John and I have been waking up at 6am everyday to have our coffee, go on a walk, and workout before we start work. We’re both obsessed with this new routine.

The other morning - while on our walk - we saw a school bus stop at the bus stop to pick up kids for school for the first time since we moved in in June.

The beginning of September is something I look forward to with a vicious excitement. And I know that may sound crazy. But let me reframe it for you.

Imagine you get to choose all of your projects and classes. You set your own deadlines for things. And you have adult money for buying new notebooks, colored pens, and binder organizers.

That is how I feel going into the month of September.

Since quitting my job to be a private chef and trust fall with the universe, I have had to find the systems that work for me in terms of time management and establishing a baseline of what needs to get done in a week in order to feel like I have my head screwed on straight.

What I’ve come to learn is that having a 3-ring binder to organize my life and a few key meetings on the calendar with myself does ABSOLUTE wonders for making me feel like I am doing any of this ~right~.

But more so than that, I am the type of creative that needs structure in order to feel free.

So I thought I’d share a few things that have really been helping me lately:

1. Step one: get a 3-ring binder and some tabs to organize it. Mine are organized by project.

2. Step two: add a few meetings to your week that are dedicated time for yourself to sit down and get clear on your priorities. Mine are as follows:

   1. Monday am: CEO meeting. I go through this set of prompts on a follow along video with Lexi Merritt and it’s so fun and relaxing I genuinely look forward to it.

   1. Monday am: Content Ideas Meeting. I was finding that I was trying to jump too quickly from input to output without having a digestion period in the middle to really think about what’s been on my mind and turn it into something new, fresh, and exciting to me. Spending an hour going through a few prompts to intentionally reflect on what I’ve consumed before creating, has been a game changer.

   2. Friday: Finance meeting. I sit down for 30-60 mins and go through all weekly expenses, invoices, and just ensure that I have my financial shit together. When you work for yourself, this feels either really daunting or empowering. Knowing that I am spending time organizing myself each week makes it feel empowering.

3. Step three: find a community of people who are in a similar boat. And set up time with them for accountability and solidarity. I have a weekly all-hands with a few friends to go over our goals, a weekly catch up with my long distance bestie who’s in a similar field, and a monthly walk with another content creator friend and this time spent together is invaluable to me.

4. Step four: add some structured novelty to your week. If you also suffer from shiny objects syndrome and want to do everything NOW or even yesterday, then I highly recommend scheduling some time each week to do the thing you “wish you had more time for.” I am admittedly TERRIBLE at this but I’m writing it in here because I know I’d feel like a million bucks if I actually stuck to that.

5. Step five: Nail down a schedule that works for you. John and I have been getting in bed by 9:30pm and waking up by 6am to go on a walk and workout before he goes to work. This has done wonders for me in terms of feeling like I have some structure to my days. I am usually a late morning or afternoon worker outer but I am in a season of really loving an early am grind so I am rolling with it. My pre-workout coffee and little piece of toast is my motivation to get out of bed.

6. Fun addition! I’ve been doing the 21 day Chopra (cringe sorry!) meditation challenge lately and John makes my coffee while I am meditating and delivers it to my side table so that when I re-emerge, I drink it immediately. And that right there is the best part of my day!!

Alright! I hope there was something in there that was helpful or resonant for you. As always, take the meat leave the bone.

And most importantly… all of this BACK TO SCHOOL energy has really been making me crave a sandwich.

On deck this week: a Rigor Hill Market inspired BLT.

We had this BLT well over a year ago in NYC and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. There is just nothing better than some really good slices of sourdough, a bright champagne vinaigrette, creamy garlic aioli, perfectly ripe salted heirloom tomatoes, and some crunchy slices of bacon smashed between two pieces of bread.

It’s a perfect sandwich and take this as your sign to go make one!

Back to school BLT!

Makes 2 biggg sandwiches

Ingredients

For the sandwiches

• 4 thick slices sourdough bread

• 6–8 slices bacon

• 1 large heirloom tomato, thickly sliced and salted

• 1/2 avocado, sliced

• A few leaves of romaine lettuce

• Olive oil, for grilling the bread

• Kosher salt

• Freshly cracked black pepper

Garlic Aioli

• ½ cup mayonnaise

• 2 small garlic clove, finely grated

• 1/2 lemon juice

• Pinch of kosher salt

• 1 tsp honey

• 1 tbsp smoked paprika if you’re feeling crazy (and want to give this a tomato toast vibe)

Champagne Vinaigrette

• 1 tbsp champagne vinegar (or red wine vin)

• 1 tsp Dijon mustard

• 1 tsp honey

• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

• Pinch of kosher salt

• Freshly cracked black pepper

Instructions

1. Cook the bacon.
Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium heat until deeply golden and crispy (or in the oven at 400 for 15ish mins a more mess free situation). Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.

2. Make the garlic aioli.
Mix the mayonnaise, grated garlic, lemon juice, honey, and a pinch of salt until smooth. Set aside.

3. Make the champagne vinaigrette.
Whisk together the champagne vinegar, Dijon, honey, olive oil, salt, and pepper until emulsified.

4. Dress the lettuce.
Right before assembling, toss the romaine with just enough champagne vinaigrette to lightly coat it. You want it bright and crisp, not soggy.

5. Grill the sourdough.
Drizzle both sides of the sourdough with olive oil. Grill in a skillet or grill pan over medium-high heat until golden and crisp on both sides.

6. Season the tomatoes.
Season the heirloom tomato slices generously with salt and place them on paper towels for a min to absorb excess moisture.

7. Assemble.
Spread a generous layer of garlic aioli over each slice of grilled sourdough. Layer on the avocado, heirloom tomatoes, crispy bacon, and champagne-dressed romaine.

Cut in half, plate and enjoy!!!!

CANDID question of the day!

what have you changed your mind about recently?

• the power of creative constraints - reading David Epstein’s book Inside the Box has made me appreciate creative limitations. much more to say on this… for another time!

comment your answer to this question, OR what back to school evokes for you.

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But this is not just a story about toast.

This is a love story about the combination of mayo, grated garlic, smoked paprika (an obscene amount), and a dash of honey if you’re feeling wild.

I put this on … everything. And I have a hunch that you will too!

We had friends over for din last night to our new LA apartment and I made mediterranean salmon bowls with beets, mint, sheeps milk cheese - a little cucumber stone fruit and herb salad - and freshly grilled pita with… hummus MIXED with a spoonful of smoked paprika aioli. And to me, this was just further proof that you can put this sauce on literally anything! Without further ado…

SMOKED PAPRIKA AIOLI

Ingredients

½ cup mayo
2–3 garlic cloves, finely grated
1½–2 tbsp smoked paprika
dash of honey
pinch of kosher salt

Method

Mix everything together until smooth and aggressively orange.

Taste and adjust from there. More paprika for a greater punch. More garlic for some back of throat burn. Honey if it needs a little sweetness, or salt for obvious reasons.

That’s it!!!

A few ways to use it

Grilled chicken pita
Grilled chicken, sharp cheddar, chives and a massive (but tasteful) spoonful of aioli stuffed into a warm pita.

Sandwiches, wraps + burgers
Basically, anywhere you would normally use mayo, swap this in and suddenly lunch is significantly more exciting.

Tomato toast + sharp white cheddar
This is probably my favorite. Toasted bread, a generous swipe of paprika aioli, juicy tomatoes and sharp white cheddar. Simple but outrageously good.

Crispy Chicken Tacos
Add a bit of yogurt and lime juice to thin out the sauce and drizzle this on my crispy chicken tacos with paprika lime crema!

Crispy potatoes or fries
Forget ketchup. Put a bowl of this next to crispy potatoes and watch it disappear.

Okay that’s all for today!! I really can’t recommend this sauce enough. It is so easy, quick, and cheap to make. And stays good for ages in the fridge.

Let me know what else you put this on!

BTW! Hi! It’s been a min since I’ve posted here. I have been busy in the kitchen cooking for myself, John, clients, and throwing lots of summer dinner parties. I plan to keep writing here - a combination of recipes and some of my more philosophical reflections!

And if you are new here, HI! I am so grateful to have you along for the ride. Here are a few of my fav posts:

i quit my job to become a private chef, how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, what does it mean to be ready?

I started this newsletter in 2022 with the intention of expressing myself more creatively. Since then, I’ve built Reading Rhythms, CANDID, quit my job, and became a private chef. This newsletter was my first step on the journey of creating without anyone asking permission. So it means the absolute world to me to have you here!

CANDID question of the day!

what are the qualities you admire most about your friends?

• their curiosity and borderline compulsive desire to fall down random rabbit holes

• they lead interesting lives and are constantly questioning the traditional way of doing things. even if they end up walking a well-trodden path, it’s not done without questioning the possibilities

• they value freedom but also intimacy and connection

• they will drop anything to attend a dinner party :)

comment your answer to this question, as well as your fav way to use smoked paprika aioli!

Above is a voiceover of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Caught Up in Char’s Web!

If you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

Alright… let’s get into it!

Parents are so hard to shop for. They always just say they want a hand-written card. Or a refill on their favorite perfume, cologne, coffee, chocolate, tequila.

But this year, my siblings and I were bound and determined to get something memorable for my dad. So we banded together and decided to take him on a sibling/father trip. Because, truthfully, quality time is really all he ever wants.

We picked Mexico City for several reasons: great food, walkable city, he’s always wanted to go, works for my brother who lives in NY and us in LA, affordable flights and Airbnb’s.

When Christmas came around, we wracked our brains for how to present this gift to him and landed on wrapping a tortilla, lime, and a beer in some wrapping paper and tying a bow on it.

He unwrapped it and, as a very sweet dad would do, expressed immediate appreciation thinking that we were literally getting him a beer and pack of tortillas for Christmas with no underlying meaning. He was slightly confused but very gracious. We all registered that he was not understanding the gift (which I mean, who can blame lol). So I chimed in, “Dad! We are taking you on a trip to Mexico City.”

And that’s when the disbelief smeared across his face. The tears formed in his eyes and his smile changed from one of laughter to one of awe.

Here’s a video of his reaction. Could he be any cuter?

We picked a weekend in April to make this happen and our sibling chat called “Sibling Geese” kicked into planning mode…. with our oldest sister taking the lead ofc, eldest as she is!

We booked accommodations, flights, restaurants, and museum tours. And excitement built between all of us for months. I actually love planning trips in advance for this very reason. I think the lead up and excitement and planning for a trip elongates the joy of the whole experience.

The week of our trip finally rolled around and I got an email from Delta to check my dad and I in for our flights. I needed a picture of his passport to scan so I texted him asking… and in that moment I feared the worst - an expired passport.

I waited for him to respond and sure enough, when I opened the PDF file he sent … expired indeed. April 2025.

A very calm “fuck!” crossed my mind. I immediately called him to share the news. And then got on the phone with a passport agency who said that the federal passport building was our only hope with less than 24 hours before departure.

I made him an appointment for 7:15 the next morning and rebooked him onto a 2:15pm flight. We had to put together 300 docs for him to print, get passport photos taken, and ensure that he was there no later than 6am to wait in line.

My flight was at 9am so I put John (my boyfriend) on the front lines of ensuring my dad left the fed building no later than 11:30am to make his flight. And by the hair on his fucking chin did he make it to the airport to send us this photo once through security.

He landed in CDMX and my siblings and I headed back after our lovely first dinner together to greet him. We got him situated with some street tacos and a beer, took some deep breaths, and allowed the rest of the trip to begin.

We had very little agenda outside of dinner reservations and a tour of the Frida Kahlo museum.

It was really just a trip designed for quality time. And such a testament to how novelty slows down time. We were only there Friday to Monday morning but it still felt like a full, expansive weekend.

Pre-emptive nostalgia was present throughout the whole experience. I felt like there was a future part of me watching from a birds eye view, already expressing gratitude to myself and my siblings for having carved out the time and resources to create this experience.

It felt so adult and mature to be able to take one of our parents on a paid-for trip as a token of our appreciation for all he has done for us.

It’s very easy in today’s world for the goal post to keep moving. Comparison feels like it’s at an all-time high with everyone’s highlight reel being shoved down our throats on a daily basis. But this was a moment in which I (and I think my siblings too!), got to pause and feel really proud.

Success, to me, means being able to take someone you love on a trip. No matter how big, how expensive, how grand… being able to carve out time and money to say “I love you and I want to spend time with you this weekend” is such a gift.

So I write this - as a reminder to myself - of the types of things that I want to include in my definition of success.

It’s not about affluence. It’s about attention and intention.

I see wealth all around me - especially as a private chef - and it has shown me first hand that money is not everything.

It really is about the quality of life that you lead. The time that you have. The headspace that remains free. And your ability to show up for the people around you.

Or at least that’s what it is for me.

I have been thinking a lot about time and leisure lately. It’s very easy to get swept into the busy olympics. I caught myself in a funny moment of this recently.

John was praising me to my mom and sister for “reading a book at 2pm” and “going to a 4:30pm yoga class” in my new life as a private chef. And I felt my stomach drop. I immediately felt embarrassed.

The thought that crossed my mind was, “oh my god my mom and sister are going to think I am a lazy pile of shit for reading and going to yoga in the middle of the work week.”

Which neither of them think, btw.

