Self-Care Necessities: Little Happy Things (+ Three of Mine This Summer)

The world can seem like a very dark place sometimes, and I know that most of us have been feeling the weight of that for a while. That's not to say the world hasn't gone through dark times before, but I think now that we're exposed to fast-flowing news and social media nonstop, it's sometimes hard to see out of it and find some light.

But finding that light and a few little happy things is often vital, especially if you're a highly empathetic person or someone prone to depression and anxiety. So first, remember to take care of yourself. Second, don't feel guilty for doing so. Third, don't let anyone shame you for not wanting to be immersed in the negative stuff all the time. Do what you can to stay informed and help the causes and people you care about, but also realize that you're no good to anyone if doing so is causing your own mental or physical health to suffer.

I've talked about this before, so I won't go too deeply into it, but I just wanted to put that reminder out there. It's one I need to give myself pretty often too. And one of the things I've found helpful for me is to find some little happy things that make me smile. This is one reason why I'm a romance reader and writer. We need to read those happy endings to remind ourselves they're possible. So first on my list is obvious.

1. Read books that make you feel good.

For me that's usually romance and YA. For you, it may be books that make you cry but are cathartic. Or it may be books that engage your mind in a mystery. You do you. But for me, there's often no better way to cheer myself up than to get lost in a great book. If you need a recommendation, I read Christina Lauren's Love and Other Words recently and loved it so hard. It just left a big ol' smile on my face. (If you like my books, I think it has a similar emotional feel to the kind of stories I write, if that helps.)

2. Upbeat music that gets you singing or dancing along

If I've had a rough day or am feeling blue, the quickest way to turn it around for me is to switch on my favorite playlist when I start cooking dinner and sing/dance alone while I cook. It's a great way to shake off the day and transition into relaxed family time. I know music is super personal, so suggesting something that everyone will like is impossible. However, I can tell you that after my family saw The Struts open for the Foo Fighters a couple of weeks ago, we have been OBSESSED. Opening bands rarely capture my attention, but The Struts grabbed mine right from the start. The lead singer is a great showman and reminds me a lot of Freddie Mercury, and the songs are just so catchy and fun to sing. I highly recommend checking out their full playlist but here's a taste. I apologize ahead of time for the earworm. Every one of their songs is an earworm. I think I've been singing "Put Your Money on Me" for a month straight.

3. Spending time with those you love with no news on TV in the background and without checking your phone.

I've talked about how we're doing device-free summer again, and that always gets us playing board games. Sometimes I'm feeling like--ugh, I so don't feel like playing a game right now--but once we start, my competitive side kicks in and before I know it, we're all having fun. We had quite a game of Upwords the other night where hubs trash talked me and then lived to regret it when I beat him badly in the game, lol. We also had a lot of fun last weekend playing ping pong. Those unplugged things sometimes take some effort to start, but they really do feel good once you're doing them.  

---

So those are just a few of mine. Not everyone's little happy things are going to be the same. A little happy thing for me is decorating my planner or writing in my reading journal. They seem like silly things but work for me. You need to find those things that let you take a deep breath and restore some balance. So go ahead, have a little fun, and don't feel bad about it. It doesn't mean you're ignoring the problems in the world. It just means that you're making sure you're not on the airplane putting everyone else's mask on first and then collapsing in the aisle because you forgot you needed to breathe too.

Slowing Down & Savoring Summer: A Few Strategies

I mentioned in my last post Device-Free Summer 2.0 that in addition to kidlet going device-free for another summer, I was looking for way to slow down our summer. Today I'm tackling that topic more in depth.

Summers for us usually mean a shift in our schedule but not a change in the hectic-ness of it. Kidlet isn't in school, but he goes to full-time day camp. Hubs and I are still working. Books still need to be written and edited and promoted. I'm used to that being our summer.

However, last week (week two of summer) when I found myself up before 7am and already yelling, "Where's the sunscreen? Where'd you put your tennis shoes? We're going to be late! Someone grab a juice box!", I realized that not only was I NOT getting any kind of slow down in summer, it almost felt more crazy--for all of us. This was in part because we'd spent seven days in New York City for a combo vacation/work trip right after school ended, so we'd hit the ground running with a very fun but busy trip. But it also felt like more that just that. I was deeply tired of this rush.

It gave me the very pointed craving to slow the hell down for summer. Summer used to have this promise to it when I was growing up--a promise of lazy days and an open schedule. Yes, it was blazing hot and humid in south Louisiana. Yes, I was an only child and often got bored. But that's also the time I got to read all the books I wanted. It's when I got to goof around at the pool with friends or run through sprinklers. It was walks down the road to the sno-ball stand (they are NOT snow cones in Louisiana) without your parents. 

