Friday Open Thread

April 19, 2019
by Nicole
2 min read
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Or Good Friday open thread, if you prefer.

Today, I suggest reading Tara K. Shepersky’s thoughts on Good Friday, which are appropriate regardless of your current faith. I spent last weekend performing with Chorale Midwest in an absolutely beautiful Catholic church, surrounded by stained-glass saints and Stations of the Cross, and it made me think about all of the stories we tell and the rituals we perform to acknowledge the changing of the seasons (and the way our own lives change over time).

I’ll be honest: as a person who stopped attending services after spending five years as a church organist, it also made me think “I wish Christianity was mostly about people getting together to discuss how to live and having regular celebrations based on a shared narrative, because I would be down for that.”

The trouble is that so many of those discussions devolve into xenophobia and homophobia and arguments about whether guitars are appropriate in church (which is really just an extension of the old “but what if we didn’t always speak in Latin” argument), and it quickly becomes less about discussing how to live and more about bickering over the details.

Anyway. This is an open thread, which means it’s time for me to stop going on and on and let you share what’s on your mind. ❤️

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The Importance of Scheduling Unscheduled Time

March 20, 2019
by Nicole
4 min read
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The two most important blocks of time on my calendar are 6:30-9:30 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

I call these blocks whim time. They represent the time between when I wake up and when it’s time to get ready for my Les Mills class at the YMCA (I take BodyFlow on Saturday and BodyAttack on Sunday*).

They also represent my best time. If you had a chance to read my Lifehacker article about how I schedule my day as a freelancer, you might remember me writing “I solve more problems between 6:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. than I do the entire rest of the day.”

So, during whim time, I can sit comfortably on my sofa with my cup of tea and think about things.

Or put harebrained schemes into action, e.g. “what would happen if I started doing Saturday Open Threads?” (I now prep my Saturday Open Threads on Friday, to keep my Saturday whim time free of obligations like writing blog posts.)

Or read everything the internet has to offer on a particular topic, such as “how to rope drop Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World**.”

Or immerse myself in a book, though I usually end up saving reading for the afternoons because those mornings are just so beautifully wonderful for thinking and digging and journaling and processing and creating.

Anyway, I knew I was going to write about whim time at some point, and then Lifehacker ran an article titled Give Yourself the Gift of Time This Week and I thought yep, I agree with all of this.

To quote Lifehacker’s Alicia Adamczyk:

One of the greatest pleasures of my new-ish morning routine is that I start many of my days by doing nothing. I lay around for a bit, before getting ready and then sitting with a cup of coffee for a few minutes.

My resting cup of coffee never takes me more than 20 minutes to finish—and it’s usually far less than that—and yet when I skip I can feel how much tenser I am, and more prone to stress during my morning commute.

What I’m missing is the benefit of doing nothing, of enjoying a bit of alone time before I venture out into the world and the daily grind begins.

I start all of my weekdays with yoga practice, which is my way of enjoying a bit of alone time before the daily grind begins, but I give my weekends an extra-long chunk of doing nothing time, which is to say time to do whatever I want. To go where the whims take me.

This is where I have to remind new readers that I am single and have no children and have the privilege of a freelance career that fits within a 9-5 schedule. In case you’re wondering how I manage to carve so much time out of my weekends for whim.

On that note: I had an absolutely beautiful whim day last Sunday. No plans (besides BodyAttack, which I wouldn’t miss for the world), no obligations, nothing but whatever I felt like doing, for a full day.

I played the piano and played video games and went for a walk and did some excellent sitting and thinking and did two loads of laundry and watched an entire movie without pausing it except to use the toilet, which is something I rarely have time for on non-whim days. (When I do decide to watch a movie, I tend to break it up into two or three 40-minute chunks because that’s the only way I can fit it into a typical evening.)

If I don’t get a full whim day at least once a month — and it’s nicer to get two — I start to feel cramped and worn out and overwhelmed.

Which means I have to plan for these days in my calendar, just like I plan my whim time on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

And then say no to anything that might conflict with those plans — or if something comes up that I can’t (or don’t want to) say no to, rearrange my schedule to find another whim day.

Because they’re that important.

Is this an introvert thing? I don’t know. It’s something I’ve always sought out, ever since college when I had the ability to start setting my own schedule.

I’m curious if you carve out similar unscheduled chunks of time for yourself, and how you keep those times sacred — and if you don’t, whether you wish you could. ❤️

*I also take BodyPump on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and BodyAttack Express on Wednesday evenings.

**More on this later — but yes, I might be rope-dropping Animal Kingdom soon. (And the other three Walt Disney World parks.)

Where I Got Published Today: Haven Life

March 4, 2019
by Nicole
1 min read
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I recently started freelancing for Haven Life, and am excited to share my first published post, What Millennials Should Know About Caregiving:

Millennials are getting older… and so are their parents. This means it’s time to start thinking about caregiving responsibilities, and how you’ll handle them if — and when — they come up.

After all, a lot of us will become caregivers at some point in our lives. Roughly one in four caregivers is already a millennial, most hold another job at the same time and spend an average of 20 hours per week providing care for their loved ones, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute.

Caregiving isn’t just about eldercare. Millennials can find themselves caring for a child with special needs or a partner with a disability. If you are facing an unexpected caregiving role or anticipate taking on a caregiving responsibility, here’s what you need to do.