Author: Casey Jane

In Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, author Elizabeth Gilbert explains our emotions as being like passengers in a car. “There’s plenty of room in the vehicle of all of us,” she writes to her emotions, primarily to fear, “So make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way. I recognize and respect that you are still part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still—your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.” 

My emotional road trip is dominated by three “Casey’s”, the three versions of myself that take up the most mental space. I picture them together in a Jeep Wrangler, just like the one I drove in high school, with the top down and headed towards the beach. 

In the driver’s seat is Casey Jane. She’s singing along with the radio, hair piled into a bun on the top of her head, wearing scratched up aviator Ray Bans and her favorite yellow shirt. She’s daydreaming, her favorite driving activity, letting her mind drift through the stories she’s writing, the books she’s read lately, memories and song lyrics. She’s present, experiencing the breeze on her skin, taking in the smells and the sights. She is me at my most balanced. She’s creative, curious, friendly and inviting. 

Casey Jane is sweet, she enjoys life and life enjoys her. She takes deep breaths. She’s an optimist who believes in good and believes that she has something good to share with the world, which fuels her creative spirit. But she can also binge watch Friends for the fifteenth time and eat ice cream for every meal and not notice as time slips away from her.

The Casey in the passenger seat has her hair pulled back and her glasses on, typing furiously into her phone. My husband calls this Casey the Beast from the Southeast. In college, my friends called her Caserace. In a word, she’s the boss. She takes charge and gets shit done. She’s ruthless. She’s relentless. She’s impressive. She does things other people can’t and she knows it. Without looking up from her phone screen she barks out directions, because she’s always focused on where she’s going. She’s always moving, always chasing, never stopping. 

The Beast from the Southeast is a badass. She’s fiercely loyal, driven, focused, and I love her determination but sometimes it scares me with how cold she can be. If she doesn’t care about you, you know it. And if she does care about you, sometimes you don’t know it. Sometimes she’s a showoff, because attention reaffirms her dominance, so she can be obnoxious. Her mind is always racing through the possibilities and worrying about what could happen if she slows down. 

Most people don’t notice the girl in the backseat. She’s got her arms crossed and is staring out the window in stony silence, pouting. “Hmph,” she puffs occasionally just to remind people she exists. This is why we call her the “Hmphkin” (hah-rum-ph-kin) a term that perfectly describes this grumpy little gremlin who is easily annoyed and even more easily hurt. She’s always on the edge of either yelling or crying, so most people just don’t talk to her at all. 

The hmphkin, God love her, is a fragile little shitshow, and while it’s easy to point out how she complains too much and can’t ever seem to find happiness, it’s harder to see how she is so full of empathy and desperately wants to both love and be loved. She is the small child that has to be protected, so she should never be in the driver’s seat, but from the backseat she is capable of seeing the world in a way that the adult versions of her simply can’t.

It’s not always easy to get these passengers to play nice: the Beast always wants to be the one in charge, and the other two don’t like to stand up to her; often when people are looking for Casey Jane, the hmphkin shows up in her place. I used to think of these pieces of myself as different hats I had to take off and put on, and sometimes that works. If I’m going into a difficult workout, I need that beast mentality. If I’m leading a yoga class, I let myself relax back into Casey Jane mode. 

But other times the picture isn’t so clear, and it’s not easy to tell who should be driving. Even more often, the part of me that wants to get behind the wheel isn’t the right person at all. Getting into an argument can stimulate the same sensations as a challenging working, filling me with adrenaline, and the more bossy parts of me want to take charge, which usually escalates the fight and causes more drama than necessary. When I’m seeking my flow state through writing or hiking, my little hmphkin pops up to remind me of all of my insecurities and short comings, and I’m unable to concentrate and end up giving up on the task at hand. 

It can feel exhausting, and confusing. It feels like different people have a completely different understanding of who I am based on which part of me they’ve seen the most, and I have always struggled to hold the disparate parts of myself in my hands, present them to people and say authentically “this is me.” 

So lately I’ve been trying to reimagine my road trip. Instead of constantly pulling over to switch drivers, I’m trying to let each passenger participate in every conversation, and have a voice in the decisions that are made. I see what happens when these versions of myself are allowed to interact and collaborate instead of taking over. What happens when I can show up with both grace and determination? If I can recognize my own grumpiness, my own fears and voice them up front, how am I better able to deal with them and move on? 

The road is still a bumpy one, but it’s reassuring to remember that there’s room for us all in the car, and that we’ll all get to the beach eventually, so we might as well enjoy the ride. 

American history is studded with the rhetoric of national service, from our multiple national holidays to celebrate veterans and military members to JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” speech. Service is often referenced by CEOs, politicians and other successful people as one of the most influential aspects of their own lives, and both millennials and Gen Z’s are more interested than ever in joining programs like AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, and Teach for America.

