How I Am Keeping Organized This Year

February 10, 2020 |

I’ve written before about my low-key bullet journaling style twice. Over the last year and a half, though, I’ve found bullet journaling to not be sufficient anymore for my needs and I took to finding a new system of keeping myself organized, motivated, and reflective of what it is I’m doing with my time every day.

The bullet journal stopped working for me because, as much as it was useful for assessing task importance, it didn’t give me a way to delegate my time during the day nor plan further ahead. I slowly began to shift over to a digital task management system, then realized that alone wouldn’t be enough for me.

Every Day Organization

Enter: Day Designer.

As I noted in the Instagram post above, whenever I lug this thing around — and lug is the right term, given how substantial it is — I get asked about it. The Day Designer is exactly what it promises to be: a way to design your day around time blocks. Every single day has its own page, except for Saturdays and Sundays which are on the same page, and the days are broken down into hours from 5 AM to 9 PM.

In addition to the time breakdown, though, each page offers a ton of other ways to track what’s important that day. There’s space for a top three of the day, for notes, as well as a space for that day’s to-do list. I don’t use the gratitude space in the planner, since I leave that in another place, but there is room for those who want to see that when they open up their planner.

I get up at 4:30 every morning. Having the chance to start planning my day at 5 AM is a game-changer. So many planners start much later, but I do need to get started early. Sure, “reading” and “meditation,” are things I’d likely do automatically, but the act of slotting those into time boxes prioritizes them and is a reminder of what exactly I did with my time on any given day.

I don’t write down every single thing I want to get done on the to-do list each day because I also use a digital task management system. Things is the one I prefer, as I can set up recurring tasks, can reschedule things easily, and I can keep a running list of “future ideas.”

Under “Today” on Things, you get a check list and can just mark things off as you go. You get a nice view of upcoming tasks like that seen above, and you can keep track of ideas in the “Someday” folder. This is where I often brainstorm post ideas or take notes about trends or topics I want to remember to go back to but that don’t necessarily have any due date associated with them. Often, one of the recurring tasks in Things ends up on the Top 3 priorities in the Day Designer, just because it is. I know I’ll do it, but it’s the most important thing to get done, no matter what else pops up during the course of a day.

The to-do list in my paper planner becomes a bit of a dumping ground for things that are small but need to get done: packages to take to the post office, appointments to make, emails to send or follow up with. When I collect those administrative-like tasks together in that space, I’m able to get an idea of how much time I need to allot in my day to complete them. Will it be an hour? Two hours? Or do I move those to another day and schedule a longer period of time to knock out a lot of things at once?

My last tool is one that isn’t updated daily. I have a monthly calendar planner that has just each month of the year. In it, I write down my planned blog posts, newsletter topics, and other regular writing when it’s scheduled. It’s an old-school content calendar and allows me to see what I’ve got cooking so I don’t repeat myself or find myself being bored by writing the same kinds of things all the time. It also ensures I don’t forget to do something.

Goal Setting and Reflection

In addition to the organization system for my day-to-day life, I keep a similarly-large planner for my goal setting. After reading numerous rave reviews of the PowerSheets system, I decided to splurge on one this year. I’m so glad I did!

The PowerSheets ask for a lot of upfront work, but it’s all good upfront work. You reflect on things going well in your life, then think about what it is you really want to get out of the next year of time. Those are distilled into no more than eight goals for the year, which are then broken down even further. Those micro-steps are transformed into tasks you tend to, either over the course of a month, each week, or every day.

Image from https://cultivatewhatmatters.com/.

Every week, I review my tending sheet a couple of times and update it. What did I get done from the month’s tasks, the week’s goals, and the daily tasks? It’s a reminder to refocus and also to allow myself space to deviate — an example is that I make it a daily goal not to turn on my laptop until 7 am and use that time to read and meditate. But sometimes things come up and my morning gets compressed and I need to turn on my laptop for some work. When I look at the daily goals and see that 10 out of the last 11 days have been successful in no turning on the laptop, I do not feel an ounce of guilt for doing it once because I can see how good I am at maintaining the goal overall.