It was just a reflection of my own perception of self and where I get my worth. A lot of it still comes from being busy. I am a try-hard over achiever and that has always been part of my identity. So if the people that know and love me best start thinking that I am actually.. RESTING…. who the fuck does that mean I have become? Terrifying. Totally terrifying.

But when I actually sit with myself and ask what success means… it’s having the time and freedom to do what I want! Reading and going to yoga are two of my favorite activities in this lifetime. Very little brings me more joy. And I have finally created the type of lifestyle in which I have the space for those things to not only be leisure activities but also inform my work! That has been my absolute dream and it’s here. But now I am afraid it will make me look lazy?!?!?

Give me a break!

Okay so why am I talking about all of this in my newsletter about taking my dad to CDMX?

Because my main takeaway from this trip was being reacquainted with what actually matters to me.

Quality time with the people I love, freedom, spaciousness, eating good food (also w/ the people I love), long walks, and spontaneity.

If that is the case, then my definition of success simply means creating a life in which that is possible.

And news flash! I am already doing that!!!!! How often do we forget to give ourselves credit for how far we have come because we are too busy comparing ourselves to other people and wanting more more more more more?

This whole experience made me think of one of my favorite CANDID cards…

How has your definition of success changed over time?

So I will leave you here with this:

1. Who is someone you have been wanting to spend quality time with? Send this to them and get the trip out of the group chat!

2. When you think about what you would be doing on a day-to-day basis “once you’ve made it,” what are those things? What does that day look like? Are you already doing any of those things? Give yourself the credit that is due for already being successful by your own metrics, then!

I am so grateful to my siblings for making this trip possible and my dad for raising me and my best friends!!!! That is all for today! Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me!

I will catch you here again soon.

With love,

Char

related posts: i quit my job to become a private chef, how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, what does it mean to be ready?

Above is a voiceover of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Caught Up in Char’s Web!

If you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

Alright… let’s get into it!

my biggest challenge since leaving my job about a month ago has been grappling with how to build a personal brand as someone who has a lot of interests and is violently allergic to inauthenticity in any form.

this internal tension has taught me a lot about myself. I have a part of me that wants the absolute world. she is ambitious and driven and passionate. but also has a bit of a “fuck it - I’ll show them” mentality (stemming from never feeling like the prettiest or most popular girl in high school but knowing that i could use my discipline to always maintain straight A’s). she wants to burn the midnight oil on everything she does. she watches youtube videos about social strategy and wants to play the game for growth.

this version of me cares deeply about being successful - financially and reputationally - and ultimately, dreams of writing a book, a cookbook, having a family, building a beautiful home, and being able to maintain a high degree of freedom and independence.

and then there is the part of me that craves intimacy. she is soft and slow and deeply feminine. she is creative and ruthless in sharing her truth. she cares less about making a big splash and more about fostering deep, genuine connection. this part of me knows what real fulfillment comes from. she is quiet and internal and grounded in what matters.

and wow do these parts war against each other.

a fire burns in my chest as i am whiplashed between my desire to grow and my desire to stay true to myself.

and then another voice comes in - exhausted by this back and forth - and cries shameful tears of how grossly self-obsessed this internal battle makes me feel.

‘you’re missing the whole fucking point!!!!’ this fire in my chest yells at me.

maybe if you two would stop fighting over your goddamn personal brand and start living your life, you would actually start feeling the very thing that both of these parts are ultimately pushing you towards.

that is, joy, fulfillment, connection, love, intimacy, freedom.

these two parts have vastly different strategies for arriving at the same conclusion. so how do I start working towards a sense of internal peace?

that is what i have been asking myself for the past couple of weeks. and here’s where i’ve gotten so far…

the ugly thing i’m willing to admit is… if i was creating continuously and it was driving engagement and results, the ambitious part of me would feel satisfied and the intimacy part would too - so long as i was sharing work that really felt like me.

so a lot of this battle comes from the fact that i am going to have to stay in it for a while to see “success” or change my definition of what success actually looks like for me here.

and here’s how i’m doing that…

for the ambitious part:

1. success = consistency // setting a goal about how frequently i want to post and create and sticking to it to build reps of consistency

2. tracking different metrics = not so much follower count or views, which are very much out of my control - but more so the comments, replies, community building, and serendipitous connections that i can foster through my platforms

3. tracking how much fun i am having in the process of creation itself

for the intimacy part:

1. letting her choose what i get to talk about and how i express my own style

2. giving her time to do nothing, go on long walks, spend time alone, connect with friends and family offline and balance out how much time i am spending thinking about myself vs other people

3. continuing to develop my coaching practice and remembering that my online presence or personal brand is one piece of the pie of what i am creating - balancing out the time i am spending creating content with growing candid, private cheffing, and just having some more fun

i read this article recently by talking about how his early twenties spirituality was characterized by turning inwards, getting quiet, going on 7 day silent meditation retreats, psychedelics, and shutting out anyone who interfered with his own growth

and as he’s gotten older, he’s realized that makes him.. fucking miserable.

we all have a very human tendency to feel like the world revolves around absolutely nothing but you. we wake up in deeply personal and individualistic stories of who we are and what we must do to thrive as our avatar. and listen, i think a certain amount of that is necessary for surviving the modern world.

but but but but but

if we genuinely want to be happy and experience spirituality 2.0 3.0 4.0 infinity, we start to realize… it’s not a lone-man’s game.

we don’t find ourselves in a vacuum. we find ourselves through tension and strife and the meeting of the moment that happens when we share in this experience with other people, which, by the way, is the very best part.

and i think that’s the main thing that this personal branding trope gets wrong. it makes me focus way too much on how people of perceiving of me at the risk of me being un-interested in others. an icky thing to admit.

building a personal brand is probably one of the most selfish things we can possibly do. it’s probably not necessary for everyone to do. it’s exhausting at times. and can make me feel ill. BUT. it’s also a great challenge. a great playground for self-expression. a great schoolyard for letting go. and a master challenge in reminding yourself over and over again, what really matters to me?

so i am still pursuing it. because it feels important to the life i want to lead.

but with a new approach. that i am going to share here in case it’s helpful to any of you.

1. redefine what success means to me and ensure those variables are actually within my control

2. play the long game - if you find a game that you’d want to play over and over again regardless of outcome, you’ve already won at life!

3. experiment!!!! remind myself that I am still at the beginning and therefore have the privilege of getting to do things messily

4. at the beginning of a creative process, our taste is way better than our work. which is super fucking frustrating. because the visions that i have in my head for what i want to create far surpass my skillset at the moment. BUT the beauty in that is that i get to show up daily and build my skills overtime.

5. life first. art second. when I let my ambitious parts drive, they keep me in rigid routines in hopes that it will make me more productive. but what ultimately happens is that i become isolated and my inputs cheapen. so my new creative process demands that i stay in and of the world. spending time with friends, spending time alone doing things that i enjoy, enriching my inputs, all of those things contribute positively to my creative work and therefore i give myself ample permission to engage in them.

6. create bc you have to do it. it’s like scratching an itch. Noah Wyle of The Pitt talks about how he creates for his own health. Without being able to act and create, he doesn’t know what he would do. there have been a few interruptions in his career and when he paused to think about what type of work he’d want to create again, he kept on coming back to the times in which his process felt best. and that’s what he focuses on. how does he want to feel while creating. what are the conditions under which the most joy can be felt? that’s how i want to create my process too

7. be very wary of the strategy of others. I can way way way way too easily take on other people’s strategies in a manner that completely derails my creativity. i know what i need to focus on and i trust that the right tools and tactics will reveal themselves to me over time.

8. it’s normal to want people to pay attention and to create things that are useful to others. but you don’t have to worry about that too much at first. because the more you create, the better you will get and the more value you will provide to people.

i am taking my power back.

i’m not gonna make myself a circus monkey for the purposes of garnering attention. i am going to share for connection - but only parts of my story that are ready, that the youngest parts of me would be okay putting on blast.

and most importantly, i am going to counter balance this personal branding pursuit with… living my life.

am i gonna fuck up? i am sure of it. am i going to change and regret certain things? maybe. but i am going to keep going. yes! why?

because my desire to fuck around and find out, my desire for the type of life i want to build, my desire to share authentically, my desire to continue creating… is way stronger than my fear of getting it wrong.

so i will continue sharing and creating… and striving but also making some space for mediocrity.

if that’s your cup of tea, i hope you stick around for more!

and if you happen to be in a similar spot, REPLY TO THIS EMAIL. let’s chat!!!! I am also thinking of starting a small group for women in the same boat so lmk if that’s something you’d be interested in.

thanks for getting caught up in char’s web with me and i will catch you here again soon!

with love,

Char

P.S. if this spoke to you, i cannot recommend reading essay on “building a personal brand without burning out.” it is the type of resource that feels ILLEGAL to be free!!!!!!

related posts: i quit my job to become a private chef, how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, what does it mean to be ready?

Above is a voiceover of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Caught Up in Char’s Web!

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of Maddy of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

It’s Monday morning. I am drinking my coffee from my favorite corner of the couch. Light is pouring through our windows and we are at the max limit of indoor plants before our living room feels like a greenhouse.

Today is my first day of not logging onto Slack. Not checking my work email. And not hosting any meetings. It feels surreal.

I quit my job to take over my mom’s private cheffing business (and trust fall with the universe, because I still don’t know where this will lead me) and I am going to tell you the story of how I got here. My intention in sharing is to inspire you and remind you that… you can just do things! And you don’t have to have it all perfectly figured out to start.

Let me say that again. YOU CAN JUST DO THINGS.

My life changed when I realized that simple yet profound truth about 4 years ago.

This is not really about quitting your job as the end game. Though it may inspire you to do that! This story is about finding your people, coming back home to yourself, and the beauty of following a very messy circuitous and serendipitous path.

Okay here we go!

I graduated college during the pandemic with very little conviction behind what I wanted to do. I had a summer internship at a venture capital firm and thought maybe I wanted to go into the restaurant industry in some capacity. But the world shutting down and restaurants boiling to shit was not exactly the best time for me to get a cushy restaurant management job or anything related. So I moved back home and started working events with my mom’s catering company and doing some private tutoring.

I felt so much shame about not knowing where I was headed at the time. I remember long walks and talks with friends in which I asked, “I feel so lost right now I can’t even remember who I am or what I am interested in. You’ve known me for a long time… can you remind me of what I care about?”

They humored me but it didn’t help. I needed to find that answer for myself firsthand.

In my last semester of college, I took a personal finance class and we had a guest lecturer come in to speak with us. You know when you are listening to someone talk and you can’t quite figure out why but you are just obsessed with their delivery and have a strong feeling that you want to learn from them?

That’s how I felt in this guest lecturer’s presence so I messaged him on LinkedIn after. And to my surprise, he responded extremely kindly and generously.

I asked him “what’s the worst advice given to college grads?” and his answer was absolutely perfect. I’ll ask if I can share it in another newsletter.

Long story short, about 6 months after this exchange, he was looking to hire an analyst for his company and I ended up getting the job. I was over the moon.

I always remained a contractor in this job and it was almost like a self-guided rotation program. I had a million different titles and projects throughout my time there - which kept me on my toes and learning continuously.

And this job gave me immense freedom. It was always remote and allowed me to move to New York City on a whim in 2022. Which would end up being one of the most - if not THE most - impactful decisions of my life.

That’s where this part of the story really takes off.

As a relatively introverted home body, I twisted and contorted myself to put it all out there when I moved to New York. I hit up people I hadn’t spoken to in years. And accepted invites to random things I had no business going to.

One thing lead to another and I ended up meeting a group of people who would become my best friends… and one (hi John!) would slowly become a little more than friends and, ultimately, the love of my life.

At the time, I was craving what I called the “lemonade stand feeling.”

Picture waking up early on a Saturday in elementary school and baking a shit ton of cookies, brownies, and banana bread with friends and setting up a plastic table with bowls for cash on the side of the busiest yet safest intersection you could find. I missed counting change at the end of it and kicking our feet up after a long day of being sugar high. I wanted to have the lemonade stand feeling again. I wanted to collaborate with like-hearted peers on building something cool.

So when I met a bunch of people who all seemed to be evoking the ‘lemonade stand feeling’ in their own rights, I was electrified.

After my first ever conversation with John, I sent out my Substack in 2022. This was a huge deal for me. Not because I was afraid of what people would think (yet). But because it was the first time in a long time that I did something creative without anyone asking me to.

I’d wake up on Thursday mornings, drink way too much coffee, and write until I sent out my newsletter at 1pm. I did that every single week for 52 weeks!

And then months later, we started bringing our friends together to read on our rooftops with my roommate, Philipp, playing the piano during our 2 30-minute silent reading blocks.

We called it Reading Rhythms and it grew and grew and grew. We quickly realized that we were not alone in our desire to read more in the city and meet other people who wanted to have weird interdisciplinary conversations about a variety of books.

When we first started throwing these, none of us could ever have imagined that less than a year later we’d be featured in the NYT and Today Show and sold out reading parties 6 months in advance.

and then came CANDID (our deck of playing cards and conversation starters), which started with a similar energy. Sick and tired of being asked the same questions over and over again, John and I started a list of ‘good questions’ on our phones. My new favorite notification became ~John Lifrieri edited ‘Good Questions’~

One thing led to another and we decided to turn it into an art project for friends and family as Christmas gifts. And the reception was so positive that we decided to make it into a business.