As a junior in college I committed to joining the corps at Teach for America, a non-profit program that fast-tracks its members to a teaching license and connects them with schools that serve low-income communities. For two years I taught 4th grade math at a Title I school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the end of my two years, I received a $10,000 grant that I used to pay for a Master’s in Public Administration, and then I started working for a family foundation outside of the education sector.

A lot of the critics of Teach for America will harp on the fact that I ultimately left teaching, entirely missing the point that joining the corps gave me two years to have massive impact on my students, which also had a massive impact on me. The school I worked at was both underfunded and understaffed, and I was able to provide resources, time, and attention to students who otherwise might not have gotten. I left education, but my time as a teacher will never leave me. I have firsthand experience with how the public education system actually works in America, and how it impacts communities very different from the one I grew up in. I carry that understanding with me into my everyday interactions with people, into where I donate my money, into how I vote. I wouldn’t have this perspective without that, and while it exposed so many of America’s flaws to me, it’s also something that made me believe in doing the work everyday to make this country a better place for everyone to live.

The ideological, political, and culture divide is deepening across America, and in turn so are the income, education, and opportunity gaps that exist. That’s why I think developing a mandatory public service program is so interesting. While mandating public service has been in the political conversation for decades, it popped up most recently in the 2020 presidential race. Several democratic candidates called for a national public service program, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman John Delaney. Pete Buttigieg said that national service among young adults would help foster unity in America, and that it should become a conversation colleges and universities are already having with their students preparing to graduate.

Even more recently, in the face of the coronavirus pandemic a group of bipartisan senators crafted a proposal called the Cultivating Opportunity and Response to the Pandemic through Service (CORPS Act) that would have drastically expanded access to national services and through AmeriCorps positions, which are active across all fifty states. There is also international precedent for a mandatory public service program.

As Elizabeth Warren says, she has a plan for that, and here’s mine: creating a government funded program requiring one year of public service, to be completed anytime between your twentieth and thirtieth birthday.

A public service is anything that is intended to serve all members within a community, which usually is facilitated through the government, although in some cases can be privatized or subsidized through volunteers. Think education, police/fire/EMS, military, healthcare, the justice system, transportation and social services. The value of public service is that everyone gets equal access to these services at low or no cost (I wouldn’t want to have to hire a firefighter when my house is burning down, for example). But in my experience, public service is just as valuable to the people doing the serving as those being served.

We rely on public service sectors in order for our society to function, but public service workers are often underpaid and undervalued, and therefore are consistently understaffed. A mandatory public service year would help not only to fill that resource gap, but also to help to instill the value of public service in every individual, who will then take that experience with them when they vote, pay taxes, and participate in their communities. That’s a value I believe every American should have and should have early in their adult life, which is why completing a mandatory public service year at some point in your twenties would be the most beneficial for society and for us personally.

Honestly, what America doesn’t need is more hot-shot twenty-three year old investment bankers bragging about their Upper East Side apartments or how they’ve been awake for the past 48 hours working on some company’s IPO. We need twenty-three year old teachers who use their energy to get down on the ground and play with their students, or twenty-three year old government administrators who can help bring our antiquated systems into the 21st century. We need citizens who understand how other people live in and interact with the world and care to do something to make it better.

But this isn’t just a charity project or eye-opening experience. I’m not interested in making people take mission trips around America. So let’s look at it from a different angle. Statistically, young adults from low income backgrounds and specifically people of color have fewer job opportunities available to them than their wealthier white peers. This program would be required regardless of if you went to college or graduated high school, regardless of if you have a criminal record or documentation status. It’s a foot in the door for youth in America who are otherwise looking at a minimum wage job at McDonalds. A minimum wage job at McDonalds is fine, but should be one option of many that people can choose to take.

More broadly than impacting young adults in America, I think mandating a year of public service would be a necessary push towards changing what America values. We say we value education, and have one of the worst public education systems in the world. We say we value teachers, and pay them less in one year than we pay (some) entry-level bankers in one month.

Former UN Ambassador Susan Rice said, “I wish we could have mandatory national civilian service in this country, so that every kid… spent six or twelve months in national service, whether it’s laying broadband or building infrastructure, or rehabilitating inner-city schools and libraries. The reason I think service is so important is, not only is it creating economic opportunity in training and skills for those who may not otherwise have them, but most importantly, it’s teaching us to understand and to know each other as Americans across different geographic, racial, socioeconomic lines, as part of one nation and one community.”

Of course there are a lot of finer points that would still need to be tuned about this. What happens if a person can’t get hired anywhere? What about the people who just don’t care, and don’t want to do it? Could volunteering for a year count? What about people who pursue higher education, which in some fields can take up most of your twenties?

