Dear First name, When we didn’t have anything else to eat for dinner, my mom would make goulash. I think this could be a nice meal for other families. But in our case it felt like catchall for anything left in the fridge, which really wasn’t pretty. Corn was always involved. Honestly, our goulash looked like if a dog had gotten into the trash, eaten a bunch of stuff they shouldn’t have, and then got sick. I’m sorry. I know that’s an awful image. I’m really good at saying disgusting things and I’m too tired (a good tired) to filter. The point is that this week’s newsletter is goulash. Its a little bit of everything all rolled into one but probably not quite as sassy as the Meridith Brooks song I just poached that line from. At first it was going to be a creative goulash, at least. I was gonna pull random notes from my iphone without trying to connect any ideas or stitch it all together. But at this very moment, even that seems like too much effort. So now i’m just going to type a bunch of random stuff as it comes into my head. Look out for corn. |
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Currently, I find myself stuck in the dilemma of not being able to type because I keep eating a few doritos at a time, thus giving myself doritos fingers. so then I lick my fingers and tell myself to stop eating doritos, but since it feels like it helps me think better, I grab a few more doritos and the vicious cycle repeats itself. There are 3,436 notes in my iphone. I used to think sparkling water was rude for simply existing, now i drink it all day. Teethkiss the class started this week. Teaching it has me deep in my feels and I can never believe I made something I love so much. I feel the same way when I look at my kids. Today facebook emotionally manipulated me with a memory that was seven years old. None of my three kids had gone through puberty yet, which is saying something. After I found saw picture, I was sitting across from Shiloh (my youngest who is 12), watching him pick something out of his braces. All of time, past present and future was just beaming from his face as he was going after a bean shell or piece of rice, or something, and I started weeping. |
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The kids and I, seven years ago. (from left to right, wren, myra, shiloh) |
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The iphone note that made me think I should make goulash is one I think about all the time because it just came to my one day as if there were two people living in my head having a conversation with each other. I suppose a lot of my notes are like that. I have it memorized so I can share it hear without having to reach for my phone. “Will it hurt?” he asked “If we do it right,” she answered. Even though I think about it a lot, it also sounds kind of like a bad pick up line at first. I think my root chakra opened up recently. I think this for a lot of reasons, but the “grounding one,” (pun intended) is that after plateauing for more than a year, my yoga practice feels suddenly different as if everything is emanating from that place in my body. I can feel more of me. I like more of me. On new year’s even I danced with about five of my closest friends in one of their basements for a solid couple of hours. We all thought it would be more fun than it ended up being. But it was still pretty good. Myra and I walk Tuesday at sunrise together. This feels wildly important to me. Like it was one of those ideas that as soon as I thought it, I knew in such a deep place I had to make it happen. For both of us. I have feelings like that about various things on most days, and on most days, there is at least one thing I actually cannot make happen, no matter how deeply I feel it. Life feels a lot about learning to live with impossible things like that. |
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The hardest seasons of my life have been the ones when laughter doesn’t come easily. I feel like I barely got my sense of humor back in the nick of time for teaching to pick up again. Thank god, for my students sake. I started trying to take an instant film self portrait a day for all of 2023. But i haven’t taken one yet, and I reaaalllllly don’t feel inspired by my Dorito fingers. Wren (my middle, 14) just walked in the room and kissed the top of my head. Between NYE and Christmas we were driving home to Utah from Boise, listening to Weezer, which was my favorite band in high school and who she now loves. We were discussing whether the Blue Album or Pinkerton was better. I thought we were really connecting. Out of the blue she says, “I would have really hated you if we went to high school together.” I started laughing really hard because it was such a hilariously harsh thing to say. Myra tried to swoop in from the backseat and defend me. But wren didn’t mean it to be cruel, like it sounded. She said, “Because you had so many things people wanted, but you never used them to get ahead. I would have been really jealous of that.” I felt and loved wren so much in that moment. I also remembered how hard it is to be a teenager. I keep thinking, with a sense of dismay bordering somewhere between delight and concern that winter might be my new favorite season. I say concern because I don’t even recognize myself in that sentence and I really don’t have the patience to architect a whole new personality as a winter loving person. |
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I watched the Lego movie with the kids this past week, the original one from 2014 and when Vetruvius tells Emmet that all he has to do is Believe and then says,“It sounds like a cat poster, but its true.” I felt on fire with resonance - like that summed up my vibe more than anything ever has. Plus I really believe it. And I hope you do too.(that’s the corn). Xx, Yan |
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