Okay so where am I going with all of this?

What’s the thread?

In every single one of these projects, I just followed an impulse. I had a need to express myself creatively in some way and I did not wait for someone to ask me to start in order to give it my all.

It wasn’t done with a great amount of force or pressure or strategy.

These projects were built slowly. Intimately. With equal parts intention and freedom to become what they were meant to be.

And when I moved back to LA and started posting about being a private chef for my roommate Allie and boyfriend John, I didn’t realize it at the time but I was planting seeds for where I’d ultimately land.

That is how everything good in my life has unfolded. Seeds planted. Weeds extracted. Roots laid. Flowers blossomed.

There was nothing preconceived about me starting this silly little private cheffing series. I didn’t have a goal. It was just fun. I just had fun doing it.

Why is it so damn easy to forget that that’s how all the best things in my life start? Following the impulse of fun. I have to come back to that so often.

Think about your favorite parts of your life. Were they cultivated through a perfectly articulated plan? Or did you follow your fun-tuition and it lead you down a path that you couldn’t have anticipated otherwise?

I’m actually very curious how you’d answer that so pls do comment if you feel so inclined.

But if you are sitting here reading and thinking, damn I really want to start expressing myself more creatively. Or maybe you are also craving the ‘lemonade stand feeling’ or starting a cool project about something you care about with people you respect. Then I would start with this…

What is the creative impulse you’ve been wanting to follow but have told yourself…

1. no one will care

2. I don’t have time

3. people will think I am weird

4. it’s not gonna lead anywhere

5. no one will understand me

Write down what the thing is that you have been wanting to do but have talked yourself out of.

Btw, I have all of those voices too. They don’t fully go away. But what allowed me to finally start creating and get out of my own way was meeting people who had the courage to do it anyway.

To start scared.

To post afraid.

To show a part of yourself that you have previously kept small out of fear that people will see you for who you really are and maybe not accept you.

I am still doing this every single day.

I am still scared about things that I am creating and where it’s all headed. But what I know for sure is that anything good in my life has come from listening to an urge that I have to create and doing it even when I am afraid.

And if I had to give one piece of ‘advice,’ it would be to find other people who are doing it too! Because I can tell you for certain, there is not a single chance I would be where I am today without the constant, love, support, and inspiration of my peers who are on similar journeys. As well as my childhood friends, siblings, parents, and everyone else in my community who has been cheering me on along the way.

So this is also my way of saying thank you.

Maybe you are reading this and have no idea how my newsletter ever landed in your inbox. If that’s the case, I hope you are enjoying this and if not, you are most welcome to unsub.

Or maybe you are one of my first 42 email address imports into this newsletter.

No matter what, you have played a huge role in my path and I hope I can offer some of that inspiration and support back to you!

So go do something you’ve been wanting to!

Reach out to someone who inspires you! (btw - I just finished Reach Out Party and I kid you not… this was one of the best things i have every done!!!!!! Literally cannot recommend highly enough. If you are even remotely interested, pls comment email message reply call! I would love to share more about my experience)

Send a thank you message to someone who has encouraged you!

And let’s keep making cool shit because holy shit our world needs more people creating from an authentic place of self-expression. And less mother fucking strategy.

That’s all for today! Thanks for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me!

I will catch you here again soon.

With love,

Char

related posts: how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

Above is a voiceover of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

Being creative doesn’t feel unique anymore.

It feels like everyone and their mom has a Substack and posts vulnerably on IG.

So sometimes, when I am caught in a negative headspace, I open the apps and I hear a voice say, “why bother?”

So I’m writing to that voice.

The one that says there’s no point anymore.

It’s not that this voice thinks I’m dumb or don’t have anything to say. It just feels like what I want to contribute has already been contributed.

So here’s how I talk to myself when I hear this doomsday-for-creativity voice come online:

Me: Okay. Here you are again. The Why Bother voice. I hear you saying, “there’s no more room for my creativity to matter.” What’s bringing you here today?

Voice: I just feel flustered. I want to create but every time I open my computer or phone, I just get flooded with a feed of people already doing and saying what I want to say. We live in a society in which more people are creating. Which is a mesmerizingly good thing. But a challenging one for those of us who want to make a career of it. I’m feeling late to the party and like there’s no more room for me.

Me: It sounds like creative expression and individuality are really important to you. You must play a really important role in Charlotte’s system. Can I ask you something? What do you fear would happen if we don’t treat this idea that “there is no more creative room for you” as true right now or if we question it?

Long pause.

Voice: I’d get my hopes up and keep creating and no one would pay attention and I’d grow exhausted and jaded and lose faith in creativity itself. I also would never make any money and would be a total failure.

Me: Ahh okay that makes sense. So you are protecting against failure. And what would happen if you failed?

Long pause.

Voice: I can’t even imagine that. I’m not gonna let it happen.

Me: Okay I get that! You are a very strong part and play a really important role in Charlotte’s system. But do you have a sense of what you are afraid would happen IF Charlotte failed? I’m not saying it’s gonna happen. Just a hypothetical.

Voice: Well yeah. I’d never be able to have the life that I want to have. One of my greatest dreams in life is to raise kids and have a family and if I am not successful, I won’t be able to do that. And also, I’m afraid of what financial instability would do to my relationship.

Me: Mhmm. Okay yes. There it is. That is the fear that you are protecting against. Thank you so much for sharing. Can I ask you something? How long have you been doing this job for? This protecting against failure thing?

Voice: Ooooof. A long fucking time. Like a really long time. Idk maybe 15 years? For as long as I can remember, really.

Me: Yeah it sounds like you have been around since Charlotte was really young. When you look at Charlotte (aka me), how do you see her?

Voice: I see her as a young girl that people thought was smart but they didn’t realize it was only because she worked her tail off. She didn’t see herself as being naturally smart or gifted or unique.

Long pause.

Me: Are you still seeing this version of Charlotte? The one that felt really young and like her only skillset was her discipline?

Voice: I am not sure what happened but I just got overwhelmed by a feeling of fear.

Me: Okay let’s turn towards the part that’s feeling afraid. Does it have any concerns about us talking to the “why bother” voice?

Afraid Voice: Yes. It’s afraid that it is true that there is no more room for us to make it creatively. And that you’re going to convince me to keep creating anyway and then I’ll fall flat on my face. And then all of the people that told me that I was too soft and feminine would have been right about me. I will never make it.

Me: Yeah that sounds really scary. Well first, I just want to assure you that I have no agenda whatsoever. I am not here to convince you of anything. I am just here to facilitate a conversation between you and the parts or voices you hear. Is that okay with you?

Voice: Yes.

Me: Okay great. So, does it make sense to you that you feel some fear around creating when there’s a loud voice in your head telling you that there’s no more room for you?

Voice: Yeah that makes complete sense to me.

Me: Okay good. Can you let the part of you that’s afraid of creating in a crowded room know that you really get that?

Voice: Nodding.

Me: How does the afraid part feel when you acknowledge it?

Voice: I feel a softening. I understand and empathize with why this part is so afraid. But I am also able to see more clearly that it’s just a belief this part holds that the creative room is full. It’s not necessarily true.

Me: Beautiful, yes. Can you let that part know that you really understand it and you have a lot of empathy for how scared it is?

Voice: Yes.

Me: And what happens when you let it know that?

Voice: It doesn’t feel so charged anymore. It feels more gentle.

Me: Okay great. I feel curious about this part saying that all of the people that told her she was too soft and feminine would be right about her. Does that remind you of anyone?

Voice: Yes. It does.

Me: Okay good. You don’t have to give me any of the details if you don’t want to but I just want you to check this out. Who does that voice remind you of?

Voice: A few memories come to mind. I see myself presenting a school project in 2nd grade that I worked on with my dad and felt so excited about. Until… I brought it to school and saw the stark contrast between my project and the rest of the classes.

I see a moment in college. I’m a freshman in a class full of seniors presenting and completely freeze up.

I see myself in my fellowship. The teacher stops me mid presentation and tells me to lie flat on the floor. Look up at the ceiling, he says. And scream your presentation to the roof. You need to be more confident in sharing your own voice.

And then I see myself working on projects that I cared deeply about. And the pang of feeling like my contributions weren’t enough to keep up. That my feminine presence, my warmth in hosting, my eye for design. Those silly little twirly things felt squashed by the desire for scale.

Me: Those are really powerful examples. What are you feeling right now in remembering those moments?

Voice: I feel sad for that version of me that had to endure those things. But more so, I feel really proud of how far I’ve come. I’m fairly good at public speaking now. I present myself confidently. And while I still struggle to give merit to my “feminine” contributions, I am much more clear on the things that I am good at. All of these experiences helped me realize that when I lean into the areas of my natural talent, I really thrive.

Me: It is so beautiful to hear you own your strength. You really have come so far, Char. I’m also really proud of you! I’m curious now… how are you feeling towards the voice that says “why bother?” There is no more room for you, anyway.

Voice: I feel so much less impacted by that voice! In fact, I am starting to realize that the fear is not really that there is no more room for me to share. I can see that there have always been a lot of people creating and the reality is, even if my message helps one person, I will feel fulfilled. What I am really afraid of is not being perceived as successful or not making enough money. And those are valid fears. But when I think back on those experiences that informed those fears and remember how far I’ve come… I don’t feel so scared anymore! I feel like if I just keep showing up, keep trusting my intuition, keep using my pragmatic voice so that I can pay my bills in the meantime… I really feel like I will eventually land in a place in which I am spending most if not all of my time in areas where I feel uniquely gifted.

And when I imagine that, oh my god it’s like my energy is abounding. I can create so much more fluidly and fluently! I am so excited to keep creating. And I feel re-acquainted with why I like to write and share content and build CANDID and coach and cook in the first place.

It all comes back to connection.

And if I just keep showing up here to build connection without worrying so much about the scale, I really believe the resources will come!!!!!

Me: Are you hearing this? I’m smiling ear to ear with you. That’s all you, Char. You got yourself there. What are you taking away from this? And is there anything you’d like to jot down or come back to if the “why bother?” voice returns?

Voice: I am feeling so empowered in this moment. And if or when that voice returns, I will just come back to these pages. I will look at this part calmly. I will acknowledge it’s fears. And I will get quiet enough to remember. It all comes back to connection.

That’s all for today. Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me! I will catch you here sometime soon.

With love,

Char

related posts: how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

I mostlyyyyy post personal reflections on here. But sometimes, when a recipe is too good to refrain from sharing, it may slide into my Substack as well.

Today is one of those days. I present to you my salmon coconut curry that I. cannot. stop. making!

salmon coconut curry is my hyperfixation weeknight (or easy hosting!!!!) dinner 🍛🌿🥥

Ingredients

• 2 4-6 oz filets of salmon

• 1 tbsp high heat oil

• 1 small onion, sliced

• 3–4 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 generous tbsp fresh grated ginger

• 2–3 tbsp curry paste (works with red or green - green is my personal preference)

• 1 can full-fat coconut milk

• 1 cup chicken or veggie broth (or more if you like it more soupy)

• Veggies of choice (sweet potato, butternut squash, broccoli, bell pepper, snap peas, zucchini, etc.)

• Juice of ½–1 lime

• Salt, to taste

• Fresh cilantro & basil, to finish

For the curry: Sauté onion in oil over medium heat until soft. Add garlic + ginger, cook 30 seconds. Stir in green curry paste and let it bloom for 1 minute. Add coconut milk + broth and bring to a gentle simmer. Add starchy veggies first (potatoes, butternut squash) and simmer 15 mins, then add the rest. Finish with lime juice and salt. Top with herbs and serve over rice.

For the salmon: Pat dry and salt heavily right before cooking. Drizzle 1-2 tbsp high heat oil on a cold pan and place salmon skin side down. Bring up to medium/high heat and cook skin side down for 2ish mins. Then add the cover for 2 more mins. Remove cover and sear the top for 2+ mins. Serve on a bed of rice + curry with fresh herbs and a squeeze of lime.

Bright, creamy, spicy, and comforting every single time 🍛🍋‍🟩🥥🌶️🫚

Let me know if you make this one!!!!

And also, let me know if weeknight dinner recipes/hosting essentials straight to your inbox is something you want more of!

That’s all for today! Thanks for getting Caught Up in Char’s Kitchen.

With love,

Char

John’s taste test for social proof.

If you want even moreeee recipe posts, follow along on my IG @charlottejacksonn or TT @caughtupincharsweb.

Back to regularly scheduled programming next week!

I also made a reel with this recipe in case you prefer!

Okay bye!

Above is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

Going to a coffee shop with me used to be an absolute nightmare. I would deliberate over what to order for ages and often crane my neck around the coffee bar soon after ordering to make yet another amendment to my drink.

It sounds silly, and it was. But it’s connected to something much deeper. That is, the grief that accompanies decision-making.

Following one path, necessarily means leaving the other behind. Ordering a cortado does indeed mean that a matcha latte will be skipped over. And trite as that may be in the realm of coffee orders, this fear of making the wrong choice used to plague me.

I am confident and decisive in many ways - and thank my lucky stars, I no longer struggle with my coffee order - but there are areas in life in which making decisions still feels daunting to me.

It feels like grief.

Which is why I felt so seen by “The Ghost Ship that Didn’t Carry Us” by Cheryl Strayed.

