Because Black people have always had our own systems of class, access, and social capital. We know the difference between being invited somewhere and being invited somewhere. We know what it means when somebody says, “Come through,” versus when your name is actually on the list. We understand that there are rooms where the currency isn’t necessarily money; it’s relationships, pedigree, profession, affiliations, education, family name, social fluency, or simply knowing somebody who knows somebody.

And when you’ve spent enough of your life learning how to navigate those rooms, it’s easy to confuse access with affirmation.

Black Don't Burn Out

Who Are You When Nobody Is Impressed?

It’s Martha’s Vineyard season for our kind of people. The Blacks are party-hopping, rubbing shoulders with celebrities, threading & posting their whereabouts, and complaining about the particular exhaustion that comes with too much grandeur. Everybody is booked, busy, invited, pho…

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14 days ago · 79 likes · 6 comments · Ternicia

• People online continue to want to share themselves in exclusive spaces, but what does it mean to show up vs be invited in? Martha’s Vineyard has been a space where the in crowd gathers to network, fellowship, and vacation for. years. Many Black families live on Oak Bluff or have vacation homes. Now, we see people there literally for the social proof. I question whether they would be interested if appearing online wasn’t a factor or whether they feel like they belong. Belonging is what makes the space exclusive, not the actual location.

I woke up Sunday morning feeling restored and immediately began planning for the week ahead by meal planning, making a grocery list, and gathering clothes to launder. My list of non-negotiables for the week ahead began to take shape.

The Sunday scaries began to take hold. All that rest and ease I had led with for one night and one day gave way to productivity. I began to give up that last day of the weekend in favor of gathering my mental and physical armor for the workweek.

• I’m determined to avoid the creep of the Sunday Scaries. Once Friday at 4 PM hits, I don’t care what I do or don’t have planned, work has to stop. It’s not about balance. If I don’t practice rest and ease, when I get to retirement, I’ll be like the retirees who are unwilling to stop working. I don’t want my whole life or purpose to be work, so right now I’m learning to let go and enjoy the life I’ve built.

Behind the paywall you will find: what are you giving yourself permission to do next?, setting the foundation for monumental tasks, how you can change your life through one simple habit, why don’t we all just quit?, and a family saga worth reading.

A subscription gets you: A monthly deep dive into the methodology behind your life redesign, a monthly reading wrap-up, a quarterly reset, and a weekly newsletter every Friday full of rec’s for things to read, watch, listen to, and investigate.

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freedom from pain, worry, or great effort, or the act of making something less severe or uncomfortable

That’s the definition of ease.

This past weekend, I did something I hadn’t done in a long while: move with the flow. You see, I’d worked from home and in Detroit the week before.

When I take work trips, I’m usually working 12-hour days and getting less-than-restful sleep. So, Friday evening, on my way home from the ATL airport I decided to rest.

When you’re a person who thrives on routine, that’s easier said than done.

Friday night was easy. I came home, ordered some butter chicken, samosas, naan, and saag lamb. A feast, if you will. Then I sat down to catch up on some of the shows I’m watching right now: Silo, Lanterns, Reacher, and Gone. Followed by a deep sleep that lasted a full 7 hours.

I woke up feeling recovered and ready to sidequest.

I’d been trying to get to the High Museum to see the Amy Sherald exhibit, so that became priority #1. Then I did a quick shop at H-Mart before choosing to sit poolside for the day.

The man was on grill duty, and I made a refreshing peach salad (recipe here). Then we relaxed by the pool, reading, talking, and sharing social media posts for the rest of the day.

That night, I got 12 hours of sleep.

I woke up Sunday morning feeling restored and immediately began planning for the week ahead by meal planning, making a grocery list, and gathering clothes to launder. My list of non-negotiables for the week ahead began to take shape.

The Sunday scaries began to take hold. All that rest and ease I had led with for one night and one day gave way to productivity. I began to give up that last day of the weekend in favor of gathering my mental and physical armor for the workweek.

Exactly the opposite of what I’m striving for in my 40s. I’m trying to turn the page on go-go-go to make space for whimsy.

Then my man grabbed his coffee and said, “How about we take this outside?” That led to an actual day of rest and ease, where we sat chatting over coffee and pastries before sitting poolside for the rest of the day.

I will admit that without his gentle suggestion, I would’ve dug into organizing, cleaning, and preparing, earning rest by late afternoon.

And you know what?

Choosing to rest that day and giving only one hour to preparing for the week ahead didn’t break anything. Instead, I regained some freedom and got a gentle reminder not to give work more time than is necessary.

I don’t have to earn rest and ease. I just need to take it.

Free posts show you what’s happening in a complex life. Upgrade to paid to learn how to redesign it without giving up everything you’ve built.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

Does anyone else stop by a store for a $2 box of candy before visiting the movie theater?

As soon as I entered, the store spoke to me.

Everything said “Back to School” in large print signs, which was the store’s way of telling me to browse that section before leaving.

A stationery section hates to see me coming. I never met a notebook I didn’t want to flip through to test the binding, feel the paper, and decide how best to use it in my life-management systems. A few times a year, I find myself testing new pens or buying sticky notes and pouches.

Why did I feel the urgency to buy a calendar for an August start when I typically reset my year in October?

Right now, the planner community is buzzing as academic-year planners are being set aside in anticipation of the fall planner season. A season when we notice changes in the planners we use and consider whether it’s time to move on to a new layout or brand.

I found myself at the Dollar Tree, suddenly thinking about my planning system. I looked at academic-year planners, pens on sale, and fresh notebooks. I observed the colorway that will be popular in the year ahead and considered whether to try a new set of highlighters, while also thinking about a new layout for the rest of the year.

I found myself overwhelmed, which made me pause. Why was I trying to buy an academic-year planner? I don’t teach or attend any type of educational institution. I don’t have kids, nor does my job require me to work on the August-July calendar year.

On the surface, that’s no big deal. However, that one impulse purchase would’ve knocked the rest of my system out of balance. Instead of buying a planner on my own time, after evaluating my current system and deciding what stays and what goes, I almost bought something on the fly. A purchase that would likely lead to disruption and a pile-up of other things to make that planner work.

I’ve made that mistake before during the boom of the planner community. I tried stickers and stamps. I’ve used disc-bound, spiral-bound, and book-bound planners. I bought the teacher planner, monthly, weekly… you name it. Over time, I’ve come to realize that the planner itself will not make a chaotic life work. The noise and messaging are always there. It’s my job to live by the ticking of my own clock.

My year doesn’t begin with the kiddos, and on impulse I almost forgot that. I almost forgot that planning begins when I evaluate how life is treating me compared to my wants, my actual life, and my plans. The planner is where I plan for the future. It’s where action is reflected on the page.

That is what allows me to hold my complex life together.

