#15: Three things that got me thinking
Pregnant ease + writerly motivation + kitchen experiments
1. Pregnant laissez-faire
One thing I loved about being pregnant is the clarity I felt. Maybe I ached, maybe I glowed—either way, I owned it and most people had my back1.
You’re exhausted and want to go home in the middle of the office Christmas do? Nobody will call you lame and insist you get another drink2.
You feel strong and happy and want to dance to Bruno Mars? Good for you!
You avoid upsetting news articles and cry-watch This Is Us instead? It’s Okay.
So I could relate to what singer and actress Mandy Moore says about ditching perfectionism during her pregnancy in this Romper profile3:
“I don’t find myself feeling stressed out about how my voice sounds, or am I hitting the right notes? It feels good to just open my mouth and sing right now, which is weird, but I like it. […] I hope I can bottle this feeling, and once the baby’s born, I can continue to approach any performance with the same laissez-faire attitude.”
2. Why do we write?
Shortly after I published this piece on persisting with things you stink at, I read an angry post by Ed Zitron, a writer and PR person (his own description).
In a takedown of a recent book excerpt about remote work—which urges readers to find “restoration” in hobbies and “cultivate essential parts of us that have been suffocated by productivity obsessions”—Zitron writes:
“Everyone reading this has hobbies! You are not special if you do this stuff! And while there are many people who do hobbies to impress other people or to be ‘good’ at them, there are plenty more that do not.”
He slams the whole piece as “written for a wealthy, privileged audience - those who have the freedom and ability to dream about not working”.
Reading his (valid) criticism, I wondered if I’d committed the same sins in my recent posts, and in this whole newsletter. Am I tone-deaf? Is it just trite, privileged nonsense to write about seeking joy over performance?
I’m trying to pay attention.
In his most recent post, Zitron also reflects about the big why behind his writing, his “duty” to “shine a big light” on labour abuses in particular:
“every time I am angry at someone for something they’ve written, every time I attack a policy, every time I call out a bad actor, I’m doing it because I see an imbalance of power and, by extension, a bully being given more power to exact their own petty will against people for reasons that don’t actually match with those given.”
I don’t have a fully formed big why behind this newsletter, yet, and I’m curious to see it take shape over time.
3. Jackass in the kitchen
Finally, I discovered the newsletter Food Is Stupid, where writer Dennis Lee tries to answer questions such as “Can you carbonate raw fish?” or “Can you brew coffee using a surgical face mask?” Then he figures it out in real-life experiments.
His write-ups make me chuckle, and also make me feel a tiny bit sad because I miss silliness and adventure and doing things because Why Not.
Some people, including healthcare professionals, did infantilise me, but I was lucky that they were the minority.
That extra drink is only meant to make purveyors of extra drinks feel better about their own drunkenness, anyway.
This was published in January—her child was born shortly after.