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By Emma, on February 14th, 2013 I find that I’m most motivated to write when I’m writing. Come to think of it, I’m also most motivated to run when I’m running.
When I’m sitting in my office, I might call myself a very reluctant lap swimmer. But then I march myself over to the pool on my lunch break and strap on some goggles, and—what do you know?—I kind of like to swim. I’m no fish, but sometimes, I get so energized by what I’m doing that I throw in an extra lap. Indeed, I’m motivated to swim when I’m swimming!
Several years back, I read some books on positive psychology for a course I was teaching. One aphorism has stuck with me: Action leads to motivation leads to more action.
It’s simple yet brilliant. You see, we rarely pull motivation out of thin air.
Do I ever feel like working on my taxes? Of course not. But if I focus on the first step—getting out my folder of documents—I can put the wheels in motion. Suddenly, I’m engaged in the challenge. Before I know it, I’m motivated to work on my taxes. So I carry on.
Why is motivation on my mind? Because it’s February, when new-year energy starts to wane. When best intentions start to put their feet up and eat bonbons—just this once, of course.
I’m claiming 2013 as my own. February, you’ve got nothing on me! I may not feel like doing a gosh-darn thing, but that’s not going to stop me. I know the secret.
And you, dear reader? If February has its lackadaisical grip on you, remember that it’s perfectly normal to feel unmotivated. But you get to decide whether you do something anyway.
*****
I Want to Know
- Are you struggling with motivation these days?
- What helps you take action?
Thanks for reading! You can find me on twitter @emmasota. And, if you haven’t already, please visit emmasota on Facebook and click “Like!”
photo credit: SweetOnVeg via photopin cc
By Emma, on August 20th, 2012 I would love to write, but I’ve been so busy that when the PetSmart employee turned me away at 9:01 tonight, I started to cry. The dogs had enough food for breakfast tomorrow, but that was all. My car—bless its weary soul—has been trying to start itself without a key in the ignition and must be dropped off at the shop tomorrow. My dear preschooler doesn’t go to bed until almost 9 p.m. (or later), and then I’m faced with dirty dishes, a sea of misplaced toys, and the prospect of an early alarm.
Thank you, PetSmart Lady, for taking pity on me and letting me sprint through the aisles to wrestle that 30-pound bag of kibble up to the register. I needed the exercise, and Lord knows I needed a good laugh at myself. My spirits have been buoyed by your compassion, the banana split I just consumed, and the come-hither text message that my husband just sent me from the basement.
I would love to write more, but life calls.
*****
I Want to Know
Have you ever cried at PetSmart?
How do you respond to being overly tired?
Have you ever seen a car try to start itself without any keys?
Do you totally hate blog posts about why the blogger isn’t blogging? 
Thanks for reading! You can find me on twitter @emmasota. And, if you haven’t already, please visit emmasota on Facebook and click “Like!”
By Emma, on August 7th, 2012 I’m on vacation this week—a little breathing room between old job and new—and it feels fantastic. Linus is napping, and I’m letting Linnea have at a roll of masking tape so I can sneak in a bit of typing here. Dangerous, I know. In lieu of planning anything major this week, we’re making our own frugal family fun. Yesterday, we went to a nice little beach at a suburban lake. Being a Monday, the place wasn’t mobbed, and we scored a sandy patch under a large shade umbrella. Linus and Linnea had a ball playing with (and to an unfortunate degree, eating) the sand.
My vacation didn’t exactly start on such a sunshine-y note. Friday was my last day at the job I’ve held since early 2008. After a lovely farewell happy hour on Thursday, and lunch with coworkers and a solid day of wrapping up loose ends on Friday, I was feeling pretty good until I realized (at 4 p.m.) that my cell phone was missing. A dozen or so coworkers combed my cubicle, the office kitchen, and even the bathroom. It was nowhere to be found, and I actually had to walk out the door without it. I was in a particularly sour mood until a Dairy Queen Blizzard intervened.
Sometime on Saturday I had a crazy idea. While working, I often had a three-ring binder full of sample products sitting open on my desk. Since the papers wouldn’t stay flat, it wasn’t unusual for me to use a mug or another object (maybe a phone?) as a paperweight. I started calculating the likelihood of a scenario in which I had closed the phone in the binder and placed it on the bookshelf without it falling out. Josh’s iphone was employed for some highly scientific experimentation, and I determined that it was, indeed, possible.
I managed to survive the weekend without a phone. In fact, I didn’t miss it all that much, except that my car has been on the fritz, and it surely would have sucked to break down on the side of the road with no phone. I envisioned walking along I-35 with two kids in tow, but thankfully, I zipped down to my hometown and back without any trouble. My mom and I held one stellar garage sale, and she gets extra credit for the most beautiful signs ever. Who else would attach faux flowers and prairie grass shoots to carefully-lettered cardboard signs?
