.SOMETIMES RAW.

The other day I had a conversation with a colleague at work who is spending “quality family time” with his child at a family resort. Why do I get goosebumps? Maybe because this has nothing to do with relaxation and free time to me when travelling with a small child. Proof me wrong and I will shut up about this! Another friend told me to go to a farm where the kids can pet animals and stuff. Again, I haven’t heard anything about relaxation for the parents yet. Maybe there is the option to hand your kid(s) over to someone who takes care of them all day long while you are at the SPA? That could work. So, you decided to hang out at this over-prized all-inclusive hotel with your lovely family. Finally, the kid is in bed. Here are some options for you and your significant other if you don’t fall asleep at 8 pm as well (oh sweet parenting, sigh!):

Sit in the bathroom and use your creativity to make it the most exciting place in the entire hotel.

Become frustrated that rearranging the towels has failed to turn the bathroom into the most exciting place in the entire hotel.

Remember that your child’s bed has wheels, and see if you can wheel it into the not-particularly-exciting bathroom without waking them up.

Stop moving the crib in a panic after one of your child’s eyelids briefly flutters open. Spend the next ten minutes silently begging them for forgiveness.

Listen to the peaceful sound of your child’s breathing and feel guilty that it is boring you rather than inspiring you to compose a sonnet.

Wonder if going to the hotel bar would count as negligent parenting, given that you and your child would technically still be in the same building.

Decide that going to the bar counts as negligent parenting, but going to the adjacent hotel room would be totally fine.

Remember that you have no idea who, if anyone, is staying in the adjacent hotel room.

Try to figure out if there is a non-creepy way to determine who, if anyone, is staying in the adjacent hotel room.

Knock on the door of the adjacent hotel room. Experience a huge rush of excitement at the thrill of not knowing what awaits you on the other side, a huge rush of relief when no one answers, and a huge rush of shame upon realizing that you just left your child alone in a hotel room for approximately nineteen seconds. Run back to the hotel room and spend the next twenty minutes silently begging them for forgiveness.

Realize that all new parents must share this frustration when staying in hotels. This has opened up a golden business opportunity to start a company that makes it easy to book entire homes with multiple rooms rather than individual hotel rooms for vacations.

Remember that Airbnb already exists, and this is the thesis behind one of its recent ad campaigns. Sigh quietly.

Reminisce about that crazy trip you and the girls took to Amsterdam over sophomore-year spring break while listening to Cindy Lauper on your headphones. Get nostalgic and wistful about how much fuller of possibility the world seemed back then, even though you actually spent most of that trip vomiting after losing tequila shot contests to your at that time best friend J.

Look J. up on LinkedIn. See that she is now a cardiopulmonologist based in the UK. Feel weird about it.

Worry about what to tell your child about the Amsterdam trip if they ever ask you about it. Decide to hope it doesn’t come up.

Write a letter to your local representative asking what they plan to do about how immorally expensive it is to book a hotel room that includes a separate and closed-off space where your child can sleep, as this has clearly been the biggest problem facing the country since about forty minutes ago.

Play Wordle.

Try to come up with the next Wordle.

Struggle to come up with the next Wordle, and play the mini crossword instead.

Write the lyrics to a hit song inspired by your trip. A good title for it could be “Hangin’ at the Hotel.”

Struggle to come up with lyrics beyond “We’re hangin’ at the hotel / So glad it’s not a motel,” and find a different mini crossword to play instead.

Put on your headphones, and watch an episode of Sex and the City on your iPad before passing out. Realize that this really isn’t very different from what you usually do after your child goes to bed.

Also fall asleep at 7:30 p.m. Finally understand why your child seems so full of energy every morning.

1. When a co-worker steals your lunch, you:

A) Emit a guttural scream. Ask, “What man committed this crime?!” Lecture the entire office on boundaries. Your bark is worse than your bite, but they don’t know that.

B) Hunt down the motherfucker who ate your cheese sandwich. Tell him to keep his hand at the level of his eye when he walks to the parking garage tonight.

C) Go home. Take a nap under a blanket fort.

D) Find the person eating your lunch, and tell him that if he wanted you to make him a sandwich, all he had to do was ask. You’d be more than happy to pack for two sometimes! Maybe Fridays?

E) Remind everyone that you labeled your stuff. For the next few days go out for lunch. Watch the thief wither without your delicious food.

2. When that woman in your book club calls you confused and forgetful, you:

A) Tell her to fuck off. You know you want to! You’ve been so patient with her hater ass. You deserve a little release!

B) Stab her hand with a salad fork. Shatter a metacarpal. Feel how your ancestors must have felt when they conquered worlds.

C) Freeze and replay everything you’ve ever said or done that could make her think that. Sift through hours and hours of footage. By the time you remember you’re in a room full of people, no one remembers what she said.

D) Tell her she’s right! You are totally spacey. You should probably work on that.

E) Ignore her. This can look like C, but it is an intentional act.

3. When a friend asks for help moving 
even though she knows you have back problems, you:

A) Call her a shitty friend. Why can’t she remember the basics about you! What is wrong with her?

B) Slap her until she remembers that you’re always in pain.

C) Tell her you’re busy that day.

D) Help her and injure yourself but don’t say anything. Spend hundreds of dollars on chiropractor treatments just to get back to your normal pain level.

