46. All at once

A comedic sensory explosion

What I’m up to

Paul and Lucy left for the US on Tuesday. Lucy has since eaten Auntie Anne’s, Sheetz, The Waffle Shop waffles, and… she has seen snow!! Meanwhile it’s 35 degrees Celsius over here.

(We are 5 weeks away from the end of the school year, and it’s beginning to feel like summer.)

I would say the house is really quiet with the noisier members of the family gone, but I left for a school trip the day after Paul and Lucy left, so we haven’t experienced the new normal yet.

BUT — Anna and I have plans to “cope.” We intend to take turns cooking, go on weekend trips, and push back our bedtimes (a little).

What I’m reading

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. I have mentioned loving Mandel’s Station Eleven (and The Glass Hotel). This is her latest. It’s literary sci-fi. She writes about pandemics again — this time through a multi-century perspective. It’s good.

The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren. This gave me the warm-fuzzies.

I started Anxious People by Frederik Backman. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it is stressing me out!

What I’m thinking about

Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Watching this movie felt like getting on a roller coaster, buckling in, and then just hanging on for dear life. It addresses the question of suffering in a (mostly) comedic sensory explosion. I laughed, I gasped, I cried. I need more time to process this movie… maybe more later.

Identity. I’ve written about this before.

I’m at a retreat for high school seniors right now, and one of the activities we do every year is take the DISC personality test. I’ve taken the quiz 6 times but it is challenging every time. I always score a tie between D (dominant: active and task-oriented) and I (influencing: active and people-oriented). But the funny thing is only one student — in 6 years — has guessed my top two correctly.

It’s made me wonder if maybe… I’m wrong? How is my self-perception so different from how I present?

I’m an Enneagram 3, and the “core sin” associated with this type is deceit.

I think I am honest to a fault. But what I do struggle with is that I am so outward-oriented, so adaptable to the current circumstance, that I don’t actually know who I am. So I answer questions and then later wonder, wait — is that what I really think? Wait, am I actually an introvert? I’m championing something — but do I actually like it? It feels like personality dysmorphia — I wonder if I am unable to see myself for who I really am.

One of my core values is integrity (which makes sense, now that I think of it), so any time I second-guess the honesty of what I communicate, it deeply bums me out.

I think this is why I am so into typing myself. I keep trying to figure out how I appear and whether how I present matches who I am.

My friend C wrote about identity in her newsletter (which I highly recommend). She said, “I notice myself grasping for identity. I think that’s what I’m doing on social media: checking to confirm my internet persona to remind me who I am.” I so resonate with this idea of wanting to be reminded who I am.

What I’m learning

I actually drew a blank when trying to decide what to write here, so I asked my student E to tell me something I don’t know. He told me penguins can jump out of the water higher because how they move causes air bubbles to form all over their body. Huh.

What I’m doing

Hanging out at a fancy hotel with 90 high school students. Because of Covid, we weren’t able to go to our usual camp site, and for some reason… the back-up option was a 5 star hotel? We literally have a fountain outside our meeting room (which is actually a ballroom). Not complaining!!

As I mentioned earlier, this is my 6th year coming to this retreat. It’s always a highlight of my school year (even when we sleep in janky bunkbeds). The retreat is designed to give students dedicated time to spend together. All the talks are about looking ahead to saying goodbyes, moving, starting college. I went to this same retreat as a student 21 years ago. I went to junior-senior prom in this hotel. It’s bonkers.

What I’ve saved

Jon Stewart was the voice of my young adult milieu. (The Atlantic)

“Why Read Fiction in a Bad World?” I am always thinking about why we read. This is good: “Fiction satisfies, intermittently and imperfectly, a metaphysical longing, a desire to extend life beyond its arbitrary limits.” (Gawker)

Until next week,

Kate