Back to the phone. I emailed my friend and now-former boss to ask her to check the three-ring binder on Monday morning, and sure enough—there it was! And now that I’ve solved that mystery, I’ve reached that dreamy vacation mindset in which it’s hard to imagine life being any other way. I contemplated putting all household chores on hold this week but decided that would totally cancel out the restorative effects by next Monday. So I’m doing a little laundry, and I guess I’ll vacuum a few times. Staycationing would be so much cooler with a cleaning staff.
*****
I Want to Know
What do you like to do while on vacation at home?
Where’s the craziest place you ever found something that you’d lost?
Thanks for reading! You can find me on twitter @emmasota. And, if you haven’t already, please visit emmasota on Facebook and click “Like!”
By Emma, on July 26th, 2012 Back in January, I wrote a post in which I gave myself permission to let things be. “Percolating,” I called it. Well, it took a lot longer than I thought. Letting decisions come to me in an organic, easygoing manner is not my forte. I have too much pent-up energy for that. Trying to “let go” makes me want to rise up riot, metaphorically speaking. But this time, I did it. I let things stew sufficiently, and now I’m moving forward.
I’ve been uncharacteristic silent here lately. While I consider myself an open book most of the time, I’ve been holding some things close to home this summer. Perhaps you already saw that I’ve pulled the plug on Divorced Before 30 and my book project. Huge decision. For nearly three years, I wrote, edited, and built up an online community. I tweeted, I Facebooked, and I landed a literary agent. For the most part, I had a ball, but after months of deliberating next steps, I woke up one day and realized that I wanted to let it go.
That project doesn’t define me. More than wanting to be a published memoirist or a well-loved blogger, I want to have a satisfying everyday life. I love writing, but I also love coaxing kids out of mud puddles, leafing through a magazine in the living room wingback, and taking a hot bath at the end of a long day. Regular person stuff. This is not to say that I won’t come up with another wild goal six months from now.
It’s been a stressful year in a lot of ways, but it’s nothing that some downtime and ice cream can’t fix. I’ll be starting a new job in a couple of weeks, and making the decision to leave my current position was incredibly difficult. I’ve been there four and a half years and have grown so fond of the people that it feels a little like college graduation. Tears have been shed. And yet I’m very excited for a new challenge.
At home, I am happily working on a modest summer checklist—things like putting together a baby book for Linus and having a garage sale with my mom. The fam and I are still going strong on frugal family fun, and feeding the ducks at a nearby pond is the best thing ever as far as the kids are concerned. Oh, and by the way, “the baby,” as we like to call him, is no longer a baby! He walks around the house like a drunken sailor, lunging for crayons and knocking over the dogs’ dishes. And Miss Linnea? She’s gearing up for preschool by nailing this potty-training thing down. Most days, she does.
That, folks, is where I’ve been.
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I Want to Know
Are you an open book, or do you tend to keep things to yourself?
Have you noticed a difference in your sharing online versus in real life?
Thanks for reading! You can find me on twitter @emmasota. And, if you haven’t already, please visit emmasota on Facebook and click “Like!”
By Emma, on July 3rd, 2012 Life is a comedy these days, friends. A comedy in which physical humor prevails and the crazed mother-heroine is invariably covered in strained peas. Two nights ago, a ceramic bowl shattered at the end of dinner, riiiiight after I announced that I was about to lose my mind. There seems to be a pattern wherein a mini disaster strikes just as I’m starting to eat my dinner. This has led me to adopt some less than civil eating habits. “Hurry,” I whisper to myself as I shovel in the grub. “The children aren’t watching.”
Tonight, I freed an antsy Linus from his highchair in the middle of dinner and dared to savor a few bites of ginger chicken at a “normal person” pace. The next thing I knew, Linus was walking across the living room waving a training potty full of pee. A joyful cackle escaped from behind his pacifier, and his big sister’s pee sloshed onto the floor in slow motion as I raced over to minimize the damage. Lesson learned.
Come to think of it, potty training is an activity ripe with lessons to be learned. The main problem with having a three-year-old trainee is that she isn’t easily impressed with the likes of sticker charts or high fives. This week, we moved beyond wrapped gifts (which Linnea dubbed “poopy presents”) to cash. That’s right—I’m entirely willing to buy me some potty training. The price? Nickles, dimes, and the promise to spend them at Target and the donut shop.
While I haven’t started to bribe Linus yet, I have been trying to negotiate my own training plan. He’s become a faithful running partner this summer, enjoying crack-of-dawn trips through suburban neighborhoods from the comfort of his jogging stroller. When he wakes before 6 a.m., I find that I’d rather go running than try to stay awake in the house. Brain-sapping sleep deprivation turns out to be a great motivator, and Coach Linus doesn’t take no for an answer.