I have my own ideas about how to respond to each of these, but I also realize that in doing so I’m making and imposing a lot of my own assumptions about the world on others. Not everyone feels a since of civic duty, or that they “owe” their country anything by performing national service, and I think that’s valid for many marginalized communities that aren’t appreciated by American society. I also respect that my definition of public service might be different than yours; specifically the benefits of military service is something that many people disagree on. Got opinions of your own? I want to hear them.

#26: The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

I have such a massive backlog of physical books that I’ve either bought or picked up from a little free library that I rarely let myself by books to read on my Kindle. The one exception? Going on vacation. Because it’s so much easier and more convenient to have my Kindle than to carry a physical book (or several)! 

This month I took the vacation of all vacations, aka MY HONEYMOON!!! Bobby and I got married in DC and took off for a week-long trip around the northeast, which meant lots and lots of time on the train, which meant lots and lots of time for reading! I used that time to get through this massive hunk of a horror story and it was so worth the time. I really enjoyed the characters created and even though Wendig’s writing style isn’t my favorite to read (it’s a little too conversational, and came across as gimmicky in places), the plot moves so well that I never wanted to put it down. Also, short chapters! Yay for short chapters so I can take quick breaks or squeeze in one more before Bobby drags me off the train to go do other things! 

While this book is billed as horror, I think it would be a good entry-point for anyone looking for a slightly scarier book that won’t fuck you up for life. It does have some truly grizzly descriptions though, so be prepared for that. My biggest issue with horror as a genre is that too often I feel like creators come up with this amazing twisted problem, and develop such awesome terrifying events, and then it just… ends. And they don’t really give you the why. This book has a nice why, and it provides a satisfying ending that makes the page count worth it.

After half a year of synthesizing the research, having conversations with people I trust, and sharing the process of it all on my blog, today I’m releasing the first draft of my mindset thesis. 

To recap, this is not a thesis for a personal development book, meant to be commercialized and widely shared. It’s not a recipe for others to copy. It’s not even a list of what I feel are the most important aspects of building a healthy mindset. Instead, it’s an attempt to find the things I’ve been missing, the pieces of my own mindset that I need to improve actively and intentionally to continue to become a person I’ll be proud of. These are the things that are crucially important to me, but that don’t come easy. Anyone reading my series of posts on developing a mindset thesis can use this as a framework for assessing their own blind spots and weaknesses. I believe that everyone’s mindset thesis should look a little different. 

Before the end of the year, I’d like to write out a complete mindset manifesto that fully encapsulates the vision I’ve been crafting, but for the first draft I’ll share the five key principles that I’ve decided are the most important aspects of my own healthy mindset: 

Choose goodness 

Be present

Take responsibility

Seek opportunities

Stay curious

And here’s why: 

Choose goodness 

In general, I tend to be more negative than positive. Sometimes I say this and it surprises people, like “Oh Casey! But you’re so bubbly and smiley and blonde, you couldn’t possibly be negative!” but just ask my mom or my best friends, and they know, because they’ve seen it. 

I try to hide it, but the people who really know me know the ridiculous level of grumpiness that only I can achieve. My fiancé calls it the “gremlin” because that’s what I tend to resemble when I’m feeling irritated or worried about something: picture me with my arms crossed and shoulders slumped, eyebrows scrunched together and kind of muttering angrily to myself in a corner somewhere, and that’s the gremlin. 

Negativity comes naturally to me, much more so than putting a smile on and grinning through adversity. But I don’t want to be a little curmudgeon in the world, so that means constantly, continually choosing goodness for myself and for those around me. 

Choosing goodness means seeing the best in the people and situations around me, believing in good intentions, and reacting in a positive way even during stressful situations. It means resolving conflict quickly and then moving on, not wallowing in my own anger or hurt. And it means doing the right thing, even when it isn’t easy or comfortable, and always bringing myself back to my ultimate purpose to be good and do good. 

Be present

Being present is my way of living intentionally. It’s my way of becoming more in touch with myself, and not letting my life be dictated by the world around me. So often I find myself doing something just because someone else told me I “should” (remember that time I worked for a bank? Like, what the hell?), or when I’m doing the things that I want to do I’m filled with doubt, worried that it’s what I “shouldn’t” do (have you ever sat down to watch a TV show and been racked with anxiety, convinced you’re wasting time and therefore your life, and instead of enjoying the show you just sit there in kind of a panicked state of self-loathing for thirty minutes?). 

But being present is about being bold, and being willing to make changes to better match my reality to my expectation instead of the other way around. It’s also full of grace. It allows me to stop being so hard on myself and instead to trust in my own intuition and the fact that I know what’s best for myself, and using that to encourage me towards brave choices. 