In truth, I was the problem. I have a great system that’s worked for years: look at all the planner launches in August and decide in time to buy a new planner by October. Instead of following my own path, I almost let marketing and the excitement of the “Back to School” season push me into an impulse purchase.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in this life is to proceed at my own pace. That’s how I lead a life filled with my desires, leaving regret behind. That day, the “Back to School” section was not the problem. The choice to let someone else’s timeline rule my life almost snuck up on me.

Instead, I chose the standards I’ve set for my life, which help me maintain the systems I’ve set for myself to enjoy life and achieve my heart’s desires. That day, I left Dollar Tree with one box of Hot Tamales and a firm decision to take my time and stick with what works.

Free posts show you what’s happening in a complex life. Upgrade to paid to learn how to redesign it without giving up everything you’ve built.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

In the Trump era, Americans have sadly grown accustomed to embarrassment on a global scale. But they are also dealing with a biblical assortment of plagues, rising costs, and needless wars. Why should anyone who isn’t a classical music connoisseur worry about the fate of the NSO?

The Contrarian

Why the Crisis at the National Symphony Orchestra Matters

This week, the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) belatedly unveiled its 2026-2027 season, which will include performances of works by Handel, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and other classical music titans…

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12 days ago · 75 likes · 8 comments · Meredith Blake

• I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve had this year about the place of arts and culture in our society. About how arts organizations and artists are struggling to fund their work. How many feel under attack by the current administration and what we can do about it. I think we’re coming to the conclusion that we need to build coalition and put art out there as representation of our struggle. Fear seems to be giving way to fight and I love that for us.

During my childhood, there weren’t many TV spots where I saw diverse representations of Black culture in the media. Much of that vastness was relegated to magazines and literature for us by us.

Then, during the Obama years, that representation grew and held for a while. Eventually, it gave us Insecure, Queen Sugar, Atlanta, The Chi, Snowfall, Dear White People, and A Black Lady Sketch Show, all at the same time. Built through years of investment in Black creatives and actors who stood on the shoulders of those before them.

Now, as opportunities for such breadth of representation shrink, I found the reboot of A Different World exciting… until I watched the trailer.

• Can we critique Black art and still give it a chance? Absolutely. I think when we’re seeing the widespread erasure of our Blackness from media, it’s time to double down. I’m not sure this reboot will give us that and so I wrote my thoughts. However, I do want to be clear. I still plan to support this reboot and any representations of Black media and art that i can… while we can.

Behind the paywall you will find: the struggle of Black female friendship, habits for a lifetime, a system for choosing healthy food during trends and crisis, navigating busy work days, and a new book review & recommendation.

A subscription gets you: A monthly deep dive into the methodology behind your life redesign, a monthly reading wrap-up, a quarterly reset, and a weekly newsletter every Friday full of rec’s for things to read, watch, listen to, and investigate.

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I enjoyed the movie, but it wasn’t particularly memorable. However, about halfway through, I found myself distracted.

I began to pay closer attention to the music behind the scenes because something was missing. By the end of the movie, my observations were confirmed. The entire movie soundtrack lacks any hip-hop or rap music.

No big deal, but I began to pay closer attention.

TV shows, commercials, and much of new mainstream media are skipping these popular genres altogether.

This is part of a broader trend toward the erasure and flattening of Black American representation in today’s media. Therefore, when I learned that ‘A Different World’ was getting a reboot releasing this year, I was relieved and excited.

This was one of the seminal shows from my childhood. Seeing different types of Black kids attending college, gaining knowledge, and growing as people on television for all to see.

During my childhood, there weren’t many TV spots where I saw diverse representations of Black culture in the media. Much of that vastness was relegated to magazines and literature for us by us.

Then, during the Obama years, that representation grew and held for a while. Eventually, it gave us Insecure, Queen Sugar, Atlanta, The Chi, Snowfall, Dear White People, and A Black Lady Sketch Show, all at the same time. Built through years of investment in Black creatives and actors who stood on the shoulders of those before them.

Now, as opportunities for such breadth of representation shrink, I found the reboot of A Different World exciting… until I watched the trailer.

It hits every Black stereotype available, and I’m okay with that. If it’s written by the people depicted, then I expect those characters not to be flattened into their stereotype.

You get the old cast of characters, bringing their children to college. Again, it’s a formula we’ve seen before, but with Debbie Allen at the helm, I’m willing to give it a shot.

We see Black Love and political activism, which is part of what made the original so beloved.

Where I take exception is at around 01:37: “we are living our best young, gifted, Black, talented lives.”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Welp, this is written for Gen X and Boomers.

That phrase immediately flattens our collective struggle.

Hillman has been cited as the reason so many Millennials attended college and/or an HBCU, to experience the culture, get an education, and create a life for themselves, as the connection to The Cosby Show suggests.

However, we’ve learned quite clearly that being Black Excellence in a systemically racist world may help you with class mobility. But it will not shake anything concerning our collective struggle. Black representation and the Black dollar are not enough to make lasting change. Just take a look at the Black representation on the current US Supreme Court, in the Trump Administration, and at conservative representation in the US overall right now.

It’s been almost two years since that man took office, and Black Americans are decidedly worse off despite representation, class mobility, and higher education.

I’m still willing to give the show a chance, problems and all. However, I want to see Allen and the show’s writers leverage the platform in a way that’s useful to our community, though I may be asking too much of them.

However, I am noting that once again our stories are being flattened and housed within Talented 10th ideology (despite DuBois’s learning from and revising that strategy into the Talented 100).

Unlike before, we now have the internet, where people can produce their own media that represents Blackness today. Media that showcases the struggle and fight of the majority, not just the few chosen to excel.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

Mid-swing, I felt a pull in my elbow.

Not sharp or painful, just wrong in a way that registered a bit of alarm. I finished the rally anyway, then the game, set, and match.

We lost as I ran several scenarios through my brain, praying this wasn’t the session that would lead to tennis elbow.

During the long drive home through ATL traffic, it clicked: the strength training I’d skipped for the last few months actually makes a difference.

Thanks to a 10-day unplugged vacation and a brief vacation to Dallas shortly thereafter, my fitness routine fell off. Typically, I lift weights three days a week, run three times a week, and play tennis two to three days a week. I’ve developed a system to support my overall physical health over time.

So, of course, after that class, my instinct was to pick up that routine right where I left off to make up for lost time. However, I’ve been exercising long enough to know that diving into the full routine would only lead to overuse and injury.

That day on the court, I felt the strain in my forearm muscles. It didn’t happen because of a single missed strength session. It happened over time, due to a loose training plan. In late May, I began training for a 10K. I changed my training routine to incorporate more running, and after a few weeks, the issue with that approach became apparent. By the time I stepped on the court that day, the whole balance had been off for months, not weeks.

The problem: I didn’t adjust the structure of my routine.