My kiddo has never had that kind of summer because summers are generally scheduled events now. (Not just for me but most of the kids I know.) There are summer camps and music camps and STEM camps and sports teams/games and blah blah blah. Part of that is necessary. Even though I'm home, I'm working full-time. My job doesn't stop in the summer, and kidlet would get hella bored being home all day every day by himself with me working (and him device-free,) But I'm now wondering if we've swung too far in the other direction and maybe could use some balance. Meaning, work in some lazy, slow stuff into the busy schedule for us all. Allow time for boredom and creativity and white space.

So, though kidlet already has two weeks of pre-scheduled, already paid for speciality camps, I'm going to try him on half days instead of full for his regular summer camp and only bring him in the afternoons. I get most of my deep work/writing down in the afternoon anyway, so this should work for me. In the mornings, I can get easier work stuff done and also spend some time with him. We shall see how it goes.

But this got me to thinking more about how fast time goes. This past school year flew by, and I know summer will as well if I don't do something different. I mean, we can't actually slow down time, but I wondered if there were things we could do to savor it more and make it feel a little more languid.

This is what made me pick up the book Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam. (Yes, it has the same title as one of my books, but is a very different topic! lol) Y'all know I love a productivity book, but this one is less about productivity, and more about finding the white space in your schedule and feeling like you have "all the time in the world" instead of feeling like you're always rushed and behind.

Vaderkam had a large group of people in different professions track their time, and she used the results for this book. One interesting thing she found was that a lot of the people in very busy, high-powered positions often felt like they had more time, but it was because they'd learn strategies to make it that way. So this book goes into a number of strategies to help create that feeling of space in your schedule, of slowing down and savoring.

I won't go deeply into each of these because the book is worth a read and I did lots of underlining, but each strategy has its own chapter title and I'll touch on those.

Chapter 1: Tend Your Garden

Her basic premise here is that in order to do anything about your time, you need to know where it's actually going. We're really bad at estimating how much time we spend doing certain things. Like, you know, how often we're sucked into social media. Or how few minutes it actually takes to wash the dishes. So she recommends tracking your time by the half-hour ALL DAY for at least a week. 

"...one of the most striking findings of my survey was the gap in estimated phone checks per hour between people who felt relaxed about time and those who felt anxious" --pg. 8

I've done time-tracking on and off over the years, which is made easy with the Day Designer planner I use, and I have found it helpful. If you're honest in your tracking, you can see where your time is getting wasted or squandered. It's sobering when you realize you popped over to check twitter for a minute and wasted forty minutes instead. So this practice takes discipline, but I think it is a great exercise to kind of give you an overview.

"Time passes whether or not we think about how we are spending it. Tracking forces me to think about it." --pg. 35

Chapter 2: Make Life Memorable

This was probably my favorite chapter of the book. I have a TERRIBLE memory. Terrible, y'all. And I hate that so many memories sift through my fingers (probably because I'm moving too fast.) So this chapter was about the science of what makes a memory stick. We know that novel experiences and experiences with high emotion (good and bad) are more likely to burn into our memories. But does that mean the ordinary days are destined to just compress in our minds and give us that sense of time just flying by? Vanderkam argues that no, there are things we can do. She encourages us to record things in a journal (or in your time tracker if you're doing that). Nothing elaborate but something that will help the day stick a little better.

"One might inquire this of any twenty-four hours. Why is today different from all other days? Why should my brain bother holding on to the existence of this day as it curates the museum of my memories?" --pg. 64

I love this concept and am going to give it a try. I'm terrible at journaling, but this seems less intimidating--just marking down what was special about that day. Not only does it provide a record, but the actual act of writing it down helps your memory keep it better. And she said taking photos isn't enough because unless we curate them, it's just a big jumble of a file in our phone. (Guilty as charged!)

Chapter 3: Don't Fill Time

This one is pretty obvious but still not as easy in practice if you're not deliberate about it. The main points are: leave white space on your calendar (to account for things running over, unexpected things, thinking time, etc.) and don't say yes to things unless you really want/need to do it. (This goes back to the "if it's not a hell yes, it's a no" thing.) I liked a particular question she posed about how to decide whether to agree to something in the future. She warns that we don't think of our future selves as "us", so we assign those future versions of ourselves things present "us" really doesn't want to do because we think this imaginary future "us" will totally be into it by the time it gets here. I'm SO guilty of this. So she suggests this question:

"Would I do this tomorrow?" and "Would you be tempted? Would you try to move things around to fit this new opportunity?" --pg. 98

Also in the "don't fill time" category is the technology/phone habit. Every moment that you have to wait in a line or wait for an appointment doesn't need to be filled with social media or the web. It makes us fee busier. It erases that sense of downtime or space in your schedule (beyond being a distraction.) I also think it sucks up time we could use for those things we'd "like to do if we had more time." Like, for me, I always want more reading time. My TBR pile is out of control. But if I'm on the couch and bored and pick up my phone, I could lose half an hour just scrolling or answering email. Instead, I could pick up a book and spend that time doing something I love and want to do. When I started paying attention (and dialing back) my social media time last year, I noticed a big difference in how many books I read. (In 2016 I read 42 books, in 2017 I read 63. I've read almost 30 this year so far.)

