Keep Going 053

Brought to you by homemade tortillas.

👋 Hello everyone!

Last week I spent a few days with my folks in west Texas. It was SO nice to have some time alone with them to chat and hang out. It’s so quiet out there—I feel like everything just moves a little slower (which is sometimes good, sometimes bad).

Back in Austin, everything is moving super fast. Or at least, everything in my brain is moving super fast. I’m spending today with pen and paper and sticky notes, with Notion and Trello and Todoist, trying to pause and be intentional about what I’m working on, and when, rather than just reacting to all the incoming tasks and ideas. I find it so hard to do this—as I’m organizing tasks, I want to just start doing them (“that one won’t take long, let me just knock it out…”), and then I’m out of planning mode and back in frenzy mode.

I read a really interesting article (I linked to it below) about how our to-do lists can become Lists of Shame: all the ideas and tasks we’ve dumped into one spot but somehow just don’t get done. So today I’m reviewing my List of Shame and figuring out which tasks serve me and my goals, and which tasks just serve a feeling of guilt or FOMO. Wish me luck!

What have you been up to lately? I’ve been…

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🧇 Eating

I remembered to take a few photos of the delicious things I had on my west Texas trip:

1. When I got to my parents’ house, my mom had fresh fideo, beans, and homemade tortillas ready for me. I know I’m spoiled. 🤗

2. I didn’t think I could go more than a few days without my beloved fruit-yogurt bowl, so my dad stopped at the store to pick up some fruit and some non-dairy yogurt for me. Again, I am spoiled. 😏 (No granola here, so cornflakes it was!)

3. And THEN my mom made red enchiladas. 😋 We always have this little lettuce “garnish” with enchiladas, but I heaped some more on there and called it a salad.

4. We went out for brunch one day to this cool old diner, where I had a veggie omelet and hash browns. This picture does not truly show how HUGE this thing was. 😳

1. We finally tried The Halal Corner (which is seriously just around the corner from us), and we LOVED it. I had a veggie-falafel wrap and lentil soup, plus the smoothest hummus and pita. The leftovers were amazing, too!

2. Just look at these strawberries! I chose “organic strawberries” on Instacart, and this is what I got. So fancy. (Don’t ask how much they cost.)

3. My new favorite thing: the chilled ramen/hiyashi chūka at Better Half. The veggies! The tender noodles! The kewpie!

4. Brunch at home: waffles with strawberries and syrup, plus veggie sausage links and my daily dalgona.

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📚 Reading

1. American Royals and Majesty. I finished American Royals and went straight on to the second book in the series, in which all the things you maybe wanted in the first book get turned upside down, and maybe now you don’t want those things after all. I wasn’t 100% happy with the ending, but I did enjoy the royal American world the author built.

2. This list of dystopian movies. I dunno why, but I love dystopian stories. Or, I love to hate them? They make me SO uncomfortable, but they’re also fascinating to me. I’m thinking of making my way through the films on this list that I haven’t seen. You know, just to keep me creeped out.

3. I loved this piece on how the many productivity apps we try still fail to make us more productive. I definitely have a List of Shame—I’ll open my Todoist app on a Monday and see that I have 27 tasks due that day, which is impossible. It makes me want to reconsider using a pen-and-paper list.

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😂 Laughing

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That’s it! Thank you for reading—hit reply and tell me what you’re up to.

--Crystal