I try to get outside and enjoy the fresh air every day, but there’s a difference between “walking around my neighborhood, which is in the middle of a city” and “a deep dive into nature.” The more often I do the latter, the better I feel.

I want a term for my “intense experiences with nature.” For several years, I have thought of it as a “nature bomb” but I don’t like the violence of that word. There’s nothing violent about communing with the world’s splendor.

There is the term “forest bathing” but I enjoy nature in all her forms: the beach, with her salty air and crashing waves; the desert, with expanses of sand and rock, still teeming with life; a botanical garden, with rows of rose bushes and cacti gardens; and even the farm that my kids love to visit, with fields of strawberries and baby goats. I adore trees and I love to wander in the woods. Heck, I fell in love with my alma mater Dartmouth because it was surrounded by woods, but I don’t want to limit my nature sessions to the forest bathing.

I’ve been playing around with Word Hippo and considering alternate phrases:

• Nature bath: I like the word “bath” because it’s cleansing and it does feel like nature washes the slime of city life away from my soul, but I don’t like this phrase because it seems passive. I don’t just want to soak in a tub of nature. I want to move around, explore, and engage my senses.
• Nature infusion: sort of medicinal, which emphasizes how vital nature is to the soul. But nature is poetic, and I don’t want to reduce it to a clinical practice.
• Soaking: Back to water, but this makes it sound like some fringe sexual practice

Perhaps I do not need a phrase for this practice. Perhaps that’s why so many people feel moved by nature to write poetry: you can’t boil the communing down to a phrase, or even a lyric, but pages and pages to let your wonder unspool and embrace the glory of mountains, sky and trees.

Pithy phrase of not, I want to fill my life with as much nature as possible. That’s why this morning, I headed to the Arboretum to take my morning walk. I saw peacocks, squirrels, turtles, butterflies, and one rabbit hopping into the underbrush. I wore my headphones for awhile, listening to music, but eventually I discarded them so I could listen to the birds, my footsteps on dirt paths, and the wind in the branches. There was still the noise of city life – an occasional helicopter or a gardener armed with a leaf blower – but I felt restored by my time communing with nature.

Here are some ways I hope to include “intense experiences with nature” in my life during the next few months:

• Regular visits to the Arboretum after morning drop-off
• And I’d like to renew my membership at the Huntington Gardens and enjoy some walks there once the weather cools off a bit. (I’m so lucky to live in a city with easy access to so many botanical gardens!)
• My kids are probably going to have soccer practice near Descanso Gardens. Descanso is a bit too far for regular school days but if we are heading that way for soccer practice, perhaps we can fit in an hour of “forest bathing” as well.
• Visits to the beach – hopefully once more when it’s warm enough to boogie board, but I love the beach no matter the weather.
• Hikes into the San Gabriel Mountains, solo and with friends and family.
• A visit to Underwood Family Farm for their fall festival.

Whatever I call it, I’m so grateful for the healing power of nature.

Last Thursday, after a few days of imposing a caffeine curfew, I sucked it up and measured just how much soda I was drinking. The final number: 84 ounces of Coke Zero.

I realize this is a shocking number for many.

Not for me.

I’m only drinking Coke Zero so I can steadily reduce my caffeine intake. (Not sure if Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke have identical caffeine amounts, so this is like an experiment with a control.) Here’s how it’s going:

• Day 1: 84 ounces
• Day 2: 80 ounces
• Day 3: 75 ounces
• Day 4: 74 ounces
• Day 5: 73 ounces
• Day Today: 72 ounces

If I continue to reduce my intake by one ounce a day, I’ll be caffeine-free by Halloween and I’ll skip that whole nasty caffeine withdrawal business. (I’ve seen that movie before and it’s terrifying.)

Between my curfew and gradual Coke Zero reduction, I’m already reaping the rewards of better, deeper sleep. I also feel less edgy. My energy also feels “cleaner” – I’ll have to think of a better way to describe that sensation. It’s currently Day 14 of my cycle, so I’ll be paying attention to see if caffeine reduction improves my PMS. (Spoiler alert: I’m pretty damn sure it will).

