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A reminder that rest doesn’t need to be earned.

This weekend, Husband and I got our flu shots and COVID boosters. We knew there was a good chance we’d be knocked on our asses for at least 24 hours afterward, so we planned ahead: ordered enough Chinese takeout to last a few meals and made sure the fuzzy blankets were on the couch. He called it scheduled server maintenance, aka planned downtime.

Even though I knew I’d likely feel shitty, I declared, “Even if I feel fine tomorrow, I’m still going to potato.”

If I didn’t feel sick, Past Amanda would’ve done laundry, organized something, maybe finally gotten around to writing that thing that’s been sitting in drafts (and/or this post). Rest, in my old vocabulary, was a backup plan, not a first choice.

I think a lot of us — especially those wired to be responsible, ambitious, or perpetually “on top of things” — have learned to see rest as something we have to earn. You rest after the work is done. Or you rest because you’re sick, or burned out, or on vacation (and even then, probably not fully).

Rest, in other words, needs a reason.

And without that reason, it feels indulgent. Lazy. Like you’re breaking an unspoken rule about what it means to be a good adult.

We often praise people for doing a lot — not necessarily doing well, just doing more. We even talk about rest in productivity terms: “Rest is important so you can recharge.” We ask coworkers when they’re back from PTO if they’re refreshed and recharged, so they can… get back to work.

While it’s true that rest fuels good work, it’s telling that we still frame it as fuel for work. 

Ew. 

It’s hard to imagine saying, “Rest is important because sometimes you need to not be doing anything.” That doesn’t sound very… ambitious, does it?

When I think about Saturday, I did nothing useful. Not one productive thing, besides walking Kona in the morning, and even that was a struggle. I spent the day rotting on the couch, binging the new Denver season of Love Is Blind (btw, this season is particularly cringe), and napping. I felt so terrible that I could barely sit up to eat.

Yes, I had a perfectly good reason to be completely useless. But I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt about it — where Past Amanda would’ve felt bad or stressed about “losing a day,” even if she’d technically “earned” a lazy one. There used to be this tension between wanting to rest and wanting to deserve it. 

When we only rest after we’ve earned it, rest becomes another form of productivity — we’re resting because we need it to be productive. True rest is not transactional. It’s not a break between “real” things. It is the real thing. There’s something radical about letting yourself rest without a reason. It interrupts the flow of hustle culture. It reminds you that you don’t need to justify your existence with output.

You’re allowed to be a lump of mashed potatoes on a couch, watching truly trash TV, with no greater purpose than just being. This weekend was a good reminder that I need more planned downtime. You probably do too.

I got a pocket, got a pocketful of sunshine…

I grew up with music as the backdrop to everything. My bright yellow Sony Walkman was practically glued to me, playing homemade Elvis mixtapes or whatever cassettes my dad left lying around. In the car, it was a rotation between the “oldies” station (pretty sure it was 101.1, WCBS FM; I can still hear the jingle in my head), the popular music station (Z100!), or “car CDs” (usually boy band albums or Burmese songs). When I graduated to a Discman, I burned my own CDs with tracks ripped from Limewire, hoping the download didn’t nuke the family computer. I eventually moved up to an iPod — late to the game with a 5th gen, I think — suddenly carrying hundreds of songs in my pocket.

I carry music with me everywhere. Singing in the shower. Cooking dinner (I use the 10-minute version of “All Too Well” as a pasta timer). Flipping through radio stations and somehow knowing every song, even across totally different genres. Just the other day, I went seamlessly from The Corrs’ “Breathless” to T-Pain’s “I’m Sprung” to Michelle Branch’s “Everywhere”. My Red Rocks concert tees range from The Goo Goo Dolls to Teddy Swims to Anderson .Paak. I’m a millennial who can karaoke to Shania Twain just as well as Linkin Park. If I know it, even halfway, I’ll sing or hum along. Call it eclectic, call it range.

Music isn’t just background or entertainment for me. Music is how I reset. I try to start each morning with something playing, even if just for a song or two. There’s something cleansing about it, like it shakes the mental Etch A Sketch and lets me start fresh. Some days, it’s “Killing In the Name”. Other days, it’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You”. Either way, the music clears my head.