A reader writes in to Strayed’s column confessing that he’s seeking clarity on whether or not to have kids. There is a part of him that loves his single (or partnered) life. That loves travel and adventure and not having the responsibility of children. There is a part of him that doesn’t want his life to change at all. He can imagine a childless life and feels satisfied by it.

And yet, there is another part of him that still questions. That still wonders if he will regret not having children.

He thinks back on two cats that he raised from infancy until their death at 22-years-old and how at the time, he imagined that fathering these felines was practice for the real deal: having children someday. He knew then that he’d make a great father.

So what should he do?, he asks Strayed. How can he arrive at clarity in this decision?

He doesn’t feel like hypothetical regret is a good marker for decision-making. How else can he get clear?

Strayed’s answer is brutal and kind at the same time.

Stop looking for clarity, she says. You may never get there.

Regret is not a useless feeling in this case, Strayed adds. It’s the very tool you need to take the next step.

When it came time for Strayed to decide herself (and with Mr. Strayed) if they wanted to have kids, she was 34 and not clearly “ready” to have them but also not willing to risk waiting. So she got knocked up. And aboard the ship of motherhood she went. She does not regret it.

But that does not mean that she is not aware of the sister-life that could have followed had she boarded up a different ship. A childless ship. She writes about the books she may have written had she not been catching kids at the bottom of slides. But also about the books she did write because of being a mother.

Her point is this: clarity is not a prerequisite for making a choice. Sometimes, the very thing we need to do is get out a pen and paper. And imagine the two lives that we’d lead. One with kids - in this example. And one without.

She encourages the reader to write out on a piece of paper “son or daughter” and “same life.” Then write out exhaustive lists of what those experiences would give and take from you.

Would the temporary loss of a considerable portion your personal freedom in middle age be significantly neutralized by the experience of loving someone more powerfully than you ever have? Would the achy uncertainty of never having been anyone’s father be defused by the glorious reality that you got to live your life relatively unconstrained by the needs of another?

Next, write down “good life” and free associate everything that falls within that. Then rank order your list.

Have the most meaningful things in your life come to you as a result of ease or struggle?

What scares you about sacrifice?

What scares you about not sacrificing?

Strayed tell us that no matter what decision you are making, there will always be a ghost ship. A ship that could have carried you but that could not because you made a different decision.

Acknowledging that. Owning that. Making decisions with your full chest and generously letting go of the other path… that is the only way through. Clarity will not always lead you there.

But a decision will.

I came across this video the other day by Leadership & Embodiment coach (and friend!!), Dayna April, in which she says that if you are stuck on questioning the “how,” you are sort of missing the point.

How is something going to unfold?, is not the most helpful question to ask. Once you’ve made a commitment - once you have written out the questions, analyzed the benefits of one choice and the regrets of the other, and then chosen which is best for you - you no longer have to worry about the how.

She uses the example of an all night dance party that she attended for New Years. She woke up on the morning of NYE feeling exhausted. But she had committed to this dance party. She had a fabulous time. And as the sun broke in the morning, she realized that she never once questioned “how” she was going to make it through. She was doing it. There was no “if.” And as a result, all of the energy and resources she needed to enjoy the process came to her effortlessly.

So if you are still caught in questioning “how is this all going to work out?” “am I doing this the right way?” “do I have the right strategy?”, it usually means you just haven’t fully made a commitment yet. And that is okay!

BUT it is a signal for you to get quiet. To write out a list of what you know and what you might regret. And then make a decision. Make a decision and do a ritual to acknowledge the ghost ship of the other path that you are leaving behind.

Because if you can go into the thing with your full chest, you will relinquish your need for clarity and the “how,” and by putting one foot in front of the other. From there, the resources you need will meet you right where you are.

I think back to the advice that was given to me that I wrote about in my last newsletter: Answer this question. What were you put here on this earth to do? And then stop doing everything else that you care about. Focus exclusively on this one thing. Find your niche. And don’t stop until people know you for it.

I struggled with this for a long time.

I thought that I needed to pick one singular interest and bid adieu to the ghost ships of the rest.

It made me feel like there was a grand decision to be made. One akin to the choice of whether or not to have a child.

But throughout the process of writing this, I came to realize: I’m not deciding about kids. I’m not deciding between two job offers. No one is standing over me with a clipboard demanding a final answer.

The thing I’m stuck on is smaller, and more insidious.

It’s not a decision about an outcome. It’s a decision about a way of being.

My ghost ship isn’t another career. My ghost ship is a certain way of doing success.

The way that is easily understandable by everyone else. The way that would make people stop asking questions. The way that would let me explain myself at a dinner party in one sentence.

There’s a part of me that wants that ship badly, not because it’s true to who I am, but because it would be socially efficient.

But when I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I’m built for one narrow lane.

When I listen to someone like Rick Rubin talk about committed sessions of deep focus on one thing, then total release, then picking up another project and letting the second one enrich the first, something in me is soothed.

That is exactly how my mind works. And that has always been the case.

I like having multiple “studios”.

I just don’t like the shame I feel when other people tell me that means I’m unserious.

So here’s the real decision I’m making. Not one decision, forever. A decision I will make again and again.

I’m deciding to stop treating my many outlet self like a problem to solve.

I’m deciding to stop abandoning myself in the name of someone else’s strategy, which worked for them - cool!

I’m deciding that I don’t need a perfect plan to keep moving.

And when I start spiraling into “am I doing it right?” I’m going to ask the question that my therapist often asks me and it cuts right through the bullshit:

Is there really a problem to solve here?

Most of the time, the answer will be no. It’ll just be an old part of me trying to earn belonging by staying in motion and staying “impressive.” So I’m choosing a different practice.

Keep writing.
Keep posting.
Keep building CANDID.
Keep reaching out to clients.
Keep hosting rooms where the right people can find me.
Keep track of my expanders.
Keep going.

Not because I’ve finalized my identity and know exactly who I am just yet. But because I’m loyal to my intuition. And that loyalty is the only commitment I actually need right now.

I read this to John the other day and he said it reminded him of this quote:

Iteration is perfection. Stagnation is death.

That sums this up perfectly. The thing that will set you free is indeed making a decision. Just be honest with yourself about what type of decision are you making.

Here’s what writing this essay taught me… not every crossroads is a cliff.

Some decisions are forks. Kids or no kids. This job or that one. You have to make a choice, grieve the ghost ship, hop board and trust that the “how” will unfold in due time.

But other decisions are seasons. Not “Who will I be forever?” but “What am I committing to for now?” And when I spiral, it’s usually because I’m treating a season like a fork. I’m demanding lifelong clarity from a three-month experiment (exhausting!!!).

So now I ask myself three questions:

1. What kind of decision is this? A fork or a season?

2. What’s the ghost ship I’m afraid to disappoint? The other life, or the other strategy?

3. And is there actually a problem to solve?

If it’s a fork, I do what Strayed suggests: I write out my lists, I stay committed to my freedom and truth, and I make peace with the ghost ship I’m not boarding.

If it’s a season, I pick a window of time to experiment, commit with my full chest, and stop interrogating the “how.” I trust that the answers will come to me in due time.

Either way, the relief doesn’t come from certainty. It comes from honesty and action. From naming what I’m choosing, naming what I’m leaving, and letting that be enough.

So here's my question for you: What decision are you treating like a fork when it's actually just a season?

That’s all for today. Thanks for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me.

With love,
Char

related posts: how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

Above is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Caught Up in Char’s Web!

If you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

This newsletter is about knowing when to artfully discard advice that does not resonate with you! A skill that has taken me all of my years in earth school to develop :)

Quick note: Thank you SO MUCH to for the feature in his newsletter, Rambull. I got to share some of my favorite things like 1) this 2 min youtube video that immediately puts me in a good mood, 2) these matchbox drawings on Etsy, 3) Murray Hidary, and more! Check it out & if you’d like to be featured yourself, Rob is always looking for creative individuals to share.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

I sat patiently waiting for my card to be pulled. She wore a long shiny dress that looked beautiful and breathable and had a warmth to her that made me feel at ease.

We sat around in a hodgepodge smattering of chairs and turned up the dial of silliness and play as we pretended to read tarot. I mean we were actually reading tarot. But no one had any idea what they were doing, so we were mimicking what we’d seen before and having a lot of fun with it.

I was at a Girls and Ghouls Halloween party in which we all dressed up as our witchiest avatars and spent the night watching magic and embodying our dark feminine energy. It was fun and playful.

But as soon as it was my turn in the hot seat, I had to remind myself not to take it too seriously. I thought about which question I wanted to have answered and then hoped and prayed that the card would be radiantly happy, affirming, and speak to the abundance that I shall soon find.

“What do I need to know right now?” I asked of this deck.

And our hilarious and improv-skilled tarot reader shuffled the deck “like my dad did when we played go fish as a kid,” she said, and then pulled my card assiduously.

Seven of Swords. Upright.

She read the meaning. “Deceit. Lies. Trickery. Mental manipulation. An enemy masquerading as a friend.”

Well fucking A. We all laughed.

“Is there anyone in your life that you think may be deceiving you right now? Are you deceiving anyone else?”

I thought hard and answered honestly that I had not the slightest idea what this could be referring to.

“Do you have a boyfriend?,” the girls asked laughing. I confirmed and they suggested I look further into that. Luckily Allie was there to back me when I said that I literally have the most wholesome boyfriend ever.

It still took me a second to shake it. I climbed into bed with John that night and told him this story and outright asked him if he was betraying me. We both laughed.

I woke up the next day and looked for an interpretation of this card that I liked better. Perhaps this card was about self-deception.

What am I not being honest about with myself about right now?

That’s when it started to get good.

I’ve been transfixed as of late by the question of will I be successful? How should I be spending my time? Am I sure I am on the right track?

And this constant chatter has been leading me in circles and always delivers me right back on the doorstep of the same answer. Yes, I am on the right track. But damn girl do I need to let go of the constant search for external validation about how I’m leading my life.

When I am at the beginning of things and insecure about my stature, I become a magnet for unsolicited advice. And there was this one piece of advice that I received recently that I could not get out of my head.

Someone 10+ years older than me who I respect asked me the following question: What were you put here on this earth to do?

And after replying (with my best guess), she said “Stop doing everything else that you care about. Focus exclusively on this one thing. Find your niche. And don’t stop until people know you for it.”

It wasn’t bad advice outright but it’s not what I needed to hear and I know that because it made me feel disconnected from my own truth.

I psychoanalyzed the fuck out of my response to this.

Why was I so upset about this seemingly innocuous statement?

I concluded that it must be because of a shadow side of mine that I have a blind spot around. That the discomfort was coming from this question illuminating it. And that I needed to step into this darkness in order to bring the light and find my way through.

I badgered and gaslit myself around this and started to allow it to shift the way that I was actually spending my time and thinking about my future. And surprising to absolutely no one, it felt fucking awful.

After giving this advice, she told me that people who talk about their decisions with others become emotionally weak so I should not share what she just told me with John, my therapist, or anyone besides myself. I hung up and told John that I just had a really weird call that I wasn’t allowed to tell him about. And not 3 minutes later, I came out of the bathroom, teary eyed, and unleashed it all.

I was inconsolable actually. Not because her advice was evil. But because I let it into a very sensitive place in me. A place that still believes other people can see my life more clearly than I can.

The funniest part about this was that we were driving home and there was a disgustingly dirty car parked on the side of the road. On the window, someone had written “I wish my wife were this dirty.”

John knew better than to try to get me to look at it and laugh in the state that I was in. But when I had calmed down later that night, I asked him if he saw it and we both erupted in laughter.

Even after processing this conversation with John and my therapist several times, its tentacles were still gripping at my perception of my decisions. The contents of the advice actually doesn’t matter. The point here is that this was coming from the lived experience of one person. One person who is not me. Who has a different set of lessons to learn.

And what’s funny is I actually agree with this advice in many ways…

I agree that our efforts are best directed when we are able to focus. But that comes with time. And for some, existing in the messy middle between a few different things before fully diving into one is the exact experience we need.

And more recently even, I’ve been wondering if I am the type of person who will ever have just one thing I am working on. I have a through line. But my expression comes in different forms. I may never just have one thing. And I am not sure that necessarily means that I cannot be successful. I guess we’ll find out!

So the lesson here was to stop absorbing other people’s opinions and perceptions of your path.

I loved what Luke Haverty said about this recently in his YouTube video 10 Brutal Lessons from the Year of Reinvention.

He cautions against crowdsourcing. When you continuously ask people for their opinion of what you are up, you stop listening to your own signal.

You stop trusting your own intuition. And the weirdness or edge that makes you you, starts fading into the oblivion of the average.

If you want to do something epic, he says, average is not going to cut it. And a sure-bet path to average is becoming a mix of the many opinions around you.

And so the morning after the Seven of Swords was pulled for me, I chose to believe that it was referring to the self-deception and mental manipulation of this interaction and to finally let go of it fully.

And my reason for sharing it all with is because I think there is a really powerful lesson here (especially for those of us who struggle with a fear of authority and sometimes crippling need for external validation).

Be discerning about who you share your truth with and when. If you are going through a transition, it is perfectly normal to want to talk to people about how you are feeling.

Just ensure that you talk to people who ask good questions instead of imposing answers. Talk to people who respect a whisper of a “no” from you and do not continue to press on. And remember that you don’t need permission to start.

