My daily tarot card: Today I drew the Two of Stakes. (Stakes=Wands in a typical tarot deck.) Wands are the suit of creativity and passions, so it’s apropos for me to draw from that suit on a day I’m doing focus work on this newsletter. Twos often refer to partnerships or unions, but it can also refer to a fork in the road. The Two of Stakes is about looking ahead to the horizon, taking a pause to consider, then taking decisive action to forge ahead. It can also speak to outgrowing or moving beyond the status quo, even if it means stepping outside your comfort zone. As you can see from the card from the Buffy deck, sword or stake, stake or sword. You have many weapons to choose from, and the choosing makes all the difference!
Want your own card pull or full reading? I can do that.
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Why I’m thinking about adulting this week.
Short answer: Because life is definitely life-ing. Personal, professional, political…all dimensions.
I remember when I was a kid one of my favorite things to do was to go grocery shopping with my mom. When I got to be old enough, she’d give me a cart and half the list, and I go to one end of the store, and she’d go to the other, and we’d work our way to meet up in the center. I would get frustrated because she would put back stuff I picked up that was not on her list. Inevitably it was stuff like sugary cereals, snacks, ice cream. Just wait until I’m an adult, I thought, then I can get anything I want at the store.
Years later as a starving artist in NYC I realized that a) I couldn’t get anything I wanted, if I was the one who would have to pay, and b) If I got everything I wanted and just ate it willy nilly, it would likely be less healthy, and that I would actually care about the results of that indulgence on the other side of it.
I can think of countless similar realizations, all throughout my life:
The first time something in my apartment broke down after buying a condo and realizing the “landlord” was me
I could mock Nora Ephron all I wanted, and still one day I woke up and wondered, what the heck happened to my neck. (Maybe this means I finally need to read her book on the topic?)
Some people you can do handshake deals with, and it will always be fine, and some folks…not so much. And you can’t always tell. You may “get got” no matter how long you live and how wise you get
It doesn’t matter what age you are, you can cry at a movie (I did this weekend), get disappointed, resist doing something you know is for your own good because you just don’t wanna, believe a lie, say something so stupid it will haunt those hours before you fall asleep or when you just wake up
It’s a known psychological phenomenon that when we’re younger we think of ourselves as older (or more mature, if you like), and as we get older, we still think of ourselves as younger. (This Psychology Today article is a brief review of “subjective age.”)
Similarly, the younger we are the earlier we draw the line between young and old. I remember being in elementary school and seeing high school kids driving and thinking how impossibly old they were. More recently I’ve been doing a daily clean-up of my Photos app. (All thanks to this recommendation from Christine Koh…check out #4 on her list; it’s definitely making me feel productive every single day, and bringing up lots of great memories.)
In doing this daily photo review, I found a picture of my mother at pretty much exactly the age I am now. I was struck, above all else, by how young she looked. I was not surprised because I feel old now. I was surprised because I don’t feel old, but I certainly thought of her as old then. But she looks pretty “young.” Whatever these labels mean. Perhaps the point is that these labels means little. They are constructs and subjective and live in our heads, more than in any universally applicable rubric we can all live by.
My mom (L) at the age I (R) am now
Build a squad that can help carry the weight of the world
If there’s one over-arching, always-on ethos reflected in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s that doing the right thing, acting for the greater good…it’s not easy. It often requires sacrifice. And no one is immune to wishing they could sometimes just NOT. And that means sometimes even “grown-ups” make bad decisions…decisions they have to live with (but that also build their empathy muscle).
Buffy: "I'm not gonna lie to you. It was scary. I'm so used to you being a grown-up, and then I find out you're a person."
Giles: "Most grown-ups are."
And if there’s a second over-arching, always-on ethos reflected in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s that teamwork will help you get where you want to go (or to mourn when you fail to get there). I have a whole online course I do about mentorship where I say, forget about finding a be-all, end-all mentor…build yourself a squad instead. A Scooby Gang of your very own. All Slayers before Buffy acted alone; they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders. Buffy thrives because she has a team. And she’s a leader because she knows how to find and bring out the best in each of them. She’s still learning, from her mentor and watcher Giles, but he learns from her too. Being a Slayer sometimes feels like a lonely fate. But she’s not alone.
Here’s that course I was mentioning, check it out here: https://www.genconnectu.com/products/modern-mentorship-a-win-win-framework-of-mutuality
Recently I posted the below on LinkedIn about how, even in this AI age, turning to humans for learning, advice, and camaraderie is a good idea. This post got more traction than most of my posts…perhaps we all need the reminder to build our squad?
