Keep Going 079: Summertime
Brought to you by the Schwan’s Man.
👋 Hello everyone!
It’s our first week of temperatures in the upper 90s, and I reluctantly must accept that summer is here in Austin. The story I usually tell myself is:
I hate the heat. I hate being outside in the summer. I hate summer clothes. I hate feeling hot. I hate summer.
This year I’m going to attempt to tell myself a new story:
Summer is fine. Summer means swimming pools and popsicles. I can be hot and sweaty because everyone else is also hot and sweaty. I can take 20 showers a day if it means being outside more and also feeling fresh and clean. But maybe most importantly, I can travel to places that are not so hot and sweaty every so often and escape for a bit.
We’ll see if that sticks.
What are you up to? I’ve been…
🖤 Inking
Justin and I got our first tattoos a few weeks ago in LA! Something small and cute to celebrate our 25th year. When we hold hands, they line up. It’s so perfect.
I had been eyeing this fantastic artist for a while, then finally reached out to her. She was super kind and easy to work with, taking my favorite things and ideas and preferences and drawing them so perfectly. I can’t believe how lovely the cats are! I expected just a plain black cat and orange cat, but I sent her photos of our beloved Little and Roux, and she somehow managed to capture them in this tiny tattoo. Other favorite things: books, BTS Love Yourself heart, autumn leaves, and chocolate. I plan to keep adding faves as they come up in life. 💘
🍜 Eating
I’ve been having fun drawing on my photos lately and adding to Instagram—I wanted to post things but not stress about them being “Instagrammable,” and I wanted it to be something I’d enjoy looking back on. Justin said, “what if you used Instagram to journal your life, rather than to show your life?” And that made all the difference.
📚 Reading
The True Love Experiment - This was sweet and romantic and lovely and giggly, but it was also really witty and funny, if a little formulaic. “Last week I considered going jogging in flip-flops just to remind myself how sex sounds.” 😂
Talking to Strangers - I wish I hadn’t finished this book, because it did not redeem itself. I wrote, “It seems that Gladwell created a thesis, provided selective evidence to support it, and ultimately belittled horrific, complex events by calling them miscommunications.” 😕 No quotes, because I’m still mad at it.
Hidden Potential - The first half was good, but then I got tired of the “guess who” anecdotes. “Did you make yourself better today? Did you make someone else better today? If the answer to either question is yes, it was a good day.”
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone - Sort of a Knives Out, Cabin In The Woods sort of mystery-trope-on-purpose kind of book, but I still mostly enjoyed it. “Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it's who you'd spill it for.”
Rangikura - This poetry is just SO good. Desire and exploitation, ancestral trauma and young love. “Wow I say / good on you babe / then I spread / my hair all over the hotel pillow / because I love a winner / and you / hit the jackpot with me / with all us silly girls / for believing you were God / for as long as we did.”
Bride - The Good: Vampires! Werewolves! Forbidden Love! Witty banter! Sexy times! The Bad: I learned about “knotting,” and I never wish to hear about it again. 🥴 “We all want to think that we’re important to the people who are important to us. But sometimes, our best friend is someone else’s best friend.”
Love, Theoretically - Modern romance in the setting of… theoretical physics. The physics stuff was a bit much for me, and the male lead was a bit too Edward-ian in his controlling tendencies, and the “it’s so obvious that you mold yourself to be whatever other people want” was a bit heavy-handed, but I still finished it, so. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or makes you resent your pathological inability to set boundaries, one or the two.”
I also dipped into but did not finish a few: Essentialism (it was good, but I had to return it before finishing it), Big Bad Boss: Moon Mad (so, so, SO bad that I couldn’t finish it), Slow Productivity (good ideas but maybe could have been an in-depth article?), Unruly (super good, we just haven’t finished it yet).
😂 Laughing
That’s it! Thank you for reading—hit reply and tell me what you’re up to.
--Crystal