Chapter 4: Linger

This chapter is mostly about mindfulness and learning to savor the present. One of the tactics I loved was recommended by a psychology professor she interviewed. He imagines himself in his elderly years when his health is failing and he can't do much anymore and imagines that version of himself looking back at today, feeling the wistfulness of "I wish I could be doing that again" and then knowing that, hey, that IS today for me. I'm here in this moment right now.

Chapter 5: Invest in Your Happiness

Her advice: if you can afford to, farm out hated/annoying tasks that can be done by others that are sucking up valuable time. If you can pay someone to cut your lawn and save yourself the time, do it. But this chapter also talked about "paying yourself first" with your time. Meaning, if you want to write a book, give yourself that chunk of time in your schedule first before anyone else gets your time. Even if it's just a little bit. I learned this when I took Becca Syme's Write Better Faster class--write first. Before the distractions come. Before the busy work or demands others put on your time. I don't always follow that because my creative brain kicks in more in the afternoon, but I still use it in concept because I block off that time for my writing. I give myself my most creative, productive hours and don't hand those off to other people's needs/tasks.

Chapter 6: Let It Go

Life is life, and things are going to get in the way of best laid plans. The water heater is going to break when you planned a writing day. You're going to get caught in traffic and screw up the afternoon's schedule. You're going to get a cold that knocks you on your butt. Vanderkam's advice is to learn to let it go. Just do what you can do with the time you have.

"When I tell myself, OK, you only have this time, just do what you can do, I surprise myself. I can write an article draft in a few hours. I can edit it in those ninety-minute chunks. Indeed, when I tell myself to just do what I can, even if it is only a little bit, because it is better than nothing, that something, done repeatedly, adds up." -- pg. 173 

I need this reminder often because I like to write in big three-hour blocks. If my schedule gets messed up and I only have an hour and a half, I feel like--well, why bother? But I can get a decent amount of words in an hour or whatever if I focus on it. So I need to not throw out the whole plan if things didn't go perfectly.

Chapter 7: People Are a Good Use of Time

This section focuses on spending quality time with your family and friends and colleagues because that kind of experience often expands time and makes great memories. What I particularly loved about this chapter was the idea of planning your off hours.

"Few people would show up at work at 8:00am with no idea about what they'd do until 1:00pm, and yet people will come home at 6:00pm having given no thought to what they'll do until they go to bed at 11:00pm. This is how people will claim to have no time for their hobbies, even though they're clearly awake for two hours or more after their kids go to bed...It is simply that they haven't thought about this time, and so it feels like it doesn't exist." --pg. 204

I love this idea and have seen it in action. Most of us don't want to schedule ourselves down to the second in our off time. However, last year when we did device-free summer, I had to be deliberate about what was going to fill some of kidlet's free time instead. I wanted to make it fun and to help him realize life without the devices and video games could be way cooler. So on our calendar I planned movie nights and board game night. I scheduled nights that he'd help me cook dinner. We planned for outings like putt putt or bowling. It gave the summer a feeling of adventure, and it cemented a lot of those things in my memory. I remember the movies we watched together as a family. I remember binge-watching The Goldbergs and teaching kidlet about life in the 80s. I remember an epic game of Upwords. It made simple things into events and made the summer feel special and full. I plan to do that again this summer, but I also need to take this idea and use it all through the year.

So, if you can't tell, I really enjoyed the book and got a lot from it. I'm going to take away a lot of ideas. I'm tracking my time again, and I'm going to attempt to journal. I'll report back!

How is your summer shaping up? Do you seek out a slow summer?

THE ONE YOU CAN'T FORGET is here!

It's time for Rebecca and Wes's story! I'm so excited to share this one with y'all.

About the book:

Most days Rebecca Lindt feels like an imposter...

The world admires her as a survivor. But that impression would crumble if people knew her secret. She didn't deserve to be the one who got away. But nothing can change the past, so she's thrown herself into her work. She can't dwell if she never slows down.