When I returned from vacation, my instinct was to jump right back into match play, followed by my full routine. However, I didn’t adjust my workouts to support that focus. Instead, I immediately jumped into hours-long tennis sessions without adjusting my training to support the muscles that would be taxed.

You see, I’ve set a standard for the next 30 years of my life. I’m training for a standard of living at age 70, not just today’s performance. That centers a routine focused on functional mobility, joint health, and sustainable energy. I want to be able to get up off the floor at 70 with little effort. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to maintain a trim, toned physique, but I also want to keep Meg Knees and a** as long as possible. That 10K race and match play can work against that when adjustments are made for short-term fitness goals.

Though I felt a bit of muscle strain that day, I didn’t end up with tennis elbow. It was just a clear signal to pull back and rebuild. So I decided to rebuild my fitness routine over three weeks instead of all at once.

In week one, I got back into tennis classes alongside match play. In week two, I added three full-body strength training days (I also tried a commercial gym for the first time in three years 🫠, but that’s another story). Now I’m in week three, reintegrating a mix of walking and running into my routine.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my summer vacation. It gave me the rest I needed to make it through the next few months. After those trips, instead of setting short-term goals to uphold the standard I’d set for myself, I broke the structure I’d established, which could have led to injury. However, I quickly learned that nothing about those trips was the problem.

Three weeks away didn’t help, but I sabotaged myself three months earlier, when I let the structure slide and called it rest.

Free posts show you what's happening in a complex life. Upgrade to paid to learn how to redesign it, without giving up everything you've built.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

We are living through absurd times (and if you would like to delve more into absurdist philosophy, I recommend reading more Albert Camus). We’re in the midst of transition and disruption. The world is being completely redone. And my first thought is not escapism or nostalgia (those are totally fine btw, I was just adding context earlier); my first thought is planting. When I was going through a tough time last year, someone said to me, “rock bottom is the perfect place to plant seeds.”

Ai, Humanities, and the Future of Work

No Amount of Ambition Will Save You From a Collapsing Institution

My friend crashed out on my couch. I’m not talking about sleeping, like full-on fits of anger and hot tears streaming down her face…

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20 days ago · 164 likes · 1 comment · Shae O.

• The news constantly shows us the ways in which US Democracy has given way to fascism. Various articles here on Substack delve into the details, putting together the past and present. What I see less of and what we need more of are posts asking and answering the question of: now what? I am trying to think more about what we rebuild once the dust settles. The answer always leads to the same place, planting seeds. Have you thought about what comes next?

When you run your life based on adapted scripts and aesthetics, you keep paying a price through obligations the real you doesn’t want to keep. Fixing this requires knowing your limits. If you do not know how to define what is acceptable behavior for engaging with you, you will continue to pile on obligations based on an identity that is exhausting your physical and emotional well-being.

• I just watched Scandal for the first time last year 🫣, and it gave everything and more. Was it super problematic? Absolutely. But I get the obsession with Rhimes style of character development. I remember reading Year of Yes the first time back in 2016 and thinking: this book has many issues. As an avid reader, you tend to get beyond the shallow observations to think more critically. However, there were several gems in that short text and in this article I examine how you can apply her framework for gaining more emotional stability in your life without resorting to extremes. Don’t get me wrong, the book was very engaging, and I took away a rule that I use to this day.

Behind the paywall you will find: why do books all look the same today?, the power of “no,” how to get your whole life back, and a book to add to your TBR.

A subscription gets you: A monthly deep dive into the methodology behind your life redesign, a monthly reading wrap-up, a quarterly reset, and a weekly newsletter every Friday full of rec’s for things to read, watch, listen to, and investigate.

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In America’s toxic work culture, we’re encouraged to work ourselves to the bone. We’re all too familiar with the exhaustion that comes from overwork. What we don’t often examine is the cost of taking on too much in our personal lives. We want a full life, so we say yes to one obligation at a time. Months or years later, we’re carrying such a heavy load that we’re stretched in every direction, paying for it with a life full of stress and little rest or ease.

Most high-achievers plan their lives well, with space for work and everything they want to do. They view this competence as a set of deliberate choices that fulfill their purpose. But if you strip away the crowded calendar, the full inbox, and their commitments to friends, colleagues, board seats, and family members, you find a life full of default obligations that are hard to unravel because it feels like giving up a part of yourself.

Shonda Rhimes, at the peak of her early career in the 2010s, owned Thursday nights. She personally ran Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal while executive producing How to Get Away with Murder. She controlled hundreds of millions of dollars in production budgets and delivered millions of viewers to advertisers every week. By any objective measure, she was one of the most powerful storytellers and executives in modern entertainment history.

Yet at the same time, she was letting friends take advantage of her and reflexively saying yes in her personal life. When friends asked her for money, she gave it. Not a loan, but a gift, because, to her, that was being a good friend. For years, her friend took advantage of her through emotional manipulation, leveraging their friendship for financial gain. This translated into giving friends favors, access, and time without question.

Professionally, she hadn’t established a sustainable workflow for running three primetime television shows. She said “yes” to each show, one at a time, without asking herself what she would have to sacrifice personally.

The result of stretching herself too thin was a psychological collapse of her personal boundaries. The physical toll included weight gain. Socially, she declined parties, social gatherings, public appearances, and intimate relationships.

It took one extreme year, during which she said “yes” to everything, to examine her life and lose 127 lbs. That’s when she realized that much of her life had been running on autopilot, entirely career-focused, and void of what would ease exhaustion and unhappiness.

Yes vs No

The biggest mistake most high-achievers make when looking back on periods of intense exhaustion is to evaluate the strategy and plan that got them to that moment: the yes, the no.

However, the problem doesn’t occur from just one decision.

The automatic yes to the friend asking for money and the automatic no to nearly every invitation outside of work were driven by the same logic: protect a story she’d already told herself about who she was.

In a script, characters act according to their established traits. The generous character stays generous. The tireless worker stays late. Rhimes identifies this as a writer’s flaw that carries over into personal life. Today, that comparison happens on social media, where people take advice from the aesthetic, highly curated lives of others without pausing to consider the human being staring back at you.

Saying no protected her from the anxiety of being visible, the discomfort of small talk, and the fear of judgment. It allowed her to retreat behind the armor of her production schedules.

When you run your life based on adapted scripts and aesthetics, you keep paying a price through obligations the real you doesn’t want to keep. Fixing this requires knowing your limits. If you do not know how to define what is acceptable behavior for engaging with you, you will continue to pile on obligations based on an identity that is exhausting your physical and emotional well-being.

Below is the four-part framework for moving from feeling overextended and tired to a concrete analysis of what your scripted obligations are costing you.

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As an adult, financially, this has translated into my maintaining a portfolio career for the majority of my adult working years.

This began before the influencer world took off.

I was a teacher, held down a private music lessons studio, and did contract work for local non-profits. All built on the skills I’d worked hard to develop during my undergraduate studies.