My longterm goal is to drastically reduce my soda intake along with eliminating caffeine. I thought I’d just reduce them together, but I have been desperately missing my afternoon soda. I don’t want to lose my progress on the caffeine front because I’m craving an afternoon soda, so this morning I procured caffeine-free Diet Pepsi at the grocery store.

First I eliminated refined sugar from my diet. Now I’m reducing caffeine and working on my nasty soda addiction. I wonder what changes I feel inspired to make next.

Yesterday, Southern California was hit by its first tropical storm in 84 years. Here in Pasadena, we received about 5 inches of rain in 24 hours and a little wind, but the storm was less severe than ones we saw last winter. Still, we heeded all the warnings and “battened the hatches.” On Saturday, Nathan and I moved our pool toys and lighter patio furniture into the garage. Nathan bought extra flashlights and candles, and I got us a cute little generator that can be recharged with solar panels. Did we need any of these provisions? No. But are they good to have in case of any disaster? Absolutely. We do live in earthquake country, and shit happens.

Today is Monday, and school is cancelled. I could get outraged and indignant and rage against the injustice of the universe – I wanted to go to hot yoga! and work on my novel revisions! – but this is life. Shit happens. Again and again and again. Part of being an adult means living gracefully with the unexpected.

A little levity is also very helpful.

Since the kids are home, it’s hard to revise my novel. Too many interruptions and noise (for example, right now, the kids are howling at Mario Kart). Instead, I’m going to knock out as much housework as I can while listening to podcasts. That way, I can do more writing when they return to school tomorrow.

I also can’t go to hot yoga, but I have a weighted hula hoop. I can use that for 20-30 minutes to get in a workout.

It’s easier for me to have a good attitude today because I’ve been rebuilding my buffer, simplifying my life, and healing from burnout. Since I quit the PTA and AYSO, I have more free time, so the loss of one day of school does not feel tragedy. But this time last year? Or a few months ago? I would have been ranting and raving, full of despair and Woe Is Me! Today is a reminder of why I need a buffer: because shit happens, including historic tropical storms.

Right now, I’m taking a deep breath and thanking myself for slowing down and healing from burnout. For not overloading my schedule with more volunteer work than I can handle. For having the energy and bandwidth to handle Southern California’s first tropical storm in 84 years.

Or maybe I’m just delighted to have an excuse to pad around the house in my pajamas on a Monday.

Last weekend, my iPhone advised me that it was out of memory. This was an impressive feat seeing as my iPhone has 128 GB of storage. I immediately deleted unused apps, but this did not relieve much pressure, so I checked my iPhone to see what other culprits I could address.

Of course photos and videos are the biggest culprit. I need to wade through that backlog, but that task actual requires attention and a little thoughtfulness. Dealing with the photos on my phone is on my longterm To Do list, but I was looking for an easy way to free up storage on my iPhone.

Hello, text messages.

I did not realize my old text messages were gobbling up 20.78 GB of storage! I know I send and receive a lot of text messages, but holy shit, it was obviously time to delete some old chains.

I ending up deleting almost every text chain for a fresh start. Then I went into the Recently Deleted folder where conversations lurk until they are permanently deleted, so I could empty that folder and reclaim 20 GB of storage on my phone.

45,698 messages! I had a backlog of nearly 46,000 text messages! @#&%$(#!!! It felt so good to click Delete and send all that digital clutter to the netherworld.

Next up: getting a handle on my digital photos and videos. Please pray for me. A lot.

Man, I love hot yoga — but that wasn’t always the case. I attended my first class about seventeen years ago and had a shitty experience with a judgmental teacher. I went to class with my sister and at the end of class, the teacher praised her profusely and encouraged her to come back. Then she looked at me. I had struggled with the poses and left the room mid-class because I thought I was going to die. She sneered at me and walked away.