At least, it clears my head when lyrics aren’t fighting for attention. If I’m deep into writing or problem-solving, lyrics hijack my brain. I can’t focus on building my own sentences when a song is telling me a story. But instead of working in silence, I turn to lo-fi beats, instrumental tracks, or songs in languages I don’t understand.  No words to trip me up — just rhythm and beats. Scaffolding for my brain, without distraction of catchy choruses I can sing along to. I’ve definitely typed song lyrics instead of status updates before…

Music tells the stories we cling to, the ones we belt out at concerts, the ones that bring us back to a car ride in 1999. I still remember the first time my dad blasted the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium CD through the car speakers. Twelve-year-old me hearing the intro to “Larger Than Life”, complete with AJ’s maniacal cackle. In the right moment, music and lyrics are belonging. In the wrong one, they’re just noise.

And that’s not just true in my AirPods; it’s true everywhere. Coffee shops use mellow acoustic tracks to make you linger. Bars crank up the bass to make nights feel electric. Restaurants fine-tune playlists to make meals more intimate, or more bumpin’, while supermarkets play the “oldies” to remind you you’re officially an adult shopping for milk and eggs. Music steers the vibe, whether or not we notice.

That’s why music feels so necessary to me: it teaches me to notice what I need. Do I want to feel nostalgic, to be swept in a memory? Or do I need the hum of background rhythm to stay present and focused? Side note: I often get stuck on deciding what my morning tunes are because I DON’T KNOW what I need. But that’s another story.

Today (including while writing this!), I spent hours with music in the background, mostly throwback J-Pop, and I felt more… regulated. Like I’d been tuned, back into myself.

Music doesn’t just accompany us. It shapes us, sometimes with words, sometimes without. The trick is knowing when to sing along, and when to let the lyrics fall away. Maybe that’s not just true for music, but for life too.

Good enough is sometimes just fine.

Over the weekend, I caught myself reading way too many online reviews for a beginner sewing machine. I spent 45 minutes comparing brands, models, features, prices, and durability like I was making a major life decision. For what? To hem pants. I shook myself out of it and resolved to go to a brick-and-mortar sew and vac store later this week (yep, just learned that was a thing) and maybe touch and use a few before deciding. 

That’s when it hit me: At some point in my life, I internalized that I must always get the best. I mean, sure, I deserve the best. But figuring out what the “best” is for every little thing is exhausting af.

It’s not just sewing machines. It’s restaurants (“this one got a 4.8 with 120 reviews, this one got a 4.6 but with 600 reviews”), vacations (“we should stay at the BnB with the best value”), even socks (“this brand has better construction, but this other brand has an easy pull tab”). Somewhere in the back of my brain, a little gremlin is always whispering that I need to make the best choice, optimize for the best outcome. 

What comes to mind is a scene from “Master of None” where Aziz’s character wants to get tacos, and he pulls up both his laptop and his phone to find the best tacos in NYC. He scours Yelp and Eater and other review sites, while texting his friends to crowdsource best taco opinions. This scene was… too relatable.

This doesn’t just show up in figuring out how to spend my money. It seeps into how I approach my time. If I cook dinner, I want the most efficient workflow, the sharpest knife, the highest-rated pan. The seemingly unlimited choices on streaming platforms sometimes lead to watching no movie at all. The irony is that optimization often doesn’t even lead to a significantly better experience. Dinner (usually) tastes good whether or not I optimized my workflow and got every component done at the same time. Watching Lilo and Stitch again was as enjoyable as watching something new. And realistically, any sewing machine would be just fine for hemming pants and doing basic sewing projects.

We live in a world obsessed with efficiency, productivity, and ratings. There’s an endless supply of “Top 10” lists, Wirecutter guides, YouTube reviews, and Reddit threads dedicated to making sure you never settle for “just fine.” To pick wrong feels like wasting money, wasting time, wasting potential. But what if “just fine” is exactly what you needed?

What’s interesting is the quest for the best often wastes more time than it saves. I’ve lost whole evenings to Google Reviews, bouncing between four-star restaurants while my stomach growled. By the time we actually picked one, the “best” option was a pizza spot around the corner from our hotel, because it was nearby and open. And it was delicious.

Sometimes I think about how my parents or grandparents made choices. They went to the store, bought the pan they saw on the shelf, and called it a day. They didn’t agonize over whether it was the peak performer in its category. And their food cooked just fine in that pan.

