1- Ethan’s tennis banquet
Last night we attended Ethan’s end-of-season tennis banquet at school. It was at 5:30 p.m. and way across town (for me anyway, from home…). Ivan met us there from work.
Ethan drove me, despite being essentially “rush hour” on the “busy/ scary interstate route” (which is actually just his normal route to school….😩). He did great! But I still am very on edge about him being just 2 months away from getting his license AND knowing that he will have to start driving himself to school on this route in the very near future. I know it’s a normal progression in adolescence, driving is inevitable around here, and risks are an inherent part of life…. but gah. I just don’t like it.
The banquet itself was a little underwhelming, but nice enough. The head coach is quite young, so I think he may just not have the same experience as say, the soccer coach in the fall, who had probably done this 25 times by now and had a whole slideshow presentation, etc.
The tennis coach just basically stood up there, spoke for maybe 5 minutes (thanking the various assistant coaches, team manager, parent rep, etc.), said a few things about the season and that was it! Then we just ate. At other banquets they will do like “Most Improved” awards, or “Spirit” awards, or they’ll call up all the freshmen, then sophomores, etc…I don’t know, this just seemed VERY brief. Oh well!
On the plus side, we didn’t have to sit there for 3 hours.
We were assigned to bring a “main dish”, which was kind of stressing me out all week because I didn’t know what we should bring/ I had to work/ didn’t really have time to deal with it. The other night we were discussing it and Ivan finally said, “Just don’t even worry about it- I’ll figure something out.” (There’s a nice grocery store across the street from his work, so we thought maybe he could pick up like a big platter of mac and cheese or some other pre-made item from the deli.)
Turns out he showed up with 2 large pepperoni pizzas from the Costco food court! 😅 Actually- it was brilliant! I mean. Costco pizza is GOOD. Also, it’s a guaranteed hit with teenagers (and, um, me). And the best part was, I didn’t have to make anything, buy anything, or do anything. 🎉
2- Spine Clinic
I have an appointment this morning at the Spine Clinic. You may recall I’ve had ongoing back issues (which, of course, now that I have this appointment, currently seem slightly better than usual…). Did the whole chiropractor thing last summer to no real avail, and have just had almost daily pain (to varying levels and impacts).
It’s complicated to really explain my pain. It tends to comes and go; sometimes it’s horrible and severely affects my ability to even do simple things like bend over and put my socks on or stand for a long time, and other times it’s much more mild. And yet I cannot figure out any real correlation. (i.e. Not like it only hurts after exercise, or after sleeping a certain way, or sitting for too long, etc.)
My primary doctor took x-rays recently which just showed the same scoliosis that was seen on the chiropractor’s x-rays. I guess we’ll see what the spine experts have to say!
3- Cal’s podcast struck a nerve this week
I LOVE the Deep Questions podcast and I also really like Cal Newport! I know he’s controversial for some people, but I’m personally a big fan.
That being said, on this week’s episode he struck a little nerve for me. He was answering a question from someone who wanted to decrease social media use. In response, he said something like, “As a general rule of thumb, never post anything online unless you’re getting paid for it.”
Hmm. I of course immediately thought of my BLOG, from which I have so far made… (checking my financial records…) exactly $0.00 since I started it in 2020.
In fairness, he was talking about traditional social media (instagram, facebook, etc.), and this person did want to decrease their use of it, so this is not “bad” advice perhaps for this particular person.
But the vibe I got from the answer was basically that posting online is essentially a waste of time (unless you’re getting paid) and therefore, unnecessary.
I post things online, and I don’t get paid for it, and yet- I think I get a lot of value from it?! What about the real life friends I’ve made through my blog?! I literally talk to my blog friends offline every single day. What about the creativity aspect? What about enjoying a personal hobby? What about the memory keeping I do through it? What about the neural connections in my brain that stay active via all the writing I do here?
I don’t mean to misconstrue what he said, but it just felt off the mark for me. Even thinking about regular social media (not a blog), I am unconvinced that there is zero value for a regular person posting photos or sharing things on those platforms unless they’re getting paid.
4- Speaking of low value online activities…. HAHA
Okay, fine, my life is not particularly enriched by seeing this little meme online yesterday, but you know what? It made me laugh, it made me smile, I related to it (a little too much? 😬), and I call that a net positive in my life.
LOL!!! Come on, we’ve all been there. “Representative. Representative. REPRESENATIVE!! 😡😡🤣🤣”
5- Rock= 1 Van Windshield=0
A rock hit my windshield on the highway and now my van windshield is going to need to be replaced. It started as a good sized chip and now, because I ignored it for like a month after it happened, has spread into a 12 inch long crack. 😩
THIS IS MY BRAND NEW VAN! It’s not even a year old yet. Also, I already got a flat tire in it last fall and had to replace one of those.
