Things I refuse to believe

Despite signs to the contrary, I continue to think I know better. Plus: a great Netflix show to binge and season 2 of a favorite podcast.

Before I went to bed last Saturday night, I set my fancy bedside alarm clock an hour earlier to 5 a.m. so I could get up and write a post for Substack (SPOILER ALERT: these posts are the literary equivalent of building the plane as you fly it). My college son wanted to go food shopping before heading back from his spring break at lunchtime on Sunday, so I wanted to get my Substack business in order before we left.

As soon as I sat down at my desk that morning, everything was weird. First, my Apple Watch seemed to have malfunctioned overnight. I am currently obsessed with tracking my sleep. While I wait for my coffee to brew each morning, I study the data from the night before. I like to know just not the total amount of time I slept, but the quality of my slumber time. The watch can also (somehow) discern the stages of my nightly sleep and break down the percentage of time spent in REM, core and deep sleep. I’m fascinated.

But last Sunday, the app on my phone that I check to see the nightly data had somehow malfunctioned. First, neither the phone nor the watch would come out of sleep mode, despite me clearly being awake. And then the app kept insisting I only slept 6 hours and 15 minutes although I knew I’d gone to bed early enough to grab at least 7 hours.

Concurrently, as I sat in the dark at my desk sipping coffee in my bathrobe, I noticed that the clocks on the stove and microwave were off. I kept looking at them and then down at my phone and none of it made sense. Both sons had been home for the weekend so obviously, I deduced, one of them had broken the clocks. What other excuse could there have been?

But I persevered. I put my head down and wrote, wrote, wrote some story to share with you and as I was getting toward the end, my oldest some walked into the kitchen.

He said, “Hey, did you have any idea the time change was last night?”

You know at the end of the movie The Usual Suspects when all of the puzzle pieces come together and Keyser Soze starts walking without the limp (if you don’t, you really need to watch that movie tonight)? Like, for the audience, everything about the mystery of the movie and exactly who the bad guy was made total sense? That was me sitting at my desk and realizing that I’d gotten up at 4 a.m. to write and not 5:00.

Wait, guys. Have I been “blogging” for 10 years? Maybe?

Do you know what that reminded me of? Remember years ago when I wrote about driving in the wrong direction for about an hour before realizing that it wasn’t my GPS that had broken? Those of you who’ve been with me a long time will recall how I famously began driving home from a college visit in Virginia and after a stop at a rest area to get salty snacks, turned back south instead of north back on Route 81 and headed back toward the school.

This was about 10 years ago and my younger daughter, who was in high school at the time, had been holding my iPhone and reporting that it kept indicating we were heading in the wrong direction. But for some reason, I felt strongly that we were not. But then we passed a sign for Roanoke, a town I knew we’d passed an hour earlier, and all the puzzle pieces began to come together.

The good part about that was that instead of being mad at me, my daughter just laughed and we spent the rest of the trip belting out songs from the Frozen soundtrack and eating Goldfish. “Let it Go” felt really a propos that afternoon.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but sometimes, I refuse to believe things, despite all the signs pointing in that direction. I feel like this could make a great “This American Life” episode (honestly, it probably already is).

This is a personality flaw of mine that makes my children crazy. The part of me that thinks it knows better than what I’ve been told. I am always under the assumption that I know better than my GPS. Driving home from the doctor the other day, I veered off the course my phone wanted me to take to the closest Dunkin three times and each time, I had to reroute before pulling into a drive through.

This is something that has an official name in the recovery world. In the Fourth Step, you make a list of your “character defects,” and next time I work that step I will make sure to add “know-it-all-ness” to the list.

In fact, back when I was drinking, I refused to believe that I might have a problem, despite all the signs in my life that things weren’t going in the best direction. While I was Googling “Signs of a drinking problem” and breathing a sigh of relief that I hadn’t hit the obvious “rehab” or “DUI,” there were still indicators that my life was moving in the wrong direction.

Sign #1: My financial situation, while not dire, was not sustainable. There was no clear path toward supporting myself and I was doing nothing about a course correction.

Sign #2: I was starting to look like I drank a lot of wine. I was obsessed with the state of my nose (which it turns out is rosacea that turns my nose red every morning still after coffee).