I’ve taken this a step further, too, in that I have been creating themes around my goals by month. February, for example, is “renew,” and it’s when I’m trying to take care of overdue tasks. I went and got my Real ID at the DMV, I ordered new glasses, and I am in the midst of figuring out what to do with my hair. I made myself a massage appointment and will be taking my car in for some overdue repairs I’ve put off. Spending time at the start of the month to put all of those things down and look at them in conjunction with my big goals, I see how each of those moves me closer to the bigger picture in some way. It’s incredibly motivating.

Each month’s tending is paired with a reflection page about what went well and what didn’t that month, which is so helpful and grounding.

I don’t stop at the PowerSheets though. The other tool I use for dreaming and goal setting is the Start Today journal. I’ve written before about my complex relationship with Rachel Hollis, in that I see where she has weaknesses but also that there are a lot of things she talks about and shares that are extremely helpful to me (and frankly, I think a lot of the feedback she’s seen has made her a lot more aware of those shortcomings, as I’m finding myself liking her more and more because it’s clear she’s working and is indeed complex and flawed and sees that!).

Start Today is her methodology, and it requires on fancy journals. I do have one, though, that she sells because I grabbed it on discount. The premise is extremely simple: every day, you write down 5 things you’re grateful for, then 10 dreams — written as if they’ve already happened, so it doesn’t read like a to-do list, and then the ONE goal you’re going to achieve first. This fits in SO neatly with the PowerSheets and gives me a roadmap to success in the grander scheme of things while also inviting me to not only dream, but find gratitude every day.

Journaling

The last tool in my daily regimen for staying organized and grounded is a simple journaling technique I learned from a fellow student while doing my Yoga Life Coach certification.

While all of the above tools are extremely useful, they’re not the best for looking backward. They’re all set in the now or in the future. And while those aren’t bad things, there’s tremendous value in also reflecting and recalling what it is you did in a day.

I use a journal I’ve had at home and answer these four questions every single day:

What brought me joy?
What am I grateful for? (Yes, I repeat something from the Start Today list)
What is it I can let go of?
What am I most proud of?

On days when I am working, I add a fifth question:

What did I work on today?

This gives me the chance to reflect on the highs of a day, the things I’m glad I did, and gives me a reminder of what the heck I am doing with my time, so that when I look back on the week, I can acknowledge that I wrote 4 newsletters for work and recorded two podcasts, had a number of phone calls, wrote a couple of posts, and so forth. It’s the “Ta-Done” list, if you will, and writing it out, as opposed to simply checking it off my planner or task list solidifies accomplishment.

So How Long Does It Take You?

Honestly, half an hour on a slow day. After I get up, I make myself a cup of tea, and while it’s brewing, I generally journal from the previous day or work on the Start Today page. By the time my water is hot, I can enjoy my cup of tea while doing the other, and as soon as that finishes, I often still have most of my tea.

That’s when I crack open the Day Designer and plot out my time for the day. I prioritize things that are on my Things task list, as well as things on my Tending list for the month or week. When I see there’s time in a day, I will get cracking either on the tasks on the Day Designer list or poke through my tending list and make some progress.

That half hour is more than worth it weight in gold, especially when I see each way those tiny steps adds up to a much bigger picture and forward movement toward those big, juicy goals and dreams.

What To Do With Books By Authors Accused of Assault, Racism, or Other Inappropriate or Illegal Behaviors

February 13, 2018 |

This weekend saw victims of assault in the kid lit world coming forth to name the individuals who’ve harmed them. While no public forum like the comments on an SLJ article — one which fails to mention my work on this topic and fails to link to the work Anne Ursu was undertaking at the same time — will solve the issue, it’s a start. And like all starts, it’s rife with problems. It’s not victims alone coming forth to put voice to their experiences. It’s many on the sidelines sharing hearsay, which does more harm than good. In early instances in the SLJ comments, those individuals were told they were taking away from the voices of actual victims.

Over the last few days, a question has popped up in my inboxes, as well as across social media. What can teachers and librarians do now, knowing that they have seen names of authors and knowing they can’t ignore them?

This is tricky, but here are some options, and I hope this short, quick guide at least provides an opportunity to engage critically with your collection development, reader advisory, or teaching habits, as well as a pathway to navigating this unfamiliar terrain. Although timely in the wake of sexual assault victims speaking up, know this also applies to authors who’ve been engaging in racist and other behaviors which are inappropriate.