I was in my twenties and pretty damn insecure. That bitchy teacher got to me and convinced me that I did not belong in a hot yoga studio. 

Except over the years, I could not escape the nagging feeling that I was supposed to be doing hot yoga. Especially after I moved to Pasadena and regularly drove past my local studio. After I had kids, the nagging idea amplified until it became an inner call that I could not ignore. So in 2019, I started attending classes and was getting my momentum going when 2020 came and you all know how that went. But when restrictions on exercise studios eased up, I returned. Now I consider myself a bona fide hot yogi. 

These are some of the reasons I love hot yoga:

1. I get a full body workout. Cardio, strength training and stretching for every part of my body. 
2. The practice has helped me build and deepen my body-mind connection. (Update: I blogged more about that in this post.)
3. I sweat out the crazy. 
4. And toxins. 
5. The heat and humidity help me get deeper into the stretches.
6. Hot yoga is not a contest – but I am the worst. Kidding aside, yoga is not my wheelhouse! I’ve never been naturally flexible. When I go to hot yoga, I get to be bad at something which is so beneficial for this recovering perfectionist. 
7. In addition to the full body workout, it’s a meditative practice that calms my nerves. 
8. My hot yoga teachers are very encouraging and positive. They have changed my inner monologue, making it gentler and kinder. 
9. My teachers tell us to explore our bodies and see what we can do today. Can we reach the toes? Or not yet? They constantly repeat the phrase “not yet” which has really helped me cultivate a growth mindset. 
10. It makes my body feel so damn good! Before I started hot yoga, I suffered from back and shoulder pain all the time. Now, I experience that pain rarely and when I do, it goes away quickly. 

As much as I love hot yoga, I will never try to convince anyone to try a class because it’s not for everyone. (You have to be a little crazy). But it’s definitely for me! I’m so glad I got over my first negative experience and found a studio that welcomes all bodies, no matter their natural flexibility. 

This is what my morning routine has looked like:

• Wake up sometime after 7 a.m.
• Lounge in bed with my iPhone, playing SimCity or watching TikTok’s or crap like that
• Get the kids ready for camp/school
• Feel depleted by the time I drop them off, nerves frayed
• Finally sit down and journal and ah, I feel better

Yesterday morning, I woke at 7 a.m. to my alarm and then squandered 25 minutes in bed, playing SimCity. By the time I got home from taking Pippa to school and had Julian set up with an ice pack for his sprained ankle, I was cranky and impatient. I sat down to journal and immediately felt calm. Journaling centers me, clears out the mental debris and prepares me for the day. As I journaled yesterday, I realized, Why am I playing SimCity in bed when I could be journaling?

So that’s what I did today – except my morning routine actually started last night. I’ve been bringing my iPhone to bed and playing more SimCity, also sometimes checking email and text messages, social media, etc. You know how it goes. I would usually finally put the iPhone away at 10 p.m. and then, wired and wide awake, read until I could fall asleep, sometime after 10:30 p.m. If I’m up until 10:30 or later, of course I need to sleep past 7!

But mama needs to wake up at 7, and mama wants to feel refreshed, so mama needs a new bedtime. (And ick, I will stop writing about myself in the third person now!)

Last night, instead of bringing my iPhone to bed, I left it in the kitchen. Nathan and I finished watching t.v. at 9:10 p.m., and I was reading in bed by 9:30. At 10, I put my book on the nightstand and fell asleep easily.

I was awake this morning before 7, but let myself doze until my alarm went off. But when the alarm finally chimed, I hopped out of bed, stretched for a moment, and then cozied up on the armchair in our bedroom with my journal. For twenty minutes, I journaled and hallelujah, it felt so good to start my morning this way. When I emerged from my bedroom, I had energy and patience and was delighted to engage with my children while scrambling eggs and making school lunches.