Oh and please, for the love of god, allow yourself to follow your intuition. That’s the biggest thing that I needed to come back to here.

It is so easy to waver and question ourselves when uncertainty is at play. It’s so easy to hear the advice of someone else who has been successful in a similar field and feel like you MUST follow the same path in order for things to work out in your favor. But the truth of the matter is… just because it worked for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you. And vice versa! We are all walking our own paths and there is sincerely no right or wrong way to do it.

So here’s my invitation to you.

Imagine a time traveler peers into your future tells you that every single one of your dreams is going to come true. Actually, more than come true. It will be better than you could ever have imagined.

Now, knowing that, reflect on how you’d hold yourself. Would you listen to the advice of others if you knew that following your own path would lead you to everything you want and more?

When I reflect on this question, my path feels way more clear and invigorating to me.

But there is still a part of me that wonders if I am being stubborn or hard-headed and if there is merit in observing how those who have come before me have done it.

So I wanted to explore how to tell the difference between resistance and misalignment. Because there is a balance to be found between the certainty of trusting your own intuition and the malleability of allowing yourself to transcend your comfort zone.

So I found myself asking, how can you tell if you are experiencing the good type of resistance that comes up before a big breakthrough or if it’s actually misalignment that you should caution against?

Resistance is the fear, procrastination, or self-doubt that arises in proportion to how much something matters to you.

It feels tight and charged, like there’s something on the other side of it. It shows up right before you do the thing you most want to do: create, share, risk exposure. The voice sounds like, “Who do you think you are?” or “You’re not ready yet.”

You feel butterflies, dread, or adrenaline, but also invigoration. And if you take even one small action, it often loosens its grip.

For example, you feel resistance to posting your work online because it feels vulnerable. You fear it because you care deeply about it.

Misalignment, on the other hand, is your intuition saying “this isn’t mine.” It’s when you’re trying to live someone else’s definition of success or forcing a strategy that violates your natural rhythm.

It feels heavy, dull, and draining. There’s no creative spark underneath the discomfort. Even if you push through, it feels lifeless. You’re not scared of it per se. Something about it just feels wrong. And the voice sounds like, “I should do this,” or “Everyone says this is the right way.”

Taking action doesn’t bring relief. It makes you feel more off-course.

For example, you’re offered a “great opportunity” that looks perfect on paper (maybe a promotion, a collaboration, or a new client) but deep down, you feel an immediate heaviness. You tell yourself you should be excited, yet every time you imagine saying yes, your energy drops. That’s misalignment. The discomfort isn’t fear of stepping up (that would be Resistance); it’s your intuition saying, this isn’t your mountain to climb.

I really do believe that following what makes you feel most alive is the pathway through. I don’t believe that it will be easy. I just wrote an essay on choosing your hard. But I do believe that your Muse will confirm you’re on track by how alive you feel when you do it.

Maybe the Seven of Swords wasn’t a warning about another person’s trickery. Maybe the real deceit was the belief that someone else could see my path more clearly than I could. It was an invitation to stop abandoning myself in subtle ways. And a lighthearted reminder that even in our silliest rituals, we are always guided back to our own truth.

There is a quote in the Course of Miracles that goes: “I’ve given everything I see all of the meaning it has for me.” And I come back to that often. Because we are always assigning meaning to everything. It can feel funny and weird and mystical to choose the meaning that we assign to a damn tarot card… but it really is no different than the meaning you assign to a journaling prompt, a Reel that lands on your feed, or any other “sign” from the universe that you choose to interpret in a way that feels true to you.

I don’t believe the magic is inherently in the cards or the advice or the certainty. It’s in the moment you realize… you already know your own truth. And finally just allow yourself to keep following it.

That’s all for today! Thanks for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me this week!

With love,

Char

Prompt: Imagine a time traveler looks you in the eye and tells you, with total certainty, that everything you dream of - the love, the home, the career, the abundance - is already on its way. It’s even better than you can picture. The only condition? You must follow your own path.

How would that change the way you move through your life today?

related posts: how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

Above is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

Hello and welcome or welcome back to Caught Up in Char’s Web!

If you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

This newsletter was inspired by a text I got the other day asking me to write about how John and I meet our needs for solitude in a loving, committed relationship and while living together. As a formerly anxious/avoidant couple, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how to get this need met and it was fun and cathartic to put it into words. If you are someone who has struggled to feel like you have the space and permission to cultivate your relationship to yourself while in a relationship with someone else, this one is for you!

Alright… let’s get into it!!

Can you talk about how you, as someone who needs solitude and alone time, is able to prioritize that while still being in a very committed relationship especially while living with your partner. And in the times you need alone time how do you communicate that without making them feel like they’ve done something wrong or overwhelmed you?

A friend texted me this the other day saying “I have a request for one of your next newsletter chats if you’re up for it” and sent the above.

How to meet your need for solitude in a committed relationship?

Oh this is something I have thought about at length. I am going to respond and John is going to leave his notes so you get both sides of the equation for us!

I once heard a saying about how there’s usually one person in a relationship that’s more afraid of losing the other and one person who’s more afraid of losing themselves. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am afraid of both lol. But I historically had a tendency to fear losing myself in a relationship more than anything else.

I am someone for whom my well of solitude needs to be full in order for me to show up how I want to in my life and in my relationships.

So naturally, I’ve always feared how I would be able to do that in relationship. This has plagued me in the past. I’ve had partners who were deeply offended by my need for solitude and pleaded with me to figure out how to meet that need more quickly, more quietly, and ultimately…. in their presence.

But it wasn’t until I started dating John that I actually cracked the code on this. And it happened in the most surprising of ways.

John and I had a unique onramp into our relationship (if you’re curious, you can read more here). Essentially, we were obsessed with each other but I was incapable of feeling my feelings for him so we ended up in a codependent friendship spiral, “broke up” with each other as friends, and then broke through to the deepest purest most magical love either of us could ever imagine.

But naturally, as someone who does need a fuck ton of solitude, I feared how I would be able to meet it in our newly formed relationship. Even before we lived together, we had to have conversations around how frequently it felt good to have sleepovers and hang out with each other.

Make it low stakes

We were in NYC at the time, so my need for solitude was even higher amidst the chaos of the city. These conversations started early and they weren’t always perfect but we did build a foundation for both of us getting our needs met. We are both people who really admire relationships in which a deep sense of individuality is maintained so that basis helped a lot.

But then about 6 months into us dating, a close family member was sick and we needed to come back to LA to support my family. I remember getting the call from my mom that it was time to come home. I was so anxious about telling John and wondered what would happen to us. Would we do long distance? Would he come visit? How long was I even going to be in LA?

I broke the news anxiously and he looked at me and said, “Char. This is so simple. I love you. I work remotely. Your family needs us. We’re both going to LA.”

I was immediately back at ease.

When we got to thinking through logistics, I called him and said, “Okay here’s the deal. I am getting us a sublet for a month in LA but we’ve only been dating for 6 months and I don’t want to move in with each other circumstantially. I want to make sure we are both ready. So depending on how long we stay in LA, are you open to getting our own apartments out there?”

He said yes, of course.

The stakes were lowered. I just needed to know that we had an out if necessary. I needed to know that we could move at a speed that felt good to both of us instead of being blown by the winds of life’s circumstances.

It’s like when you are contemplating cancelling plans and then the other person tells you that it’s totally fine if you don’t go and it immediately makes you want to go. Not because you are playing games. But because you needed to be reacquainted with your ability to choose.

Within 3 weeks of living with each other, I knew I never wanted to live apart. We of course had our things to work through and needed to figure out how to get into rhythm with each other but it was immediately clear to me that I’d probably never live alone again and I was more than happy about it.

With our foundation laid for how to communicate about my need for solitude when we lived apart, we just continued to build on it in our new home together.

Simple daily rituals go a long way

I wake up earlier than John so that helps. My morning routine consists of me making my lemon water, going on a little walk, and then bringing my coffee and breakfast to my reading nook and writing for 45 mins each morning. I do all of that alone.

I go on long walks alone.

I work out alone.

I go grocery shopping alone.

And John gets his alone time similarly - walking, working, driving, when I am hanging out with friends.

It hasn’t always been easy. For example, when I joined my first gym in LA, John wanted to come and I was iffy on it. I kind of wanted it to be my own space. I tried holding out on that but it just didn’t feel right. It actually felt better for us to be able to go to the gym together sometimes (esp bc it had a cold plunge and sauna and social element to it).

We worked through that by laying out all of our needs.

We also do a weekly check in where we go on a walk and answer the following 6 questions:

1. What are 3 things you grateful for in life right now?

2. What are 3 things you appreciate about the other person?

3. What are 3 things you appreciate about the relationship?

4. Is there anything you need to clear?

5. How can I support and make you feel loved this week?

6. What are you looking forward to?

And then we added the following:

1. Do you need solitude this week? If yes, when? We schedule it then. (ie John goes out to dinner with a friend one night or Char goes on a solo date)

The deepest, truest answer… let yourself be seen

But here’s the main thing that ultimately allows me to feel completely fulfilled in both my relationship with myself and my relationship with John without feeling like they’re competing with each other.

I am completely, utterly, unabashedly, sometimes disgustingly… myself with John! There is nothing I hide from him and nothing he keeps from me.

Besides going to the bathroom with the door closed, there is nothing that I would do alone that I feel like I couldn’t do in front of him. There is no performance.

In fact, the only performance that I put on is that I am my very weirdest self in front of him. John has turned up the dial on my silliness beyond measure and vice versa. And the vulnerability that we’ve built in letting all parts of ourselves be seen in front of each other has actually made both of us feel like we can fully recharge in one another’s company.

See, in relationships prior, I was performing a bit. There was a Charlotte that I’d put on in the relationship - and it was still me! But there were absolutely things that I would never let the other person see and therefore I needed a lot more solitude to ring out the metaphorical sponge.

Not with John though! And that is the thing that has surprised me.

Getting to be my full, silly, unabashed self has allowed me to go from someone who could barely tolerate multiple sleepovers in a row to someone who is sincerely upset when we spend a single night sleeping apart.

So to answer the question of “How to meet your need for solitude in a committed relationship?”… well, put succinctly: let yourself be seen and communicate openly about your needs.

The vulnerability takes time to build up to. It was through many trips together and little moments of testing how far I could go without feeling embarrassed that we ultimately arrived at being our most silly weird selves in front of each other without losing any of the sexiness. I def thought in the past that I needed to be more of a buttoned up & put together “lady” in order to maintain my femininity in a relationship.

And then I learned that there is nothing more intimate than letting all parts of you be seen. And in return, getting to be a first hand witness to the full humanity of another.

So if you are in a newer relationship and you are still trying to figure out ways to meet these needs, my advice would be to have open conversations about both of your needs for solitude. And make it so clear that the intention is to ensure you can show up to the relationship as your best self. It’s not about the other person. And second, evaluate how comfortable you feel showing your full self to the other. Know that it takes time to build up to full vulnerability. I was certainly more polished in front of John in the earlier stages of getting to know each other. But ask yourself if there is a baseline of comfortability that you think will build over time. And more so than anything, make sure that you are in a relationship in which both parties genuinely want the needs of the other to be met.

I wanted this to include both my perspective and John’s. So I asked him to read what I’d written and write his notes down as well. Here’s what John has to say about meeting needs for solitude in a relationship between a (formerly) anxious/avoidant couple.

John’s Note:

Wow so beyond grateful to be featured here in THE Caught up in Char’s Web Newsie!!! (long time reader here!!!) Thinking back on exactly how far we’ve come in this department is a beautiful one to reminisce on and wasn’t always as easy as it feels right now. And I think that’s a testament to the commitment we both share in actively choosing to be the best lovers and partners we can to one another.

At its core, once we broke through the codependent cycle in our friendship, I believe that we both entered into our romantic relationship from a deep place of gratitude of GETTING and CHOOSING to be there in a whole new way. We both knew that we were both OK and could meet all of our needs on our own and yet actively wanting to be with each other and knowing that we get to show up and meet some of each other’s needs in a way that feels healthy. (that’s part of the fun of being in a romantic relationship!)

I remember early on in dating reflecting on our past and knowing that I tended to skew more anxious and you more avoidant in relationships. And I said to myself, I’m grateful to be here, getting to experience a deeply beautiful love with truly my best friend in the entire world, we are not perfect but I’m going to do my best to show up and be a stand for healing love in this new dynamic. That meant actively choosing to be a steady, stable, secure, grounded presence without the twinges of anxiety or codependent energy permeating a place they were no longer welcome. That meant honoring your needs for solitude and knowing deeply that we are good. There may have been moments of feeling anxiety early on, but choosing to show up in the way that I wanted to was not only powerful, but also deeply healing for my own attachment wounds and I think for you as well.

Over time, it’s simply become easier and easier to meet each other’s need for solitude (and otherwise) in a way that truly feels effortless. As we continue to deepen and shed the layers between us and allow ourselves to fully be seen (there’s literally no more layers lol), we also deepen the strength of the secure bond that we’ve built. From that place, it’s very easy to give each other the gentle loving space we both need when we need it. And you said it so well, the coolest part is recognizing that because of the truly raw, naked openness we’ve created with one another, we just don’t even need as much solitude as we once may have… I’m grateful for all that we’ve built together and hope this reflection is insightful to someone reading! Thanks for having me on the newsie <3 - John

He is perfect. That’s all for today! Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me! I will catch you here again soon.