I believe that all moments are worthy of being experienced fully, whether it’s running my first marathon or watching that episode of Friends for the twelfth time. For me, a well-lived life is one where I actually lived all of it to the best of my ability. So I won’t cram every minute with tasks in the name of productivity and self-improvement, but I also won’t use the excuse of “being present” to take a three hour nap instead of doing my taxes because I don’t feel like it. I’ll seek to live in accordance with my values in every instance, and not stray from that by getting distracted or getting sucked up into other people’s expectations for my own life. 

Take responsibility

Responsibility has always been an incredibly boring character trait in my opinion. When I was an elementary school teacher I saw plenty of classrooms ruled by responsibility, but I stayed away from it. I thought there were so many other more important characteristics to focus on, and I still believe that. I’d rather have hard-working, empathetic, resilient, inquisitive ten-year-old’s than responsible ones. And yet the more I researched this facet of mindset, the more I realized that the reason I balked at the concept of responsibility is also the reason I need to focus on it most. To me, responsibility has always been like box-checking. What I mean is, it’s the bare minimum of what’s required. And I never wanted to just check boxes. 

But responsibility, or what some people call radical responsibility, actually pushes people to do more than just be dependable. Radical responsibility forces you to accept that you are in control of your own life, and all aspects of your life. So you can choose to just check the box, or you can choose to complete something to the best of your ability. If a friend asks you to help them move on a Saturday morning, you can grudgingly show up hungover and resentful because you want to keep your promise, or you can get there early with coffee and make the experience fun and stress-free for you both. 

Being responsible means never whining, never complaining, and never making excuses. If you are radically responsible for your own life, you can’t blame others, it’s always always always on you. I find that in a lot of arguments I have with other people I’m able to weasel my way out of taking responsibility by explaining (read: blaming) my behavior on something else, someone else, etc. If instead I’m willing to take full ownership of my own life and my own actions, I’m so excited to see where it will take me. 

Seek opportunities

This part of mindset thesis didn’t come from a book or podcast. Instead it came from a conversation with my (super sexy) fiancé, so I’ll give credit where it’s due. I asked Bobby this: if I could pick one thing to change about my mindset that would have the most impact, what do you think it would be? And after fearfully deflecting the question because he knows I occasionally respond poorly to criticism (remember the gremlin from above), he told me that he thinks I could react better when things don’t go my way. 

When things don’t go according to my carefully laid plans, I tend to wig out a little, sometimes even a lot. The worst is when things happen that I wasn’t planning for (some people also call this life). I don’t want to be wigged out by life. I want to be energized by it, motivated by it, inspired by it, in love with it. Bobby reminded me that everything that happens is always an opportunity. Whether it’s what I expected or intended or not, I can see life as a series of opportunities to make me better. The Stoics, who I suppose had this idea before Bobby did, phrase this as amor fati, or love of fate. Nietzsche said his formula for a great human was “That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.” That’s what I think I’m going for here. 

When I’m overly attached to my own plans what I’m really doing is appealing to my own ego, the voice in my head that tells me I’ve got to have everything under control in order to be worthy. But this chokehold I’ve had on my life for the sake of control ends up limiting my experiences, keeping me fearful and trapped inside these self-imposed boundaries of what I “expected” to happen. It makes me see change as a bad thing. Instead, I want to see change as a chance for an even better outcome than I had planned for, and I want to accept life and all of its events without having to keep everything under a label of “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong”; it’s all just another opportunity. 

Stay curious

I fully believe that curiosity is the key to a happy and successful life. Curious people ask questions. They dig in and try to understand. They have empathy. They bring up interesting points. They constantly learn, and learning has always been one of my core values.

But learning to me has always been more of a solitary activity. It’s reading books, listening to podcasts, staying sequestered in my own safe world with my own safe ideas. Being curious pushes me to take advantage of every moment, every conversation, every interaction. It reminds me to speak up in the meeting and ask the question, even though I’m afraid people will think I’m dumb. It gives me permission to try new things and not have to be good at it, or enjoy it, to get something out of it. 

Staying curious also keeps me from my bad habit of being judgmental, of myself and of others. I think I’ve started to get too comfortable with my own understanding of the world around me, and it’s about time I explore that a bit more. 

—

So there you have it! I’ve got these written up and posted in the places where I’ll see them most, and I’ve got five months left in the year to test them out and hone them in. Interestingly, this isn’t where I thought I’d land in this exercise, but I’m glad that I did. It’s brought me to a place where I feel more grounded in my own values and more confident in myself and all the things I’m already good at, so that I can focus without being overly critical on the areas where I still need a lot of work. And as the goddess Sophia Bush says, we’re all, always, just works in progress. 