Now, we live in a world where AI can optimize things for us. It can give us the shortest driving route, summarize the best reviews, and even decide which salad spinner is “most efficient.” In theory, that should be liberating. If the machine is doing the optimizing, shouldn’t that mean we have more time to relax, linger, wander, spend time doing what we want to do? Instead, the pressure sneaks back in: if AI is saving us time, aren’t we supposed to do more with it? Shouldn’t we squeeze in another meeting, another project, another side hustle? Optimization becomes a trap, where every extra minute is treated like a slot we’re obligated to fill.

What if AI’s optimization bought us the option to opt out of optimizing? To let “good enough” be the standard in the rest of our lives? To spend that saved time not on doing more, but on doing less? (Ngl, I’m proud of that first sentence, lol. Just call me Billie Shakespeare, baby!)

So I’m trying to be more ok with choosing “good enough.” Which, admittedly, is hard for a recovering perfectionist like me! I’m trying to let “fun” or “easy” be more important than “best.” To notice when I’m about to tumble down the rabbit hole of optimization and ask myself if I really need the best cheese grater before spending the next three hours reading every review on the internet. The answer is often no.

By the way, the best cheese grater is the Zyliss professional cheese grater, the kind they use at Olive Garden. I just saved you hours of reading reviews. You’re welcome.

Summer shifts into Serious September, and I kinda hate it?

All the small-talky conversations I’ve had recently have included some lamenting that summer is over. Girl, it’s still 85 degrees out. It certainly is not fall yet. I’m not in denial; autumn officially starts on the equinox. I’m sticking to that stance.

I get it, though. Every September, usually not too long after Labor Day, the vibe shifts. It’s subtle at first — cooler morning dog walks, a slightly darker sky when I start cooking dinner, a sudden craving for soup. But it’s not just the weather. There’s a different feeling in the air, both literally and figuratively speaking. It’s as if September flips a switch.

Even though I haven’t had a real “back to school” moment in years, September still carries the energy of a new school uniform (yep, attended Catholic school from K–8), sharpened pencils (Ticonderoga #2s!), new notebooks (composition notebooks only, not sure why), and a return to seriousness. I can still feel the stiffness of that plaid jumpskirt and hear the way my sensible black-or-brown-only shoes squeaked against the linoleum floors. The ritual of school-supply shopping made it feel like September was less about a date on the calendar and more about hitting the reset button. Summer was for drifting, but September was for getting serious.

I can’t help but think this is a result of conditioning. Most of us spent the first two decades of our lives on the academic calendar. September was the real New Year, whether or not the calendar said January. It was when the freedom of summer gave way to early alarms, structure, and expectations. Even as adults — with no teacher waiting and no midterms looming — that rhythm is still baked into us.

You see it everywhere. Workplaces suddenly feel busier, like everyone collectively decided that “vacation season” is over. Calendars fill up again. Deadlines multiply. Summer Fridays give way to Friday status updates. Every year, the week after Labor Day, it’s like someone sounded an alarm and suddenly I’m drowning in meeting invites and Slack pings. Somewhere along the line, we tied September to discipline and productivity, and we never let go.

I notice it in myself too, and I try to resist. The silly little voice in my head that never shuts up insists that summer fun is over, that I should be inside getting things done. It’s like a phantom school bell still ringing, even though I graduated long ago. The adult version isn’t homework. It’s the guilt I feel if I say yes to a mid-day ice cream run or a last-minute hike before winter sets in.

But maybe September doesn’t have to mean the end of leisure. Maybe we don’t have to accept the cultural script that says fall is for buckling down. Especially not during These Times. Joy is resistance, right?

After all, harvest season was never just about hard work. It was also about feasts and festivals, about gathering to celebrate what had been grown. Maybe the invitation of September isn’t to put our heads down and grind, but to find balance… to hold onto slowness even as the days get shorter. To make soup AND still eat ice cream. To reset without erasing joy.

So no, I won’t be rushing into Serious September just yet. The air might feel different, but I’m holding onto the sunshine a little longer. After all, it’s still 85 degrees out.

Culture is a choice. Are we choosing the right things?

“Amanda, you’re on the clock.”

This, of course, is referring to… my work fantasy football draft.

Right now, I’m logging into my league app, checking scores and analysis articles, and debating waiver wire moves.

I’m not here to complain about fantasy football existing at work. I actually enjoy it. What I am interested in is the way fantasy football — and sports more broadly — gets treated as the default culture of the workplace.

Every fall, office Slack channels light up with draft chatter. Coworkers huddle around talking trades. Monday meetings start with a recap of Sunday’s games. If you don’t play, you’re suddenly outside the inside jokes. And if you don’t like sports at all, forget it: You’re missing not just the game, but a whole layer of office culture.