So this is my new routine:

• Finish up with my iPhone by 9 p.m. and banish it to the kitchen
• Be in bed by 9:30
• Set alarm for 7 a.m.
• Read
• Lights off at 10
• Out of bed and journaling by 7 a.m.
• Get the kids ready for school

Then, when I get home, I can exercise or jump into novel revisions instead of needing time to journal and clear my head.

Eventually, I’d like to get back to waking up at 6 a.m. Then, I can journal and do basic chores (unload the dishwasher, make beds, etc.) before I take the kids to school and when I get back from school drop-off, the day will truly be mine. But sleep is the foundation of my mental health, so I’m not going to be a hero. If my body needs to stay in bed until 7 a.m., that’s what I’ll do.

Full Disclosure: I’m drinking a Coke Zero as I write this post.

If I’m being honest with myself, yes, it is definitely time to break up caffeine and see what that change does for my health. But when it comes to caffeine, I’m not always honest with myself. Me and caffeine, well, we have a long history that goes back to high school when I first became obsessed with starting the school day with a cold can of Diet Pepsi from the soda machine.

I have broken up with caffeine many times, and each time, I vowed, This is it! I’m never going back to caffeine! And every time, I inevitably decided to have a sip of soda here, a can of soda there, and before long, I’d be back to a full-blown addiction. Because me and soda do not do restraint. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition. Either I abstain completely or I’m guzzling 100+ ounces of caffeinated diet soda a day.

Sidebar: I also want to wean myself off soda for a variety of health reasons. But baby steps, folks, baby steps.

There’s a voice inside me whispering, You don’t need to quit soda completely. You just need to monitor your intake so it doesn’t interfere with your sleep. If you quit entirely, then you’ll go crazy and end up right where you started, guzzling soda all day long.

That little voice sounds reasonable, but I know that’s just Resistance keeping me from making a profound change that would be good for my health. I’ve quit caffeine before and every time I do, I sleep better and have more energy – but I don’t think I’ve ever quit caffeine and refined sugar at the same time. Since I started my Refined Sugar Moratorium last month, I feel so much healthier. How much healthier will I feel if I eliminate caffeine as well?

Recently, I’ve been deepening my mind-body connection, and that connection is telling me it’s time to breakup with caffeine. So I am taking a deep breath and resolving to quit caffeine.

Slowly. I quit refined sugar cold turkey. One day, I was obsessed with the sweet white powder, and the next, I could not stand the stuff. But as much as I want to nurture my body, I’m not interested in severe caffeine withdrawal. In the past, I weaned off caffeine ounce by ounce. This time, I’m going to use a two prong approach:

1. I’m enacting a Caffeine Curfew, after which time, I’m not allowed to imbibe the stuff until the next morning. Yesterday, I set the curfew at 2. Today, I’m lowering it to 1:45. I’ll keep lowering it by 15 minute increments, guided by my intuition.
2. And when I feel ready (but no later then next Monday), I’ll measure my caffeine. The first day, I’ll drink however much I want until the Caffeine Curfew and keep track of what I’m drinking. The next day, I’ll reduce the amount by 1-5 ounces, depending on how much I’m drinking when I start measuring. So, if I measure out 200 ounces on Day 1, then I’ll definitely knock off 5 ounces the next. But if I only measure 40 ounces, I’ll probably knock off 2 ounces, so I don’t lose my mind from withdrawal.

Stay tuned for more health updates and wish me luck!

Today is the first day of school, but Julian is at home, nursing a sprained ankle. He took a bad step yesterday on a bouncy castle at his cousin’s birthday party, and he was in so much pain, we ended up going to urgent care. X-rays confirmed it’s not broken (yay!), but the doctor assured me it’s a “gnarly sprain” and advised keeping Julian home for the first couple days of school.

Never a dull moment, eh?

When the urgent care doctor told me to keep Julian home, I was grateful for her advice because I was struggling to assess the extent of Julian’s injury. But after the gratitude, I got bitter and descended into a downward spiral of Woe is me! Can’t life be easy for awhile? I just want to go to hot yoga tomorrow! Now I’m trapped at home and how am I supposed to take care of myself if my kids get stupid injuries? It’s just one damn thing after another!