So you own books by those named…keep them on your shelves if they’re circulating or readers are picking them up. Do not toss them. That is censorship. But perhaps this is an opportunity to do some weeding. Pull up your circulation records of all books and following the CREW or other preferred methods of ridding materials from your collection, weed. If books by authors named haven’t moved in the same time frame that others being removed haven’t, then they can go. But to pull otherwise would be silent censorship.

So you own the books by those named and you’re keeping them on shelf…you’re under no obligation to promote them. Keep them on the shelf, but don’t put them on displays, on end caps, or in your book talks. Instead, use this as an opportunity to talk and share the books that are by other authors, especially those who are from marginalized groups. This is an opportunity to expand your own reading and your own skills, rather than relying on old habits which can be hard to kick.

So the books are in your classroom library…see above. No need to pull them unless they don’t move. Don’t judge your readers who choose to pick them up. But, perhaps, if your reader approaches you about the book’s content or about wanting to know more about the book, this is your chance to make a choice: do you have an honest conversation with them? Do you use it as an opportunity to have a wider conversation with your classroom? Or do you provide the basic information and encourage your students to engage in their own research odyssey? Only you can decide that based on your students and/or your patrons.

So the author has a new book coming out….do you buy it or pretend you don’t see it? This one is about going back to basics. Use the trade reviews. It’s so easy to auto-buy books by well-known authors or those who’ve had acclaim before. But why? It’s taking the easy route. Read the trade reviews, and if the reviews are positive, then you buy the book. If they’re middling to poor, consider your community. If it’s a community that would want the book, buy it. If not, then don’t. And if you do buy the book, either on good reviews or because your community would want it, buy another book or two, too, that has excellent reviews that you may have otherwise overlooked. Put in the work. For those without access to the trade review journals, know that many review excerpts show up on major retail sites, and that some sites, like Kirkus, offer their reviews for free online.

So you use the book in your classroom as a discussion title…why can’t you change it? If it’s your choice, use your choice. Pick another title. If it’s a title which is mandated by a department, bring the situation up to your department. It might not change the requirement, but staying silent when you know there’s a possible issue is worse. It’s tricky, of course, but speaking your truth will often make your voice shake. And that’s okay. You can use this experience when, if you are still required to teach the book, you teach the book.

So you don’t have the book in your library but someone asks for it…if it’s an older book, see if you can acquire it elsewhere, either via interlibrary loans, system holds, or track down a borrowed or used copy from another person. This ensures legality but also ensures money isn’t exchanged. If it’s a new book, you might need to buy the book. Use the same standards you’d use in any other collection development situation — if you buy all books people ask for, you need to buy it. But, like noted above, you are in no way required to promote it. Serve your patrons. Get them what it is they are asking for. Feel no other requirement but that when it comes to that book.

So what are some other things I can do…if you’re part of a planning committee for author visits or events, speak up if someone who is being talked about as a possibility is someone you’d feel uncomfortable with. Use your voice. If you see an all-male or all-white panel at an event, speak up. Get it changed. The same goes for purchasing. For writing book lists. For book talking. Work on inclusion at every turn, and keep your ears to the ground. If something makes you feel uncomfortable, trust that instinct. And, as has been said over and over, if you hear a first-hand story, if someone tells you something about being a victim (a student, a patron, a colleague, a professional), believe them.

If librarians or educators have any more questions not addressed here about what to do in light of what we’re learning, please reach out. Drop them in the comments here, and Kimberly, me, or our fantastically thoughtful readers can hop in and offer some thoughts. Remember that you have all the tools you need at your disposal. It’s a matter of remembering to turn back to those and rely on them as means to help you through.

Bullet Journaling 101: My Process Revisited

June 6, 2016 |

Now that I’m well over a year deep into using a bullet journal for my everyday life management, and seeing that bullet journaling has become a hot and happening and trendy thing now (even BuzzFeed wrote an extensive image-driven post about how-to do it), I thought it would be worth revisiting what mine looks like for those who are curious about how it works, how you can modify it to make it your own, and why you absolutely do not need to buy a million fancy things to make this task system work for you.

I love looking at the bullet journals people post on Pinterest or on Instagram or on Tumblr or on Twitter. But something about seeing them over and over has bothered me a little bit — there’s been a weird need to make them super fancy, to create what amounts to an entire industry, over a task management system. No shame on those who love doing it, since I am a person who keeps numerous notebooks and art journals for various things, but I want to emphasize to anyone intimidated by the idea of bullet journaling to realize that the goal isn’t to make it fancy. It’s to make it functional for you. I am bare bones with my journal, and that works for me. I use only supplies around my house, and I don’t make anything fancy. I don’t even use a lot of the suggested setups that the original bullet journal video suggests. I tried some of these things out when I first began but soon realized that they do no work for me, my life, or how I think. So I ditched ’em.

