place to socially distance and be outdoors while getting concrete and surprisingly cheap plants. The residual deck chunks are now shelves and a respectable table. Most of the plants have both not died and gotten bigger. Now the yard is a place where humans and puppies can relax for a few hours.

Rebecca chalked up positive notes on our gratitude wall that reminds us to count our blessings. We also cultivate a sadness baseboard; in order to use that, you must crawl on the floor and scrawl your complaint in Sharpie on the crappy cabinet kickboard above the cold kitchen tile.

Working from home and taking frequent walks is the new normal for us. We invested in home office and lab setups. My work reference books now live here. I positioned my webcam to show the most professional angle and background. With all the time spent at my home desk, we discovered that (surprise!) a tricky spot in our roof was leaking (typically whenever it rained). It’s been a challenging project to climb up and caulk the holes. And we made three wall-mounted racks for hats and masks and leashes and umbrellas, so that we are ALWAYS prepared for a nice hike around the block.

As for TV, we’ve certainly picked up new shows. Westworld season 1 was fantastic; seasons 2 and 3 were disappointing and lackluster. Ultimate Tag is fun even though Rebecca rolls her eyes every time. Rebecca tried watching Lost, is diving into Glee. We have loved laughing through Impractical Jokers and pick an episode nearly every weeknight. Floor Is Lava and The Titan Games are new family favorites.

(now it's my turn! Below is Rebecca typing.)

What's up with us? Well, first/overwhelmingly/all-encompassing, for me: business stuffs. As some of you know, I quit my job last October to start writing full-time. At that point, I had maybe one byline and one client. Because we're optimistic people, Ted and I had a lot (A LOT) of conversations about the likelihood of our essentially making things work without a second income.

But then I got lucky. Very, very lucky. Knock on wood, but I'm a small business owner now (like v small, I'm the only one in it), and things are going...pretty well. My current challenges involve not overworking myself (it's so easy to say yes to another client, but then realize later that no, I don't have another couple of hours to type up articles about rabbit care) and scaling.

Right now, I'm still in the there's-no-way-this-is-real stage of business ownership. When people ask what I do, or when Ted proudly tells people his wife owns a small writing business, I tend to blush, do weird things with my arms, and say something like "LOL sure I write sometimes haha no big." It's odd to call something a business, even, when it's just you typing on your laptop. (I used the box for Battleship as a desk for the first four months. I could not feel less professional.)

SO, a couple of months ago, I invested in a bundle of freelancer business-y courses - at the time, one of my favorite writers was offering to donate a portion of her proceeds to victims of police brutality in Minnesota, so it seemed like a way I could give back and figure out what the hell I was doing at the same time.

I'm currently working my way through a few of said courses. They've helped me decide upon a few goals:

1. Don't step on anyone's toes. I don't think I'd do anything illegal or iffy intentionally, but BOY OH BOY do I not want to get sued over, like, accidental plagiarism or IP infringement. We've set up an LLC so our family would be safe if I did, but man my anxiety does not love that I'm the one liable if I do something stupid.
2. I need to get better at social media. More and more, when I send pitches over to publications or apply for ghostwriting gigs, prospective clients want to be able to google me and have something pop up. Anything at all. Insta and Twitter, as well as having a personal website that isn't totally dead, are important for this. This series is helping my website (...we did not start this series for business reasons, but it'd be silly to say it wasn't helping), but I am just not good at selfies or consistent, interesting social content. I used to be! I'm not, now. So, like the million-year-old crone I am, I'm currently taking an Instagram class and brainstorming an angle for content. I want to have one stream of very curated writing/fiction/goofy mythologies/fairytales?/stuff I draw? content, and one stream where I just get better at showing what's going on in our lives. It's what my favorite Insta users do, it's what the Insta algorithms are prepped to favor, and it's easy--just pick up your phone, they say. However, I'm a perfectionist and hate being vulnerable online or ever, so that's hard for me. So. That's something I'm working towards.
3. I need to... have goals. When we started the biz, we were just happy that I was making money. Then, we were happy that I was able to match what I'd been making before. Now, it's clear that I need to have goals that aren't strictly about finances. Actually finishing that second novel? Getting my Insta feed up to snuff? Getting more public bylines instead of more private ghostwriting stuff? Again, taking a class on being more confident+creative when scaling, so, these are all things rattling around my head right now.

Okay, that was a lot. What else are we up to?

• Sometime today hopefully I'm going to listen to folktales. Have you guys listened to it? I'm v excited.
• Currently thriving: My obsession with angsty teen dramas. The advent of HBO Max gave me my Pretty Little Liars back (YES), so I'm watching one ep at a time and fully luxuriating in the ridiculous outfits, shaky cam, and simultaneous text tones. Also on deck: Riverdale, and Glee.
• I'm thinking I need to start an actual fitness program? Something with a tiny bit of structure, so I actually...do it? My current pattern is to get about a week in to something DIY, just enough to start feeling a tiny bit good, and then ... stop. Yoga with Adriene's 30 day programs are always a fav, but I'm thinking about doing one of Cassey Ho's paid (inexpensive) programs for Blogilates (PIIT, maybe?). I've had the opportunity to work with their team on occasion, and they're all lovely, so I'm kind of interested in learning more about what they offer....
• I'm badly in need of a way to feel connected to my faith right now when it's difficult to get to Mass. I tried, but streamed Masses really don't cut it for me. I need something that gives me that sense of tradition and ritual and physicality, you know? Soooooo, this week, I dug out my Christian Prayer book and put all the ribbons in the right places. Maybe occasional Liturgy of the Hours will help? I definitely won't be able to do all of them, but I'm thinking that I'll try to pair morning prayers with that first jolt of coffee. Just this week. To see if it'll stick.
• Reading-wise, I'm on a royal romance kick. Last week, I finished The Heir Affair, a fun novel (very) loosely based on Kate Middleton's debut into the Firm. The authors write ridiculously personably, and their storyline is peppered with an incredible amount of research into British royal history and the inner workings of modern royal families. (Lots of media stuff, v relevant to what's going on right now with the Sussexes...). ANYWAY, to bring this back to infertility, a little bit: The Heir Affair is (SPOILERS) one of the few books I've read that didn't fully go in for the sitcom-esque 'is it food poisoning or is it pregnancy LOL' storyline. The Kate character, in fact, had to try for years to have a kid, while under pressure as a royal to produce an heir. It was fascinating, and felt realistic, and I was grateful for that infertility representation in literature. 10/10 recommend The Royal We/The Heir Affair, if you're into funny romances. Next, I'm diving into Bullfinch's Mythology, to mine for inspo, and am picking up 'The Story of the Girls', an Iliad retelling.
• Oh, and I have an acupuncture appointment tomorrow morning?!?! We decided to be proactive about our TCM-versus-NaPro decision, and just made initial consultation appointments with practitioners in both specialties. So. Tomorrow morning. Lots of needles. And masks. And me. It'll really be ... something?

UP NEXT FOR US:

• One family vacay
• One friend vacay
• Work work work
• Otherwise, in the time of COVID, not much

This has been our family update. Join us next week when we talk about caffeine and infertility, as noted above :)

The week after that, we'll be trying to answer the question "What is NaPro", as we continue our what-to-do-next waffling. Have a great week, guys!