I woke up this morning pretty cranky, but once we got Pippa to school and I had Julian settled on the couch, I journaled. As I journaled, my sense of humor returned and I realized, Yes, it is one damn thing after another, but that’s life. That’s fine. At least life never gets boring.

Julian’s sprained ankle felt like AN ABOMINATION AND GRIEVOUS ASSAULT ON MY FREE TIME because I’m burnt out. I’ve spent the summer relaxing and chilling out, but I’m still a smoldering pile of ashes. The past few years have been a lot, from a pandemic and distance learning to my dad’s cancer and multiple brain surgeries, and I pushed myself too hard, for too long. That’s okay. This is my year to be a phoenix, and arise reborn from my charred remains!

But first, I have to be a pile of ash.

And as a pile of ash, I don’t have much in the way of perspective. Life feels relentless, like one damn thing after another, and every little thing bruises my battered self.

I’m not going to beat myself up for feeling this way. My feelings are good! They are letting me know that I am still depleted and need to take my time healing from some seriously profound burnout. My body is reminding me to go slowly and not volunteer for anything extra. My body is taking care of me. Feeling overwhelmed by little things is actually helping me heal.

Eventually, I will heal fullyl and be the phoenix. When that happens, I won’t feel destroyed when shit happens and one of the kids needs to stay home from school. I’ll have perspective about the ups and downs of life and embrace the unexpected adventures of living.

But for now, I feel like it’s one damn thing after another – and that’s okay.

Last night, we attended our elementary school’s Welcome Back Fair. The kids got their classroom assignments (both are separated from their best friend; both are happy with their teachers) and I DID NOT VOLUNTEER FOR ANYTHING.

For the past five years, I’ve been a room mom, and for the past two years, I’ve also been in charge of organizing and galvanizing the room parents. I am friends with the new room parent chair, so I promised to visit her booth during the fair and let her pick my brain about recruiting room parents. I was a little nervous about doing this. Would she beg me to be a room mom again? But by the time I visited her booth, both my kids’ classes had room parents!

I have been psyching myself up for this all summer, regularly writing in my journal, I will not be a room mom. I will not volunteer for anything else. I will not be a room mom. I will not feel guilty about this. But I did not realize I had been holding my breath on the room parent front until I saw the signup sheet with parent names in the slots for both kids’ classes.

IT’S DONE.

I won’t be guilted, begged, or blackmailed into being a room mom.

I won’t have to protect my boundaries and feel guilty about taking time to heal from some major, soul-shredding burnout.

My room mom crown has been retired, folks, and my mental load is suddenly much, much lighter.

You can’t see me, but I’m doing a victory dance. Ok, I’m actually sitting on an armchair relaxing, but in my heart, I’m doing the jitterbug and flashing some serious jazz hands.

Last week, I blogged about my intention to volunteer less during the 2023-24 school year. What do I intend to do with my extra free time?

HEAL FROM BURNOUT.

I’m currently reading Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, and I am learning so much. I will blog more about that book soon, but today, I want to reflect on the practices that I think will help me heal from both the fake drama and real life stress of the 2022-23 school year.

What’s “fake drama”? I think of it as stress over things that don’t actually matter. Some of the fake drama I experienced last year: the PTA membership drive; managing volunteers for the school carnival; recruiting referees for my kids’ AYSO teams; and concern over who my son’s first grade teacher would be. All these things made me lose all my shits, and I had to do a lot of soul-searching to realize THEY DIDN’T ACTUALLY MATTER in the grand scheme of things. Yet the stress they generated was as real to my body as the stress created by a car accident or stampede of wooly mammoths in my neighborhood.

When my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer last September, I received an abrupt and necessary reminder of what actually matters. Recruiting a room parent for every class at school? Not actually a matter of life or death. My dad getting the right treatment for cancer? Pretty damn important.

