I’m back from an unofficial summer break with a good old-fashioned “what I did this summer” essay like I imagine you might have written in grade school. I say I imagine this because I was homeschooled until high school, where the summer essays all revolved around a reading assignment.
It’s been an eventful three months since I last wrote to you …
I got married!
In June Josh and I got married, after a nearly seven-year engagement, and on our 10th anniversary of being together!
Our wedding was at his grandmother’s property on the town lake, just a block from our home. We planted wildflowers to decorate the grounds and cooked the street taco dinner ourselves. My sisters decorated the reception, Josh’s mom and brothers made a beautiful cocktail hour graze for us, his cousin stepped in as our Spotify DJ, and my sister’s husband made us a batch cocktail that somebody called “dangerous”. Everyone was crying by the last toast, and at the end of the night, we surprised folks with a pizza delivery!
I tried to plan an Anti-Burnout wedding, but I’m no longer convinced there is such a thing. No matter how chill and low-stress you try to make them for everyone involved, I think maybe weddings will just always be stressful????
Because even once you get past the internal stress of self-worth issues — Do you even deserve a wedding, or should you just elope? Just who do you think you are registering for all these expensive gifts? — stressful things happen.
People show up to your home unannounced while you’re elbow-deep in elote. You forget to purchase any beverages besides alcohol. You miss the deadline to condense your 12 pages of notes into coherent vows and wind up making them up on the spot. You try your darndest not to have guests working an event they’re invited to, but still end up asking them to light candles, pour prosecco, and cut cake.
Every single one of these things happened. And it was OK!!!
Turns out, the people who love you are happy to help. And you’ll feel a lot better about accepting that love and care from them if you stop saying “I’m sorry,” and just start saying “thank you.”
*Makes mental note to send thank-you cards by September*
I got laid off
From a seasonal job, so I knew it was coming eventually. However, this does mean I’m in job-search mode, so if you hear of something you think may be a good fit, please send it my way (you can reply to this email!).
I’d love to work remotely, with a company whose mission and values complement what I'm doing here: ending burnout, decreasing stress, and making work more compassionate and human. While my experience is mainly in content and social media marketing, I’m open to exploring anything that will let me flex both my strategic and creative sides. Thanks in advance for anything you send my way!
If you haven’t already, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my work here with ABL while I look for gainful (and non-burnout-inducing!) employment. If just three of you upgraded to yearly memberships, together you’d knock out my Xfinity bill this month!
And if you’re really feeling frisky and benevolent, you can also choose to gift me a title from my Anti-Burnout Book Registry on Bookshop.org. Every book on the list relates to my study of burnout somehow and will show up in future pieces here. Registry purchases also earn me affiliate commission, which makes this a double-whammy of support from you! Here are the three I’m most excited to read:
Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, by Tricia Hersey
Real Self Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included), by Pooja Lakshmin
Cry, Baby: Why Our Tears Matter, by Benjamin Perry
I did NOT get into a fender bender
Josh did, on the way to work about a month ago. Both he and the other driver are OK, and insurance covered the car repairs. But if you see him, please remind him to leave one car length per every 10 mph he drives (he’ll hate you for it, but he’ll definitely remember).
Things like this are exactly why I always tell everyone “Drive safe!” when they go somewhere. It’s a superstition bordering on compulsion at this point, but I think it bears repeating, and often.
Love you! Drive safe!
I sprained my ankle
It was Barbie Weekend, and I was in New York to celebrate my friends. The night before we had seen the Barbie movie at a waterfront drive-in for Tara’s birthday (I cried twice, but that’s a different story). Tonight we had fêted
and the publication of her very first book with a private karaoke party, and now were on our way to refuel with dumplings.Like any other responsible, forward-thinking 30-year-old, I decided to change from heels into flip-flops for the walk. Either that was a problem1 or the three rounds of well gin and tonic at karaoke were.
Mid-step, my right flip-flop flew off and landed a yard in front of me. I tried to catch myself, rearing back to avoid putting my bare foot on a filthy city sidewalk. But I overshot it, twisting and toppling left: off my sandal, off the sidewalk, and into the tree well.
My left ankle was instantly the size of a very large egg — in the background of a Live photo from that night, you can hear the wince in Hattie’s2 voice as she says, “Ohhh, yeah baby you swollen.” The next morning it looked more like Violet Beauregarde’s than mine, blue and still ballooning. And for the next week — which I spent almost entirely on the couch, keeping my foot RICE’d and feeling very, very stupid — it was a new color every time I looked at it.
Nothing makes you feel more embarrassed3 to be 30 than injuring yourself by wearing flat shoes. I’m taking the tiniest bit of comfort in telling myself that at least I was true to the theme of Barbie Weekend. If you want to help me feel better, order a copy of Hattie’s book.
I read an entire book in a hammock
The biggest plan on my calendar post-wedding was Camp Sulli, a four-night trip to the Poconos with my big family of in-laws where we stayed in a sprawling house on a steep riverbank.
The trip came just a week after I sprained my ankle, which meant I couldn’t wade and tube in the stream with the cousins or hike the falls with the siblings. But I read an entire Agatha Christie while lying in a hammock, played for hours with our niece and nephews, and learned so many new group/drinking games. And by the end of the week, I was running up and down the stairs with no problem.
Meanwhile, Josh lost his wedding ring4 while searching for crawdads in the creek. Multiple folks have already likened this to the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, so if hobbits ever show up in South Jersey, at least we’ll know why.
After retracing his steps 150 yards through a muddy, rocky, fast-running mountain stream and coming up empty-handed, he jumped on Etsy and messaged the jeweler we bought the ring from. They gave him a very generous discount toward a replacement and shipped it immediately. All told he was only without a ring for six days!
So many thank yous to Rings By Lux for their incredible customer service. If you’re looking for band-style rings that incorporate unique materials like dinosaur bone, guitar string, or meteorite, I can’t recommend them enough.
I got health insurance
Do you have any idea how much paperwork is left to do after a wedding?? I may not have started my thank-you notes or the name-change process yet, but we did at least get me added to Josh’s health insurance. My impulse is to say I’m “unreasonably” excited about mental and dental but I’m trying not to invalidate my own feelings here. And having been uninsured for the past several years, this level of excitement is actually perfectly reasonable.
But there’s a greasy film of medical anxiety floating on top of that excitement. Given my family history (my mother died from colon cancer almost seven years ago, at age 52) I’m dreading my first checkup in ages. And I feel very unsure how to choose a therapist, but clearly, I really need one.
If you have any helpful advice to share about choosing a therapist or starting therapy, let’s talk about it in the comments. Because if I have these questions, chances are others do, too.
Between the highlights, I’m also crocheting (I made the cutest little top that turned out a size too big), growing and giving away so many zinnia and black-eyed-Susan bouquets, and eating all the Jersey Fresh corn and tomatoes I can get my hands on. I’m struggling to finish reading How to Do Nothing because I keep getting distracted by the hummingbirds and goldfinches visiting my flowers, which is maybe the whole point of the book.
After directing so much creative energy toward wedding planning in the first half of the year, it’s a relief for this newsletter to finally be the biggest project on my plate. I’ve got Reading Notes coming up next week for paid subscribers, and a breakdown of my Anti-Burnout framework for everyone the following week. And I’m outlining an affirmation-writing workshop I plan to lead in the fall.
Thank you for being here! Talk soon,
💜 Chloe
Do anyone else’s feet have to adjust to being flat again after wearing heels? Just mine?
Thank you, Hattie, for towing me through Penn Station with an ice pack and bundling me and my bag onto the train.
How humiliating, to have a body!
It’s a cruel summer for Josh