Sports are everywhere at work, even beyond the games themselves. Think about the metaphors we casually toss into meetings: 

• We’ve got that project on deck
• This idea is a slam dunk
• Our sponsor team threw us a curveball
• That client is playing hardball
• We need to get this over the finish line
• Etc.

Admittedly, I use some of these phrases! I didn’t even realize so many of these common office phrases had a sports origin, until I sat down to think of them just now. They just snuck in and became part of my vocabulary. And that’s the point: They slip in unnoticed, reinforcing the idea that everyone should speak the language of sports. (Side note: There’s a TikTok creator, Ari Kraemer, who has started using makeup metaphors at work. “I mean, you’re skipping skin prep and are wondering why the results aren’t sticking.” Genius. Hilarious.)

Now compare that to other cultural moments. When the Met Gala rolls around, maybe you’ll find one coworker who wants to gossip about red carpet looks. The MTV Video Music Awards, just this past weekend? That’ll get a passing mention at best. When the new season of “Love is Blind” drops? You’ll get an eye roll and a “reality TV is stupid” or “not everyone watches that.” (Side note #2: Sports is literally reality TV for men. The cast of characters! The cliffhangers every Sunday! The physical altercations! The DRAMA! I will die on this hill.)

Sports, which are overwhelmingly coded male in American culture, are treated as neutral, universal, and worth organizing entire office rituals around. But pop culture, award shows, and reality TV — often coded feminine, queer, and/or niche — are treated as side interests. Optional, and not central to workplace culture.

Fantasy football leagues and March Madness brackets aren’t bad. They’re fun! They bring people together. They spark connection across levels and departments. The problem is that they’re assumed to be the default, the thing everyone will get, while everything else is treated as a special interest.

I know this firsthand. I wanted to be part of the group. I learned how to play fantasy football, and participated in Superbowl Squares, and speed-ran learning who’s who in the NCAA, because I wanted to participate. They say fake it til you make it, and I sure faked it during my fantasy draft this year. Now I understand just enough to be dangerous, where I can jump into the shit-talking, use the metaphors, keep up with league standings, and maybe even win some of these games. But I can also feel how uneven the playing field is. My pop culture references, the things the typical American man in the workplace doesn’t care about, don’t carry the same weight. I don’t see Slack channels lighting up over the Backstreet Boys Las Vegas residency. I don’t see brackets being made for Best Picture nominees.

This isn’t just about what we do for fun at work, but it’s what got me thinking. This observation is broader than the workplace. It’s about who gets to set the cultural baseline. When men’s hobbies and interests are positioned as the norm, it sends a subtle but powerful message about who belongs and whose culture is secondary. I witnessed SO. MUCH. COMPLAINING by men (and women too, but a whole lot of men) who think Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce is stupid, a publicity stunt, “who even cares, can’t I just enjoy football?” When Taylor Swift shows up on NFL broadcasts, men groan that it’s ruining the game. But women have had to learn who’s still in the running for the World Series or which quarterback is out with an injury just to keep up at work. Isn’t it interesting how one is seen as an intrusion and the other is just… culture.

What’s fascinating about all of this is that sports themselves are not inherently universal. They just get treated that way. We’ve decided as a society that the Final Four is more culturally relevant than the season finale of “Love Island”, even though both reach millions. We’ve decided that Monday morning quarterbacking belongs in the office, but Monday morning red carpet reviews do not.

That choice is not neutral. It’s about power, history, and whose interests have long been centered in the public sphere.

I’m not suggesting we all stop filling out brackets or shut down fantasy leagues. Like I said, I enjoy them. But I do think it’s worth noticing what we’re elevating as “for everyone” and what we’re dismissing as “just for some.” Why is it cool to like sports but uncool to like boy bands? Why are we trained to adapt to the world of straight men’s interests, while their participation in ours is optional?

What if the baseline wasn’t only men’s interests? What if the Oscars pool got as much energy as March Madness? What if office-wide chatter included not just the touchdown highlights, but the VMAs performances (Lady Gaga frickin SLAYED) or the latest episode of a hit reality show? What if we treated pop culture, in all its diversity, as culture — not niche, not extra, not optional, but just as valid as sports?

What this thought exercise made me realize is: Culture is a choice, and I’m intentionally taking up more space with all of my interests that aren’t considered the default.