#21: Weather by Jenny Offill 

Written almost like a diary, this book is a record of the thoughts of the protagonist as she raises her son and works as a college librarian, more and more worried about the changing world around her. The book takes place in the same time as it was written, during Donald Trump’s presidency, and Offill perfectly harnesses the turbulence and emotion of the time in her writing. It’s dark but it’s also curious, and is the perfect length to be read in one sitting.   

#22: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

Y’all know I’m obsessed with the FBI, or at least the fictional depictions of it in shows like Criminal Minds. This book so perfectly captured the true nature of the origins of the bureau and is one of the best true crime novels I’ve ever read. If you liked Devil in the White City (which I also read earlier this year) this book is so much better. It focuses on the FBIs investigation and trial of the serial murders of Osage Native Americans in the 1920’s but also uncovers a plot on the lives of the Osage that was much more vast and dastardly than anyone realized at the time. I enjoyed the first two sections of the book, which were well written and stuck to the traditional true crime script, and then spent most of the final sections gasping out loud as Grann continued the mystery. 

#23: The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power

Samantha Power was the US ambassador to the UN while I was studying political science in college, so obviously I was obsessed with her, and this memoir only reinforced it. She’s such a strong, passionate person who is also completely unafraid to admit her faults and blind spots, and equally unafraid to take on difficult challenges even if it means she won’t get the glory or the most flattering spotlight. She is everything I aspire to be, and of course is also a talented writer. I can tell that I’ll continue to reach for this book anytime I find myself feeling curmudgeon-y, to remind myself to always remain an idealist. 

#24: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I found an awesome old copy of this book in a Little Free Library in DC and decided to revisit my English major days and give it a re-read. It’s a short and powerful book about mental illness written by a poet so of course it’s beautiful. The audiobook version narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal is great too. 

#25: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switzler 

This was the book of the month for my women in business group, but I found myself reading it from more of a personal perspective. The researchers who wrote the book originally sought to study what they called “crucial moments” or career-defining occurrences to see how they typically occur and how people handle them best. What they found is that most of these occurrences aren’t events but were conversations where the stakes are high and opinions differ, and that the people who handled them best all seemed to do the same things: they focus on what they can control (their own reactions), they create a shared pool of understanding between everyone involved, and they focus on what they actually want without getting caught up in their emotions. That last piece has really stuck with me, especially in conversations (ok, fights) with Bobby. Reminding myself that I want our relationship to be strong and for us to both be happy more than I want to win an argument has helped us avoid unnecessary spats and have more real conversations where we both get what we want and save time that would have been wasted bickering. 

It’s summer, which means summer reading, which means all the fiction books! I really enjoyed this month of reading. 

#16: The Overstory by Richard Powers

According to an interview Hugh Jackman did with Tim Ferris this is currently his favorite book, so obviously I had to read it because I think Hugh Jackman is the shit, and he did not disappoint. What starts as separate vignettes about different groups of characters merges into a masterful storyline that wasn’t overpowered by its message. Highly recommend this if you’re looking for some outdoor reading this summer, preferably in a place surrounded by trees. 

#17: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I flew through this book on my first plane ride post-COVID and I wrote that whole sentence before I realized how punny it was, so there you go. I’ve heard great things about this book and even though I’m not big on magical realism I really enjoyed it. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is such a good storyteller, and this was an easy book to get wrapped up in and forget where you are. It doesn’t require too much focus to stay with the plot, and his writing is so consistently clean that it’s easy to appreciate every page. Highly recommend if you’ve got a few hours to kill while travelling or sitting on a beach. 

#18: Principles by Ray Dalio

This book is on every list of “must read business books” or “books every successful leader LOVES!” or whatever, so when I saw it on sale in a bookstore I picked it up and I’m sorry I did because it’s completely overrated and ridiculous. Ok, maybe that’s an overreaction, I’m sure I got some salient points out of reading, but the entire book reeked of entitlement and for someone who touts the benefits of open-mindedness, his entire perspective was incredibly narrow. I ended up annotating it in two different ways, bracketing the things I thought were insightful and underlining the things that I wanted to remember so I could NEVER DO THEM EVER. Unfortunately, don’t recommend. 

#19: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

This book was a little too woo-woo, even for me, and yet I still enjoyed it and have found it switching up my worldview in a lot of ways. I’ve started incorporating the habit of writing daily morning pages and going on weekly artist dates into my routine, and have been paying a lot more attention to my inner artist. Yesterday I felt restless and upset for most of the day but couldn’t explain why, until finally I admitted to myself that it was because my inner artist had been cooped up all week and needed to be set free to play and do something creative for a while. Recommend if you’re feeling creatively blocked, or like reading books that come with activities and tasks to complete. 

