Entering vacation mode
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Every other day, a piece of writing considering our cultural and personal relationships to labor, regeneration, and rest seems to land in my inbox.
While I’ve declared this my Summer of Minimal Effort,
has written about running out of ideas, has written about the newsletter economy being great for flexibility but also “ripe for burning writers out and causing personal anxiety about self-worth.” Kate Manne of is tired, posits that presence is more integral to a life well lived than energy, and ’s mom thinks an iron supplement will cure her exhaustion.My Summer of Minimal Effort
Recently, Virginia Sole-Smith wrote about her Big Fat Summer Plans (all of which are excellent and which you should read more about here), referencing the fact that I had declared this summer my Summer of Minimal Effort. I didn’t go into this summer
It's not clear to me why summer 2023 has encouraged so many of us to reexamine our relationships to work, rest, and selfhood, but I’d like to believe it’s the cosmos and not just our increasing anxiety about the tenuous state of the world. I’d like to believe that cultural shifts can take place when one person and then another person and then another says “yeah, maybe let’s try to do things differently.”
Tonight I’m going to see Beyoncé, which I’m sure will be life-changing but which is also making me anxious because it will entail me staying up past 10PM, and on Wednesday I’ll be joining my family in Cape Cod where I’m going to pour myself fully into vacation mode. Like last year, I’ll delete social media from my phone, I’ll eat lots of beach sandwiches and salty chips, and I will do my best 90s Mom and snap at my kids that they’re lucky to have siblings to play with and to just let mommy read and go build a sandcastle.
Searching for summer vacation
Today Brett and I will attempt to load three children, 2 bikes, 1 baseball bat, sundry articles of clothing, a nightguard, an inhaler, several bottles and tubes and sticks of sunscreen, diapers, bathing suits, books, various plastic dinosaurs, and way too many stuffies into a car and go on vacation. We will have snacks. I will try not to yell.
I’m also going to give my brain plenty of room to daydream, muse, mull, and grow weeds in a fallow state. I’m doing this not only because I think it’s fundamentally healthy for me (and everyone!) to press pause on my brain’s everyday whirring, but also because I want to open myself up to curiosity about the future of this newsletter, which I famously started fueled solely by outrage and without any clear idea of its future.
Back in March 2022, I had completed most of the heavy writing labor for Momfluenced and had the time and bandwidth to dive into making this newsletter, fun, productive, and worth people’s time and money. And I’ve loved writing it more than I ever could’ve predicted. In Pursuit has allowed me so much creative freedom and so much opportunity to connect with and learn from my readers (thank you!!!) I’m grateful every day.
In thinking about the future of In Pursuit, I’m considering how I’ll continue to publish this newsletter (a full-time job) while also finding time to write a book proposal for my second book (currently a little seedling of an idea), sell that book, and ummmm write that book. Writing a book is hard! And writing a book proposal might be even harder? It requires so much contemplation, reading, and deep focus if you want the book to not suck, and I’m not sure (right now, anyway) how I’ll do that alongside newsletter writing. I know it’s possible! Many of my peers have done it successfully. I just want to be sure I’m doing it in a way that continues to be professionally and personally rewarding, and doesn’t burn me out. The hustler (who believes her value is dependent on external markers of success) in me fears that publishing less frequently will threaten my ability to earn an income from this newsletter, but the idealist in me believes that folks pay for newsletter subscriptions because they believe it’s important to support artists for their labor, even if the fruits of that labor show up in their inboxes once a week (for example) rather than three times a week (for example). The newsletter subscription model is still so relatively new, and the need to balance pragmatism (I need to make money) with the conditions necessary for creativity (a certain amount of space and time to nurture ideas) is something I’m still figuring out nearly a year and a half into this.
So I’ll be thinking a lot about the future of In Pursuit during my vacation. And I’d love your help! What’s been most valuable for you as a reader? What wouldn’t be missed if it went away? What do you hope to see more of? What’s the central reason you read this newsletter? If you’re a paying subscriber (THANK YOU AND BLESS YOU), why is this newsletter worth supporting? I’m opening up the comments for everyone this week.
I’ll be back the week of August 15th, but will cross-post some of my favorite Substack while I’m officially OOO, and I’ll send paying subscribers a little vacation update next week, so if you want to hear about which books I’m loving, how my social media fast is going, and get my recs for where to eat, drink, and shop on the outer Cape, upgrade here!
Thank you so much for reading. It consistently blows me away that I get to show up in people’s inboxes and my sincerest hope that In Pursuit emails continue to be a welcome appearance ❤
I hope you have a wonderful rest! For your contemplation, I think of this newsletter as fun and gossipy and while also going deep on things that are often dismissed. Outraged but in a fun way! And with deep thinking behind it! Favorites are deep dives on specific influencers and their meaning (Kelli Stickles, ballerina farm), WFTs, and useful-maybe-ugly product recs.
I subscribe to this newsletter because I love the mix of thought-provoking explorations into modern parenting and laughing at the WTFness of momfluencers and mom-focused marketing. May your rest be actually restful and your kids be perfect angels!