Lately I've used Claude to "talk through" a couple of sticky situations.
It was helpful as a mirror...helping me distinguish between my reactions and what was actually important to me. feelings vs. actions. And so on.
Today I had another moment. But I took a pause.
The data are very clear about human connection being important for our mental wellness and longevity. "Talking" to Claude is nice, but it's NOT human connection.
So I pinged a friend to see if they could chat instead. It was a very conscious and specific decision to do so. I recommend making some ground rules with yourself to do that every now and then :)
Question: Do you turn to AI chat to augment, enhance, or replace human chats?
The original and foundational “Scooby Gang”: Buffy with the supernatural strength, strategy, and skills, Giles with the wisdom and knowledge, Willow with tech-savvy (and eventually magic), and Xander with a lotta heart and loyalty…which comes in handy more than you’d think!
Question: Who’s in your squad? Have you built it with intention, luck, or a bit of both?
So, what Buffy episodes did I watch these past two weeks week?
I watched Season 2, episodes 7 (Lie To Me recap), 8 (The Dark Age recap), 9 (What’s my Line part 1 recap) and 10 (What’s My Line part 2 recap)…which aired between November 3 and November 24, 1997.
The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Season 2 Episode 7 is that there are only more gray areas as we get older. Sometimes we need nothing more than for someone to tell us what we want to hear, which isn’t always the same as what we need to hear.
The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Season 2 Episode 8 is some version of “past is prologue.” But the past can be a reason we grow, empathize, strive, or stumble.
The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Season 2 Episodes 9 and 10 is that the grass may or may not be greener on the other side. Choose a squad that shows up with a hose or to mow, whatever the moment calls for.
Signposting and sharing
📺 Next week’s recapping will cover Buffy Season 2, episodes 11 and 12. Both episodes qualify more as “monster of the week” than mythology episodes. But one features John Ritter playing against type, so definitely worth the watch!
🛠️ Tool of the week/Granola: [Note: No sooner did I decide to finally recommend the app Huxe, then I got an email last week saying they’re sunsetting it! I feel like Ferris Bueller realizing that life moves pretty fast! Such a bummer. I might attempt to create my own version of it, we’ll see.] Nonetheless, this week’s recommendation is Granola. I don’t know about you, but every time I open Zoom these days, I get four different prompts to take notes, or open the AI companion, or save the transcript to Notion. But the only tool I’m using lately is Granola. It’s a universal note taker (works on Zoom, Teams, Meet, even phone calls). It listens to the audio then produces notes. It doesn’t save the audio, which I actually like. Much like Notion, you can create “recipes” for actions for Granola to take. At the end of every day, for example, I run a recipe I created to extract my personal to-dos and action items from that day’s meeting. There’s a free version which, thus far, has been sufficient for my needs. It’s worth a try, so check out Granola here.
📚 Book recommendation this week: I love anything by Elizabeth Strout. Her new book, The Things We Never say, is no exception. It’s one of those books that’s about small things but is profound and universal. I would say it stays in the poignant and bittersweet lane the entire time, but it’s so beautifully written and the characters so finely drawn that it’s satisfying (for me anyway). Start your “Strout era” via bookshop.org. But for real, you cannot go wrong with anything Strout, even if you read one of her series out of sequence. I first read Oh, William!, which was 3rd or 4th in her Lucy Barton series 🤷🏻♀️ I went on to gobble up everything she ever wrote.
🙋🏻♀️ Question of the Week: How many tools do you use for note-taking, action tracking, to-do-lists, and the like? I feel like I’ve tried every one, most not really working for me. I mostly use the Notes app native to Macs and Apple Calendar with time blocking and scheduled reminders at this point. However, I recently made my own little Top Task Tracking tool. What do you love using?
Bonus: Here’s a screenshot of the Top Task Tracking tool (with sample tasks) that I made for myself. It’s really meant to take a more voluminous list and break it down to 1-3 things today, 3-5 things for the week, and a handful of big year goals that you haven’t yet scheduled, but don’t want to forget. If you want to mess with it, you can…but anyone with this Demo link will see links you put in it, so be forewarned :)
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SOME FINAL WORDS
Giles: "Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their evil deeds, and they always lose. And we always win. And nobody ever dies... and everybody lives happily ever after."
Buffy: "Liar."
Giles: "...Yes."
-From Lie to Me, Season 2, Episode 7
