Stress Response

September 9th, 2019

Once, when I was single and had been for years, a woo-woo friend advised me to start wearing orange underwear. She said that orange is a “stimulating” color for “the root chakra” and would attract “love.” I hate the color orange, but humbly, I complied. For a few months I wore Hanky Panky thongs in varying shades of my least favorite color. This venture was a bust.

A few days ago, I finally got around to throwing those horrible things away. I haven’t worn a thong since pre-kids and don’t expect I ever will again. Besides, my chakras are married now, and that happened without orange underwear in the mix. 

The truth is, throwing things out always makes me feel better. 

It has been a chaotic transition back to school and away from glorious summer. In addition to all the routine changes for my family and the sheer amount of things I had to remember to do, buy, and orchestrate, I have, of course, had the busiest last few months of my freelance life so far. 

The way I cope with being this busy is to toss and organize. It makes me feel like the chaos is under control. So far, in the last week, I have reorganized:

  • My closet (throwing out tons of clothes)

  • My daughters’ closet (same)

  • The pantry cabinets in my kitchen

  • The freezer

  • The tupperware sitch

  • The breezeway baskets, swapping from summer stuff to winter stuff

  • The ski closet

And I also ordered five wooden crates to stash all the incoming schoolwork, art, and mail so that Jon and I can stop arguing about the “pile problem.” And more importantly, so he can stop consolidating all my meticulous Virgo piles into one big Capricon pile.

All of this reorganizing meant some tough decisions.

There’s no longer room for an entire kitchen drawer full of bespoke kitchen aprons. Nor do we have the luxury of keeping half a drawer reserved for straws we never use but which I feel too guilty to throw out and also can’t give away, because technically, my kids have licked every single one of them multiple times and then stuck them back in the drawer.

I also threw out about ten bras I haven’t worn in years. Now, I have a lovely drawer full of black cotton underwear and bras, and a drawer full of nested tupperware, and another drawer full of tupperware lids that match that tupperware exactly.

Aaaaahhhhhh. 

What I’m listening to:

The new Highwomen album

What I’m eating:

I used my old standard crisp recipe to make crisp with blueberries we had just picked, and holy hell. 

What I’m reading:

Only Taffy Brodesser-Akner could get me to read an entire piece about Mariane WIlliamson and actually leave me with the takeaway, she’s not that crazy. But don’t get me wrong; I’m not voting for her. 

What I’m working on:

I have been in the weeds for weeks — no, months — and yet somehow have little published work to show for it this week. Several of my clients are about to launch Big Things, which I am excited to share. In the meantime…

For Peltarion:Webinar: How NLP and BERT Will Change the Language Game

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