There’s a big difference between knowing and doing, isn’t there?

It’s baffling, the gap between what I know and what I do. I called this TinyLetter “Like I always say…” because it’s infinitely easier to rattle off wise words for happy living (like “This, too, shall pass”) than to follow them. Especially in moments of stress.

I actually know quite a bit about best practices for a happy, productive life, having immersed myself in personal development (a much better term than “self-help”) content since high school.

I can tell you all about Martin Seligman’s research on learned helplessness and learned optimism, but I still get stuck in self-defeating thought patterns of “I can’t” and “This is never going to change.”

I can explain researcher John Gottman’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the four types of interaction that predict divorce and other ruptured relationships, but I still react with defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling when I’m really angry.

I can share nuggets of wisdom from my sheroes Oprah, Elizabeth Gilbert, Brene Brown, and Gretchen Rubin, and I have 20+ parenting books on my shelf (see photo — Evan’s spirited nature has really given me a run for my money!). So why am I not a fully expressed human being and exceptional parent by now? Why do I keep tripping over what Gretchen calls “happiness stumbling blocks”?

In moments of stress, Darren will sometimes ask me, “Is there a tool you can use here?” and I sit there searching my mental database and coming up empty. (Darren, on the other hand, doesn’t know half of what I do about all of this, but effortlessly manages to practice it. Must be nice!!)

So what’s going on here? A few things, I think:

1) Analysis paralysis. Over 20+ years, I’ve amassed an enormous toolbox to draw from. Under duress, I find myself desperately rummaging through the jumble of tools and coming up empty because there are just so many to choose from.

What I can do: Organize my toolbox in advance. When I learn about a new tool, I can decide what to use it for: “This will be a good tool for (when Evan sasses me / I find myself procrastinating / I feel hopeless.”) That way, when the situation calls for a wrench, I’m not trying to fix it with a hammer I grabbed from the mess at random.

2) Unrealistic expectations. I expect myself to apply best practices as soon as I encounter them, but things are simply easier said than done. That’s why New Year’s resolutions fall by the wayside, even though we know they would make us happier and healthier. It’s just human nature to fall into the same old habits we’re used to.

What I can do: Realize that these lessons are called “practices” for a reason, because they’re not quick and permanent fixes, Like the board game Othello, they take “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master.” I’m working on taking a pause before reacting, and while this will get easier, it may always take conscious effort — especially when it comes to parenting.

3) Blind spots. It’s hard to notice the gradual evolution in yourself because you’re with yourself 24/7. It’s like how you see someone else’s kids every so often and see how much they’ve grown, but you don’t notice the same kinds of changes in your own kids.

​What I can do: Recognize progress. I wish my 15-year-old self and my 37-year-old self could have coffee together so I could see all the ways I’ve evolved, due to life experience and work on myself. I know that I’m kinder, more confident, and less judgmental, and even in the areas I’m still working on, I’ve made progress.

What are the gaps between what you know and what you do? Where have you made progress, and which tools are you using to keep doing better? Hit reply and tell me.

Last week I was drafting a different TinyLetter that just wasn’t working, and I felt deflated and frustrated after wasting the one precious hour I have for creative projects in the morning. My sister happened to send me a clip of Janelle Monae on Sesame Street singing “The Power of Yet” (It “needs to be my mantra,” she said). It brought tears to my eyes because it was — and continues to be — exactly what I needed to hear.

Selling our old house (hallelujah!) has freed up time and money to put into our new house, and I was overjoyed to buy a longtime wish list item: a digital piano. I grew up playing an upright piano but have grown to prefer a digital because it’s compact and easy to move, you can change the key (helpful for singing when the piece is written too high or low for your voice), you don’t need to tune it, and there are a lot of fun features built in, like different instruments, a metronome, and the ability to record. I’ve been learning the Westworld theme, which is a shiveringly gorgeous piece of music, through a Guitar Hero-style tutorial on YouTube. The kids are enjoying messing around with making music, too.

I’ve been loving Spotify’s Time Capsule, which creates a two-hour playlist of songs from your teenage years based on your age and location. From “Interstate Love Song” to “I Love Your Smile,” these songs are making me feel like I’m 15 again, in the best way possible.

I was not expecting to change jobs last month, but sometimes the universe has other plans.

