My Summer of Minimal Effort
milkweed and a manifesto
Recently,
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 intending it to be one of Minimal Effort; in fact, I had planned on putting forth quite a bit of effort in the form of a book proposal. But my Summer of Minimal Effort was foisted upon me by both circumstance and an internal screeching of breaks that felt almost out of my control. Spotty childcare was certainly the impetus for rethinking summer and work, but as soon as I allowed the idea of LESS to creep into my brain, it spread and took root as quickly as a single milkweed plant’s rhizome pushes through the soil, creating dozens of new offshoots. A milkweed colony.
I remember feeling an almost visceral sense of lightness descend over me as I typed the words to Virginia in a text. Minimal Effort. What does that mean for me? I’m still writing this newsletter (with breaks), and yes, I’m still responding to emails (but not on weekends), but I’ve taken a break from the ceaseless strategizing I’ve done so much of in preparation for launching Momfluenced. As for the book proposal, I’m embracing a fallow period before I urge my brain into another marathon.
If you want to talk about silver linings, the vicissitudes inherent to writing and publicizing Momfluenced felt shitty at times, but now that the dust has settled, I can say with assurance that the process has been a crash course in surrender. I’ve been able to see with crystalline clarity that I can only control so much, and I can only try so much. After a certain point, my effort is only so many circulations of a hamster wheel racing towards nowhere and nothing.
Minimal Effort means spending more time outside. Reading fun books. Seeing friends. Attempting to make Sydney’s omelette from The Bear. Swimming with my kids while they’re still little enough to want that kind of thing. Watching the newly “patched” (according to the 4YO’s lexicon) house finches living in a wreath on our front door grow. Letting anxieties over “growing my platform” collect dust in the back of a dark drawer in my mind instead of colonizing that same mind and preventing me from engaging with concrete realities in my here and now.
Deliberately saying no to effort—in the completely legally binding format of TEXT MESSAGE to a friend—felt radical after the past fews years (and really, years before that) fully invested in striving and hustling and trying.
To quote our lady Taylor Swift, “I’ve never been a natural. All I do is try, try, try.”
As a little kid, I tried to show my second grade teacher that I was more mature than my 7-year-old peers, that I was someone who really got it, by fucking around on my fill-in-the-blank reading worksheets. I’d turn a typical See Jane Run story into something funny and irreverent to showcase my elevated intellect and enviable wit, and Mrs. Croto would write me chummy little messages in the margins. I was, of course, madly in love with Mrs. Croto. When my mother mentioned to my father that Mrs. Croto’s father-in-law had died (they were friendly), I tried to outdo my previous worksheet bonding attempts by writing on the next worksheet: