It's Kind Of About Pot Roast

Living Happy

One of my writer Facebook friends laid out an edict last week—an edict of taste.

“I hate,” she said, “when writers read their own books.”

I bristled and walked away from the computer. I’m a bit drama like that. But also, I tend to leave the space that makes me uncomfortable so I can process things. And that post, no matter how innocent she is or meant it to be (she’s lovely) made me uncomfortable.

This means I set about trying to figure out why one opinion made me so grumpy. And I decided it was because it meant that authors don’t sound okay reading their own words because they aren’t professional readers, which is a skill, right?

I don’t listen to audio books. Gasp! I know. The reason why? I don’t like that so many of the readers sound so similar, that the cadence is always there that tells me, “Ah, this is a professional reader doing an audio book.”

To me, it’s like watching TikTok videos where they have the automated voice or even when the TikTokker does those TikTok head movements and similar finger points. It feels inauthentic. I’m more into diverse sounds and cadences and ways, I think.

Maybe, instead of looking for that monolith of audiobook voices, instead of leaning into the homogeneity of cadence and sound, we should actually celebrate difference—the stutter step of an author’s realization that maybe on page 123, they shouldn’t have used that word, or the actual love letter a story can become when it goes correctly—that kind of love that an author feels for what she’s created.

Or maybe not?

But it bristled.

Sometimes it feels like we all want everything to sound the same—super professional—an expectation of actor-reader giving us the lines.

I am not into that. It’s totally okay if you are, obviously. No edicts from me. But sometimes I wish we could all look into the edicts we lay out and see why we want things certain ways. Our steak must be well done or rare. Our preference is for hot showers or cold. We must lie on the right side of the bed. Our audio books must not be read by writers.

It seems a bit silly sometimes.

It’s like we have not just routines for our lives (always getting up at 5:30, breakfast at 9, workout at noon, etc.), but also routines for our minds. It makes sense because we tend to lean into the most energy effective, easiest ways to do things. That even includes thinking. We don’t want to believe that our way of thinking is wrong even when there are facts right there, dancing around, waving at us, telling us that elephants are not actually rainbow colored.

But routines can get in our way. Sometimes we just do things because we’re used to doing them. Sometimes we just think things because we’ve always thought them.

Yes, there is decision fatigue, and our brain only has so much energy to decide if we want an apple for breakfast or a banana and our poor, amazing brains have SO MANY decisions every day.

Systems, routines, they save that brain energy. Routines help us move forward, but there’s also a thing on an individual level (vs a societal level) called a status quo bias  We do what is familiar over and over again, we lean in toward that similarity, not because it’s better for us, but because we’re used to it.

Here’s a great anecdote relayed by Kat Boogaard,

“Andy Molinsky adds to this point with a story from Ellen Langer’s book Mindfulness , where she talks about generations of cooks in the same family who—following the old family recipe—would always cut each end off the pot roast before putting it in the pan.

“’Only when a friend of the family asked for the recipe and inquired about that unusual practice did the family investigate why it was they cut off both ends,’ Molinsky says. After putting in some legwork and tracing that step back, it was discovered that the recipe started that way because the pan the original cook used (over 50 years prior) was too small to hold the entire thing. ‘I always loved that story because it really captures the essence of a mindless routine,’ adds Molinsky.”

Doing things differently can increase our focus, make our memory better, make us more creative, and allows us to re-evaluate our situations, making cool changes so that we can develop and grow.

Yes, I did think about all this because of one random Facebook post calling out a love of sameness, but that nice human isn’t alone. I do the same sort of thing every day, leaning into my own routines, my own thinking patterns.

Here’s the thing though: that routine, that sameness, that call for uniformity can hold us back as individuals and as a society. Not every song should sound like Taylor Swift. Not every book should have the same exact set up as James Patterson. Not every book should be read by the same five audio book readers. There’s a beauty to mistakes, to a lack of uniformity, to the new experience. And as a society when we don’t celebrate that? That’s when we stagnate.

And I don’t want to stagnate even if it’s easier.

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BE BRAVE FRIDAY ON A MONDAY

I’ve been quietly writing poems first thing every morning for a couple of weeks now. This routine will probably change because of what I wrote about up there.

But, I guess, it’s my idea of morning pages, which is a writer thing where you write in the morning. Or maybe like journaling, which is a self-help thing where you get your brain ready for the day.

So, I write a poem in the morning lately.

This Friday’s poem is up there.

This morning’s poem is below.

And I’ve been not-so-quietly writing a hyper-local news blog for about a year now. It gets about 70,000 views every month, which is pretty cool and also sort of amazing since I kind of thought it would get–maybe 100?

I had coffee this week with a guy and he told me that it was okay for me to go big, to go after big things and goals. There’s nothing wrong about patting yourself on the back sometimes, he said. You can claim your space in the world.

So now, I’m trying to be a bit braver about the things I do maybe too quietly and to not be afraid to go a bit bigger in ambition and voice and focus.

It’s weird to go bigger when people expect you to be small.

This, of course, made me think about expectations.

This woman I met last week did the typical, “Oh what do you do?” as if my occupation defined me. I know! I know! People ask that to make small talk, but I’d so much rather we got to know each other by asking questions like, “Do you talk to birds?” or “Have you ever hugged a tree?” or “Do you believe that dancing in the rain is a cliche, silly, ridiculous, or a must-do whenever it is raining?”

Anyway, she asked me what I did.

I said, “I write novels.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

She asked the next question, which if you are a writer, you know is always, “Have you published any?”

And I got to say, “Yes.”

Shaun yelled in, “She’s an NYT and internationally bestselling author.”

And her other eyebrow went up into that shocked look. I shrugged.

Here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter if some of my books randomly made those lists. What matters is that I love stories and creating them and sharing them.

What matters isn’t that I’m now somehow more acceptable because of a bench mark of success.

What matters is that I talk to birds and have definitely hug a tree and think dancing in the rain can be whatever you want it to be.

It’s okay to be big when people expect you to be small. It’s okay to create your art and not have to have it become a “mark of external success.”

And it’s also okay to be small when people expect you to be big.

We get to be who we are. That’s it. Be who you are.

And also I hope you have a great and brave Friday!

Here’s my painting this week. It’s a couple of colors that almost don’t go together. Kind of like expectations and reality, right?

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