I’d been working for an education foundation and had started a new marketing role there in January. I was loving the work and my team, and things were humming along smoothly. I had just announced the new job on Facebook, and my friends were excited and supportive.

Then, one afternoon, somewhat but not completely out of the blue, it became clear that the CEO and I were not going to mesh. It felt awful, but it didn’t seem like I had much choice but to brush away the tears, dig in my heels, and soldier on.

As fate would have it, I did have another choice (and of course we always do). The very next day, Darren’s marketing director at Creative Distillery, his branding and design firm, let him know that she’d accepted another job. He was going to have to find someone to fill her role, someone with my exact skill set, and someone he trusted. What kind of crazy cosmic timing is that?

Still, my first reaction was no. I felt loyal to my team at the foundation. The money was good. It was easier to stick with what I knew than to risk making a change.

Darren and I kept talking it over. Could this work financially? Yes. Could we work together? We did it for four years while we got the business off the ground. Working for myself would open up more time for creative projects — my writing, the podcast that my sister and I have been working on — and I’d be able to speak freely about what I was struggling with without worrying about optics. Plus, when my kids were sick, I could work from home without feeling guilty about being out of the office.

It felt like a door had appeared in front of me, inviting me to step through it toward a bigger life, the kind I envisioned for myself. And I decided to listen to my instincts, summon my courage, and step through.

My first few weeks have been not without their challenges — the learning curve of any new role, adjusting to taking direction from my husband instead of leading my own team — but I know in my core that this was the right move. I just need to be patient and bear with the process (like I always say…) as I settle into the new normal.

I believe in signs from the universe that point us toward our calling. It’s up to us whether we pay attention and follow them. Sometimes it’s a rough road, and we may be able to see only a few feet in front of us at a time, but we have to trust that we’ll end up better off than where we started. Right now I’m not quite sure where my own path will lead, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

what’s fueling me

You know when you move house and stash a few items in the corner, and suddenly it’s eight months later and they still haven’t put themselves away?

One of those items stored during our move last summer was my wooden jewelry rack. When I packed up the master bedroom in the old house, I put the rack in a large plastic bag, jewelry and all, and placed it flat on a high shelf in the master closet in the new house. I moved a few of my favorite necklaces and earrings into a bathroom drawer to wear until I could access the full selection.

As I was getting dressed each morning, I’d look up at the jewelry rack in the closet and think, “If you just make time to hang this, you’ll have less clutter and more jewelry to wear.” But the weekends would pass, and still it wouldn’t get done. Darren and I needed to buy a stud finder and batteries, and find some drywall anchors and the level and a sharp pencil. It all seemed like too much.

Last Saturday I told Darren, “If we do one thing this weekend, let’s hang my jewelry rack.” So with that laser focus, and with the kids playing together on the floor of our closet, we gathered up all of the items we needed and hung the rack. Seeing it hanging on the wall, at long last, felt like a huge victory.

But as it turns out, there was a Part 2 of the Jewelry Rack Challenge. My strategy to move the jewelry without it tangling didn’t work, and two dozen necklaces and various earrings had become twisted into an ugly mess. I set it on the floor and took stock of it. It looked tangled beyond resolution.

Maybe I should just put it back on the shelf and deal with it another day, I thought. It just seemed like too much to handle, when the kids were starting to go wild. But I knew that I would probably put it off for another six months.

Instead, I sat down on the floor and gently pulled the end of one strand, a thin, silver chain. Evan wanted to help, so I asked him to help me look for the path of the necklace. Over, under, and through, we freed the chain, hung it on the rack, and high-fived each other. Then we tackled a second. When one snagged too much, I resisted the temptation to use brute force that would further tangle the jewelry. Instead, we changed our focus to another necklace that was easier to extract.

One by one, we untangled them, unhurried but determined to reach our goal. Twenty minutes later, the pile on the floor had disappeared, and the necklaces and earrings hung in neat rows on the jewelry rack.

I almost couldn’t believe that we had overcome such a daunting task so quickly. It felt almost magical that suddenly there were no more knots to speak of. We had untangled all of them, one thread at a time.

what’s fueling me

I love The Bachelor, and I’m not ashamed to say it. The collective outrage this week over Arie’s take-backsies proposal to Becca and for-realsies proposal to Lauren, then the nationwide cheer when Becca was announced as Bachelorette, was riveting. The routine of watching The Bachelor and Bachelor-related shows, then dishing with my friends, consuming tweets, the feminist Here to Make Friends Podcast, and Ali Barthwell’s delightful Vulture recaps is one of the few things I do for pure enjoyment and not self-improvement.