Then in February, when the cancer was resolved and my dad needed emergency brain surgery for an unrelated health issue, I got an even bigger reminder of what matters: family; love; our health and wellbeing. Things that don’t matter? Running a book fair; recruiting PTA volunteers; reminding people to donate items to the school auction. Okay, I’m being a bit harsh – those things also matter. I care about education and school community! But they shouldn’t cause stress, and they certainly shouldn’t cause the sort of stress that leads to burnout.

I experienced way too much stress during the 2022-23 school year, so for me, the 2023-24 school year is all about HEALING. (Excuse me while I tattoo that on my forehead so I don’t forget.)

This is unexplored territory for me! But these are some things I think will help me heal:

• Intentional Rest and Relaxation: This does not include the inevitable collapse at day’s end to watch t.v. with Nathan – even if I’m knitting or doodling. This refers to the conscious decision to stop doing shit and just Chill the Fuck Out. On hot days, this means floating in the pool with a magazine. On less hot days, I like to sit on my favorite rocking chair on our front porch with a cup of tea and work on my latest cross stitch project. I can do this on the weekend, but bonus points if I do it while the kids are at school, when I’m dogged by that relentless feeling that I Should be Productive. (Another quest in progress: eliminating that relentless feeling to be productive all the time.)
• Hot Yoga: This is cardio, strength, and deep stretching for the entire body. It’s my ashram, my place to be quiet and get centered. I always leave feeling more grounded.
• Nature: Pasadena has gorgeous botanical gardens and hiking in the mountains. Forest bathing, anyone?
• Crafting: I really want to play with resin. Make shit with pompoms. Create something complicated with perler beads.
• Baking Bread: I might be on a refined sugar moratorium, but me and bread are still excellent friends.
• Sewing: I feel like my best self when I’m at the sewing machine. And yet, I don’t do this nearly often enough. Partly because for me, sewing comes second to writing. But also, because I’ve been too busy with PTA and AYSO shit. It’s time to prioritize my sewing machine over soul-crushing paperwork.
• Journaling: Sometime a download of all my thoughts. Other times, more like poetry. Or a conversation with the divine sublime. Affirmations and mantras. Verbal diarrhea. Dialogues with my inner child. My journaling practice is whatever I need it to be, changing day-by-day.
• Meditation: I downloaded the Calm App a few days ago. I forgot how much I enjoy the Daily Calm, a ten minute guided meditation. Yes, it costs money, but it’s my favorite program and I want to bring its lessons back into my life.
• Pampering Myself With Spa Treatments: Massages! Facials! Pedicures! Oh my! Also: I want to find the time to visit to my favorite women’s only spa in Korea Town, so I can get a scrub and reflexology and experience the bliss of unwinding. Note to self: let’s do that by the end of 2023. And then make it a quarterly practice.
• Swimming
• Tennis: I signed up for lessons and I’m excited to reconnect with this childhood joy.
• Art: making and appreciating. I renewed my membership to the Norton Simon and will also rejoin the Huntington soon so I can get my art on.
• Time with family and friends
• Laughter
• Decluttering: It feels so good to have space and not feel weighed down by unnecessary possessions. But I’m doing this slowly so I can revel in the catharsis and not turn “Decluttering the house” into another source of fake stress.
• Cleaning: Slowly. Zoning out with a good podcast or audiobook. The satisfaction of a clean floor feels good for my soul.
• Reading: Before dinner. I always read in the hours after dinner, solo and with the kids, but sometimes, I just want to sit and enjoy a delicious book during daylight hours.
• Gardening
• Attend a sound bath: I haven’t done this in years but the vibrations of a gong and Tibetan singing bowls make my body shiver in a profoundly good way.
• Play the Piano: I started playing again last week. It’s so calming. It connects me to my feelings deeply yet gently.
• Play: With the kids. With Nathan. Tossing a frisbee. Playing a boardgames. Being silly. For no point other than the joy of being human on this glorious planet.

With healing on my mind, I’m sure other ideas will bubble to the surface. Yoga with baby goats, anyone?