What. The. Heck.
This is very, very irritating to me, and another reason I don’t actually love having very nice things. Nothing ever lasts, anyway! The end.
Okay, have a fabulous Friday and a wonderful weekend!!
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful that Ivan handled the banquet food and I didn’t have to grocery shop or cook for it or drag a crockpot into the school. Score.
GRATEFUL KAE 
Ha, BRILLIANT solution by Ivan! And yes- I do expect a “banquet” to have some sort of presentations and awards. That’s a little odd, but as you said, maybe this young coach will catch on.
Yes, I would push back on that comment from Cal! I’m not really sure where he was coming from. About the blog though- it’s funny because I can tell it irks my husband that I spend the time on it that I do, and don’t get paid anything. Um… it’s a hobby? It’s fun? It brings me a lot of fulfillment? I’ve made friends? I mean, I don’t get paid for running or reading, but I do those things as well.
Ugh, your back issue sounds hard. There must be a solution- I hope you find it at this spine clinic. It sounds like a good next step to take, since the chiropractor didn’t help. Good luck with it!
LikeLike
Pizza would never cross my mind but it’s brilliant! I love how men tend to have NO SHAME in bringing the easy thing…but sometimes (often), the “easy” thing is literally the biggest hit. I remember years ago going to a banquet and it required everyone to bring a dessert. I made homemade squares which were delicious but took quite a bit of time. You know what every single kid went for? THE storebought Oreos.
I have a friend who is sooooo crafty and makes delicious food and really cares deeply about aesthetics, but when we have an bi-annual group potluck, she always brings cut-up fruit, and little trays of candy and/or individually wrapped chocolate bars. Genius and the kids love it, of course.
LikeLike
Oops. I hit publish too soon.
Such great insights about the Newport podcast ep. I think that online activity can be very empty of meaning and purpose, but I also think we’ve established that the tight-knit (mostly not-for-profit) blogs that we manage are one of the richest sources of community in our lives? Free of ads and sponsorships, these blogs are so deeply personal. And we invest in them and each other. I think in broad terms, Cal is likely right – but he just doesn’t happen to belong to our blogging network 😉
The other day I was listening to a podcast episode (The Lazy Genius) about friendship and she asked people to list their “who would you tell good news and bad news right away”). The first person I thought of was a local friend, the second person was a blog friend. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? I like genuinely love so many bloggers. (And you want me to be your second mom, so that’s gotta count for something, right – haha).
LOVE that tennis banquet pic – you two look are so photogenic ❤
UGH about the windshield. What a bummer. I hate things like that. They cost so much money and are the biggest, random nuisance.
LikeLike
YES! Well, you already know my opinion but I agree Cal ignored SO MANY VALUABLE things about online friendships/blogging. Even though my platform makes a little bit money (the blog itself actually does not make much my hourly pay for that particular piece is very very low) – I would absolutely continue to blog for free. (And I did for many years!)
In other news the pizza was literally genius. I was actually thinking you could just do a takeout lasagna from somewhere but pizza even smarter.
LikeLike
Ivan is a genius with the Costco pizza dinner solution. I bet it was the favorite main dish of the dinner. I love the striped dress. And bravo for having Ethan drive in rush hour!
You and I have made exactly the same from blogging! My goal is to continue to make that much. There are lots of things that I do that don’t make money, and frankly the thing that I do to make money isn’t bringing me much happiness. If it’s all the same to Cal I think I’ll keep doing the minimum required to get the paycheck and continue to pursue happiness from non-monetary things.
LikeLike
That rock story is so on par with my situation right now. I bought a new bike, but luckily it was NOT one of the thousands of dollars ones, as I did not know what to expect so did not want to go all in. However, in the last two months, I have changed both tires, two tubes, a chain, a cassette and the brake pads! I have been to a bike shop on average about once every two weeks! However, I do not think that a more expensive bike would have saved me from having to do many of those things anyway.
Wooof to teenage drivers! I remember the first time I went to SFO when I was about 16 and this was when you could take people to their gate! My parents went to take my brother to his gate and told me to “wait outside in the car” and of course a security guard told me to move, so I thought I would just do a circle, but I accidentally got on the freeway! I figured out how to get off and back on and back to the airport but it was a bit stressful! I had never driven on the freeway before that.
LikeLike
Ugh, the rock in the windshield is the worst! This also just happened to my parents in their months-old Toyota Highlander! I hope you have a quiet period after the windshield replacement.