The Parkland teens. ‘Nuff said.

This is from last spring, but a friend recently shared it and had me LOL’ing: Newport, Oregon police investigated what appeared to be a cat perched in a tree, holding an assault rifle.

“Mommmmyyyyy!” I hear my four-year-old wailing from his bedroom.

It’s the fourth time he’s called me in there, and the clock reads 10:35 p.m. It’s a weeknight, and I want to scream. All I ask after a long day is to drink a glass of wine and watch a half hour of Bachelor Winter Games before I inevitably fall asleep on the couch. A friend has just shared with me an article called “Study Confirms Putting Kids to Bed Earlier Is Better for Mom’s Mental Health,” and to this I say LOLOLOLOL.

As I go to tuck in my son and reassure him for the zillionth time that there are solid brick walls between him and the darkness outside, I remind myself that this is not a waste of time. Instead, “This is the work.”

I’ve had to repeat this mantra more than usual lately. The kids have had colds and have been clingy and fussy. The baby has wanted to be in my arms at all times, not understanding that this prevents me from washing her clothes, cleaning the kitchen, or doing much of anything else.

“This is the work,” I remind myself again.

These interruptions feel frustrating, like detours from whatever I want to be doing at the moment. And they are. But they’re also the actual, boots-on-the-ground work of parenting, not just a distraction to push past to get to the real stuff. I want my son to feel safe and learn to sleep better. I want to comfort my daughter when she’s sick. The minutes and hours I put in now are an investment in an outcome that’s important to me: happy, healthy kids.

This philosophy applies to creative work, as well. This TinyLetter has been sitting in my drafts since last fall, and I keep trying to get it right, changing out the anecdotes and tweaking the phrasing like I’m trying on hats.  I’m still not quite happy with it. But I keep plugging away, because one of my 18 for ’18 goals is to write a post biweekly. Even when it’s not quite working, this is the work.

The darkness outside won’t hurt you. Shh, baby, sleep. Type / delete / repeat. This is the work. This is the work. This is the work. A mantra to repeat often, as many times as it takes to get you where you want to go.

what’s fueling me

Elizabeth Gilbert recently lost her beloved partner, Rayya Elias, and posted this video of Rayya singing at the top of her lungs to the Doobie Brothers, full of joy in the midst of her suffering.

Amy Purdy’s story on Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations podcast gave me chills. Amy lost both of her legs to bacterial meningitis at age 19, but she has gone on to be a Paralympic snowboarder, model and actress, nonprofit founder, author, and competitor on Dancing with the Stars (I watched her in utter awe). She is a reminder that so many of our obstacles are internal, and there’s nothing really stopping us except for our own fear. I can’t wait to watch her TEDx talk, Living Beyond Limits.

The slate may be wiped clean by a change in personal relationships: marriage, divorce, a new baby, a new puppy, a break-up, a new friend, a death. Or the slate may be wiped clean by a change in surroundings: a new apartment, a new city, even rearranged furniture. Or some major aspect of life may change: a new job, a new school, a new doctor.

The New Year is the Super Bowl of fresh starts. I like to do a Year in Review in my journal — even a few bullets about the progress I’ve made — and then an activity envisioning what I want for the new year. I’ve done vision collages, outlined resolutions in Google Docs, and chosen a one-word resolution for the year.

This year I tried “18 for ’18,”which Gretchen and her sister, Liz, have been talking about on the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. You write down 18 things you want to do in 2018, big or small, fun or not so fun but good for your well-being.

Here are my 18 for ’18:

1. Stay current on news, from local to international, to know the headlines-plus.
2. Work a little exercise into each day, even dancing to one song.
3. Hang the pictures.
4. Buy black dress pants that fit.
5. Go on a date night with Darren at least once a month.
6. Arrive five minutes early.
7. Publish the book.
8. Launch the podcast.
9. Write a TinyLetter biweekly.
10. Get rid of clothes that I haven’t worn in a year.
11. Clean out the kids’ toys.
12. Reinstate weekly lunch at home with Darren to connect with each other, pay bills, etc.
13. Make time for joy every day: play guitar, dance, or sing.
14. Meditate or journal for five minutes at least 3x/week.
15. Make an emergency kit.
16. Write a will.
17. Spend 20 focused minutes a day following the kids’ lead in play.
18. Connect with my parents and sister at least once a week.

Shoot for the moon and land in the stars, right? Because visible is memorable, I’m going to print them out and post them on the fridge. Then I can give myself stickers (literal gold stars) when I stick to my goals. It’s silly, but it totally works for me.

What are your 18 for ’18? Hit reply and tell me.

what’s fueling me

When I found out that my dear friend Chris Balme was dating the sister of indie artist Kina Grannis, I couldn’t get over how cool that was. When he married her over the holidays, and Kina not only wrote a song about their love story but featured their wedding footage in her new video, I lost my fangirling mind. It makes me so happy that Chris has found a love for the ages. Watch the video for “I Found You.” You may need some Kleenex — you’ve been warned.

Darren and I have jumped aboard the Instant Pot bandwagon, and it’s fantastic. Granted, he’s the one who does 90 percent of the cooking, so I’ve only observed the magic so far, but it’s made tender collard greens and potatoes fit for mashing, red lentil stew with kale and sausage, and chili in no time. It’s true that it should be called the “Hands-Off Pot” because it takes a while to come up to pressure and back down again, but it’s much more efficient than the slow cooker we used to use every week.

The Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide by Jenna Fischer is both hilarious and creatively encouraging. I love her stories about eight years of struggle and rejection in Hollywood before landing the role of Pam on The Office, and her advice about getting good at your craft and not giving up. It’s inspiring not just for actors, but for writers and other artists, too.

As a child, I felt more and more excited as the holidays approached. Strings of lights twinkling around town, tins of cookies, Christmas carols, presents, time off school…what’s not to love?

Now that I’m an adult, I realize how hard the grown-ups, especially Mom and Dad, must have worked to make the holidays magical for me. All of those presents don’t thoughtfully pick out themselves! I wrote about this feeling a few Christmases ago, when the weight of so many obligations had all but crushed my Christmas spirit.

This year when one of my preset radio stations started playing all Christmas music, all the time, it wasn’t excitement that I felt. It was dread. Instead of singing along to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” like I wanted to, all I could think about was my long To-Do list unspooling like a scroll.

When I told Darren about this, he said, “That’s not acceptable to me. What can we do to change that?”

In my world, any new undertaking calls for a Google Doc, so I created one called “Christmas Cheer 2017” (yes, tongue-in-cheek) and started unloading the To-Do’s rattling around in my brain: Bake cookies. Shoot Christmas cards. Buy presents. I was hoping that making a To-Do list would clear my mind and put the “happy” back in the holidays.

Well, it’s now midway through December, and I’ve succeeded in not being a stress ball. But I haven’t ever gone back to the list. I turns out that it wasn’t the To-Do list that’s made this holiday season more pleasant; it was the To-Don’t list: the things that I cut out or simplified that took the pressure off.

Darren designed a Christmas card with some of our favorite photos from this year, so we didn’t need to shoot new ones, and the printer sent it out. I made a one-stop shop at Shutterfly to personalize gifts for the whole family (looking at photos boosts happiness). I’m going to bake the simpler Christmas cookies and save the labor-intensive ones for my family get-together, when we can make a day of it. I bought a tabletop Christmas tree while grocery shopping at Kroger, and we decorated it as a family with carols in the background (Bing Crosby made me smile this time).

Project Christmas Cheer 2017 is working. It’s not that I’m gritting my teeth and getting through the Christmas season; I’m just cutting out everything that doesn’t matter to me so I can focus on what does.

Please remind me of this next week if I have a meltdown next week during “Spirit Days” at Evan’s school. (Why, God, WHY?!)

what’s fueling me

I printed a few copies of the Reschool Yourself manuscript on CreateSpace, and it was a beautiful moment to lift it out of the box and into the world as a real book. I have a few trusted “beta readers” who are helping me tighten it up, and they’ve been sending me photos of “Reschool Yourself in the wild.” My sister, Gill, sent me this from a cafe in Barcelona:

My sister-in-law, Meghan, sent me this one, cozy in her PJs with a fittingly inspirational mug:

I put my book on the shelf among the ones written by talented women I admire. It’s good for my soul.