There is no index at the beginning of my bullet journal. Instead, I just hop right into the monthly calendar.

I like a quick overview of some of the big events happening in the month ahead. I don’t feel the need to fill everything out. I included one note about a private yoga session I have, but otherwise, I don’t mark down on the overview when I’m going to work out or anything. That’s easier to implement in the day-by-day pages.

Immediately after the calendar for the month, I like to keep a running “read” and “to read” list. The read is straightforward, and the “to read” isn’t necessarily my agenda of reading, but books I’ve heard about or have nearing their expiration date on my Nook. As you can see in April, I read a lot, but I don’t have anything noted on the “to read.” I don’t use it as much as I want to, but I keep it there because there are times I think of something or need to make a note and want it where I know I’ll find it.

Following the books lists, I keep two or three pages with the super helpful and descriptive title “Notes.” This is where I keep notes to myself so I don’t have a million pieces of paper floating around. Above, you can see my flight and travel information for going to Providence in March. I marked it with a little washi tape so that when I was sitting in a cab, I could flip to that ASAP without juggling a lot of paper or searching. As you can see, too, I mark so little with tape or coloring that it stands out immediately.

I also like to keep a list of blog ideas in this section every month. This is so much easier than random bits of post-its, which was my prior method. Efficient, but not necessarily organized or useful when you have 50 of them floating around. Capturing all those ideas in a single space each month is actually useful.

And then here’s how I lay out my day-to-day pages. Every day gets a half of page on the journal, and I usually combine Saturdays and Sundays into one half-page, since those tend to require less “to do” space. Starred items are things that I have to do/are appointments, so I know those are priorities around which the other things will fit or fall. I cross off tasks as I complete them, and then I spend each evening or early morning choosing which tasks will get carried over and completed and which will be thrown away completely. I don’t have time to do everything I want, and it’s through bullet journaling I’ve learned how to pick and choose what gets done and what gets left behind.

Sometimes I keep additional notes to myself in the journal. On the top right is a card with some of the assignments for my photography class, and I keep it in the journal for quick access. I don’t want to lose it, but I haven’t gone out to tackle the assignments yet. I did the same thing with edits for Here We Are, in that I kept track of who sent back revisions or who I was waiting for stuff from on notes like that. Keeping everything in this journal saved me from never finding exactly what I needed when I needed it.

I keep my journal written out a month in advance, so the pages for June and July are done now, and next month, I’ll create August and September pages. I know a lot of people need more planning time than that for their lives, but I rely on reminders or my own brain for things (I can recall appointments and plans for months in advance in my head, and some places, like my dentist’s office, send me text reminders a week in advance). When there is something well in advance I need to keep in mind or fear I’ll forget, I’ll pull out a post-it or notecard and stick it in the journal like the photo assignment card above. Easy!

The very last page of each month, I create a “month in review” space. This is where I write about triumphs and things I accomplished that I want to remember come the end of 2016. I just spend a few minutes at the end of the month writing them down in a list and keeping it simple. It’s a really nice way to reflect on the achievements, rather than on the things that didn’t go so hot, during the month. One of those is more useful to remember and reflect upon than the other.

I have in the past also kept pages for logging workouts, but since working out is now a daily event in my life, I no longer feel the need to see my progress like that. I have a yoga routine and a cardio routine and they work for me without the log. But it’s never out of the question I might choose to implement it again. Same with a word count tracker for writing — keeping a running list of how many words I wrote per day was nice to see and motivating when I needed it.

And that’s the beauty of a bullet journal: there aren’t rules. You can do what you want and make it work for your life.

If you’re curious about what tools I use, it’s a grid-style large Moleskin, along with black Pilot V5 pens (my go-to for every kind of writing). Each month’s dates and titles I put in color from the Staedtler colored pen collection I have, and the washi tape I got at Target (the masking sticker set I got in a subscription box, but it’s $4 at Amazon). The little library checkout cards I got from Knot & Bow.