Sign #3: I woke up every single morning overflowing with self-loathing about whatever I drank the night before. Plus there was a pretty solid layer of existential angst about the trajectory of my life sitting on top of it all. I was convinced I had wasted any prospects/opportunities and it was all downhill until death.

It was as if my life had a big GPS attached to it and I refused to see where it was going. Like a one-way street to Unhappyville.

For me, I’ve learned that the critical moment is not necessarily when I finally recognize the signs in front of me. It’s when I open my mind to the possibility that I could be wrong. That the reality might be different than the story inside my head.

Does that make sense?

Anyway, needless to say, I was really tired all day last Sunday and doubled down on bedtime that night, logging in almost 8 hours of sleep (unlike my usual 7). Work was bonkers so I made sure I was in bed by 9:00 most nights and often turned out the light within 30 minutes so I could get my 7 hours before getting up early and doing it again.

But yesterday was pretty nice here on the Jersey Shore, and I made sure to pay attention to all evidence that spring was close by. The daffodils that had started poking out of the ground a few weeks ago were leaning over the front step of my house, the ruffles of their bright yellow flowers still crisp. The ends of my neighbor’s cherry tree are beginning to bulge with blooms about to burst. And the boardwalk was crowded with walkers out for a stroll and to soak up some bits of sun warming the air enough that I had to take my jacket on and off throughout a long walk with a friend.

While there’s no final destination plugged into my current life GPS, I can tell it’s moving in the right direction. I’ve come to terms with my cheap Irish skin and having a pink nose. My finances are pretty solid thanks to my job. I started to use air quotes the other day to describe my “career,” and my colleague and friend was like, “Don’t do that. You have an actual career.”

And the best sign of all is that I don’t wake up brimming with self-disgust anymore. I see the signs of where my life is headed and believe they are true. I might still struggle with following a GPS in my car, but when it comes to my life’s direction, I am trying to stick to where my inner compass is telling me where to go.

Honestly, for change to occur, it’s often more about giving something up than taking something on.

sunday shares: read + watch + cook + buy

My embrace of young love continues. Well, we all know that I have been in a romantasy hole since the end of last year, reading novels about 20yo women (who somehow become immortal) who become enmeshed romantically with partners who are 500 years old. LOL. But now, I am in love with the Netflix limited series, “One Day.” It too follows the trajectory of a relationship between two young people over 14 years. But what I really love is that it starts at the end of their uni years in 1988, which coincides with my own college graduation. So that’s fun. I’m only halfway through but can’t stop thinking about it.

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• Smartypants. I was so excited to see the promo for Season 2 of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s “Wiser Than Me” podcast. Ugggghhhh. The first season was so good. #1: Dreyfus is funny as anything. #2: she interviews women older than her to gain insight into their experiences getting older. I loved the Jane Fonda and Isabelle Allende interviews in particular. This season will feature interviews with Ann Lamott, Patti Smith, Bonnie Raitt, Gloria Steinem, Ina Garten and Sally Field (that one sounds especially great).

  

• Looking for some Disney magic? As you might know, my four adult kids + one fiance,e and me are going to Orlando in May to relive the past. I’ve even rented a minivan. However, things at Disney (and Universal) are A LOT different than they were 10 years ago. To help, I enlisted the aid of Disney pro Megan Delahunt to plan our trip, and I cannot recommend her enough. Not only is she an authorized Disney vacation planner, she really knows her stuff. She’s helped us figure out what parks to doon what days, the best tickets to accommodate that schedule and even setting up our online accounts and making dinner reservations. Now if Megan could just tag along on the trip and make sure we all get along.

• And finally, heartbreak. TikTok sure knows its algorithm.

  

  @s0b3rpri3st3ss“& the person you were meant to be is gone. You gave her up. For people who dont even see you. & there's no time to grieve her because there's too much damn laundry.” #yougotthis #youarenotalone #truth #motherhood #parenthood #matriarch #annettebening #applesneverfall #powerfulmessage #thanklessjob #fyp #foryoupage #momtok #momsover30 Annette Bening did a fabulous job in this role. But specifically in this scene.

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  See you next Sunday. xoAmy