Wes Garrett is trying to get back on his feet after losing his dream restaurant, his money, and half his damn mind in a vicious divorce. But when he intervenes in a mugging and saves Rebecca—the attorney who helped his ex ruin him—his simple life gets complicated.

Their attraction is inconvenient and neither wants more than a fling. But when Rebecca's secret is put at risk, both discover they could lose everything, including what they never realized they needed: each other

She laughed and kissed him. This morning she'd melted down. But somehow this man had her laughing and turned on only a few hours later. Everything inside her felt buoyed.

She felt...light.

She'd forgotten what that felt like.

Order the book:  Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo | Indiebound | Books-A-Million | Google Play

READ CHAPTER ONE HERE

One Week Countdown to The One You Can't Forget!

It's almost here, y'all! THE ONE YOU CAN'T FORGET is out in one week!!! I'm so excited to share Rebecca and Wes's story with y'all.

But for now, here's a little sneak peek...

Excerpt:

Fifteen minutes. That was how long it took for Marco and Kincaid to abandon Rebecca and Wes in the kitchen under the auspices of Let me show you the view from Marco and Does this building have original details? from Kincaid.

Kincaid had motioned at Rebecca as she slipped out of the kitchen, some invented sign language that probably meant Talk it out with the hot chef but looked more like a drunken game of naughty charades.

Rebecca had promptly flipped her off.

But now here she was. Alone with Wes again.

Wes stood behind the large island, black bandanna keeping his hair back, gray T-shirt putting all that colorful arm ink on display, and forearms flexing as he sliced and diced an onion with practiced precision. If not for the simmering annoyance, it would’ve been a nice show to watch from her spot sitting on a stool on the other side of the counter. But he hadn’t said a word to her since they’d gotten into the condo. Just chop, chop, chop and irritated grunts.

“Do you need any help?” she asked for lack of anything else to say.

“Can you help me murder my brother?”

“I was thinking we could get rid of them both in one go. How far is the drop from the balcony?” Rebecca tapped her chin. “We could make it look like an accident. I know someone who could defend us.”

Wes smirked.

The little break in the wall helped her relax some. “Why’d you give in anyway? I was about to get us out of it. I had a whole argument prepared. There were bullet points. Closing statements. We could’ve saved ourselves this lovely moment.”

He frowned and dumped the onions into one of the prep bowls. “Yeah, but you didn’t see the look on my brother’s face.” He pushed a basket of strawberries and a paring knife toward her. “Can lawyers hull strawberries?”

“Sure.” She took the berries and stole one of his empty prep bowls. “So what kind of look was that?”

“The Don’t ruin this for me look. The Remember all the times I’ve helped you out look. That look.”

“That’s a lot for a look to say.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t hard to get the point. He’s always working and doesn’t get to go out and meet women. He likes your friend, and she seems to like him for whatever reason”—he shrugged and grabbed a bell pepper from the stack of vegetables—“so I’m hanging out with my ex-wife’s lawyer and taking one for the team.”

She wrinkled her nose.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’m just having a high school flashback.” Thankfully not the kind she’d had Friday night, but one that was unpleasant enough in its own right.

“How’s that?”

She concentrated on cutting the stem off a strawberry. “I had a friend whose parents would only let her go on group dates. So I always got dragged out with her and had to be the date of her boyfriend’s best friend, who pretty much reminded me every ten minutes that he was there as a favor and was taking one for the team by hanging out with me. It was super awesome for my fifteen-year-old ego.”

“Ouch. What an idiot.”

“Yeah, I should’ve just told her to leave me out of it and sneak out like everyone else.”

“No, I meant him. What a douche.”

“Oh. Yeah. He was.” But even as she said it, she felt a pang of guilt in her gut. Craig hadn’t made it through prom night. So douche or not, she felt guilty talking bad about the dead. “We were just in a doomed-to-fail setup. Popular jock and high-strung goody-goody were not a wise combination. Two different planets and all that. He probably thought I was an insufferable Miss Priss.”

His lip curled. “Were you?”

She lifted her hand and held her index finger and thumb an inch apart. “Maybe a little. I wasn’t…not. When they brought weed to date night, I couldn’t just say no and let them do their thing. I gave everyone a lecture about how long it stays in your system and how having something on your record could ruin your college chances.”

He cringed. “Ahh, you were that girl. We had one of those at my school, too.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded. “Laney Becker. And she thought I was a douche.”

“Were you?”

He lifted his fingers, repeating her motion back to her but widening the gap further.

“Nice.”