E) Remind her that you can’t lift. Offer to bring bagels or lunch to make her move more enjoyable.

4. When your mother obsesses over the weight you’ve gained 
since your high school graduation fifteen years ago, you:

A) Call her a bitch. Who else would randomly talk about your body without prompting? Tell her we can’t all have eating disorders, Karen.

B) It’s mostly muscle. Cardio kickboxing is going really well. Tell her that the next time you see her you can kick her ass until she gets the right idea.

C) Say nothing. You can feel your healthy dinner rapidly putrefying in your stomach. But it’s a free country. You can’t tell her what she can and can’t say. That would be fascist. She’s entitled to her opinion. Even when it makes you cry in the shower before work.

D) Tell her she’s right. You have gained weight, but you’re working on it. You’re going to the gym five days a week and eating healthy. Your body changed. You’re trying to do better.

E) You didn’t ask for her opinion, and you don’t want it. Tell her if she can’t say anything nice, she shouldn’t say anything at all.

5. When your boyfriend says he wants to move in, 
but you’re not ready, you:

A) Pick a fight. How could you move in with someone who still can’t manage to clean the sink after shaving? You’ve asked him a million times. It’s like he doesn’t even care enough to try.

B) Throw him out. A window, the front door. Whatever’s closest to the garbage.

C) Break up with him. Don’t tell him why. You obviously want different things and talking about it will only muddy the waters.

D) Tell him yes, yes, a million times yes! Feel that pebble in your stomach grow into a boulder gathering speed down a hill toward an elementary school. Never voice your doubts or reveal your newfound anxiety-related constipation. It will only make him worry.

E) Tell him that his lease being up isn’t a good reason to move in together. You told him you needed space after the miscarriage. No more secretly picking out names or looking up just how big it would be. A poppy seed. A blueberry. A green olive. You were going to throw away all your future plans for him and an apple seed. Without the apple seed, moving in together seems like the rash act it would be. You haven’t even known each other that long. Four months. You want to be smart. You hope he can respect that.

Results:

Mostly As
You may have some issues around impulsivity and aggression that you should look into with a qualified therapist.

Mostly Bs
Physical abuse isn’t cute. Get yourself to anger management before a court mandates it!

Mostly Cs
Bottling up all your feelings isn’t healthy, and hiding from the world won’t solve your problems. You need to learn how to draw boundaries and ask for what you want.

Mostly Ds
There’s something called “fawning” that you might want to look into. Stop catering to other people so much! You are responsible for your own happiness, not everyone else’s.

Mostly Es
Congratulations! You’re basically a zen master! You don’t need that lavender bubble bath, but maybe run it anyway? You deserve it for dealing with A’s, B’s, C’s, and D’s bullshit.

“Simplicity means possessing little, clearing the way for the bare necessities, the quintessence of things. Simplicity is beautiful because it brings hidden joys.”

This beautiful, soulful book expresses what many of us desire, but often can’t achieve: a life of simplicity and beauty. While I have always valued experiences over things, I still seem to have accumulated a lot of things along the way. The older I seem to get, the more valuable the act of paring down seems to be.

This book is inspiring on so many levels. While I was expecting a “rid yourself of the clutter” type of book, it’s so much more. French-born Dominique Loreau has lived for the past 40 years in Japan, where she has adapted many Asian influences on the art of simplicity.

The book is divided into three sections (home, body, and mind) and by far, the most thoughtful section to me is the last one. If the mind is cluttered, everything else is usually cluttered. The ideas behind “Polish Yourself Like a Pebble” really resonated with me. It’s not simplicity for the sake of it, but rather as a gateway to living more aware and more fully, while integrating your home, body, and soul until the whole shines.

There are some ideas that I just couldn’t agree with (e.g., the idea that a person can possess too many books or that it’s not good to read too much) and other things that just seemed weird (e.g., enjoying a snack of pomegranate seeds while watching a movie at home) or very specifically Japanese (e.g., making a facial scrub of azuki beans. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of those hanging around my house). However, most of the concepts presented in L’Art de la Simpicite (why the non-translated French title?) I found to be insightful and aspirational.

Dominique Loreau combines her French culture and upbringing (which seems to be a direct writing style and emphasis on luxury items and rituals) with insights gained from living most of her adult life in Japan (Zen principles and minimalism), this book is–despite the title–more of a minimalist philosophy than it is a how-to guide. As such, here are some of the ideas and takeaways that I think are worth remembering or reflecting upon:

* People want more time, than to “kill time.”
* Each day is a journey, and everything you need along the way must be carried in your bag. Your bag is an extension of you. It spends more time close to you than any item of clothing. Choose it well.
* Most of the time, people are more exhausted by the *thought​* of all they have to do than by what they actually have to get done.
* Save money to work less, not buy more.
* It’s said that women who wear black lead colorful lives.
* Our environment trains our personality and influences the choices we make.
* No one can take better care of your body than you can yourself — not your doctor, your beautician, or your makeup advisor. We are responsible for our own bodies and at fault when we neglect them.
* Life begins anew each day. You are alive today, here and now. Stop believing the person you were yesterday is the person you have to be today.

I found this book to be a beautiful, meditative, aspirational, as well as inspirational guide to leading a more fully internal life by mindfully choosing a less cluttered outside existence.