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I Want to Know
- What’s making you laugh these days?
- Any thoughts on potty training?
- Do you like to exercise first thing in the morning?
Find me on twitter @emmasota, look up emmasota on Facebook, and visit me at my other blog, Divorced Before 30.
By Emma, on June 21st, 2012 After downing bowls of spaghetti and big chunks of watermelon tonight, the kids and I walked to the park. Two small girls and a young woman whose tiny body and short-shorts suggested “babysitter” were already playing on the equipment. Much to my horror, the wee blondes started to call the taller one “Mommy,” and I suddenly felt incredibly old. Old and unattractive. Old and frumpy. Old, old, old.
As I watched Linnea pick tiny clover blossoms in the grass, Linus toddled back and forth on brave legs and flashed me his gap-toothed smile. I thought about what a different experience it would have been to have had kids eight or ten years earlier than I did. Would I have been more fun? More energetic? Surely, I would have been more blonde and fashionable—not to mention svelte.
The young mother and her girls walked by us as they left the park, calling out a goodbye. In the time that I’d been daydreaming in the grass, a family of presumably Middle Eastern descent had arrived. I watched the young, heavyset mother as she placed her baby girl in a swing. Our eyes met, and we shared a smile. Maybe she was happy draped head to toe in deep red fabric—and at the very least, she was used to it—but something about the way she carried herself made me sad.
Suddenly, my purple t-shirt seemed okay. I felt wonderfully comfortable in the warm summer solstice air. As I pushed our stroller home, I marveled at life’s consistent supply of moments like this—moments in which the characters seem cast just for me, the timing meant to be. And I knew that I was in the right place at the right time, and that even when it doesn’t feel like it, we usually are.
*****
I Want to Know
- What makes you feel old?
- Do you ever have seemingly serendipitous moments like this?
Find me on twitter @emmasota, look up emmasota on Facebook, and visit me at my other blog, Divorced Before 30.
By Emma, on June 12th, 2012 I’m totally uninspired to update my Facebook status or Twitter feed, and lately, I seem to start blog posts that fizzle out after three or four half-hearted sentences. Pinterest bit the dust last week after months of neglect; I deleted my account altogether. Yes, friends, I’ve got a bad case of the social media blahs.
You’re not missing much during my relative silence. Here’s a taste of the earth-shattering news from my world, both the good and the bad, and in no particular order.
I’m so tired that yesterday, I nodded off while sitting on the potty.
I can’t believe my baby boy is a walking, talking one year old.
Gluten-free bread makes totally edible croutons.
Addiction sucks ass.
My solution to kiddo artwork build-up: photograph all projects, recycle most.
I can’t decide whether my wicked case of indecisiveness has gotten better.
Having poop in one’s refrigerator (lab sample) is WEIRD.
I gave up paper towels and now wield a mean dishrag.
Someday, I might get up the nerve to sport a pixie cut.
I had a nightmare that Josh and I were fighting over paint chips.
Is it really so hard to believe that I actually WANT to keep breastfeeding?
De-cluttering feels so good—why do we inevitably collect more shit?
I need to make more time for the consumption of fluffy media.
I’m obsessed with root beer floats and chocolate-hazelnut spread.
My preschooler knows her way around the ipad better than I do.
I can’t think of a better way to invest 20 bucks than a kiddie pool.
That is all.
*****
I Want to Know
- Do you ever get the social media blahs?
- What’s new with you? (in as many characters as you please)
Find me on twitter @emmasota, look up emmasota on Facebook, and visit me at my other blog, Divorced Before 30.
By Emma, on June 4th, 2012 Once upon a time, I lived alone. I was a bold young thing who ate cereal for dinner and chose the paint colors I wanted. I was accustomed to sleeping by myself, though I daydreamed about a time when a single bed would no longer suffice. In the comfort of my own apartment, I felt safe, but one summer, I pushed the envelope with a house- and dog-sitting job in rural Western Massachusetts. Molly the Labrador retriever and I would be roommates in a log cabin in the Eastern foothills of the Berkshires for a month.
I was 25 years old, and it was my final summer vacation—the three precious months between my first and second years of graduate school—and I was determined to enjoy it. So I subleased my apartment in town and patched together a summer of house-sitting, camp counseling, and traveling. It was a near-ideal situation, but on my first night alone in the cabin, I had second thoughts. I was brave, and I was smart, but apparently, I was also afraid of the dark. Not the dark you experience in town, but the kind that creeps out of the woods to wrap a small cabin in a seemingly unnatural stillness. In truth, it’s probably the most natural thing in the world. And I desperately missed my studio apartment facing the 24-hour Dunkin Donuts.