Why rituals matter, and why I’m leaning into the ones I grew up with

If you walk through any museum, you’ll notice how much of what we know about ancient cultures comes from ritual. Offerings, vessels, jewelry, charms, garments. It wasn’t “just” decoration. These objects carried meaning: protection, luck, fertility, gratitude. They were the stuff of daily life. They were reminders that people weren’t just surviving, but living with intention.

Yet, in modern life, rituals so often slip away. Efficiency replaced them. Why steep medicinal tea when you can swallow a pill? Why cook a traditional dish when takeout is faster? Individualism eroded the collective. Science flattened mystery into data. Migration and assimilation push people to blend in and leave behind practices that mark them as “other”. Slowly, rituals become remnants of a time that once was, tucked into memory or behind museum glass.

I don’t think the human need for ritual ever disappears. It’s written into us. That’s why you see people lighting candles for self-care, rolling out yoga mats, or crafting morning routines as if they were sacred rites. Having a warm beverage every morning is a ritual of mine (as is my husband’s process of making me one). Sports fans paint their faces for a game, birthdays are celebrated with a cake and a song.

Lately, I’ve found myself leaning into the rituals I grew up around, especially the Chinese ones. I was inspired to write about this topic because I reached for “cooling” foods last week. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, there are “cooling” and “heaty” foods, and you need to maintain balance. I’ve been breaking out and biting my cheeks after eating lots of spicy and fried foods (“heaty”), so I had melon (“cooling”) for dessert every day for a week. Look, I believe in science, but I also believe in centuries-old wisdom — especially when it clears up my skin.

Other Chinese rituals I practice: Eating chicken and noodles on my birthday, because chicken is good luck and long noodles mean long life. Wearing my jade bangle for protection, even though it was definitely seen as auntie-core when I was a kid (and let’s be real, it’s gorgeous). Wearing red for the moments I need luck or celebration. Lighting incense to purify my home’s energy and ward away bad juju.

These might look like superstitions from the outside (“I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious” – Michael Scott). But to me, they’re more than that. They’re ways of staying tethered to a lineage and a community, even when modern life tries to strip that away. When I eat my birthday noodles, I’m not just having dinner, I’m celebrating a tradition practiced for centuries. When I rock my jade bangle, I’m carrying a piece of my heritage that protects me in ways both seen and unseen.

Rituals like these remind me that love, protection, and belonging don’t always need to be spoken outright. Sometimes they’re eaten, sometimes they’re worn, sometimes they live in tiny gestures. The older I get, the more I understand why my parents and grandparents clung to these small acts, even as they built new lives in a new country. Rituals weren’t just habits. They were identity, they were culture. They were a way of saying “we’re still us even in a different place.”

Maybe modern society wants to sand down those edges, to make everything faster, smoother, easier, optimized (ooh, I have a whole post’s worth of opinions about optimization, but I digress), homogenized. But I don’t think ease is the point. Rituals slow us down. They make us pause, notice, connect. They remind us that even the smallest things — a bowl of noodles, a jade necklace, a red shirt — can turn the everyday into something meaningful.

I think that’s why I find myself craving them more now. I want to slow down, connect, find meaning in the mundane, and be more intentional about what I do and why I do it. I also think — in a full-circle kind of way — that I want these rituals for the same reasons my parents did. They’re not just rituals I practice… they’re rituals that hold onto me.

There’s probably more to unpack here, but for now, I’m happy acknowledging my rituals, even if they seem a little stitious.

When words aren’t right, or aren’t enough.

Food has always been my love language. It’s how I’ve said thank you, let’s celebrate, I thought of you, I hope you feel better, I love you. The form varies from store-bought supermarket cupcakes to homemade paella, but the act itself has always been the same. Offering someone food is offering them nourishment. Something that, even if for just a moment, feels like love.

I feel a particular sense of satisfaction in feeding someone. Watching them eat, noticing their little food happy dance, seeing the way their shoulders drop just a little after the first bite, hearing the hum of approval as they go back for more. Food cuts through the walls that words sometimes hit. You don’t need to craft the perfect sentence to show affection or support; you can just hand someone a plate of delicious food. You can make your cousin’s favorite Thanksgiving dish, that you usually don’t make, because you care. You can give homemade snickerdoodles to your neighbors because you want to share the Christmas spirit. I feel this joy even when I didn’t personally make the food; if what I ordered at a restaurant is delicious, you bet I’ll offer a bite to everyone at the table.

