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Quick announcement: If you are a teacher who’s decided you’re ready for your next chapter, be sure to get on my waitlist for my course and community: **From Classroom Copywriter (Learn How to Book Your First Paid Writing Client—Even if You’re Still Teaching!) for all the details and first dibs on limited spots. Doors open in July!
Happy Friday, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE]! This one will be short and sweet because… if I’m being honest— between client and work and launching my own thing this month…I AM SWAMPED. Here’s the thing I have been sitting with: it’s OK to let go of the way you wanted something to be—or thought something would be—in order to make room for the way it’s going to unfold. Let’s be clear: this is NOT my forté.I love to plan and envisions things, down to the details of the way the it will feel in that moment… and then if it falls through, or takes a left turn, I often find myself frustrated and beating myself up for not being able to predict something or to better prepare myself. Here’s my example. Over the past 5 months or so, I really imagined slowing down this summer—A LOT more than I have the past few years of freelancing. The truth is that since starting this business in earnest in summer of 2022, I haven’t taken any “vacations.” You know where you completely unplug, leave your computer closed, don’t check your email etc. I haven’t felt like I could. “But if I can work, (and I can), I should!” I have said to myself. There aren’t any “paid vacation days” when you are freelancing. What I have failed to recognize up until this year, is that it’s actually ME that’s in charge of giving myself paid vacations. This equal parts great news and devastating news, because it’s means (on both accounts) I am responsible for making sure it happens. That means I have to figure out how much time I want to be “work free” and then work backwards to ensure I have enough going on leading up to that to make it possible + that I have enough time to wrap up important projects and let people know I won’t be available…
There it is. Telling people “I won’t be available.” What happens next? Well probably nothing. People mark it on their calendar that I’m not available and don’t contact me. Or they do and don’t get a response until I open my computer to respond again. As I told them I would. My business doesn’t fall apart, the sky doesn’t fall down and I don’t go broke over the how ever many days I want to unplug. Like most things about running your own business (godammit), it’s a mindset shift. One you must INTENTIONALLY MAKE in order for it to work FOR you. So while I’m not super thrilled to be working a lot this summer (AND, TO BE CLEAR, also very thrilled because it’s my business and I want it to thrive) I am using it as very important information that will be paramount to how I set up the months of April and May next year to make sure I am able to have a little less on my plate come Mid-June and July. Everything is data right? That’s what I’m telling myself while I watch another summer week tick away, knowing that these are the years my kid actually wants to hang out with me. Next summer, I hope to be saying, “Yes, let’s do THAT!” way more than I am able to this summer. How do you organize your summer months? Or whenever it is you decide to unplug? I’m collecting all the strategies and I’d love to hear yours. Hit reply and school me in your planning tips and tricks! Summer love and lightning bugs, Meredith The 4 x1
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Teachers (don’t) gotta teach
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It’s true, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE], But it turns out there are so many ways you could take your plethora of skills and use them elsewhere!
The truth is, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE], with your years of teaching experience and multiple degrees you’re ALREADY an expert:
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Freedom has a paywall
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Hey [FIRST NAME GOES HERE], Quick announcement: If you are a teacher who’s decided you’re ready for your next chapter, be sure to get on my waitlist for my course and community: **From Classroom Copywriter (Learn How to Book Your First Paid Writing Client—Even if You’re Still Teaching!) for all the details and first dibs on limited spots. Doors open for the limited number of founding member spots on Wednesday 7/9 !
It’s the 4th of July. I will be the first to say that this day has always felt… sticky for me. And I not because I ate too many popsicles or had one too many drinks spilled on me (though certainly both of those things have happened in my life). This year it feels downright disturbing. Because while this country was supposedly built on the idea of “freedom,” it’s always felt exceptionally clear that it only meant freedom for… some people. The people it’s not meant for has changed (a little bit) with the times. But the themes of who freedom leaves out remain the same: People of color Women Those “not from here” (this never made sense to me because if unless you are person of indiginous descent, none of us are “from” here. Those that look different from whoever is making “the rules.” These days, all of these things feel true. And more than anything, it feels like: freedom can be yours… if you can pay for it. And damn… is it expensive.