With love,

Char (& John!!)

related posts: how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

If you are new here, my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

We are well into the New Years resolution season, which can make you feel like you need to fix everything about yourself by Dec 31, 2026. And truthfully, I love this time of year for the reflective mindset that it can induce. I am someone who always wants to talk about your intentions and what is most exciting in your life right now. But I get burnt the F out on new years resolution and the manic intensity around it. So I thought it would be timely to share these reflections on what it really means to make an impact.

Instead of just focusing on what I want to “do,” in this upcoming year, this newsletter is a reflection on the type of person I want to “be” more broadly in my life.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

“I don’t mean to sound egotistical, but I’ve been noticing that I’m feeling really nice lately,” my friend said to me on the phone.

I laughed. I am pretty sure being nice to others and acknowledging it does not make you egotistical. That is the most you thing I’ve ever heard - I told him. He laughed too.

He shared that he’s just found it a lot easier to access his innate love of humanity. Instead of needing to will himself to see the good in people, it’s showing itself to him loud and clear. The normal annoyances are reading to him like sweet quirks.

Wow. Wish I could relate, I said back to him. I’m feeling the opposite.

Just before this call, I was checking out at Trader Joes and observing my patience wear thin as the cashier told her colleague who was bagging my groceries about her Halloween costume. For the love of god, I thought to myself. Is this woman incapable of chatting and ringing me up at the same time?

I watched her vigilantly as she held a bag of carrots in her hands and paused while throwing her head back in laughter, finishing her sentence casually before scanning my veg through the register.

Does this woman not know that I am already 5 minutes late for my friendly weekend catch-up call? Jeez.

I know exactly why this was coming up. It’s because my grip was firm. I was latching tightly onto my goals and it was making me painfully aware of the gap between where I am now and where I want to be. Time felt SCARCE.

I’ve spent the past 10 years working on questioning and redefining what success means to me. Moving away from societally prescribed narratives about what it means to “make it.” And allowing myself to get to know myself really well outside the bounds of what I “should” be doing with my life and time.

In the process, I learned how to create without being asked to. I made art without anyone giving me permission. I started projects for the sole purpose of meeting my own needs. And I’ve gotten some real clarity about what lights me up and what I want to spend a good chunk of my time and change building.

This has made me feel ambitious and driven. And that plopped me right back into a questioning of what ”success” means to me in this current season of my life. And wooowweeeeeee did it bring up a lot of shit.

I felt terrified that I was not going to make enough money. And the stakes felt higher now than they did before. I am 27 and I want to marry John and buy a house and have babies.

Isn’t it funny that I spent so many years showing myself that I don’t need to follow the beaten path only to come back and march right down it?

I think that is real freedom though. Giving yourself the opportunity to question why you are wanting something and then decide for yourself. It reminds me of when I moved to New York. I always wanted to want to move to New York - that’s what anyone worth their salt seemed to do post-grad. But truly, I was terrified of it. Conveniently, the pandemic pushed me back to LA for 2 years and by the time I actually moved to NYC, I wanted it with every part of me.

The 10 years that I’ve spent questioning why I want the things that I do are not wasted even if I land right back in the path of what everyone else seems to want. But the difference that I really want to make is staying connected to my why.

Why do I want to be a coach? I asked out loud. Because I fucking love the way that it makes me and others feel. I want to give to others the gift that’s been so graciously given to me by the coaches and therapists that I’ve worked with.

Okay excellent. Then came the conversation of defining enough for me. How much money/resources do I actually need to build the life that I want to with John? Am I on a path that will actually lead me there? That’s where some more of the practical questioning comes in and the truth there is that we do have a plan. And we are figuring it out.

Now, I could speak directly to the part of me that is couching some of this ambition in the name of wanting to make an impact. Okay, well what does it mean to you to make an impact?, my friend asked.

He went on to tell me a story about the most influential man in his life. Let’s call him Jerry. Jerry has shaped, shifted, and formed many of my friend’s core beliefs through the conversations that they’ve had and the way that Jerry shows up. His impact has been immense, starting communities 40 years ago that are still intact today. And with all of that, you can’t google Jerry. Or you can but nothing will come up. Yet, his impact and legacy have been so much richer than many many of the people that you could quickly Google.

He asked me to reflect on the impact that someone like my coach Kat has made on my life. I am immediately flooded with gratitude. It’s ineffable really. I will never be able to put into words the metamorphosis that I went through with Kat’s listening ears and loving words. Each person is an entire universe, my friend said. Holding in mind the impact that Kat has made on you, now think about the hundreds of other people (thousands probably), that she’s done the same for. How do you even measure that?

And now think of your few clients, he said to me. You are not at the beginning of this. You are well along your path. Keep going, Char. You are going to figure it out.

We need to be pragmatic, of course. Bills need to be paid and groceries procured. I wouldn’t be a good coach, friend, or entrepreneur if I was scraping by month to month. I know that. So I am not going to put myself in that situation. I have other streams of income and businesses underway to keep me afloat.

But this conversation was a real reminder of what matters.

We laughed again about the contrast between my friend feeling nice lately and me being ready to take out the cashier at TJs for taking too long to ring me up. He gently and lovingly reminded me of the impact that I’ve had on him. There’s a Buddhist concept called emptiness, which essentially means that we are the amalgamation of all the good in the world that has been given and done to us. So the love and kindness that you’ve poured into me over the years, Char, is now part of me. I am just a reflection of you, he said. We are all reflections of each other.

I thought about The Egg. A video that I watched on a retreat recently.

The Egg is about a 40 year old man who is suddenly taken out by a car. He lands squarely in the afterlife and is greeted by a god. His god. This vague genderless, authority-figure looking person-god who is helping guide him into the next realm. We call him the blob. The blob shows this newly dead man around the afterworld and introduces himself to the person that he will become in his next lifetime. A Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.

We can go back in time? The man asked the blob.

Why yes!

But then what happens if two incarnations of me overlap or meet each other?

Happens all the time!, the blob says to him.

The world stops for a moment. It clicks.

The blob goes on affirming for the man that every single human he’s ever encountered has been himself. In this universe, we are all re-incarnations of each other. We are all made from the same egg. Every person you’ve every victimized has been yourself. Every person you’ve ever been kind towards has been yourself.

You feel your brainwaves slow down. The mini YouTube-induced LSD trip kicks into full gear.

You look around slowly at the faces beside you. Every single person is an incarnation of you. Of each other. We are all made from the same cloth. Each incarnation lives to fulfill its lessons, to learn, grow, and mature. And eventually, when enough lifetimes have been carried out by this one person, we become gods ourselves and then we enter into a different realm - one that would be futile in explaining to human ears.

If we are all reflections of each other, how does that change what it means to make an impact?

For me, it immediately takes away the isolation that comparison induces. We get to see each person for who they are and the uniqueness of the lessons that they are learning in this go around. And in so doing, we have more of an appreciation for our own lessons and life path.

On the retreat, we were asked to imagine that each of us was freshly entering the afterlife at the end of our time, and to write about the following question:

What did I come here this time to learn?

Here’s what I think I’d say.

Me: God? Mr. God? What do you want me to call you? I was raised on the West Coast so I have no manors.

God: Still trying to charm with your sarcastic and self-deprecating sense of humor I see. Such a middle child you are.

Me: Gotta get attention somehow, I said. Where the hell am I? And why am I here?

God: You’ve entered the Great Beyond, The Great Unknown, where everything returns to its original state. I’m here to help you process your life and the lessons you’ve learned.

Me: Oh wow okay. So this is the dead version of the Jedidiah Jenkins retreat I went on?

God: Sure, Charlotte, if that helps you understand this better.

Me: Hmm okay so reflecting on why I, Charlotte, incarnated as a middle child, daughter of Michelle and Andy, sister of Rae and Travis, wife of John, mother of my 3 babies, friend of many, coach, writer, entrepreneur, grandmother, student. Those are all titles that my ego recognized me by.

But who was I really?

What did I come here to learn?

I came into my body as a funny and joyful young girl who loved to talk and play and draw.

My laissez faire childhood made me crave more structure and I found my footing through a perfectionistic fixation on grades and my body. Straight A’s and an eating disorder later, my lessons started to focus on how to restructure my sense of accomplishment and reward.

I became a lot more free overtime and then I had to learn how to let myself be seen.

At first, this looked like trying to show myself to the world and that stirred up a whole lot of ego and shit. But with years of practice and a better understanding of how connected we all really are, I learned that I much preferred doing things that resulted in “thank you” rather than “good job.”

My lessons shifted towards learning how to contribute to the world in my own special way without caring so much of how people perceived of me.

I learned how to love much more deeply and playfully. I learned how to let go and make art.

But really, the word learned is tripping me up as I try to recount all of these lessons. Because I am not sure that I learned them as much as I allowed myself to remember.

My pen stopped.

I can’t pretend to know all of the lessons that I will learn in this life. But taking a birds eye view was helpful in getting to see where I am right now. I am at the part of my life where I am learning how to let myself be seen without demanding it.

I am at the part where I have things I want to prove to myself that I can do.

And so the best way that I’ve found for myself to allow my ambition to thrive without wiping me out is this.

Take a bigger step back.

Look at how far I’ve come in 3, 6, 12 months. And look at how all of that new information is bringing me closer to a vision.

A friend told me the other day that he knows pretty clearly what he wants his life and career to look like at 40. That’s in 11 years from now for him. I took a deeper breath. I’d been thinking too much about what I need my life to look like by 32. Giving myself 8 more years gives me a lot more space to feel hopeful that my dreams are indeed possible.

But more so than anything, this reflection helps me remember who it is that I want to be by the end of my life. I can’t spiritually bypass or skip over my own lessons. I’ve gotta scrape my own knees. But taking a broader look at the lessons that I’m learning now allows me to be a lot kinder to myself in the process. It allows me to see how this chapter fits into the rest. And most importantly, it reminds me of what it means to me to make an impact.

When I think about the moment in which I inevitably will meet my “blob,” I want to feel with my full chest that I lived a life of devotion, adventure, intimacy, growth, compassion, abundance, generosity, and lighthearted fun. So in the midst of moments of questioning who I am and where I am going, that’s what I come back to.

If you are struggling with this push/pull between drive and contentment (or have any existential angst in general), I highly highly highly recommend watching this video and answering the following prompt:

“Remember what you were meant to learn in this lifetime.”

That’s all for today! Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me.

With love,

Char

related posts: how I found my one, no one cares what you do (and why that’s the best thing ever), scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of Maddy of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

Lately I’ve been rethinking spirituality. Not in a “religion” way necessarily, but in a “where do I place my trust?” way. This started, weirdly, with Santa: what we lose when the myth falls apart, and what we replace it with. Achievement. Control. Productivity.
This is an essay about holiday spirit, faith, and learning how to let magic grow up without disappearing.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

What if it’s not just your belief in Santa Claus that’s corrupted when finding out that he’s not real?

Most kids experience a feeling of betrayal, wonder lost, and growing up upon realizing that Santa has not and never will be shooting down your chimney again.

It usually happens around 6-8 years old. And I’ve started to wonder if this is the moment in which many kids stop believing in much more than just Santa.

Is this the moment in which the world feels small? In which life feels fractured and unsafe?

Is this the moment in which we realize our parents aren’t always trustworthy narrators? And that life is less sparkly, exciting, and magical than we once thought?

Whether it’s finding out that Santa isn’t real for you or something else, there is usually a moment in our childhood in which the sky becomes wallpaper that starts peeling back. We start realizing that this whole life on earth thing, is not what we thought it would be.

If Santa was just a made-up character, what else is made up?

Are the rules made up? Are our values made up?

And if we don’t have the mystic magic of Santa to bring us gifts for Christmas, then what else do we worship? Capitalism? Money? Materialism?

As kids, we go from the wonder of how did Santa know that I wanted this to watching YouTube vlogs of rich kids doing a Christmas haul, revealing the $2000 Macbook that their parents (formerly Santa) got them as a “stocking stuffer.”

It didn’t dawn on me until recently that this may well have been a moment in which I lost touch with a belief in something bigger and thereby relinquished trust into other unholy systems of control. Striving for success. Wanting more. Needing to look a certain way to feel a certain way.

Looking for “magic” in places where ordinary magic cannot be found.

But if I go back to a 7-year-old version of me and really feel into what it was like to believe that Santa was real, I can reconnect with a sense of wonder. It wasn’t just about the gifts under the tree.

It was about this sense of mystery. It felt alive. It was about the camaraderie that it forged between my siblings and I. Putting out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. Feeling seen by something magical, something larger than life.

It was really the only time I felt like everyone in my family and everyone around me shared a belief in something bigger that had its own personal relationship with me.

Santa knew what I wanted for Christmas. Santa knew me. He saw me. We had our own connection through the communication that would take place in my mind in between the time that gifts were delivered one year and cookies were eaten, to the same time it happened the following year.

So what is lost when a kid comes to realize that Santa was never real?

Well, I think it’s a belief in ordinary magic. I think I stopped looking for the signs of someone or something beyond me having my back.

But most importantly, I think a part of me gave more priority to my belief in discipline, drive, will, and work ethic than to a belief that I am supported. That the world wants me to thrive.

