Field Notes: Esther Perel on the paradox of people (+ Rosie Spinks why friendship can feel like admin), appointment reminders, more
Plus, a new format for Field Notes: 3 things, one to ponder, one to do, one to save
Hello, dear friends! Happy 2024! I love a fresh new year and all its possibilities. I’ve filling out workbooks and ordering a planner. I don’t make resolutions so much as I make plans. I scribble down dreams for the new year and then try to schedule them, or at least lay the early tracks for making them happen.
There were years when I felt despair at the idea of making plans. Whatever I scheduled — a vacation, tickets to the Nutcracker ballet — seemed to fall apart with pneumonia or another illness, and the disappointment was somehow worse than not making plans at all.
But I also have learned over time that if I don’t make the plans, the chance of something happening plummets to zero.
Plans are a bridge between your mind and reality.
Plans put others in your life on notice.
Plans get you started.
Even if you don’t get all the way there, you will be somewhere further along than if you didn’t plan.
One of my plans for 2024 is to grow this newsletter and tend to it more consistently. More interviews, more stories, more tips, and more fun. (My words for 2024 are PRO, FRIENDSHIP, and FUN. PRO, as in Steven Pressfield’s Turning Pro — or taking yourself and your art seriously.)
To that end, I want to make Field Notes better, more useful, more fun to read, I hope.
So here’s the new Field Notes format: 3 things, not 6.
First, something surprising, delightful, or thought-provoking.
Second, something actionable you can do today.
Third, something worth remembering — worth rereading, bookmarking, reminding ourselves again. So you can look at any past Field Notes and get a dose of timeless support.
All the Field Notes will still relate to our health and thriving in some way, but I use those terms very widely.
Here we go!
1} Something worth pondering:
Friendships — human connection — are well known intuitively and in research to be so important to our health. But something has happened to friendships for many of us in the past few years, and Rosie Spinks calls it out in this essay that went viral:
The Friendship Problem: Why Friendships Have Started to Feel Strikingly Similar to Admin
It’s worth a read. It’s worth 10 minutes, seriously. Rosie knits together lots of insights. She writes about how friendship has come to sometimes feel like admin, more than just being busy, and how our modern world has led to this weariness and avoidance, to plans being canceled at the last minute, to text threads getting abandoned for months (factors include isolation in general since the pandemic, exacerbated by the weariness of the office on your phone at all hours and the terrors of the world delivered to us on apps, out of context at any moment, just for starters). She concludes: “We are so burned out by the process of staying afloat in a globalized, connected world that we simply don’t have the energy for the kinds of in-person, easy interactions that might actually give us some energy and lifeforce back.
But the real stop-in-my-tracks section was when Rosie quotes relationship expert Esther Perel:
“Modern loneliness masks itself as hyper connectivity. And so people have easily 1,000 virtual friends, but no one they can ask to feed their cat. That loneliness, which is really a depletion of the social capital, is extremely powerful. […]
One question I keep asking that I had no idea was going to be so pertinent: When you grew up, did you play freely on the street? … And the majority of the people learned to play freely on the street. They learned social negotiation. They learned unscripted, un-choreographed, unmonitored interaction with people. They fought, they made rules, they made peace, they made friends, they broke up, they made friends again. They developed social muscles. And the majority of these very same people’s children do not play freely on the street. And I think that an adult needs to play freely on the street as well.
For us as adults, that means talking to people in the queue with you, talking to people on the subway, talking to people when you create any kind of group. Book club, movie club, sports club. You stay in the practice of experimentation, doubt, of the paradox of people: You need people very much but the very people that you need are the ones that can reject you.
We do not have the practice at the moment. Everything about predictive technologies is basically giving us a form of assisted living. You get it all served in uncomplicated, lack of friction, no obstacles and you no longer know how to deal with people. Because people are complex systems. Relationships, friendships are complex systems. They often demand that they hold two sides of an equation. And not that you solve little problems with technical solutions. And that is intrinsic to modern loneliness.”
I think Esther is on to something (and Rosie, too). We need the “paradox of people,” with all their annoyances and gifts, joys and irritations, support and needs. It’s hard to see that sometimes.
To ponder: How could you “play freely on the street” in 2024?
Read the full essay by Rosie Spinks.
2} Something worth doing:
January is a great time to schedule those regular healthcare appointments we might have been putting off: dentist, annual physical with bloodwork, screenings (colon, breast, etc.), eye check-up, etc. Call now and it might be March before you get in! I know, they are a pain to make time for, and appointments can be expensive. Sometimes you have to track down a new doctor, which is no fun. But missing something that could have been caught early can be much more expensive and much more inconvenient. Catching something early like a cavity or vitamin D deficiency is a gift to your Future Self. And who knows how busy 2024 will get? Better to get these scheduled. ❤️ (I write this with love. I need to make my own appointments, too!)
3} Something worth remembering:
It's Okay to Not be Okay: Let’s be REAL about New Year’s Resolutions
Dr. Lucy McBride has penned a down-to-earth supportive note that takes the pile of common resolutions (run a marathon! lose weight! eat more vegetables!) and nudges it into something more realistic.
She reminds us kindly that: “For many of us, the journey to better health starts with simply trying to meet our basic biological needs— the four non-negotiables for health (aka ‘STEM’):” Sleep, Talk, Eat, Move.”
Her definition of health (like my definition) is not a single test result or outcome, but a lifelong process:
“Health is more than our cholesterol and weight. It’s not defined by our colonoscopy or COVID test. Health is not an outcome; it’s a lifelong process that requires facts, courage, truth-telling and guidance. Health is about how we feel, think, and behave as we move through our everyday life. It’s about access to information and appropriate guidance. It’s about accepting fixed, harsh realities and reclaiming agency in areas we can control. It’s about the 364 days of the year we’re not in the doctor’s office.”
— Dr. Lucy McBride
Read the full post by Dr. Lucy McBride.
I hope you have a lovely, human-filled first week of 2024.
To our journeys,
Brianne
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p.s. Last call to sign up for Winter Art Camp! Four weeks of online community to help with the cold, dark season and dive into your art / writing /creative practice alongside other kind humans. It’s starting, and it’s been a delight already! I’d love for you to join us. (And if you’d really like to join, but it’s not in your budget, use this pay-what-you-can link.)
Happy new year, Brianne! Thanks, as always, for sharing these thought-provoking things! This from Esther Perel is especially giving me lots to chew on: “And so people have easily 1,000 virtual friends, but no one they can ask to feed their cat.” We’re more globally connected, but perhaps less locally connected than ever.
You're always bound to draw me in with an Esther Perel quote! Thank you for this post and I like the new format.