I often think about how food is tied to memory and belonging. Recipes are like love letters passed down generations, sometimes in exact measurements, sometimes just in the muscle memory of how much spice to add “until it smells right”. Anyone who’s ever asked an Asian mom for a recipe knows exactly what I mean. Cooking is never just about the meal. It’s about who you were when you first tasted it, who you were when you first learned how to make it, and who you’re with when you make it again. Maybe that’s why I’m so hell-bent on recreating my favorite dishes from childhood.

I feel this most vividly when I make chicken curry. My late mother-in-law made chicken curry for me whenever we went to her house — because I, in particular, loved her chicken curry. (I also grew up eating a very similar version of chicken curry. Burmese food has a lot of similarities to some Indian food.) When the pandemic had us all in lockdown in 2020, we realized we didn’t know when we would next have Mom’s food. So we asked her to film herself cooking, so that we would learn how to make her recipes and be able to replicate them at home. Not the same as having her home cooking, but we would hopefully make a decent facsimile to tide us over until we could visit again. I watched that video more times than I can count, pausing and rewinding, trying to translate her handfuls and pinches and “one teaspoon” (that was actually just a random green spoon in her kitchen) into written measurements.

Little did we know that that would be one of our favorite ways to remember my mother-in-law and honor her. Every time I cook that curry, I’m not just feeding us. I’m keeping her present at the table. The recipe isn’t just instructions; it’s her love letter, written in garlic and ginger and haldi and jeera. Every bite is a reminder that she loved us, that we loved her, and that love can live on through something as simple as a pot of curry.

Food isn’t only how I give love — it’s also how I’ve received it. A month or so after my dad died, I stopped into one of our favorite Chinese takeout spots in town. The owner, Peter, welcomed me in and said, “I haven’t seen you in a while.” I told him, “Yeah, we’ve been out of town a lot. My dad was sick, and he passed away.” Peter nodded, handed me my order, and said, “Take it.” No fuss or grand gesture, just a simple act of kindness in the form of beef and broccoli, fried rice, and hot and sour soup. I almost cried right there at the counter. Because food is love.

If my mother-in-law’s curry taught me that food can carry memory forward, that night at the takeout counter reminded me food can also hold you when everything falls apart. Food carries love in ways that words can’t always reach. Whether it’s a family recipe or a carton of pork fried rice, the message is the same: You are cared for.

Food doesn’t erase grief or solve problems, but sure makes things easier to deal with. It gives us something warm to hold when everything else feels uncertain or shitty. It creates a moment of connection. Fleeting, maybe, but real enough to remind us that life is still here, and so is love.

What’s interesting about food as a love language is its impermanence. The meal disappears, sometimes in minutes. The plates are cleared, the leftovers stored in mismatching tupperware, the flavors only lingering faintly in the air. But the love doesn’t vanish with the meal. It leaves an imprint: a memory, a feeling of being cared for, a moment of connection.

Food nourishes the body, and it nourishes the heart. It’s the language that doesn’t need words, a universal way to say: you are loved.

Because the best parts of who we are might be the things we’ll never get paid for. 

The last time someone asked me, “So, what do you do for work?” I felt… gross? Not just mildly annoyed, but a visceral, whole-body recoil. I probably made a face and immediately stifled it before responding. For most of my life, I thought of that question as harmless small talk, but now it makes me bristle. Why? Because in American society, we’ve decided that who you are is the same as what you do for money. Your self-worth, your identity, and your place in the social hierarchy are all filtered through your profession.

It’s not a neutral question. It’s shorthand for class, status, ambition. Growing up in the NYC area, I realized that “what do you do?” wasn’t usually about genuine curiosity. It was about sorting. Sometimes even before you knew someone’s name, you knew whether they were “worth your time.” And I went along with it, because that’s what everyone else did.

But the older I get, the more it feels like a trap. When someone asks me now, I hear the unspoken rule: if it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t matter.

Take hobbies. The moment you start one, someone will ask if you’re going to monetize it. Make mugs and bowls? “Ooh, are you going to sell them on Etsy?” Learn to paint? “Have you thought about taking commissions?” Bake sourdough? “You should start a bakery!” As if joy alone isn’t enough of a reason to do something. As if the only legitimate purpose of creativity is commerce. As if the goal of creation is to start a side hustle. Admittedly, I’ve fallen into that trap myself, wondering if I should sell the little trinket dishes I make at the studio. But I know that once something fun becomes work, it becomes… well, work.