Then, when I changed careers, I did so again.

After grad school, I was an entrepreneur in the natural hair influencer space. I held down an entry-level full-time position in fundraising and did contract work for non-profits.

All of that experience and skill-building put together helped me reach executive leadership well before the age of 40. In the last few years, given the demands of executive life, I let go of that portfolio career.

But now I’m rebuilding. Why?

Since the pandemic, I’ve witnessed highly qualified and skilled friends, family, and people in my network lose their jobs, sometimes with severance and sometimes with no notice. Recently, I’ve seen more and more people lose their jobs and be unable to obtain a new full-time position. They end up taking short-term contracts and try to build their own business while watching their savings dwindle.

The cost of living in our world has skyrocketed, and I’ve adjusted, but right now that doesn’t feel like enough. I’m saving what I can, but I recognize that I could be among the number who lose their job at any time.

Once again, the wisdom of the women before me has come full circle. “Never rely on a man.”

In this context: “the man.”

This IG post reminded me that I can take the skills I’ve built over the years to rebuild my contracting work and also rebuild within the creative space as an entrepreneur. UGC work is the fastest.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no intention of leaving my job, and that work is still my #1 priority. The problem is that in that job, I don’t see an income increase coming fast enough to significantly boost my emergency fund savings.

That’s the goal: build one year’s worth of savings as quickly as possible.

I’ve always stuck with six months as the gold standard for my single life. The network and reputation I’ve built have seemed like enough to get a job within that window of time.

Now, I’m not sure even a year’s worth is enough.

This past Friday, a friend of mine lost his job, and it’s not the first time since the pandemic. I think this may be our new normal, and it sucks.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

And yet the summer months are often seen as a season of expansion. But I’m starting to wonder if summer might actually be a season for protection. Protecting our energy, creativity, health, relationships. All the parts of yourself that make all the work worthwhile in the first place. Because what good is building a business that gives you freedom one day if you’re too busy to enjoy a beautifully sunny afternoon right now?

Quiet Growth Chronicles

A Quiet Growth summer

Every summer, the same thing happens and every summer I act surprised. The days are warmer, the evenings get longer, somebody inevitably suggests a cheeky midweek BBQ, and suddenly the idea of staring for six straight hours at a laptop screen feels anything but appealing. Summer makes you want different things from your days; your morning coffee outside…

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3 months ago · 143 likes · 21 comments · hannah bay

• This article resonates because I’ve been trying to enjoy my summer while still holding the line of productivity. It’s working because I’m protecting my free time and saying no more often. As we push toward Labor Day and less than 100 days until the fall elections, I’m going to try and implement some things from this list: I think turning down the noise during election season is one of the best things we can do for our mental health; also, keeping some kind of record of what you’ve done during these warm months may help preserve your joy during the dark months to come. Anything from the list resonate with you?

It is my hope that our collective social contract has the same effect, with most of us getting what we need, working together, and leaving that unbending white man behind.

• This comment on my latest post sent me. You mean to tell me that this is home grown behavior? Actually, that checks. If you are checked into the news cycle, everyday we’re shown how the people in charge act selfishly and without concern for humanity. Every👏🏾single👏🏾day👏🏾. I’m tired.

Behind the paywall you will find: the children of blood and bone booktok drama is confusing, unlearning beauty standards, how serious is the Artificial Intelligence threat?, five things worth buying this summer, and a short book review.

A subscription gets you: A monthly deep dive into the methodology behind your life redesign, a monthly reading wrap-up, a quarterly reset, and a weekly newsletter every Friday full of rec’s for things to read, watch, listen to, and investigate.

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Don’t be the white man standing in front of the baggage carousel.

Over the weekend, I took a quick trip. It was last-minute, but so much fun. I only took carry-on luggage, but thanks to a bit of shopping, I checked that bag for the return trip home.

ATL airport is one of the busiest in the world. Your baggage shares a carousel with at least four other flights at the same time. However, by the time you get to your gate, your bags typically arrive within five minutes. It’s magic alongside impeccable planning and execution.

This time, as most of the time, when I got to the carousel, everyone was politely standing a couple of inches back, looking for their bags.

Except one man.

He stood directly in front of the carousel, where he could see the bags dropping. It became clear that the bags dropping at the time weren’t from his flight. As he waited, I noticed that his adult children would occasionally come over, say something, and then head back to a socially acceptable distance from the arriving bags.

Then a second white man arrived to stand in front of another part of the carousel, waiting for his bags.

I found it comical that EVERYONE else decided that standing a few feet away from the carousel would allow everyone to collect their baggage.

Except for these two middle-aged white men.

They didn’t question or even notice a social contract. They took up space unapologetically until they got what they came for, the spot they deemed best for their belongings.

And you know what? Everyone else adjusted. Picked up their baggage from other parts of the carousel and helped each other, still achieving the same result.

That small moment mirrored what’s happening in the US right now. Old white men have deemed this land and everything on it their right. What they are owed. They may not even belong in the space at the moment, but they will not share, and the rest of us are supposed to adjust.

The rest of us, within our social contract, have decided to share space while still meeting our needs.

And even when the people in that white man’s family try to engage with him, they can’t get him to budge.

I don’t know how long it took that man to get his luggage. He went between two carousels looking for it. His family got their luggage. I reclaimed mine and left the area… with him still standing in front of the carousel.

It is my hope that our collective social contract has the same effect, with most of us getting what we need, working together, and leaving that unbending white man behind.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

• The Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara: This took about 100 pages to capture my interest, but then I became deeply invested in knowing what happened to Jude. Could this book have been shorter? Absolutely. By several pages. There were a few characters that were under developed, so I think those pages could’ve been used a bit more wisely. Nonetheless, I enjoyed getting the full breadth of a character and the dynamic around his life. Now, I get why this is a must read for most people and highly recommend taking the time to get through this 800+ page tome. The richness of the writing and the depth of emotion is something special and worth your time.

• The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose: I actually picked up the sequel to this book and realized that there was a part one that I needed to tackle. Started this one and immediately hated the dynamic in this marriage. Then, the mystery element captured me and the ending took a left turn I saw coming but wasn’t sure was going to happen at the same time. It’s an interesting ride and though the ending feels unearned, I think it is a great poolside/beach read. Yes, I will be reading the sequel in August.

  

• She Left by Stacie Grey: This one kept me guessing in all of the right ways. It’s a simple thriller that kept my interest and had me wanting to know how we got to the trauma the main character experiences at the beginning of the novel. I liked parsing through motives and possibilities here. Gave very Agatha Christie without the plot holes. Was it perfect? Nope, but definitely a good summer read.

• You Never Know by Connie Briscoe: The idea here was great, but the execution needed a bit of shoring up. I also felt the pacing was a bit all over the place. Plus, the main characters actions didn’t seem to fit the personality through much of the book. The plot twists weren’t hard to guess for your average thriller reader and overall, I was underwhelmed by this one. Briscoe is well known for her work, so eventually I’ll try another read by this author.

• Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman: Sequels are difficult and oftentimes the author continues similar formulas throughout a series. Here, Shusterman picks up where book one left off and develops the world and plot even further. Ending with a cliffhanger that will have me finishing the trilogy in August. We’re introduced to a new character here that is pivotal to the continued development of this world, which helped a lot. I completely understand why this series has such a cult following and I would definitely recommend sharing this series with the teenager in your life who needs an engaging plot to be encouraged to love reading.

  

• She A Baddie By Monique Fisher: This was a cute friends to lovers romance. The plot was simple and more focused on the romance itself. Overall, I found it to be a quick read without much depth. Making it great for summer, but not a series I’m interest in continuing.

• On Merit Alone By Adorabol Huckleby-Ordaz: Loved this one! The emotional depth, plot development, and story arc were all there. This surprised me because the cover is a bit “meh” and the reviews are a mixed bag. However, the story convinced me the complex woman character and dynamic between her and the love interest were earned. The author is able to write a vulnerable, emotionally scarred character with depth. Plus, the male protagonist gets the full character development treatment as well (which romance often lacks). Read this poolside this summer.

• Time Stops With You By Nia Arthurs: What an emotional rollercoaster! From the beginning, you’re told that Cullen is sick, so the whole time you know that this can’t end well. Even as the romance develops, you can’t help but feel heartbroken for what could be. This book dragged and circled the wagons a couple of times, but the ending was satisfying. The characters were well developed and overall, I enjoyed this read.

• Three Months In Accra by L.B. Gaines: This debut novella was what made me read the book below. It’s a second chance romance in which they meet in Ghana while Aliza is studying and falls in love. However, three months isn’t enough time to uproot her life, hence the second chance. Though it lacked necessary depth, the plot was promising, so I chose a novel from the author to see more development.

• Bulletproof Love by L.B. Gaines: This second chance romance had more depth than expected. It’s the classic good girl falls in love with bad boy romance with the added element of family dreams and dynamics thrown in. What I enjoyed here is the redemption story, but I also felt the main woman protagonist was unnecessarily immature. The man who went to prison is more likely to experience arrested development, but the woman who was forced to grow up fast did not? Nonetheless, it’s romance, so I suspended my disbelief and enjoyed the overall story.

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I continued the 75 Booked Challenge through this month, and finished another ten books. This included a carryover from last month, but I still quit the challenge (more on why in the last weekly digest). During my summer vacation, I couldn’t take many physical books, hence the borage of romance novels this go round. Hope you’re enjoying a few good reads this summer too!

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

This past Friday I was on the phone with my man chopping it up, letting him know that I wouldn’t be seeing him because it’s Frose Friday. The bi-weekly ritual of the tennis team I am member of where we match play under the supervision of a coach. An hour and a half later after practice ends, we head upstairs to the bar to redeem our ticket for a Frose where all of the catching up on life, the tea about what’s happening in ATL, and the gossip about the athletic club we belong to occurs.

I can’t miss that kind of girl time for any man.

It’s been raining for 40 days and 40 nights in ATL, so that day, instead of working from home I decided to hit up one of my favorite coffee shops. The matcha there is A1 and gives this non-coffee drinker the pick me up she needs to plow through on a Friday work day. On my way home, we were chatting and I mentioned that I needed to figure out dinner before Frose Friday. I don’t know about y’all, but sometimes I don’t want to think anymore, so I ask someone else what to eat and I make just that. Of course he said, steak… more specifically cajun steak bites (he loves when I make those).

I said “bet” and kept talking to him while I stopped at Publix on the way home. This was a quick simple run to the produce section for one Yukon Gold potato, a bag of green beans, and the dairy section for some grass fed butter. Lastly, I started the trek to the meat section for a NY Strip at best and sirloin at worst (still a great cut for the purpose). My game plan was to buy whatever steak was on sale and to even have the butcher separate a pack if necessary.

Another reason to love shopping at Publix as a single woman.

Y’all, I stopped in my tracks at those meat prices. I was looking at $20/lb! On sale, $9.99/lb for a single piece of steak. Seeing this had me looking closer at every piece of steak to see what I could substitute. Then, I began to question whether I even wanted to make this meal AND whether I should head down the road to Trader Joe’s. I didn’t feel like store hopping in the rain, so I picked up the $9.99/lb 10 oz cut of sirloin and headed home.

I was still on the phone with my man and all we could talk about was how unsustainable eating meat is at those prices.Typically I do most of my grocery shopping at Dekalb Farmer’s Market or Trader Joe’s, hitting up Publix and Kroger for sales. My diet mostly consists of poultry and seafood with some ground beef mixed in. I don’t regularly cook enough red meat to know when those prices skyrocketed!

Somebody please inform me, exactly when did the price of beef start climbing so high?

This post isn’t about the cost of meat. It’s about affordability. I found myself adjusting my food budget, which means taking from my fun money. A sacrifice I have to make, but at the same time, I find myself even more motivated to gather community to fight the powers that be.

I regularly read The Contrarian, so I have watched our country’s economic trajectory, but Imma be honest: living single has its advantages. I can adjust my budget without discussing it with others. There is also the obvious downside too. No one is coming to save me if I experience economic hardship. That’s what is most present in my mind right now.

Who is coming to save us?

As a woman over 40, some solutions I’ve come to:

• Get married to become a DINK household (but then I have to live with a man)

• Work from another country (but I am a support to many and have no desire to leave the community I’ve built)

• Pick up some contracts to save as much money as possible (working on this one)

• Take on a part-time job in retail (as an executive, I don’t have space for this one)

• Babysit someone’s kids a few times a week (a viable plan D)

• Tutor some kids since I was once a public school teacher (a viable plan B)

• Move in with a family member and share resources (a viable plan C)

• Start shopping with my sister’s Sam’s Club and Costco card (I can pass as her)

Any other ideas?

A year ago, this post would’ve been complete satire. Now, I’m observing, making adjustments, and weighing my options. Don’t get me wrong, currently I’m doing fine. However, IRL you will see me fighting to get people out to vote and sharing the work of journalists because we have to stay informed and fight for our human and social rights to survive.

Cause we all we got.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

But over time, I’ve realised what this principle is pointing to. When you plan and work from pressure instead of reality, the work starts to suffer, and so do you. Nothing else in nature works at constant output. A vineyard doesn’t harvest all year. Bamboo spends years growing underground before it ever breaks through the surface.

And yet we expect ourselves to produce like evergreen trees, with some form of constant visible proof of progress, regardless of the season we’re in.

No wonder it feels like we’re always slightly behind.

