#36: will I ever learn?
we should too much; majors & minors and a new life lesson
hi hi hi sisters ♡ i’m making this week’s newsletter from my phone instead of computer because bjørn and I went to his hometown for the long weekend and I didn’t bring my laptop. and let me tell you, it took me 15 minutes to get logged in and onto the right page to type this up and the links might be funky because I can’t figure out how hyperlink anything with the phone haha
sooooooo that being said, i hope your day is going much more smoothly than that! and I hope that everyone (or hopefully most of you) are having a nice extra day off this weekend! I know that summer doesn’t start until june 21st or so but memorial day feels like the beginning of the summer imo, anyone else feel that way?
okay my friend emma (hi buddy !!) sent me a tiktok where these two friends were talking about a new way in which we can ask our friends for a life update: what are you majoring and minoring in at the moment?
majoring would be something that’s the main focus right now, just like how a major in college would be the bulk of your classes/time. and minoring would be something that’s also a goal or focus but not the main one.
so for example: i’m majoring in having fun before my internship starts in a week and minoring in finding a dermatologist because I have some skin things going on (including just discovering what my mole on my head looks like after having it for a decade plus and i’m so grossed out)
anyways, kinda silly, but a fun little way to spice up the usual “what’s going on in your life?” “what’s new?” “how are you?” questions
movies: okay I have a question/poll for y’all
that being said, I didn’t watch too many movies this week (I did watch all 4 bridgerton episodes though 🤭) bjørn and I watched stardust, romeo + juliet, and atlantis
yeah yeah three movies is still a lot of movies but those all happened during the week not the weekend so it feels like it’s been a minute since i’ve watched a movie haha
I will say, I haven’t seen atlantis in soooo long, but dang that movie is good
podcasts: jenna jarvis, she created a company called vulnerability is cool, has started her own podcast under the same name!
it just came out so there’s only 2 episodes so far, but I like finding new podcasts and I think she is going to have a fun one! she was a guest on the girlscamp podcast earlier this year and I loved that episode!
in my mind: timmy got a wax figure in the madame tussaud’s in london… I have mixed feelings… it just doesn’t feel like him imo, I already feel weird about the wax figures but something about his in particular I don’t jive with
in my stomach: on the way down to bjørn’s hometown we stopped and grabbed in n out for dinner
don’t get me wrong, I love new york and the food there with every fiber of my being, but I love in-n-out and miss it SO MUCH and I missed it
when will I learn to wear more sunscreen and not let myself burn? this is the question i’ve been asking myself after I got sunburnt not once, but twice this week. and because this happened, I couldn’t help but feel like I was not going to be cut out for parenthood if I couldnt even take care of myself and my skin. some days I go hours without eating, or i’ll just eat junk or snacks and not a real meal. and I can’t help but think about how i’m supposed to provide three full meals and snacks throughout a day to a child?! but then I have to check myself in these spirals because why am I jumping to thinking about parenthood when i’m not even married yet (I know people can and do become parents outside of a marriage, but I don’t want to follow that trajectory atm)
sometimes I can’t help but “should” on myself, I know a lot of us do. I should know by now to put on sunscreen frequently. I should eat better/healthier/real meals. I should read more. I should walk more. I should watch less tv. I should expand my vocabulary. I should be less emotional. I should should should
BUT i’m trying to shift my mindset out of that. out of the “shoulds” and “supposed to’” but it’s hard!! i’m currently reading the book, the defining decade, and it actually just talked about that concept:
“Any search for glory is propelled by what Horney called "the tyranny of the should." Listening to Talia talk, it was difficult not to notice the "shoulds" and "supposed tos" that littered her sentences: Work should be Wow! She should be in graduate school. Her life should look better on Instagram than it did.
Shoulds can masquerade as high standards or lofty goals, but they are not the same. Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds judge us from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams, while shoulds feel like oppressive standards. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best interests.”
going back to sunscreen. this is a SHOULD I should follow. I should wear sunscreen because it will prevent me from getting skin cancer in the future or from getting a sunburn in the closer future. but maybe I need to frame it differently: I have a goal to wear sunscreen when I go outside.
but then there’s a little part of my nagging brain that goes, when will I learn this lesson? and even if I have learned this lesson (because I feel like I have with all the sunburns i’ve received in my life), will I still mess up (obviously yes)? is it okay to mess up? I don’t want to burn my children.
what are your thoughts? is it okay to should on yourself? or should (lol) we frame it as a goal? can we do both?
i recognize that I constantly am throwing out questions into the void, with no answers or wisdom for you all (or anyone) and I apologize for that. not that you are coming to me for all of life’s answers, I would gladly try to help answer them for you. but do I need to have the answers? is it okay to throw out thoughts into the void? (this is me shoulding myself again)
tiktok: if you don’t follow the account we rate dogs, you need to change that ASAP
instagram: the happiest pup
next week i’ll have my laptop and the links will be hyper. but for now, thanks for reading, as usual! if you want, id love if you shared this newsletter to your friends, it’s a free way to support content you like to consume!
oh also PSA I learned that if you put in eye drops from the side; like you tilt your head and drop the eye drop into the corner of the eye that’s on top, it’s a lot easier to put them in (at least for me). I think seeing the dropper directly in front of my eye would cause me to blink a ton and made the process harder, but doing it from the side, I don’t see the dropper and my eyes don’t blink as much!
I once heard someone say that when she hears her inner thoughts say she “should” do something she sees if she can replace that with “want to” or “need to,” and if neither fit then she doesn’t worry about doing the thing. Like wearing sunscreen is actually something that you do need to do in order to protect your skin, so this rule means YES do it!! But if with reading more, for example, is neither something you *need* to do or genuinely *want* to do, then it’s not necessary to beat yourself up (or should on yourself!) over it because it’s just an outside pressure weaseling itself into your mind. idk if that helps you but it helped me!