And I don’t think I’m alone in that.

It made me feel like in order to touch magic, I need to do psychedelics or talk to mediums or people in society that are in touch with other realms. That us plebeians have no connection to anything beyond our meat suits.

I recently came across an article about how to tell kids that Santa isn’t real without corrupting their world view. And here’s what it says.

How to tell a kid Santa isn’t real

Take your kid out to a really nice meal or special event - perhaps a high tea, or a delicately planned picnic.

Praise them. Acknowledge them. Tell them that you have witnessed how much they have grown and matured in the past year. That they have forged new friendships and shown exemplary kindness. That they have grown to a place in which you want to initiate them into the Santa Claus club. Ask them if they want to join. If they accept, you tell them this.

Santa Claus does not exist outside of you in the way that you may think. That spirit of generosity and excitement that you feel leading up to the holidays? Guess what buddy? That’s all within you. As part of the Santa Club, you now have that spirit of generosity and kindness fully in you. And so if you are ready to join the club, you get to do it and here’s how:

Choose someone in your life who you want to give a nice gift to. Think of something that they need and get creative with it. Give it to them secretly without ever revealing yourself as the giver.

In the article, the little boy choose his neighbor. His neighbor was a grouchy woman who yelled at him and his brother for playing in her yard. But he noticed that she went out to get the mail everyday barefoot. So the little boy decided to get her a pair of slippers for her cold feet. Him and his mom hid in the bushes one day, doing a recon mission to figure out her shoe size and chose medium. The pair of slippers was procured and left on her porch the following morning. Again, the little boy hid with his mom watching her unwrap the surprise gift and the delight that the little boy felt made him believe in something much better than the mystical Santa Claus. It made him believe in his own goodness and generosity.

Over the years, he came up with the most beautiful gift ideas for strangers all over the place and when it came time for his little brother to join the Santa club, he was a big part of the celebration.

I read this in complete awe of how this type of delivery could change a kids perception of Santa not being real into something profoundly spiritual. A moment of truly getting to choose the values that this little person will stand by for a long time to come.

A moment of integrating his belief into something within him rather than something outside of him. Christmas and Santa don’t lose their magic for this kid. They transform into something much more profound.

Reading that, I realized the Santa problem was never really about Santa. It was about where we place our faith.

The Santa Club doesn’t “ruin” the myth. It upgrades it. It tells a kid: the magic you thought lived out there actually lives in here. In attention, in generosity, in the feeling of being part of something good. And I think I’ve spent a decent chunk of adulthood trying to remember that.

This story made me want to shake off the dust on the question of “what does spirituality mean to me in this chapter of life?”

Another way of asking that question (albeit a much cheasier way) is do you believe the universe has your back?

And my answer has waxed and waned over the years.

Without an out-of-box God to believe in, I made up my own. The God of Good Grades. And the God of Calorie Burning.

I was a devout worshipper of these gods. So much so that I burnt out and eventually had to break with my own made up church. I love reading about people leaving the church because that’s what this felt like - an earth shattering but hopeful realization that my systems were fraudulent and there is an even deeper truth to the world that I could find for myself.

It didn’t happen over night, but eventually I did bid adieu to the gods of Good Grades and Calorie Burning. And a lot of soul searching happened on the other side. I enrolled myself in a 200 hour yoga teacher training and took every theology, philosophy, psychology, and history class I could get my hands on.

That chapter of life, to this day, is still one of my favorites. It was also one of the hardest. I felt socially isolated and anxious. But it was a profound period of my peripheral vision expanding to encompass much more truth to the world than I was previously capable of seeing.

I read Michael Singer to learn about the little voice in my head that never shuts up. And how I am not that voice. I am an observer of it.

Tara Brach taught me about Radical Acceptance. I learned that there was sincerely a world in which I could accept myself fully.

JD Krishnamurti showed me how to stop pedestalizing authority figures in Freedom From the Known.

My own teacher, Kat McGee, taught me how to label my mind so that I wasn’t so attached to believing every thought that I had as true. I learned how to identify my own needs and turn to myself lovingly instead of making myself so wrong.

I developed a daily meditation practice with teachers like Sam Harris, Sarah Blondin, a smidge of Joe Dispenza, Sharon Salzberg, Eckart Tolle and more.

I practiced yoga daily and felt connected to my body.

I had a community of people who were all interested in talking about mindfulness, awareness, and spirituality.

And while the bones of that work are still in tact, I have come to recognize that in recent days, I’m missing a more spiritually connected part of myself.

I learned how to relinquish control and increase my present awareness. And then upon reintegrating into the world, hitting my mid twenties and becoming even more focused on my career growth, I needed to make some more space for my ambition and drive to come back online.

And that felt incredibly empowering too.

There is always a balance to be found between personal responsibility and a belief that something larger than you has your back.

A simultaneous letting go and allowing yourself to move forward.

And so with all of that, I have found myself in a place in which my ambition, drive, and sense of personal responsibility have knocked my belief - in something larger, something more connected, something that I can relinquish a bit of trust to - off kilter.

Too much spirituality and trust in the beyond can lead to mania.

Too much discipline and personal responsibility can lead to depression.

And finding a balance between letting go and moving forward is a journey that I will likely always be walking towards.

So in this season, I am swinging the pendulum back a bit from discipline and drive towards connectedness and allowing.

Lately I’ve been asking: where am I looking for magic now? Where am I still acting like support only counts if it’s measurable, earned, optimized, proven?

Because the truth is: I don’t want to live in a world where the only “real” things are my willpower and my output. That’s not an adulthood that I want to participate in.

My word for 2026 is allow.

Which, in plain English, means: I’m practicing trust again. I’m letting my effort matter and letting life meet me halfway. I’m trying to live like I’m supported, not because a man in a red suit is coming down the chimney. But because I’ve seen what happens when I become part of the magic myself.

Maybe that’s the real grown-up version of Santa: not “someone will save me,” but “I’m not alone here and I can participate in the goodness.”

So I’m curious: what’s your relationship with spirituality now? And what would it look like to rejoin the Santa Club in your own life, in the form of attention, generosity, ritual, and a little more trust?

What I love about spirituality is that it continues to grow, shift, and evolve with you. You get to define what it means in each chapter of life. I urge you to ask yourself this question:

1. What does spirituality mean for me right now?

And write down some thoughts. It’s so easy to go by and not think about these things. But when we bring to awareness our own definitions of what we believe in, we feel much more connected to ourselves and our lives.

As always, feel free to comment on this, reply to me directly, or if you want to talk about this more in depth 1:1 convos are always welcomed.

It feels really good to be dusting the shelf off this old book case. I can’t wait to see what books and ideas and humans come my way this year through a deeper and more connected questioning of it all.

Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me this week!

With so much love and gratitude,

Char

related posts: scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of Maddy of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

This is for every creative person who feels torn between making what’s true and making what performs. It’s about how letting go of being liked is often the exact thing that finally lets your work land. It explores the tension between the part of you that craves intimacy and truth and the part of you that wants reach, scale, and results… and how they can stop fighting each other.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

Here’s the hardest truth every creative eventually runs into: No one owes your creativity attention. People meet it when it meets them. And the moment you stop creating to be cared about, your work finally becomes something others can connect to.

If you’ve ever felt ignored, overlooked, or like your work should be getting more attention than it does… you’re not wrong for wanting that. You are human and want to be accepted and adored.

But there is a good chance you are running up against a little thing I like to call… creative entitlement.

There’s a quiet belief almost all creatives hold at the beginning:

“If I share my truth, the right people will find me. They’ll get it. They’ll care.”

Which is not wrong. But it can be misleading. And here’s why. People don’t have the bandwidth to care about your life story unless it gives them something: clarity, comfort, connection, a mirror, a handrail.

And that may not happen right away. It can take time to create work that resonates or for your work to find its audience. And that can be super fucking frustrating. You wake up day in and day out and are committed to expressing yourself only to be met with… crickets.

A natural response to that is to want to change your art or find a way to create that other people will listen. But here is where the real breakthrough happens:

When you stop creating with the expectation that something will come from it and you stay devoted to sharing your truth. Because when you do that, you stay in it for long enough to get really fucking good. And through your commitment to the work itself for the sake of your joy, you do end up naturally creating in a way that is more resonant.

My biggest (and most freeing) realization of 2025 has been that no one fucking cares what I do.

Not strangers on the internet. Not casual readers. Not anyone outside my closest circle. And they shouldn’t!! They absolutely shouldn’t. Why would they have the capacity to care about my life arc, my career background, my inner process?

Unless… I share a truth that brushes up against their own.

And that is when I realized: I was not creatively blocked. I was entitled.

The word entitlement has such a negative connotation. But I don’t actually think creative entitlement is all bad.

In fact, in the beginning of embracing your own creativity, you need to become MORE creatively entitled. Meaning, you need to believe that you are allowed to share your voice, your vision, your story, with the world. That belief is crucial to getting going.

But somewhere along the way, the creative entitlement that initially gave you the permission to start can be co-opted by a desire to be seen. All of the sudden, that entitlement can slip into feeling like other people owe you their attention. And the truth of the matter is… they don’t. And that’s not why we create in the first place.

Liz Gilbert says that when someone tells her they want to write a book “to help people,” she replies. Oh please don’t! Because people can feel the heaviness of your desire to save them. They don’t want your help. Not like that!

Gilbert says that she would much rather someone write a book for their own joy and entertainment than to help people.

I had to scrape my own knees in this recently. I started to tell myself that I needed to learn how to package my art in a way that can help others. And I am not ENTIRELY wrong for asking that question.

But it needs to be kept in check. When I looked deeper, I found that this entitlement was coming from two different parts of me that are constantly competing for center stage.

1. The Intimacy Part

She’s the pure artist. The candlelit, diary-writing, “don’t make me commercialize my soul” girl. She’s deeply probing and feminine and wants truth over everything. She’s terrified of becoming watered down by capitalism.

2. The Scale/Growth Part

She’s incredibly devoted. Rips me out of bed. Gets my butt in the chair. Strategic. Disciplined. Practical. She wants reach. She wants distribution. She wants fucking results.

These two have been at odds with each other for as long as I have been conscious. Each thinking the other is abominably pathetic.

But I think this tension is widely common. If you make anything creative at all (art, content, business ideas), I would venture to guess that you have felt some of this too.

One part wants to protect your soul. One part wants you to actually ship the damn thing. And both parts think the other is ruining everything.

But here’s where the breakthrough happened:

When I actually sat with both of these parts individually for long enough to really hear them out, I realized something wild…

They both want the same damn thing!!!!! They want to offer value. They want to help people. They want to connect. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, they want to enjoy the process.

The Intimacy Part wants to express something true that lands. The Growth Part wants that truth to actually reach people.

These parts are not enemies. They’re teammates who forgot they’re on the same team. And once I finally came to terms with the fact that no one owes me their attention so I may as well just continue speaking my truth anyway, I finally felt… free.

I stopped creating to be liked. I stopped wondering if people thought I was cringe. I stopped fighting the imaginary audience in my head. And instead, I started focusing on one thing:

“How can I make art that matters to me?”

Instead of “do they like me?” I ask, “is this helping me process something?” And even more importantly, am I having fun making this?

And HOLY SHIT creating from that place is so much easier.

If you feel stuck, it’s probably not because you’re not talented. It’s probably because your work is packaged for approval instead of utility.

Utility doesn’t just mean usefulness in the LinkedIn sense of every fucking post that reads, “HeRe aRe 10 StEps To BeComE thE MoST InsuFferablE pErSoN EvEr…”

Utility means giving others:

• Emotional permission

• Language for something they couldn’t name

• Awe-inducing clarity and connection

• Truth that disrupts them

• Relief that they’re not crazy or alone or dumb

That is the reframe that changed everything for me. Stop creating to impress people. And start creating because you can’t NOT. You have to create like you have to scratch an itching mosquito bite. There is an urge within you that must be expressed. And when you do it from that place, you do ultimately end up helping others.

Not because you are some benevolent saint, by the way. But rather because through your own expression of the truth, your voice naturally find others who speak the same language.

So if you see any of this “creative entitlement” in yourself, this sense of “more people should be watching me and liking me and telling me I’m a good girl”…. well first of all YOU ARE A GOOD GIRL. And you are doing a great job! And also… DROP IT. Stop trying to make people like you!!!! And start allowing yourself to create with the reckless abandon that is given when you are reconnected to your innate desire to provide something meaningful to the world.

Money, likes, followers, etc. They are all just currencies. Forms of energy. When you create something worthy, people give up their money in exchange for what you have to offer. When you offer someone value in the form of entertainment, safety, resonance, or any other benefit, they follow your shit because you make them feel less alone.

This shift has been so helpful for getting out of my own way. Like even in writing this, if I stop wondering what you are thinking about me as a writer right now and just focus on distilling this insight into its best possible form for it to be useful to you and fun for me, it makes my life and message so much easier to disseminate.

Okay I think I drank too much coffee today but I am so happy to be here and writing this because I really do think this will be helpful for you to hear! And you know what is so cool… if it isn’t helpful, you will just keep scrolling and my mission was already accomplished because I will admit… I didn’t write this for you! I wrote this for me. For a part of me that is still trying to figure out if I need to package my work to make it more useful for other people or if I can just keep leaning into the joy of my craft and trust that the better I get at self-expression, the easier it will be for me to find my audience of resonance. And the best part of that is, it helps me take feedback less personally when I am asking “am I having fun?” versus of “wahhhh do they like me?”