Quiet Growth Chronicles

The quiet art of capacity-led planning

I don’t know about you, but there was a time when I really thought I could outwork almost anything, and I think a lot of us have lived there at some point, where the answer to everything is essentially just push a bit harder; if you’re tired push through, if you’re stressed keep going, if you’re behind speed up and catch up (as if that’s ever actually worked long term). After all, if you’re building something on your own, if it’s all up to you, you…

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4 months ago · 26 likes · 12 comments · hannah bay

• One thing my job has shown me is that time-freedom is wealth. Choosing when to push and when to pull is the cheat code to productivity without burnout. Many of us schedule “admin days” at work and in life, but what if you applied that concept to your entire week? When you are at peak capacity, you go in and get the harder tasks done. When you are experiencing low energy, you get more menial tasks done. This workflow helps you move within your natural rhythm instead of fighting to want to work and do all the things. It’s an interesting concept not everyone has the freedom to apply entirely, but is worth investigating and applying where you can.

You already know the pattern, even if you haven’t named it. The plans you made in a text thread, with no idea what the rest of the month would look like. The doctor’s appointment you’ve been meaning to book for two months, still on your to-do list. The deadline that felt fine on the 1st and impossible on the 22nd. The Sunday afternoon you meant to keep for yourself, gone to cleaning and preparing for the week ahead.

How can you fix your month?

• Summer gives us the longest days and warm nights. Though it rains, the weather is optimal for gathering and spending time together. However, you still have to work for the necessary resources to fund the fun times. This often leads to a messy summer where in hindsight, you wish you would’ve done so many things. Monthly front loading tackles that so by end of summer you feel like you gave it your all and are looking forward to the next. We’ll do this live later this week, but I wanted to share the who, what, how and why behind sitting down to plan the non-productive parts of your life before the month begins.

Behind the paywall you will find: becoming your own muse, the soft life lie, building life on your own terms, the less is more mindset, and quitting the 75 Booked challenge.

A subscription gets you: A monthly deep dive into the methodology behind your life redesign, a monthly reading wrap-up, a quarterly reset, and a weekly newsletter every Friday full of rec’s for things to read, watch, listen to, and investigate.

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That’s the trap. The calendar looks wide open, so you either leave it bare or fill it in. You fill the weekly view with social events, family time, and the meetings and appointments that were always going to happen anyway. By Thursday, there’s nothing left. Not because anything went wrong, but because a hundred small decisions added up, each taking a little more time than it seemed it would. By the third week of the month, half of what you planned has been rescheduled, canceled, or quietly reassigned to someone else’s last-minute request.

Why? Because despite the planning, you end up making decisions in real time anyway. One interruption at a time, the well-laid plan gets disrupted, and the small decisions start eating into the time the big ones were supposed to have. Instead of being handled at the start of the month, they bleed into every week, taking the attention you have left by the time it actually counts.

You already know the pattern, even if you haven’t named it. The plans you made in a text thread, with no idea what the rest of the month would look like. The doctor’s appointment you’ve been meaning to book for two months, still on your to-do list. The deadline that felt fine on the 1st and impossible on the 22nd. The Sunday afternoon you meant to keep for yourself, gone to cleaning and preparing for the week ahead.

How can you fix your month? Flip that pattern by making small decisions at the start of the month rather than letting them show up one at a time. After trying Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal Method for a while, I realized the value of a future log. Setting up your calendar at the start of the month helps you better handle whatever comes your way for the rest of the month.

This makes the monthly view the backbone of everything else. In one sitting, the appointments are placed, the priorities are set, what’s being made that month is decided, and the time that’s off-limits is marked, all at once rather than one at a time as the month goes on. The specifics of how I run that sitting are something I’ll walk through later in our next livestream. What matters here is that it happens once, at the start of the month, instead of never.

What sets this apart from your typical planning session is placing your plans and commitments first, then choosing protected time. Following this sequence helps you see what time is available and flexible for the things you want to do, so the order matters. It’s a full accounting of everything competing for your time, done once rather than item by item as they show up. By the end of this planning session, your calendar is full and serves as a guidepost for getting the small things done amid your full life.

If you don't already know where your time actually goes, that's where to start. The Capacity Audit walks you through it before you ever sit down to plan a month. Subscribe for free access to The Capacity Audit.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

My job needs to hit roughly 70% fulfillment, and that 70% needs to cover 100% of my financial life. My rent, my dinners with friends, my ability to travel, all of it. The remaining 30%, which is where my real life lives.

BURNT

The Case for Liking, Not Loving, Your Job

There is a lot of discourse about whether you should like or love your job. Entire careers have been built on both sides of that argument. Some of the smartest people alive have completely opposite views on whether your work should pay your bills or make you happy, and whether those two things are even compatible. I have spent the last several years stu…

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2 months ago · 36 likes · 1 comment · BURNT

• When I turned thirty, I changed my career away from what I loved to where my strengths lie. In doing so, I am less emotionally invested and find more ease within my 9-5. This detachment affords me the ability to see my job as the resource engine for my life, the I enjoy, and keeps me from investing all of my energy in work. I don’t want to give it my all, so I save space for my creative pursuits. This article gives lots of resources and a more in-depth discussion on this topic that I think those wanting to avoid burnout and to design a life they love should read.

Following her career and reading The Urgent Life, you see that very specific shifts occur in her life by design. It’s not the pursuit of job titles that causes her to move from job to job. Instead, it’s a deliberate decision based on her boundaries, her life in that moment, and on maintaining her personal life while keeping the same career trajectory:

• I write and research these articles about women who have designed a life out loud for y’all as much as for myself. These cases give me hope and remind me that we can build a life we’re obsessed with. One where we’re not stuck in jobs we hate or lives others prescribe for us. We can build from a place of knowing ourselves, our priorities, and choosing to show up for ourself by living within our chosen design. It’s not just Saint John’s career that inspires me. It’s How she continues to shape her life, excelling despite the boxes others try to put her in.

Behind the paywall you will find: is your meal prep failing? let’s fit that, where id all the minimalists go?, the radical pursuit of joy, distinguishing between hobbies jobs careers and vocation, and .

A subscription gets you: A monthly deep dive into the methodology behind your life redesign, a monthly reading wrap-up, a quarterly reset, and a weekly newsletter every Friday full of rec’s for things to read, watch, listen to, and investigate.

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Every career move after Peter’s death followed the same sequence. She recognized when a role no longer served the life she was building, took her transferable skills, and began rebuilding faster than the average person. Absorbing the online narrative costs each and every time.

When she received a call from Jimmy Iovine six weeks after her husband’s death, with a job offer that would allow her to apply her marketing expertise in a new environment, the answer was yes. She decided that the situation she was struggling to survive in no longer served her new reality.