When you mentioned needing a main course dish for the banquet at 5:30 my first thought was pizza. I love that Ivan took this on and came up with a brilliant solution. Pizza is always a good idea, especially when teens are involved! I have never had costco pizza, though! We always get take and bake pizzas from papa murphy’s when we have pizza which is about once/month. I’ll have to tell Phil to tell his mom to get some costco pizza sometime (we don’t have a costco membership… err, we do have a gifted membership but we haven’t activated because there are no costcos close to us and we haven’t felt like we *needed* to go to costco. But Phil’s mom goes there often so she will buy things for us.).
I have never listened to Cal Newport. My sense is that he would rub me the wrong way. I don’t really listen to productivity/planning podcasts bedsides SHU’s, though. I kind of feel like much of the advice isn’t always applicable to my job. Like I can not time block because I have to be very responsive to incoming emails. That’s just one example, though. His social media advice is weird because who is making money off their social media posts? I know some people do but most don’t? Or at least most I know don’t? I don’t use social media as you know but I guess my blog is social media-adjacent but it provides more meaningful connections with other so I think of it differently. But I am very turned off by people profiting from social media. Like I HATED it when I got “hey girl…” messages from college “friends” that worked for MLMs like Isagenix. And they would comment on how they noticed I mentioned I had RA and their supplements would really help blah blah blah. I would respond and say I am not interested and ask them to take me off their list of prospects to which one person said “girl I don’t have a prospect list – I’m just trying to help people!” VOMIT. Oof, that really pizzed me off because I am not looking for a supplement to “cure” my RA. I have a very smart doctor to figure that out, thankyouverymuch. But thanks for trying to profit off my autoimmune disease.
Anyways, I know that there are people who are trying to make ends meet and MLMs are the solution for them, but it rubs me the wrong way to try to profit/make money off your friends!!
LikeLike
I could not disagree with Cal more… because I do feel that my blog brings me so much value and personal joy. I think this advice can’t really be taken out of specific context, but if so, we’re just going to ignore it 🙂
I love that Ivan took over the “food duty” for the banquet. How nice you didn’t have to be the one to organize the potluck dish!
I do hope you get some answers at the spine clinic. I know so many people with back problems and so few that actually know the root cause of it. Frustrating!
LikeLike
yeah, I eyerolled that comment from Cal Newport as well. I don’t get the impression he’s someone who needs a lot of social connection? I have a discord moms group (the babies are 7 this summer!) and it’s a source of connection, support, and joy. There are a handful of blogs I follow and comment on and that connection is meaningful. My best friend and I live 4 hours apart, so our conversation is primarily WhatsApp based but it’s no less real.
LikeLike
I also think I get a lot of value from posting online – and none of it is financial! Not everything has a price tag, I guess. I have often thought of all the Favourite Things posts I have written, which are essentially free advertising for big corporations (and sometimes small business too). BUT the thing is, after working for YMC and writing sponsored posts, I KNOW that those posts are not at all “real,” no matter what anyone says. If a company sends you an item and is paying you to try that item and write about it, they also give you a script of talking points they want you to say. So that is not an honest review. I suppose a blogger COULD write an honest review that was negative, but they’d never get a sponsorship again, that’s just not how it works. So I do post things I love to share them with friends, because I am honest about it. I guess it’s free advertising, but I’d rather be real about things.
I had no idea you had such back issues! That’s awful and I hope you get answers.
LikeLike
I totally blog for fun not for pay. So I’m totally with you, not everything we do need to come with financial benefits. So many benefits of blogging: reflection, record, community, find out things and ideas. I sometimes think it would be such fun killer if one needs to blog for a living.
LikeLike
I am very prickly about people suggesting that everything we do in this life must be monetized. I hear this a lot about things like my blog or the tiny bit of sewing I do. I blog because it’s fun for me, I like having a record of my life, and there’s an awesome community around it. I sew because I am concerned about consumerism and maybe someday I’ll be able to sew dresses that are exactly what I want instead of having to depend on other companies to somehow have a dress with pockets and sleeves that flatters my body type. But I don’t want to create a small business out of it – that would take away the fun. It hit a nerve with me, too!
LikeLike
I know I’m coming back to this a million years after you posted it, but I was curious what others thought about Cal’s comment too. Obviously I agree with you and the comments here. I was so annoyed at hearing his comment… obviously we all cant be professional authors who write books and have massive email lists. But also I think cal meant don’t post on facebook or instagram if you feel like you are not using your time well, because I think that his rant came after a question about using social media too much? Anyways I often conflate “the internet” with “social media” even though they are very different. My blog-o-world is awesome. Posting on twitter is (in my opinion) less awesome. My old instagram life didn’t bring me as much joy as I thought. But I think there is also truth that companies like Meta are making money from anyone using their platform… so when you post on facebook or instagram you are helping those companies make money. I don’t think it’s the same with blogs, or at least it doesn’t feel the same.
LikeLike