“I probably would’ve done better if I’d been friends with someone like her. I could’ve used a girl telling me not to blow off class and get high. Or doing a lot of other things I shouldn’t have been doing back then.” He tossed more chopped veggies into a bowl. “And I’m sorry about the ‘taking one for the team’ comment. I didn’t mean it that way. This is just…a screwed-up situation. I’m willing to call a temporary let’s-forget-we-have-history truce for today.”

“I’m on board with that.”

“Good.” He frowned down at her chopped berries. “Hold up. That’s not how to hull.”

She looked down at the berry in her hand. She’d cut off the top. The stem was gone. She didn’t see any problem. “What’s wrong?”

He set down his knife and stepped around the island. “You’re wasting a big part of the berry that way. Here.” He held out his hand for the paring knife, and she handed it over. He shifted until he was right next to her and held the fruit in front of her. “The woody part is just under the leaves. That’s what you’re after.”

He poked the tip of the knife right beneath the leaves and then made a circle around the stem. He popped out the stem and only a little piece of the berry, leaving much more of the fruit intact.

“See.” He held the strawberry in his palm, the sweet scent of the ripe fruit wafting up to her. “Lots more berry, and you also don’t lose the shape of the fruit that way.”

“Oh.” She tried to focus on what he was showing her and not on the fact that he was so close and she could feel his body heat against her arm. Her hormones apparently had no qualms about this man. They remembered what his lips tasted like and were ready to ignore everything she knew about him. Stupid, misguided hormones.

Pre-Order the book:  Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Indiebound | Books-A-Million | Google Play

Want to read more? Check out all of chapter one.

Roni Recommends: Two Intense But Spectacular Reads

Hey, y'all! I know I've been quiet over here because I've been buried in edits for book 3, but that doesn't mean I haven't been reading in the evening. And today I have two reads, one fiction and one non-fiction, that just captured me completely and had me all...

Hook GIF from Hook GIFs

First up is a novel by an author who most of y'all most likely already know. I've had three Colleen Hoover books on my kindle for YEARS, but like so many other great books, they got shuffled to the back pages of the kindle and I forgot what I had. (This is one reason why I find myself gravitating to more print books the last few years. I can see them on my shelves.) But anyway, when Colleen so kindly blurbed The One You Can't Forget (out June 5th!) I wanted to fix the fact that I hadn't read her books yet. So of course I quickly realized once I started reading that I was a dumb, dumb lady for letting her books languish on my reader. How have I waited so long to read her??? I have since fixed that, don't worry. And it all started with me devouring this book:

About the book:

Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.

Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up
— she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan — her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened. 

Buy the book

So this book took on a topic that would be very hard to do well and non-exploitively in a romance, but she completely pulls it off. I don't want to give too much information about what that issue is, but if you're concerned, check online for trigger warnings. I loved how this book showed the gray areas in a relationship/situation that is often looked at as solidly black-and-white by those looking from the outside in. It's also a well done romance on top of that so you'll still get your swoony happy feelings, too. In addition, her author note at the end really hit home for me as I could relate to her childhood experience on a personal level. So it was one of the best books I've read in a while, and that's saying something, because I've read some good ones lately. If you haven't read it, go forth and buy It Ends With Us!

---

Next up is definitely not a romance and is a difficult read but also a compelling one. If you haven't been living under a rock, you've no doubt heard that they've apprehended the person they believe is the Golden State Killer. This brought the recent book about the case, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, back to the forefront. I don't read true crime often but there are occasions where I'm compelled to know more. This was one of them because the author of the book passed away while she was writing the book, and sadly, will never get to see that her book helped this guy finally get caught. I wanted to read the story she wrote.

This book is about the crimes, the investigation, and the search for the killer, but it's also about the woman who dedicated herself so fully to writing this book. Michelle McNamara did a fantastic job taking decades of evidence and a long list of crimes and organizing the information into a compelling portrait of the time in history all this was happening, the investigators, the victims, and the monster who committed the crimes. It was written with a deft hand and in a non-sensationalizing way.

I will say that you should not make the mistake I did and read it when you're home alone at night, but it was worth the read. It's also a good example of how a book can actually change things. I truly believe that the killer was found in part because of this author raising the profile of the case. She also directly suggests in the book the very method they used to catch him.

About the book:

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Utterly original and compelling, it has been hailed as a modern true crime classic—one which fulfilled Michelle's dream: helping unmask the Golden State Killer.

Buy the book

---

BOOK NEWS

If you haven't heard, The Ones Who Got Away is currently on sale for $1.99!

And book 2, The One You Can't Forget, is almost here! Pre-order your copy and it will be in your hands June 5th. It's gotten three STARRED reviews, y'all! Rebecca's straight-A girl self would be super happy to know her book got all the gold stars. ;)