She packed up, took her daughter, and moved to LA to work for Beats. Beats was acquired by Apple three months later, but she didn’t know that at the time. Her decision to move was structural, not a matter of luck. Then, in 2016, after delivering the keynote at Apple’s WWDC, her visibility skyrocketed. Instead of staying with the company to benefit from that exposure, she moved to Uber, a company in crisis. The industry read her move as a startling choice because the company’s systems needed a rebuild. She took the same skills she used to repair her broken life, now part of her personal brand, to a completely different corporation. After leaving Uber, there was outside industry chatter that she just couldn’t hack it. There was too much friction, but when you step back and look through a wider lens, you realize she recognized that the environment had a ceiling that couldn’t be redesigned from within. Knowing when to leave a job is one of her greatest skills, too.

Eleven months later, she took the credentials she gained from working for Uber during its hardest period and moved to an environment at Endeavor that offered her more freedom and flexibility. She was then offered and accepted a new position as CMO at Netflix. She became Chief Marketing Officer and the first Black C-suite executive at one of the most valuable companies in entertainment, earning her the title of the most influential CMO, according to Forbes. She left in under two years. Her interviews say, “the role stopped serving what she was building, so she moved.”

By the time she left corporate work for good, her personal projects had led her to build her own portfolio career, including: a memoir (The Urgent Life), teaching classes at Harvard University, Badass workshops, and roles as a cast member of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and On Brand with the Jimmy Fallon Show. She’s no longer working for someone else or being the darling of the corporate world. Now, every room she walks into is one she built for a life entirely self-driven by design.

The 4-Step Sequence You Can Run

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• Honey by Imani Thompson: this book was paced perfectly. It went headfirst into the mind of a killer and felt icky for it. That was the idea executed quite well. I kept wondering whether I should be empathizing with the protagonist and decided that I was the problem. It was well written and I love that the ending didn’t wrap everything up in a bow. This story is unhinged and a seriously promising debut novel.

• Reel by Kennedy Ryan: I either love or hate every book I read by Ryan and this was no exception. From the start, the chemistry between the two main characters brings life to the plot. The character development is layered and has depth rarely found in the romance genre. Plus, Ryan managed to make me feel the angst between characters and the tension within the storyline. I could definitely see this one as a great book-to-movie adaptation.

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke: this one entered my bookshelf because of the hype and I hated the main character. She embodies the critiques you see about tradwives and the facade they show to the world. While reading this book, that ick didn’t go away, but sometimes an unlikeable protagonist is exactly what the plot needs. The secondary storyline weaved throughout was initially jarring but is what ended up keeping my interest. My main critique is the journey to that ending plot twist. It needed more finesse, but I think that will come as the author continues to grow.

  

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• Unlike Before by J.B. Vample: sometimes you just want a sweet romance and this fits the bill. Characters who show each other respect. The conflict and chemistry are there, and nothing super tragic or traumatic is used to push the story along. Misunderstandings occur in every relationship. Sometimes we grow together from them and other times we realize long-term partnership isn’t for us. Pick this one up for a well written summer romance read.

• Missed Connection by Tia Williams: after stepping away from this book for a time, I’m of the mind to re-categorize it. Though the romance is the main storyline, it reads more like contemporary fiction. I did have beef with the lack of respect for boundaries displayed by the main protagonist. Would we receive that treatment the same from a man? No. Nonetheless, the characters, chemistry, and plot is why Tia Williams remains a pre-order author for me.

• Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About by Isabel Klee: I cried. Dog lovers, this one will pluck your heart strings over and over again. Klee brings us through a difficult time period where she was learning about herself through the lens of romantic relationship, her work, and fostering dog after dog. She doesn’t try to smooth over the rough parts or make excuses for the carefree young girl living in New York. Instead she invites us into her life, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I recognized my young self in her failed relationships and questionable choices. Those risks and mistakes are what lead to a life well lived. Pick this one up!

• The Urgent Life by Bozoma Saint John: I’ve followed Saint John’s career since she became CMO for Netflix. Her formula for building the life she has now while remaining in corporate serves as inspiration and a blueprint for me. In this memoir, she brings us into a particularly difficult part of her life to share with us a bit of the woman behind the drive. There are so many articles out there telling us who she is and this memoir gives us her real story with lessons learned from loss. She gives us the why behind her ambition and a glimpse into life as an eldest daughter.

• The Girl With Starts In Her Eyes by Xio Axelrod: this was a blind buy from All The Tropes bookstore here in Atlanta. Though this was a romance, it was really about friendships. Repairing old wounds to find friendship and making new friends through trust and vulnerability. I found this contemporary romance to be just the slow burn I needed after several shorter reads. The characters have time to develop and the story has all the elements of good writing with tension that releases to a satisfying ending. Mixing becoming a rockstar with second chance romance worked well and had me rooting for both the main characters career and the romance. Definitely one to pickup for your summer reading list.

• Scythe by Neal Shusterman: I get it. This series is wildly popular and I picked it up years ago but am just digging in. The setting is modern and dystopian. The story is unique in the genre too. I haven’t thought about our society reaching the point where we have learned everything there is to know in this world before. It seems like an arrogant idea. My interest was captured and remained for the entire twisted ride. I’m looking forward to reading part two in July!

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It’s typical for me to read every day, but I make it a point to re-read a book as a palette cleanser after every two new books I complete. However, for this challenge I decided to read only new books to make some headway in my TBR shelves. Little did I know that I would hate that I did this to myself. Though I enjoyed every book I read, re-reading provides me time to breathe and think about the books I’ve completed. I could change the rules I’ve set for myself, but I want to complete the challenge as I began. I’ve already learned some things about myself and that is why I set out to begin this challenge.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

As an executive myself, reading her resume, I might ask: “Wait, is she a serial job hopper?”

She’s not. In her memoir, The Urgent Life, Saint John offers a full portrait of a life shattered by her husband Peter’s 2013 death. Six weeks later, she took a call from Jimmy Iovine, accepted a job at Beats, moved from New York to LA, and set the foundation for her new career. On the surface, it looks like a rash decision made in grief, but when you dig deeper and follow her career, you see that every move was calculated. Every transition considered what was best for her child, her career, and the life she was actively rebuilding.

Following her career and reading The Urgent Life, you see that very specific shifts occur in her life by design. It’s not the pursuit of job titles that causes her to move from job to job. Instead, it’s a deliberate decision based on her boundaries, her life in that moment, and on maintaining her personal life while keeping the same career trajectory:

• While living in New York City, her husband died suddenly from cancer, and she realized that staying put would keep her trapped in a cycle of grief. Six weeks after his passing, when she received the call about moving to L.A. to work for Beats, she said yes. On the surface, it looked like a rash move, but it was calculated. She considered everything and did what was best for her child and herself while advancing her career.