There is literally nothing else to my bullet journal. I do nothing fancy, I draw nothing wild, and I don’t feel compelled to do more than list stuff I need or want to get done. I am not a digital planner at all, despite being online all the time, and the bullet journal lets me manage my time and my life in really satisfying ways. I see stuff getting done, and I make conscious choices about time and energy use. I don’t separate work tasks from life tasks, since my time with work is fluid and working on all of those things within my day is my reality. Keeping separate logs would confuse me.

I don’t have any symbols or keys or page numbers or indexes. Minimalism is what works beautifully for me. Others find fancy and pretty works for them, and heck yes, I love looking at those works of art. But they just aren’t realistic for me and my life.

Do you bullet journal? What sorts of things do you track or keep notes about? If you use another method of managing your life, I’d love to hear about that, too.

Micromovements, The Cult of Busy, & Owning Your Time

April 11, 2016 |

For readers who get my personal newsletter, this is a rerun of a piece I wrote last month that generated so much feedback privately that I knew I had to post it on STACKED. I’ve written about “busy” as a status here before, but after diving into Laura Vanderkam’s I Know How She Does It, I couldn’t stop thinking about the concept and how we can change our mentalities to fit everything we want into our lives with a little shuffling. I think that we can all relate to it, no matter what our careers, and I think for readers who want to be doing more reading, more talking about books, spending more time in the book world, this is all applicable.

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I am and have been endlessly fascinated with the concept of “busy.” It is, in my mind, about giving a false sense of importance when shared. I’m so busy lately. Of course life gets busy and your day to day can be hectic and then you have other shit coming at you requiring your attention.

But here’s the thing: in general, in the day-to-day scheme of things, busy is a status and it’s one that’s taken on the same role as bragging.

Laura Vanderkam’s recent(ish) book, I Know How She Does It, explores the idea of mosaic time management. Her argument is that we all have time to do the things that we want and we are, in fact, doing most of the things we want to with our time. But because we do not track our time well or see how we can shift around the tiles in our lives, we instead choose “busy” and “tired” as markers of how we’re doing. Even when we are technically neither. These are ways for polite conversation. It’s more acceptable to say you’re so busy, rather than to say you’ve been slaying it and are feeling fierce about it.

The book goes on to look at how women who are successful — and Vanderkam is clear in defining successful as women who make $100,000 a year on their own, a narrow and yet culturally-relevant measure of success — and how they manage their lives. Are they really working 50 or 60 hours a week? (No). Are they only getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night? (No). Are they spending any time with their families? (Yes, a lot). The thing is, we as individuals do not code or label the things we’re doing into useful categories, nor do we quite understand the measure of time on a bigger level. Vanderkam suggests rather than looking at the 24 hours we have in a day, we instead consider the 168 hours we have in a week.

When you do that, suddenly things shift in your perspective.

Maybe you only got 5 hours of sleep on Monday night, but on Saturday, you got 10 solid hours. That averages to 7.5 hours each night, right there. So yes, maybe you WERE tired on Tuesday, but how did you feel on Saturday and Sunday? Bet the answer might not be the same.

If you look at the whole of a week, you’re spending a lot of time pursuing the things you love to do. Maybe it’s not in one heap of time like you’d prefer. Maybe it’s not as much as you’d prefer; we all have those projects we want to get to but just find that, after all of our other tasks, we don’t have it in us to get to. But, by looking at time in 168 hour chunks, it might be easier to see where pieces of the time mosaic can be moved around to accommodate those passion projects. You feel fantastic when you wake up on Saturday morning after 10 hours of sleep? Maybe you spend that first hour laying in bed reading or writing or tackling a puzzle or playing a board game or writing a letter to a friend. That sounds and feels more manageable than throwing it on a to-do list for, say, Wednesday and realizing after putting in work and a stop at the grocery store and laundry and cooking dinner and feeling worn out by the time you get to it.

I wrote last year about how Bullet Journaling has changed my relationship to productivity, and I still remain dedicated and passionate about it. There is something about looking at a week over a two page spread, then choosing what gets carried over and what gets ditched. And when you consider the 168 hour week, suddenly, there is time to write that blog post. There is time to color your hair or get a pedicure. There is time to watch that TED Talk and get in a workout everyday. You probably do get in some good sex and some good time with family and friends. What you have to do is make a microshift in your mindset, though, to see it: driving with your partner to do an errand is family time if you make it a conversation or a game. You can watch that TED Talk while you’re on the elliptical or treadmill. Get a pedicure and listen to that podcast you’ve been eager to tune into. During nap hours on the weekend, maybe you spend the first part of that nap getting close with a partner. Shift how you think about your time and suddenly, the time is right there.

