Time to revisit that 2020 plan, huh?
Plans, hahaha!
Image: Fort Hammenhiel (Hummenil) te Ceylon, gezien van zee, Cornelis Steiger, c. 1710, Rijksmuseum. Used with permission.
Hi friends! I am still lighting a candle for your health and wellbeing. Please take a minute to let me know how you're going, if you're so inclined 🙏
I did get a lot of mail this week. In particular, two great reminders about planning for the year formerly known as 2020. (In the future it might go by Annus Horribilis Universalis or something like that. Not sure.) Anyway:
Leah in the US writes:
I don't set up a planner at the beginning of the calendar year. I don't like everyone's resolution talk to drive what I am doing. I start my "year" in June. So I am finishing up last year's planner right now, and setting up the new one, incorporating [the weekly Body of Knowledge questions].
Claire in the UK writes:
I take so much from your advice and your lunchtime salad recipe is working fantastically well for me, and so is the idea of meals. What you've said is important enough to me that I embed it every day. In particular your 2020 plan template is great!
So I hadn't been thinking quite yet about revisiting my 2020 planning, but Claire and Leah got me to look at it a little early, and oh how I laughed! Hahahaha.
Here's what I thought I would be doing. My "2020 on one page" verbatim:
regular writing and editing → BOOK DONE!
writing in cafes because glamorous and fun!*
beach days and SUP and hikes and outings and day trips and road trips
sweaters: Astrid, Ranunculus, Biches et Bûches no. 20, Kurt
outdoor livin!
Hawaii and/or Sri Lanka, but SL for SURE this year
personal retreat
lots of friends and family! conviviality and cooking!
Puritanism RIP!
FIVE-HOUR WORK WEEK
Almost every single item on that list has been cancelled. In particular, I am really sad about Sri Lanka, which we were going to travel to with friends from Sri Lanka. It had been in the hopper for like five years. Beaches, mountains, tea farms, and also meeting our friends' families, which to me is like the biggest hootenanny treat good times extravaganza EVER.
Will air travel be possible again? Will we be healthy enough to go anywhere? Will we even be the kind of people who can afford air travel anymore? I don't even know!
I will say this: I can still knit. And I am writing my book! It IS getting done! That is glorious and I am high-fiving myself and my cheering section constantly. And although I haven't worked this hard since college—so much for a five-hour work week—I am NOT taking a Puritan attitude toward the whole thing. It's been super fun.
Anyway! If you're home, and you're not going anywhere by air or by foot and you're thinking, hey, might be time to reevaluate the rest of 2020, and you didn't pick it up six months ago, I put my 2020 planner back in the shop for you. It's still cheap as hell—$10—and dare I say, even under our limited circumstances right now, a really good time.
xo, Max
*OMG so adorable that it still makes me feel like a grownup to work in a cafe.
PS Here's another thing I came across in reviewing my filled-in planner. It's a little part of my vision for my work, Body of Knowledge's raison d'être:
My work provides a corrective (not the only one) to ways of eating that are
supposed to be healthy but aren’t
supposed to get our eating under control but don’t
and are created by people might be knowledgeable about nutrition science or mindfulness technologies, but have little personal understanding or transformation around food obsession, compulsion and binge eating
My work gives the lie to the idea that lengthy therapeutic engagements are required to overcome eating disorders, and to the idea that getting at psychological roots of behavior is necessary before taking action.
Wow! I still 😍 that.
PPS That link again. I promise: FUN. And also: THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO. That's important right now.