Molly the Lab would be no match for the bears and psychopaths I imagined lurking outside my bedroom window. After a few nights of insomnia, I trained myself to sleep alone in the cabin. It took prayer, meditation, and probably some bedtime phone calls to my parents back in Minnesota. I also welcomed company and had visits from a college friend and the eccentric guy I was casually dating at the time (But since he’d once told me that he thought it would be exciting to rob a bank—a seemingly viable option for him—I wasn’t sure if I was more or less comforted by his presence).
The month in the cabin holds sweet memories for me—picking fresh blueberries in the yard, listening to a Joni Mitchell album on repeat, and indulging in baked goods from the Williamsburg General Store at the bottom of the dirt road. On hot afternoons, my guests and I would hike up the road to Chapel Brook, a little swimming hole with natural water slides. But more than anything, I think of that cabin as I place where I looked fear in the eye and said, “F*ck you. I’m stronger than you.”
I need to remember that part of me—the part that pushes back rather than backing down. The part that does difficult or scary things because I know they’ll be good for me. That part of me is a tough mother-you-know-what, and I need to embrace her.
How about you?
*****
I Want to Know
- What are you afraid of?
- Have you ever lived alone?
Find me on twitter @emmasota, look up emmasota on Facebook, and visit me at my other blog, Divorced Before 30.
By Emma, on May 25th, 2012 Do you ever feel like you’re being pulled in too many directions?
Last night, I sat in the bathroom clipping my hot pink toenails while supervising bath time. Linus—just a week shy of his first birthday—patted the glistening bubbles while chewing lovingly on a spongy orange letter “P.” Three-year-old Linnea was busy mothering Mermaid Dora the Explorer.
“I’m sorry,” she said in her dainty, sugar-sweet voice as she stroked Mermaid Dora’s hair. “I’m sorry I can’t play the game right now. I have to go to work now. I’m sorry, honey.”
Should I be pleased that she portrayed Mom (me?) in a loving manner, or should I be distraught that Mommy=”not enough time for me?” Or both?
I’ve always fantasized about staying home while my kids are young, and recent changes in our child care situation have made me question whether working full time is really the answer, but it’s a complex decision. Money, long-term career goals, personal satisfaction, and intuition are all important factors.
I’m being pulled in so many directions these days. I want to publish my memoir, but being a successful author (whether indie or traditionally published) requires herculean marketing efforts. I want to care for and spend time with my kids, and I also want to have an outlet for my creativity and drive. Oh, and it would be nice to have some time left over for running, cooking, cleaning, going on dates with my husband, and spending time with family and friends. I also like books, sleep, and occasionally having enough energy to get it on.
That’s (apparently) a lot to ask.
*****
I Want to Know
- Do you feel pulled in multiple directions?
- How do you manage the strain?
Find me on twitter @emmasota, look up emmasota on Facebook, and visit me at my other blog, Divorced Before 30.
By Emma, on May 14th, 2012 I can’t remember if it was before our after our recent trip to Colorado, but one night, I said to Josh, “I’m pretty sure I’m actually losing my mind, like I’m going to wind up in a mental hospital.” After years of coaching him to repeat “everything will be okay” when I’m convinced that everything will not be okay, he seems to have embraced the strategy.
“No,” he scoffed as we sat in bed reading. “You’re not losing your mind.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“You’re fine,” he said.
And you know? I am fine—I have a wonderful family, a house, a job, and a car that only makes that explosive noise every fifth or sixth time it starts. I am loved and I love. I am in terrific health and am back to my pre-baby weight, though my grandmother recently asked if I’m “PG” again. “No,” I sighed. “I’m just not the same shape I used to be.”
Josh is right. Everything is fine. And yet I’m a little off. I keep thinking of one of my favorite Anne Lamott quotes: “My mind is a bad neighborhood I try not to go into alone.” I seem to be lurking on dangerous street corners a lot lately, metaphorically speaking.
I thought that our trip would shake things up a bit—provide a nice change of scenery—but I still feel unsettled. Maybe this is a predictable response to the arrival of my 35th birthday last week. Am I making the most of this precious life? Being the mom and wife I want to be? Chasing the right dreams? Living in the right zip code?
While I wait for clarity, I’m steering toward the the safer neighborhood—the one where my baby takes his first steps, my preschooler delights in her first plane ride, and my husband and I pull off the Great Business, Babies, and Beer Vacation of 2012. It’s where I weep for joy when I see an old friend, where my hard work pays off, and where I spend Mother’s Day eating fried fish in a park with my family.
I’ve got it good (and I know it), but I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I have more questions than answers right now. But for me, that struggle—which sometimes borders on “maybe I’m losing my mind”—is simply part of life. Who knows where my answers will come from (or when), but you can be sure that I’ll be ready.
*****
I Want to Know
- How do you keep yourself out of the bad neighborhood?
Find me on twitter @emmasota, look up emmasota on Facebook, and visit me at my other blog, Divorced Before 30.
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