• Having been around since before Uber, I remember the articles about Uber and the way its internal culture began to break the company down. Bozoma Saint John took the Chief Brand Officer role at the company and worked to revive its reputation. Anyone at the executive level would tell you that she took a risk joining a company in freefall. Instead, she chose a role where the entire job was to market a rebuilt broken culture from the inside, which was, at the same time, what she was doing with her own life. What people most often fail to do is leave a job when they recognize that they’ve taken it as far as they can go. Saint John pushed the environment as far as she thought it could go, and then she left after 11 months.

• The move that put Saint John on my radar was her taking the job at Netflix as their first Black C-suite executive. You can read several articles about her, including Forbes naming her the number one most influential Chief Marketing Officer at the time. However, in under two years, she walked away. Reports cited friction with leadership and her personal projects with Harvard and her own Badass workshops as the impetus for her decision to move on. If you read her interviews, she says you’ve got to know when the time is up and keep it moving. There were other things she wanted to do with her life and career, and when it became clear that this job wouldn’t allow her to do them without scrutiny, she protected what she’d built and redesigned.

• From a career standpoint, joining the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills doesn’t make a lot of sense, but from a personal-brand standpoint, it makes all the sense in the world. By the time she joined The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Bozoma Saint John had built a brand that kept her so influential and relevant in the industry that, even after switching companies several times, she was still getting phone calls. She was still considered the top of the industry, so after two decades as one of the most influential people, she chose to move on to a platform where her brand and personality were the product. She wouldn’t have to code-switch anymore; there was no shrinking involved, and she was the one who could make decisions about her brand, allowing her to design her life so that her products, like her hair care line and other ambitions, would be the focus.

The cost of living your life out loud is that everyone has an opinion on decisions they wouldn’t have had the nerve to make.

As a woman and an executive, I recognize that every single one of these career moves came at a cost and with a lot of chatter. She has been publicly criticized, article after article, for every major career move she has made: she was said to be too bold at Apple, too flashy at Uber, and too focused on her personal brand at Netflix. The cost of redesigning your life publicly, out loud, as a personal brand is that every decision you make is scrutinized heavily and reinterpreted by your audience as something to attack, as a character flaw. The pattern was always the same: she made a move, and the commentary turned that move into a character flaw.

Saint John didn’t redesign slowly to bring her audience along. Eleven months at Uber. Under two years at Netflix. When you move that fast, people fill in the blanks with whatever story makes sense to them. Most of them landed on the same explanation: she couldn’t commit. She was chasing something. She was difficult. Nobody considered that she had enough experience to know when she needed to move on. It’s a choice many of us get stuck making, but Saint John centered herself, what she was willing to accept, and didn’t shrink in her decision-making. She made decisions and transitions that looked reckless on the outside, but when you read her interviews, books, and articles, you realize that, from her lens, she was protecting the life she wanted to lead.

She isn’t seeking to control a narrative built on other people’s perceptions, one in which she’s assumed to be running from something rather than building toward something. Instead, every decision is made while continuing to mourn the loss of her husband and first child, Eve, and while raising her daughter alone. She has published a memoir, The Urgent Life, and told the world about the weight she carries: all of the loss, the demands of caregiving, and the responsibilities of being the oldest daughter. She has also described the cost of living an ambitious life out loud, sharing how all of that has been a catalyst for every structural decision she’s made.

The public chooses to see the career moves, the job titles, and the exits. They don’t see that the woman making those moves was also the woman who lost a boyfriend to suicide, buried her husband at 37, buried her mother shortly thereafter, and has been building a life around those absences ever since.

During that time, she has built a life that reflects her internal desires. What the world sees is a string of high-powered positions. Every corporate role she left set up the next piece of what she was actually building. During that time, she was redesigning her life so that her portfolio career now includes Badass workshops, teaching classes at Harvard, being a published author, and being a cast member on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Jimmy Fallon Show.

These aren’t a bunch of side hustles. Instead, for twenty years she built toward this life where every exit from a high-powered corporate job was a setup for the portfolio career she now holds. That’s what it looks like when someone has been building toward the same thing the entire time, and nobody noticed until she was finished. I recognize this architecture because I’ve drawn my own version of it, too. You look at a life that stopped fitting, and you take it apart while you’re still inside it.

Bozoma Saint John built a life by design, and that methodology has a framework. There’s a pattern behind every move she made, and that pattern has steps. The Case Files breaks this story down into the actual decisions, what each one cost, and the framework that connects it all. If you want to see the structure behind the story, stay tuned Sunday for the next installment of The Case Files.

Free posts show you what's happening in a complex life. Upgrade to paid to learn how to redesign it, without giving up everything you've built.

Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me

I would probably see the meetings, appointments, and scheduled breaks (if any). I would see social gatherings, family time, your kids’ activities, and, for the meticulous planners, hobbies, routines, and even your weekly meal plan.

Maybe you’re the direct opposite, and none of this appears on your calendar.

Either way, with no context, looking at your calendar at a glance tells me more about your real priorities than anything you would tell me in an hour-long conversation.

The calendar is a full record of how you spend your time and what you resent about your week. The recurring 7:00 am meeting you complain about every week, and the Saturday-morning cleaning block that exists because no one else in the house will do it.

Most of what you resent in your week is something you put there yourself.

Looking back through your calendar, you should see not only the things that you wanted to do alongside your obligations, but also the things you put there that you have no desire to continue.

People treat their calendar week to week as a brand-new, forward-looking mechanism to get things right. They do so by adding focus blocks, instituting new rituals, or introducing a new color coding system. You can’t pencil yourself into a full life without making changes to edit out anything that’s not serving the life you want to lead. Subtraction is the only way to create more space. This is the difference between rearranging a room to make a couch you hate work versus simply getting rid of the couch.

If you want your calendar to reflect the priorities you set for yourself in life, you have to set parameters and subtract things that aren’t holding up to those standards.

Every recurring block on your calendar should answer three very specific questions.

First, what is this slot for? Blocking time on your calendar for work is a given, but are you sitting in meetings that should be an email? Resist that. If you can only say what happens in the block, but not why, it’s a red flag.

Second, what would actually break if it stopped? Our calendars are often full of weekly recurring meetings like 1:1s or monthly team meetings. On a completely booked schedule, it’s sometimes better to cut those meetings or simply send an email.

We maintain these meetings if time permits, not because we need a face-to-face meeting for the agenda. You do have to face what feels uncomfortable, but this question digs deeper into what you’re holding up because you’re afraid it would break, rather than confronting whether something should hold a place in your life based on your priorities.

Third, did I choose this, or did I inherit it? When someone asks us to do something, we say yes based on the time we have rather than our time, desire, or priorities. These obligations tend to pile up and take up space in an already full life.

Instead of only planning forward, take a look back and see what is missing from your calendar.

As you end the month, read through your calendar as if you did not write it. Without context, what are your priorities? What’s not there at all?

If you want to do this properly, instead of in five distracted minutes on a Sunday, the Capacity Audit is the structured version. Subscribe to receive the Capacity Audit for free.

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Until next time,

be well
xx alove4me