#20: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

While I appreciated this for the well-done scary story that it was, what I loved most was that the book was secretly all about how badass women are. Though the book is told through the lens of four male friends, its main focus is the women who provide a grounding force in their lives, who are fiercely protective of what they care for, and who prove that they each ultimately have the power to destroy or save the world while the men just kind of wander around drinking beer and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. It was refreshing to read a novel with both a female protagonist and villain (although an argument could be made that the novel was protagonist-less), who were unique and authentic without dipping into any female stereotypes (i.e. no damsels in distress here). Highly recommend if you’re good with violence and like gasping audibly while reading.  

May was a good reminder that sometimes I shouldn’t tie everything to goals, a lesson I am constantly learning. Intense – that is the best word I can think of to describe this past month for me: 

• I spent time in North Carolina visiting my family, and celebrated my brother getting engaged(!!!),
• I got fully vaccinated, which basically knocked me out for an entire week, 
• I started teaching yoga in person again, which meant hours of crafting flows and making playlists and remembering how to cue and project and lead an hour-long class, in a mask no less,
• I returned to my office for the first time since February 2020, and discovered that I am still full of social anxiety but also had some lovely and genuine in person interactions with people who have only existed on my screen for the past year,

And of course all of the other bits of life that are going on all the time, like training for my first sprint triathlon, like spending time with Bobby learning how to make our little blended family thrive, like occasional (and dramatic) emotional breakdowns that require phone calls to my mom and ice cream to cure. Like trying to read really difficult books in the midst of really difficult life. 

Sometimes I love the challenge of books. I love reading that forces me to focus on every word, underlining constantly, to fully grasp some idea or image that’s not my own. Other times I love easy-to-read books that can be trite but familiar. And occasionally I struggle to match the right book to the current moment. 

This month would have been a great month for re-reading old favorites or picking up new fiction, but instead I forced myself to finish all 789 pages of Jill Lepore’s history of the United States, which I started in February. It was a struggle, to say the least, and unfortunately I don’t think I was able to comprehend the fully depth and breadth of what Lepore accomplished with this book when so many other things were filling my brain. It’s one I will most likely re-read the next time I look for a good challenge, but heading into June, it’s all beach reads for me! 

#15: These Truths by Jill Lepore 

As the back cover of the book describes, “the American experiment rests on three ideas—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?” 

This question of whether “we the people” have lived up to our declared mission is the framing for Lepore’s history of America, and the answer is a resounding yet hopeful “not yet.” Lepore covers major events we all think we understand with astounding detail and introduced me to so many aspects of history I didn’t realize existed at all, all while staying laser focused on this thesis. Reading the book left me exhausted, but optimistic, and eager as ever to be part of the change. 

The most resonant piece of the book for me was the prevalence of truth versus lies. In 1644 the Puritan poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, published a pamphlet arguing against censorship of any book before printing on the ground that “truth could only be established if allowed to do battle with lies,” and that people are more than capable of discerning between the two when allowed to think for themselves. This belief in human’s ability to reason has been challenged, bent, and broken, ever since. 

The book ends abruptly, as history does, when it butts up against the then present day of Donald Trump’s election. In her epilogue Lepore places responsibility squarely on the new generation of Americans, on you, reading this post, to reckon with the same realities and distortions of those before us, and to forge our own path forward. 

This month I read (almost) only books found in Little Free Libraries around DC. If you’ve ever seen those little boxes in people’s front yards or in parks filled with secondhand books, that’s thanks to the Little Free Library program. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can search for a little free library in your area or start your own!

#10: The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

The protagonist of this novel wakes up every day in a new body, and is given seven lives through which to solve a murder. Sounds intriguing right? I really wanted to like this book, and while I did enjoy the process of reading it, I didn’t feel that the work I had to put in as a reader to understand what was going on and keep the plot lines straight ended up being worth it. I really don’t like books that bring you on a journey to uncover the truth but don’t give you all the facts. In this book, the reader follows a protagonist who is attempting to solve a murder, but no one, including that protagonist, has any idea what is really going on until the last thirty pages or so. It left me feeling a little duped, and ultimately like I wasted my brain power trying to solve the mystery and instead should have just passively read the novel. I’m just not a very passive person, so it wasn’t fun for me in the end. 

#11: Radical Markets by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl

I never thought I would describe a book on economics as trippy, but this book truly was. Each chapter presents a different economic idea that the authors believe could “uproot capitalism and democracy.” From eliminating private property to rethinking our one-person-one-vote voting system, the book tackles a variety of markets within the American system and offers a different option. While I didn’t agree with the merits or feasibility of literally any of their proposals, it was an interesting way to learn more about how our current systems work, and think about how we might go about improving them in the future. 