The idea of microchanges has been on my mind a lot, as it’s a big component of the yoga practice I’m doing. The instructor talks a lot about adjustments you can make in a pose to make it more or less challenging. But the fascinating piece for me is the microchange, the slight shift in movements and muscles that are working in a pose, whatever the adjustment you’ve decided may be. It’s crossing your legs opposite of the way you normally cross them. It’s placing the thumb you never place on top on top and noticing how it feels. It’s flexing your foot instead of pointing it. Simple, tiny things, but the results are quite phenomenal. Different muscles work. New things unlock. Something internally and/or externally clicks.

I think we get stymied into believing that important things come through adjustments. Adjustments mean change, which means time, and we’re all just so busy and we’re all so tired. And it’s true: an adjustment requires the whole of your body and your mind.

But microchanges are easy, tiny, tweaks in your routines, in the way you think about things, in noticing how you feel when you shift your weight from the front of your foot to the back. It’s in recognizing that maybe you can’t do something in 24 hours a day, but you can put it into one of your 168 hours a week.

Exciting News & A Pep Talk To Readers

October 27, 2015 |

In between tackling some challenging social media related shenanigans, I’ve been working really hard lately on my anthology, as well as some other writing for work and non-work reasons. It’s been fabulous, all of this writing, as has been the incredible honor I’ve had to edit essays for Feminism for the Real World. I’m going to have a very exciting announcement soon with the second part of my contributors (!!) but in the time before that, I have my own exciting announcement which is this: I am now represented by literary agent of wonder, Tina Wexler at ICM.

I cannot express my excitement for how well Tina and I clicked from our first email to our phone calls. I have let her in on all of my secrets and it’s really neat to have someone who not only gets it, but who is excited about helping me find a home for the projects I’ve got in my pocket. I even shared some (gasp!) YA fiction I’ve toyed with, a project I have toyed with and put away because of more pressing work, and she was receptive and excited by it.

A little back story: I’ve done this entirely backwards, upside down, and in my own way on my own terms. Most writers begin with an idea, then they write the manuscript, then they query agents, then they work with the agent who sends their work off to editors who might be interested. I jumped around. I wrote and sold a book to VOYA entirely on my own, and I did the same with Feminism for the Real World with Algonquin Young Readers. One of my editors there suggested I think about agents while going through some of the paperwork aspect of the project, and her suggestion really made me sit back and think about what I wanted for a career out of writing — and it was and is clear to me there’s more than this in me. Suddenly, I had five million ideas and wanted to find an agent who’d be open to trying these things, as unconventional as they may be.

There’s little to nothing out there for writers who aren’t going into straight fiction or even narrative non-fiction in terms of what they should be doing to find an agent. So I asked around — I asked writers I knew who loved their agents why they loved them, what made them stand out, and whether they knew anyone else who might be open to talking. I had it in my head to just talk, and I had fantastic conversations with two great agents. After talking, I knew this was something I not only wanted to do, but that I needed to do.

I have been taking an online course about dreaming for the last four weeks. I did it for me and me alone, and it’s been about an hour a day I get to spend thinking about possibilities and ideas and making my life more creatively adventurous and fulfilling. I might write about the course in more detail when it’s done, but a few of the big takeaways from it so far have been really impacting my thinking. I can’t just sit on ideas. I have to let myself pursue them as I have them or at least write them down to pursue when I’m ready. In a lot of ways, this was “divine timing.” And this was a leap and a risk I was more than ready to take.

I’m thrilled to keep writing, to keep building this unconventional and exciting and fun and fulfilling career. Last weekend marked four years since I walked out of a job that left me depressed and miserable and feeling awful day in and day out. I had no plans when I left, just that for my own sake, I needed to get out.

Four years back, I couldn’t have envisioned how much that decision radically changed my life in the best possible ways.

If you’re reading this, take that leap. You and your life are worth it. There will be super crummy times. There will be things that truly test the limits of all aspects of your life and your relationships.

But you only get to do this whole thing once, so take the chances as you can.

“Yes” is just as important as “no.”