Freedom comes in many forms these days. And some (ok a lot of them) are ideas that were built by a few, for a few. And sometimes I think that—rather than reflect on that—what actually happens is a lot of celebrating what it is supposed to be and not what it actually is. Because it’s much easier to drink all day, eat too much, set off loud fireworks that are terrible for the environment, and call it “Freedom.” How is this celebrating freedom ? Whose freedom?What if instead you spent 5 minutes thinking about what it actually means to be free in today’s world? Free from what someone else has told you your life should be like? Free from how “the American Dream” has guided your path? As someone who straddles the Gen X/Millennial line (I think someone cleverly called it Xennenial?) as much as I set out to walk my own path when I was younger (yes my rising Sagittarius, adventurer, forever seeker self quit my first ever job after college to instead be a lifeguard at a Club Med in Mexico…) the beat of that “traditional” drum still caught up me.When I broke up with my boyfriend at 26 at the same time my brothers were getting married, I was positive I was “doing it wrong.” After all, if you don’t get married and have a family are you really even an adult? I didn’t have many examples of doing things differently in my life. And I’m positive that if I had, I wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to course correct what felt more natural for me.It took me a long time to feel freedom from what I thought my life SHOULD be like. -Wife -Mom -Traditional job where I could “climb the ladder,” earn more and more each year, have a pension, and retire at 65. Here’s the thing: For so many of us now, every rung on that ladder is broken.In the end, I realized I would have to rebuild what freedom looked and felt like for me in order to feel like it was mine. Yes I got married—but my marriage has always been a place for growth, and reflection. A mirror for both of us rather than a place you go stop trying new things. Yes I have a child—and I have learned so much about myself and what the portal I believe motherhood can be if we start telling the truth and supporting each other through all the hardest things rather than judging each other. Yes, I started out in a “traditional job.” I even stayed way longer than I ever should have, than I knew was good for me. And then when I could feel that a shift was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not? I leaned into it. I guided where I thought it could go. I believed in a freer version of my life even when I was really unsure about each step I was taking. Today, I will be celebrating in some ways, yes. But I’ll be taking a lot of time to think about how I am going to continue to be a person that lifts up others, that finds a way for more people to be free. Because truly, freedom for a chosen few isn’t freedom. How do you celebrate the 4th—Or reflect on it? Hit reply… I’d love to hear about anything this sparks for you. The 4 x1Update on Content Biz: I’m starting a new eBook with a literacy company I contract with! I’ve ghostwritten a few of these over the past 3 years and truly they are one of my favorite projects. Update on Coaching Biz: Doors Open on 7/9 for my debut course and community built specifically for female teachers who know they want to leave the classroom to try content or copywriting and need the exact steps to get them there. I will only be opening doors to my waitlist this time around: are you on it??
Tiny Brave Things: Today I am celebrating all the brave people that are continuing to speak up even though their careers and even lives are in danger. This is not a tiny thing and if we all continue to say, “this is not normal, we aren’t going to accept any of it” it will be THE THING that keeps our democracy in tact in the end. One to Grow On: If you aren’t listening already, go check out Krista Tippet’s podcast series call “The Hope Portal” : a reflection/course experience curated by Krista and drawing upon her conversations with several visionary humans: Adrienne maree brown, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ocean Vuong, Joy Harjo, Joanna Macy, and Ross Gay. They offer ways of seeing and living to lay our hands and our hearts, our imaginations and life force on the generative possibilities of life in this time. |
Training curiosity
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Quick announcement: If you are a teacher who’s decided you’re ready for your next chapter, be sure to get on my waitlist for my course and community: **From Classroom Copywriter (Learn How to Book Your First Paid Writing Client—Even if You’re Still Teaching!) for all the details and first dibs on limited spots. Doors open in July!
Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I go outside, even before I have coffee (I know, it’s weird for me too). I sit on the deck. I close my eyes. I let the quiet and the dark and sounds of the world waking up wash over me. I started doing this last summer—a form of morning meditation I suppose. Sometimes, I get caught up in what things have to look like. Meditation for example was something I held in my head as being VERY SERIOUS. Sitting on the floor, candle lit, sage burning, trying to continuously draw yourself back to your breath and away from the hundreds of thought that zip around like dragon flies in the spring. And sometimes it looks like this. (I mean not for me, let’s be honest) But more often these days, I am trying ask myself: What do I want from this moment? Why am I doing it at all? Is there another way to arrive there? So last summer, I started going outside. First thing. While it’s still dark sometimes (hard to do in the summer actually). There is something about closing off my sense of sight and letting the others pick up the slack that feels almost…lavish. Strange idea, I’m aware. But have you tried it? Our eyes take in so much all day long. The information is non stop: reading text whether it’s on a screen or otherwise (I hope you still read books), visual information whether it’s watching a video or watching your children, or watching the cars go by. It’s a lot. When you shut that off, the feeling (for me anyway) was literally soothing. Like a bath for my nervous system. Krista Tippet writes a Substack and hosts a podcast called On Being. Right now, she is doing a series called “The Hope Portal.” It’s part inquiry, part poetry (this is my own humble opinion she isn’t actually writing poetry), and she has conversations with some incredible humans about the proximity of hope and despair in today’s world. In the first episode, she talks about hope as a choice. As a practice—the idea that we need to build it like a “moral muscle.” This resonates deeply with me as someone who was raised with a fair dose of hope injected into most situations. In the worst of situations, my dad always says: “your life can change tomorrow. You never know what’s around the corner.” I’m positive there were times growing up when this was annoying to me. When I would rather have wallowed in my “misfortune,” and been a victim of whichever teenage circumstance I had the misfortune of being in. But here’s the thing: over the years, this seed was planted firmly in my soul. It grew roots. It became my default. And not in the toxically positive sort of way we ask people to smile through terrible pain and adversity. But in a quiet certainty that things would shift. That whatever situation I was in the middle of was somehow supposed to be happening. Even if I couldn’t see it. It has never stopped the hurt. Or the tears or the grief when difficult situations arise. But it has always held me in such a way that I could see the idea that I would be OK. That things would change one way or another. The curiosity to wonder how things might be different is a huge part of that. To dare to see beyond the fires of life or cloud that won’t budge is a huge part of this. Tippet says: “Curiosity is the quiet moral muscle that makes all the other virtues possible.” And although I have never thought of it this way before now, I can now completely see that Curiosity and Hope are intertwined. They walk hand in hand. If you aren’t curious enough to imagine something could be different, hope feels like it’s too far off—a tiny ship on other horizon of vast ocean of difficulty. But you can let the teeniest spark of curiosity in, even just for a moment, that ship is all of a sudden much closer. Almost as if you could swim there. Curiosity is the first step in any big change. Daring to wonder if your life could look different, feel different, be different, is something many people won’t allow themselves to do. Change is scary after all. But what if it’s less scary than standing still? Less scary than the idea that you might stay right where you are for the foreseeable future? Part of what I help people do is build that curiosity muscle. Be brave enough to wonder, “what if it IS possible to feel differently?” 4, 3, 2, 1
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💃 That too-small pants feeling
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I was on hold for the 3rd time in an hour. Every time I conceded to a “call-back,” instead of staying on hold, I somehow missed the call. It’s like I was living in a Call Back Black Hole.™ The hold music was a catchy mix of yacht rock and late nineties: under-age club-where-everyone-is wearing-black-pants-and-drinking-watered-down-rum-and-cokes. It was A VIBE. All of which is to say, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE], I was obviously dancing. Has this ever been you? On hold so long you’re dancing to the music, but also wondering when the f$%k someone will remember you’re there? Spoiler alert: sometimes this is what it feels like to be “between worlds.” Not like “ghost of Christmas past” type of between worlds, but more like: “I know I’m done with this chapter, but I’m waiting to understand what the next is” type of way. I’ve been here more times than I can count, and I can tell you one thing: As much as it can suck (big time) not knowing what’s around the corner, I’ve grown to believe that actually, maybe:
It’s the whole point.(I said what I said) When you get into a groove of doing the same thing, in the same way, every same day…yes there is comfort. Consistency Reliability Order And this is great! For a time. It is how we build systems, and how we grow into whatever new skill we are learning. It’s is how we rest and integrate things into our lives. (I have learned the hard way how important this is.) And then, if we let it go on too long, it can become: Stagnant Too comfortable We climb to the top of our game. Sure the view is nice. For a few minutes. And then? What is there to learn? Who is there to learn from? If we aren’t learning and growing…What are we doing? I have the belief that we are here on earth for 2 reasons: to learn and to grow (and to love and give back).OK… 4 things.So if you ever start to have the slightly itchy feeling, that feeling that life is all of sudden feeling a little like a too-small pair of pants (you know the one wink) like you’ve been dancing to the hold music for a LITTLE TOO LONG, I suggest you take some to ask yourself if maybe it’s time hang up that phone. To think deeply about whether you are in same, same, same mode and need to shake it up a bit. And if you are teacher who is nodding along, maybe even ignoring that little ache, that little voice that KNOWS it’s time for something different, (and you want to try your hand at writing!) I’d love for you check out my debut course that will teach you how to go From Classroom to Copywriter. ps:
pps. hang up the phone! they’re not answering. The 4 x1
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