#12: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

If you’ve watched the Netflix series…this is nothing like that. But I really enjoyed both ghost stories told within Hill House, and recommend the book to anyone who enjoyed the episodes. Because we were trying not to watch TV during the month of April, Bobby and I read this book out loud together at night. We turned the lights down as low as possible, snuggled up and passed the book back and forth every few pages, which made it enjoyable and a little more spooky. It reminded me of reading the entire Harry Potter series out loud with my brother and my mom while I was growing up, which has always been a really lovely memory for me. If you have older kids who like scary stories then this Shirley Jackson novel is a great read aloud option. Or, of course, Harry Potter. 

#13: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

I have staunchly avoided any entertainment about pandemics, apocalypses, or the end of the world since lock down began in March 2020. However, I found this book in a little free library and decided to take it with me camping for the weekend. I finished it in a few hours. Mandel is a powerful author and is able to retain control over a narrative that winds in and out of several perspectives in both the past and present. The story was compelling, the characters were realistic, and the theme of the value of art was clearly articulated without being overdone. If I ever became a creative writing professor (one of my many dream jobs) I would definitely teach this book to students learning how to craft novels. Also, if you really enjoy her work, Mandel posts notes on all of novel on Goodreads.

#14: The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction by Donald A. Ritchie

I first learned about this book series from an interview I read from my favorite author Lauren Groff which, unfortunately I can no longer find. In response to a question about writer’s block she explained how staying curious helps her avoid the problem of staring at a blank page with nothing to say, and mentioned that she enjoys picking up random Very Short Introductions from the bookstore to help her learn about new topics. The U.S. Congress introduction is the first of the series I’ve read, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a tiny book in both size and volume, easily read in a handful of sittings, and is written in a tone less like a textbook and more like a geeky professor telling you about the topic of their favorite class. It quickly provides an overview of how Congress works, but spends most of its time giving insight into the odd quirks of the system, without going too deep on any one topic. Like Groff, I recommend this series for the eternally curious, and this book specifically for anyone who wants to better understand U.S. government without a political spin. 

In January I introduced my plan to develop my mindset thesis for the year (and if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can catch up here). I first learned about mindset in 2016 when I read Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success which the elementary school principal I was working for at the time recommended to me.

In the book, Dweck lays out two types of mindsets. A “fixed mindset” assumes that we are static, and that things like our character, our intelligence, and our abilities can’t change in any meaningful way. A fixed mindset seeks out what we are naturally good at and doggedly pursues only those skills in order to maintain a sense of being successful. Failure is the biggest fear of a fixed mindset. A “growth mindset” conversely sees failure as an opportunity for growth and learning, and enjoys the challenges of being an amateur, of trying something new, of leveling up or at least attempting to level up even if they aren’t successful the first time. 

I highly recommend Dweck’s book as the starting point in your own mindset journey, or if you’ve read it and need a refresher you can check out this article by Maria Popova on her lovely Brain Pickings website. 

When I discovered these two mindsets, I remember thinking I was so obviously in the growth category. Looking back now, I can see that I was more of a mix, depending on the situation. Sometimes we forget that our mindset impacts everything that we do. So while I was willing to risk looking like a failure in order to learn and get better in certain areas of my life, like my career, I was completely rigid in other areas, like my relationships. This book got me started on my personal development binge, where I started reading all of the new science (and, admittedly, some made-up junk), filling my podcast feed with self help, and transitioning from a fixed/growth mindset blend into more of a growth/fixed mindset blend. Because I’m still not quite where I want to be, even five years later. 

Billionaire businessman Ray Dalio writes in the introduction of his book Principles that “to be principled means to consistently operate with principles that can be clearly explained.” 

Mindset, values, principles, morals, rules…these are all terms we use to varying levels of specificity to describe the codes by which we live. The problem, I believe, is that many of us never think about the underlying code of our own lives. We’ve either adopted a code in full from somewhere else, as in religion, or someone else, as in from all of these books and podcasts I’ve been spending my time consuming. What we need to do, Dalio argues (and I agree with) is think for ourselves in an open-minded way to find what is best for the life we truly want to live. And that’s what I’m attempting to do here. 

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do this, but y’all know me, I started with books. What I found was that I wasn’t as drawn to the theoretical books about mindset; I mean, once you’ve read Dweck, you’re pretty much good, and also there was recently a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal about the lack of evidence behind much of these social psychology findings. I tried Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and Grit by Angela Duckworth. I read Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Grant and James Clear and Dale Carnegie. I went through all 365 days of Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic, and it just didn’t stick with me. 

Here’s what did: stories. It’s not revolutionary, but I first got the idea a few years ago when I listened to Tim Ferris’s interview with Brandon Stanton, the creator of Humans of New York. It’s still one of the most influential podcasts I’ve ever listened to, and one of the pieces of wisdom Stanton shared that really stuck with me was that in his darkest moments, when he felt unsure about where to go or what to do, he read about the lives of other people. We all know that reading creates empathy, and people love to stress the importance of learning about history so that we don’t “repeat the past” – but what if we do want to repeat the past? The past is full of people who lived incredible lives and changed the world, and we can harness that energy in a 300-page biography for free from the library. 