Which is why it felt especially interesting when that dreaded question came up at the pottery studio. The one place I feel free to create without worrying about work. I know this time the person probably meant it sincerely, but still, it made me twinge.

I’ve noticed how much this obsession with productivity feels uniquely American. Maybe even more concentrated on the coasts. When we first moved to Denver, we sat at the bar of a burger joint, and the bartender asked, “What do you do?” Being East Coasters, we rattled off our jobs. He laughed: “No, like, do you ski? Mountain bike? What do you DO?” That moment really shifted my perspective and made me realize there are other ways to answer that question.

And yet, I still default to the job title answer. Maybe that’s why I felt especially uncomfortable this time: I don’t really have a full-time profession at the moment. I certainly no longer want to be identified as only what I do for work. And that’s why I didn’t know how to answer in the “right” way, the way that is expected.

But maybe there’s a better way altogether. Why reduce someone to their LinkedIn headline (side note: ugh, LinkedIn, what a necessary evil. EVIL.)? Why flatten entire lives into a single line on a business card?

There are richer questions:

• What’s been bringing you joy lately? (Having an umbrella in the backyard so I can enjoy being outside without burning to a crisp)
• What have you learned lately / what are you learning right now? (I learned to drive a manual transmission / I’m learning about Hawaiian history while watching “Chief of War”)
• What’s something you’re looking forward to? (Going to two!! concerts at Red Rocks next week)

I’d rather answer any of those. I’d rather ask any of those. Because they tell me so much more than “I’m a software engineer” or “I work in finance.”

I don’t want to be asked what I do for work anymore.

Because the best parts of who we are might be the things we’ll never get paid for. (But, like, if you want to pay me for my writing or drawing or pottery, I wouldn’t say no. A girl’s got bills to pay.)

Community is built in small, everyday ways.

No, this isn’t another post about coffee.

I’ve had a really good few weeks. Not because anything big or special happened. There were no grand trips, no major milestones, no celebrations. My days have been good because I — we — have been with our people.

For someone as introverted as I am, it might surprise you to hear that my cup is so full right now. As it turns out, introversion doesn’t mean I don’t love being with people. It just means the type of connection matters. When the company is nourishing, I leave more energized than when I arrived. (And when it’s shallow, chaotic, or draining in any way… I leave empty.)

There was a fantastic tasting menu dinner with excellent company. We got to know a loved one’s new significant other — the kind of meeting that can be exciting and awkward in equal measure — and it ended up being wonderful. We swapped family stories, she got a peek into our “family” dynamic, and the comfort level rose fast enough to create the kind of inside jokes that feel instant. There was a lot of laughter.

Another night, we had dinner with friends we hadn’t seen in a while, at a Denver neighborhood staple. We thought about going somewhere new and trendy, but decided instead to revisit a local mainstay. Over a bottle of red wine (I couldn’t tell you what kind, since I let someone else choose), we talked about how sad it is when long-standing restaurants close, and how important it is to support the ones we love. The food was still excellent, the drinks simple but perfect — but most of all, the company made the night. I couldn’t tell you everything we talked about, but I can tell you how it felt: light, warm, and easy.

Then there was the casual dinner we hosted at home. This summer has been relentlessly hot — 90+ degrees for days on end — so we offered our air conditioning, along with a simple, budget-friendly meal. Outside, the air was heavy and still, the kind that sticks to your skin (why has this summer been so humid?! We thought we moved away from humidity!), but inside, the cool hum of the AC made everyone instantly relax. That night, we learned more than we expected about plants and hydroponics, the dogs got a playdate, and we got the kind of conversation that lingers with you.

We also visited one of my favorite restaurants in Denver, where we know the chef-owners and staff. We brought them bags of candy because we knew it’s their fuel, and in return, we got hugs, quick chats, and the camaraderie of people who are happy to see you walk in.

Not all of these moments happened over dinner, though.

I saw my hair stylist, someone I’ve been going to for a few years now. We caught up on the six weeks since our last visit, and she asked about my pottery. It’s a small kindness that lands bigger than you’d expect. There’s something affirming about someone remembering your little side projects; it makes you feel seen. And of course, I asked about her upcoming trip to Greece, and we yapped and yapped while she was giving my hair a much-needed trim.

Speaking of pottery, I went to the studio last week and learned how to make a lidded jar. It was a bit of a group effort, the kind of collaborative cheerleading that’s built into the pottery community. We swapped tips, laughed at our mistakes, and as it tends to happen, the conversation somehow drifted from clay techniques to imposter syndrome.