So I looked for those lives I wanted to emulate. I started with Stanton’s recommendation, Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. Isaacson is potentially the best biographer ever, and is a great author to start with. He’s written a plethora of books, and was also recently interviewed on Tim Ferris’s podcast. I moved forward from there, but here are the three stories that resonated most with me: 

Chasing Excellence by Ben Bergeron

This book walks through Coach Bergeron’s journey with three elite athletes as they go into their biggest competition of the year, the Crossfit Games. It’s summed up so well in the overview from Google Books: “CrossFit trainer Ben Bergeron has helped build the world’s fittest athletes, but he’s not like other coaches. He believes that greatness is not for the elite few; that winning is a result, not a goal; and that character, not talent, is what makes a true champion.”

I read this book when it was first published in 2017, have read it a few times since, and listen to Coach Bergeron’s podcast (also titled Chasing Excellence) every week. There is a lot of Bergeron’s methodology that I find overly prescriptive and robotic, probably because I don’t want to be a champion. I want to be excellent at everything I do, not sacrifice it all for one goal or purpose. But I’m sure that my mindset thesis will be rooted in Bergeron’s philosophy, that being a good person, meaning a person with strong character, is a key part of having a successful life.  

Becoming by Michelle Obama

I got this book as a Christmas gift and finished it before the new year. I was so taken by Michelle’s story, I couldn’t put it down. She is truly a force to be reckoned with, but without exhibiting any of the nasty characteristics of other (typically, male) dominant figures. She was smart and strong without being a show off or rude. She gives off a sense of humility and genuine caring. But what I most appreciated about Michelle’s story is that it took her a while to figure out what she cared about, and what she wanted to do. She definitely had early success and was always a hard worker, but she never stopped searching for the things she really wanted to do, and was never discouraged when she tried something and found it wasn’t quite what she was looking for. 

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

If you’ve heard of or read this book, you might be wondering what it’s doing on this particular list. But this book truly stuck with me, not as an example of who I want to be, but an example of who I could easily become if I’m not careful. Elizabeth Holmes was a uniquely driven and talented individual who wanted to change the world, but also wanted to be famous and powerful. She was willing to lie and manipulate people to get there, as we see in the book, but I don’t think she always set out to be that way. I think anyone is capable of doing awful things, and if you don’t think that, you might be the most susceptible. This book if anything reinforced my belief that I need to find my mindset thesis, because if you don’t know your values it’s easy to go against them in the moment. 

I didn’t limit myself to just books. I looked for stories in podcasts, in documentaries, and even found one in a TV series, Madame Secretary. I watched every episode over the course of a month or two, and was obsessed. The protagonist, Elizabeth McCord, is powerful, articulate, intelligent and sophisticated. She handles everything with such a calm collectedness, nothing phases her. But she’s also incredibly warm and caring, deeply dedicated to her family, and ultimately a down to earth person who loves to ride horses and read books. I get it, she’s fictional, but what I was most impressed by was the strength of her convictions. In every situation, she seemed so capable of figuring out the morally right thing to do and sticking to it, even if it made things more difficult for her political career. She had a great network of confidantes to rely on, but ultimately she had her internal compass tightly dialed in, and always knew where she was going. 

With these stories as my guide, I found that certain aspects of a strong mindset come to me naturally: valuing hard work, the desire to leave a legacy, being willing to do things other people aren’t willing to do, and constantly learning and improving. There’s also plenty that I struggle with: being a work in progress, having patience with the process and grace with myself, trusting that I’m moving in the right direction even if I can’t see what the finish line looks like. These are the things I’ll continue to tease out, and transform into my own set of principles, which I’ll share in the next update post. Then, I can spend time testing them and honing the final product, the mindset thesis. 

This month was so full of amazing things happening in real life, I only managed to finish one book even though I’m currently reading three others. Here’s to catching up in April! 

#9: How To Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi

Part of the reason that I didn’t read many books this month is because I really wanted to sit with this one. I’m still digesting so many of the ideas posed and stories told within this book. This is not a book for beginners to understanding racial systems in America, especially for white people beginning to understand their own part within that racial system. If you have received DEI training in the past or have read several “primer” texts on the subject, I think this book was excellent at taking this topic to the next level. If you’re looking for an intro-level book, I would recommend So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, which I read last year. 

One quote I’ll leave from Kendi: “Knowledge is only power if knowledge is put to the struggle for power. Changing minds is not a movement. Critiquing racism is not activism. An activist produces power and policy change. Not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, then that person is not an activist.”