And all of this was just within the last two weeks.

With each shared meal, each story, each burst of joyful-tears laughter, I’ve felt a little more grounded. A little more connected. A little more seen. A lot more appreciated, and appreciative. The last two weeks have been a beautiful reminder that community isn’t always about large gatherings or elaborate plans. It’s often about a handful of people who just get you, and the cumulative effect of those small moments is what keeps you going.

My cup is full. And when it’s full, it’s easier to pour into the people who fill mine.

I never mean to fall into rabbit holes, but here we are.

We just wanted a quote for windows and doors.

We got the quote, but not before we got a crash course in frame materials, insulation ratings, building codes, and product design patents. I now know the terms “double-hung” and “casement” and the difference between the two. The sales guy brought in an actual window and a heat lamp to demo how well that window would insulate the house. He had opinions about the different kinds of handles and the ergonomics of them.

Turns out there’s an entire universe of windows… and doors. I stepped away for a bit to take a call, and when I was done, R asked me what door style I preferred. “Idk, one that opens, closes, locks, and seals?” I suddenly had to think about which way I want my doors to open. Which side to have the hinges on. Whether I want any glass panes, and if so, how many. The material, the handle, the color, whether the front and side door should match. It was overwhelming, to say the least.

There’s a whole person immersed in that universe — someone who has spent years, maybe decades (as our particular window guy did), learning the ins and outs of something I barely thought about until now.

And I think that’s beautiful.

Not because I suddenly care deeply about windows and doors (though, honestly, I now notice window and door details more). But because he cared. You could tell he had seen it all: the houses that cut corners, the craftsmanship that still makes him proud, the tiny details most people never notice, but that he notices every single time.

We had a fun week of sales pitches and quotes and bids for house projects that we’ve been putting off for a while, so not just windows and doors. One of those projects is repainting the exterior of our house, and the paint guy had all kinds of thoughts about paint! About paint quality, yes, but also about weather exposure and surface prep and which colors fade fastest in Colorado weather and sun. He walked me through his team’s whole process, start to finish. He also did me a solid and gave me a few of his favorite color combinations to choose from. Seeing how many shades of white exist made my eyes glaze over.

And before the house projects, when we were buying this house in the first place… If you’ve been in the housing market long enough, you (well, maybe only if you’re me?) eventually find yourself an expert on zoning laws, easements, subfloors, and all the perks of living in a particular neighborhood. You can walk into a house and know exactlywhat to look for — the ceiling height, the slope of the lot (always get the water away from the house), the difference between sturdy and cheap finishes, the story behind a weirdly placed vent. We had been looking for our current house for years, and soon enough, our real estate agent was impressed by what I was checking out in every house. (I think he now checks if cabinets and drawers are soft close, every time.)

Plants are another example. Any decent plant shop has someone who can break down exactly why your pothos is leggy (it’s searching for light) or your snake plant is sad (it’s probably overwatered). They’ve studied light and water, learned how to propagate from a single node, and can tell you the difference between healthy and hopeless in an instant. And suddenly you realize someone has spent years learning which vegetables grow well together and which don’t. As someone who’s unalived many plants in my lifetime, I know this was hard-won expertise earned through A LOT of trial and error.

Expertise doesn’t always get framed as awe-inspiring, but it is. Somewhere out there, someone knows everything about the thing you just discovered. They’ve followed its changes, memorized the details, and developed a feel for what matters. And they light up when you ask a question most people overlook, when you show even an ounce of curiosity.

And it’s not just about trades or technical fields. There are experts in all fields, even fields you didn’t realize were fields. Someone can taste a wine and tell you the exact grape, region, and year. Someone can identify a bird by its call, or mushrooms by their shape — and knows which ones are edible and which ones are deadly (I guess that applies to both birds and mushrooms?). Someone knows every storyline (even the diverging ones, iykyk) in a decades-long comic book arc. Someone can identify which mushrooms are yummy and which ones will kill you. Someone understands the nuances of vintage cars — and really understands the nuances of vintage Porsches. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love being a generalist, I love having many, many, MANY interests, but I also think it’s beautiful that there are people who go so deep into a subject. There’s joy in being able to explain why something works the way it does — and in watching someone else come alive as they do.

There’s so much in this world to learn, and I’ll continue to lean in whenever someone nerds out about something I don’t understand.