Once you recognize that no one owes you anything as an artist or entrepreneur, it gives you the freedom to keep creating for your own utility and when you do that authentically, you ultimately end up providing people with something worth giving a shit about. But even more importantly, you learn to get over yourself. And to just have fun with the process.

And YOU GUYS. Getting over myself may just be the best thing that I’ve ever done!!!!!!!

That’s all for today! Thanks for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me! I will catch you here soon.

With love,

Char

related posts: scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of Maddy of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post a combo of recipes & personal reflections that inspire you to have better conversations with yourself and others.

This newsletter is about how I went from friendzoning John for a year to falling deeply in love with him. This is a story about what happens when two people are open and ready to heal their relational patterns. It’s about the difference between needing a relationship and wanting one. It’s about how I almost missed the healthiest love of my life by trying to protect myself from pain and loss. If you see yourself in any of that, this story is for you.

I hesitated to share this one because it is personal and about my relationship, which people tell you not to do. But I wanted to send this out because this is the type of story that a younger version of me needed to hear.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

Someone asked me a while ago to write a Substack about romantic relationships. The request stemmed from being on a trip with John and I and observing our love. If you know me or even just read this newsletter, you will know that John and I are very obsessed with each other. But getting to where we are now was not a given. It required time, patience, and dedication to ourselves and to each other. So I thought it could be fun to write about our story because it really was due to exposure to stories like ours in a crucial moment that I was able to allow myself to step fully into this love. So I write this in hopes that it may offer a glimmer of that for you.

John and I met at a mutual friend’s birthday party. We’d both heard about each other before and were excited to meet. It was at the end of the event that we finally made our way to each other. It was like we were waiting for the perfect moment to have our first conversation.

The first question that John asked me in getting to know me was “What’s the dream?” I remember being taken by the question alone. It was so much more gentle and refreshing than “what do you do for work?” And yet, I still gave him my elevator pitch for where I saw my life headed. And truly, I have no idea what I said because it was such a bullshit 30 second spiel. I returned the question to him and he answered by saying that to that point, he had been lucky enough several times to be in the right place at the right time to meet people that he’d get to collaborate with on cool projects that have opened doors for him that he didn’t previously know were possible. He’d worked on projects that he cared deeply about with good people and his dream was just to continue being in the right place at the right time to continue down that path.

I was stunned by his answer. I had no idea that we were allowed to answer in a way that was so hopeful but beautifully ambiguous. We continued talking for a long time - exchanging our favorite podcasts and things that we were curious about. I walked away thinking “wow what a beautiful fucking human. I can’t wait to get to know him better.” And he walked away and said out loud to our now mutual friend Josh in the car,

“If I ever live in the same city as that girl Charlotte, I have to take her on a date.”

And then he did move to the city! Which he will now admit was in part because he wanted to get to know me and a few other friends he’d met recently better. And better we got to know each other, indeed. From the second he moved to the city, we started spending all of our time together. We went on long walks and texted constantly when we were apart. We bonded over our striking similarity in affinity for the same sad British female singers. We’d lay in the park with kombucha and a speaker for hours on end talking and listening to music and writing down a list of our favorite questions on a shared Apple Note (which was later turned into CANDID). The euphoria of getting to know John is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I wanted to unwrap his every cell and know his every waking and sleeping thought.

But here is the heartbreaking truth. I was completely incapable of seeing, feeling, or recognizing my own feelings for him. Contrary to the description of so clearly falling in love that I’ve laid out just before this, I was telling myself all along that John was just my best friend.

I knew he had feelings for me and he confirmed that after a 3 mile walk home in the dark together after a party in which he asked nervously, “could you ever see our relationship going in a romantic direction?” To which I tragically responded, “not right now.”

I woke up the next morning with the worst feeling in my stomach. It would be almost a year before we started dating after that morning but this was the moment that things started to shift for me. I remember taking the train that day to my friend Maddy’s house in Connecticut with her. I told her all about the bizarre sadness that I was feeling. I was so sure that I didn’t want to date John but the thought of not getting to be his #1 best friend or first text when anything happened was crushing to me. It sounds selfish because it was selfish. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too.

I wanted emotional intimacy without emotional risk. That configuration doesn’t work.

And so began the investigation of what the fuck was wrong with me. We continued spending time together and tried very hard to put in place healthy boundaries that would exist in a male/female relationship between two single heterosexual individuals. However, that back fired horribly and if any of you live in NYC and happened to see us cuddling in the rain until the wee hours of the morning as “just friends,” no you didn’t!

There were many factors that were blinding me from my feelings for John but one of them was his desperation for being in a relationship with me. For personal reasons that I will not dig into here, John was not just looking for romantic love. He was hunting for it with a clawing attachment. And in the intensity of his search and its directedness at me, I felt like there was no space for me to discern if I liked him in that way or not. There was no room for me to explore because I already knew how he felt and it made the relationship feel like there was so much at stake. I said to him once, “I am afraid that if I kiss you, we will then get married.” And honestly, I wasn’t wrong!! I just wasn’t ready to go all in in the way that he was and not having my own wiggle room to suss out my feelings was making me want to go in the opposite direction.

We tried for months to continue our friendship. We’d take a week off of speaking to each other and then cave from the missing. And then he’d hurt again. And eventually he called me and told me that he needed to take more serious space. He didn’t know how long he needed. But he needed more time. We’d started a business together with two of our other best friends and had to navigate how to continue operating the business without speaking. We chose which events we were going to go to and which to avoid. We divided up and sold all of the concert tickets we had bought with each other. It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced.

I missed him like I was missing a part of myself. In his absence, the following realizations hit me like a slow rolling truck that I was too sad to move away from:

1. I’d never felt more beautiful than when held in John’s gaze

2. I’d never felt more comfortable around another person

3. No one makes me laugh as hard as John

4. There was not one other person I could spend as much time with without getting sick of them as John

5. I started to recognize that I would be jealous if he had a girlfriend

6. And that I didn’t just want to be his best friend. I wanted to be his everything

So, yeah. Those realizations came in firmly. But so did the work and healing I did around who I’d been conditioned to believe my partner should be.

I had a vision in my head of a type of a masculinity that reminded me of my dad (hi Freud!), which John did not exude. John is more gentle and subtle in his masculinity but once I took off the glasses through which I’d spent my life looking, I was able to see his strength for what it really is. Steady, firm, unyielding, confident, warm, constant. I got to see a different type of masculinity and just personhood in general and recognize that he is not who I thought I’d end up with, but better. He is exactly what I need.

I spent months writing and walking and talking and exploring to try to get to the bottom of my hurt. And ultimately, I arrived at a place of true surrender. A surrender to not knowing if and when he’d ever want to be in my life again. I missed him dearly but I became okay with the uncertainty because he’d already taught me so much about myself.

And I felt much more than just sadness in our time apart. I was frustrated and mad. Sometimes I wished he would just “man up” and swallow his feelings so we could be friends again. I thought of guys in high school that had a crush on me and were able to get past it and wished he could do the same. Sometimes, I judged him for needing the space. But I don’t anymore. I see it as the greatest gift he could have ever given me. And us.

Because at the same moment that I truly reached a place of surrender, he did too. He surrendered to not needing to date me in order for me to be in his life. He recognized that he’d rather have me in his life as a friend than not at all. And in his own time to reflect, he also came to recognize that he deserved more in love than someone who was wavering about him. He deserved the same level of confidence and assurance that he was giving out. So he re-entered into our friendship actually not wanting to date me anymore. He thought I was kind of a mess. And honestly, I was.

He was about to move to LA from NY and figured it would be a good time to reconnect because there would be some natural distance built in. He came over for dinner and I remember being so afraid that he would have changed. That his coldness would be palpable and that the person who’d once been my greatest mirror, would hold me at arms length. But he walked up my stairs and said “come give me the biggest fucking hug ever.”

I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was so fucking back. I still cry thinking about that moment. We ate dinner and sat on my couch catching up on the months prior and reminiscing on the best summer of our lives. I missed him so much it physically hurt. And so we were friends again. Casually and cautiously. But friends we were. And I was so happy about it.

The funny thing about John wanting to reconnect under the guise of the built-in distance that would exist from his move to LA was that it was December and I was also going home for the holidays.

It was also at the time that the business we’d started together was blowing the fuck up - in a great way. We were in the NY Times and on the Today Show. So we started spending every day at his uncle’s house (where he was staying) absolutely grinding on this project together. It was a dream. We were having so much fun and just getting to be in each other’s lives again was a dream.

And then there was this one day. Where I felt something change in me physically. I don’t know what it was or how it happened but all of the sudden I was drawn to him like never before. I felt animalistic. It was like I cut through whatever mental bullshit I was facing and got to see John for the man that he really is. I was of course terrified by these feelings after all that we’d been through.

We finally got our friendship back. Was I really now going to risk it for romance?

The answer was yes. I was. John’s uncle was dog sitting (conveniently) for a friend so we had the house alone and were awake until the wee hours just chatting. We sat on the couch scrolling through embarrassing high school pictures of each other and the distance between us somehow continued to get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until we were no longer on the couch and now were “sleeping” in his room. I’ll leave the rest out besides the best sentence John has ever said to my avoidant ass:

“That was really fun and I genuinely don’t care if it never happens again.”

It was game on from there.

We both still had a lot to work through. My fears of hurting him again. His trust. But the beautiful thing was that we’d already had the hardest conversations ever. So our communication was rock solid. And we knew how to work through things together.

One of the things that was killing me most in our “breakup” as we now call it, was that our whole friend group was going to Mexico City for January to escape the winter. And I wasn’t invited because John was going to be there. But now that we were much more than talking again, I was able to go. Our friends did not yet know that we were more than friends so we had to break that news when we arrived because how else would we tell them that I would now be sleeping in John’s room lol.

And there was one walk that I went on with Jace in which I laid out my biggest worst fears. Hurting John once was awful enough. I couldn’t bare to do it again so I was afraid of even trying to love him. What if I got a few months in and realized it wasn’t the right relationship for me? I was gut wrenchingly horrified of that being a reality. But we walked and talked and she held me firmly in my fears. I let them out and there was not an ounce of shame directed at me. For as much as this is about my love for John, it is beyond worth stating that the two of us would not be where we are if it wasn’t for the unyielding love and support of our family and friends who held us as we talked in circles about this dynamic.

I got home from that walk with Jace and decided to lay out my fears for John. I told him how afraid I was to let myself love him because what if I hurt him again. I was avoidant and he was anxious and what if we just spiral out. I had too many examples of hurting people with my avoidance before. I was too afraid to try again. And then came another one of his best ever lines.

“What if we use this relationship as a container for healing love?”

He looked at me and took the shame away. He shared how he played a role in the dynamic too and had a lot of healing to do on his own. So he invited me to do it together. My whole body softened. I’ll never forget that conversation, question, and the effects that it induced.

The funny thing about falling in love with your best friend is that we already said I love you. We had the intimacy that most couples arrive at after a year of dating down pat by our first date. But things had changed in our relationship now that we were more than friends and we made sure to have the necessary conversations in order to close out our past chapters and move healthily into this next one.

We were standing in a park and I grabbed John in tears, looked him in the eye, and confessed that I was having a hard time sitting with the reality of how much pain I had caused him in our friendship before. I knew there was going to be a pathway to building back our trust and I feared that we wouldn’t be able to let go of the remnants of our past chapter. I apologized profusely and let him know how much my heart was hurting for the hurt that I caused him. Once again, he held me close. He acknowledged and appreciated the apology. He did not try to minimize his past hurt. He just stood firmly and let me know that he was able to forgive me fully. He was able to move into the next iteration of our relationship without holding any resentment for the past. And he invited me to do the same. I could tell he meant it.

I looked him in the eyes and told him “I love you.” And though we both clearly knew, I made sure to clarify that I didn’t just mean it as a friend.

It would still be 5 more months before we were in Italy together and walking home from the cutest dinner date when I’d ask him,

“John, are you my boyfriend?”
And he’d reply, “Yes and I have been for a long time.”

Why is he so fucking cute?

We’re nearing our two year anniversary - which feels cheap to me. It feels like it should be at least 4 years. But anyhow. I’ve wanted to write our story because again, the representations of this type of love gave me the hope that change was possible exactly when I needed it most. And also because of this…

The thing that has surprised me the most about our relationship is…

John is my best friend. My favorite travel companion. My co-founder in 2 businesses (and counting). My love. My only exception to when my friends say “do not tell anyone about this.” And so much more. But our relationship occupies very little headspace for me. And I wanted to call that out because if you would have told me that previously, I would not have believed you.

I have always believed that being in a relationship would come at the expense of my own freedom and growth. That I would have to sacrifice parts of myself and my time in order to love properly. And I actually don’t feel that at all.

I barely ever talk about John in therapy. To the point that I’ve occasionally wondered if my therapist thinks that I am hiding or pushing down my relationship struggles. But the reality is, John is the least complicated thing in my life. His love is firm and constant. His support is unyielding. He doesn’t take time from me - he gives it back. We are so much better individually for being together.

I share all of this because a younger version of me so badly needed to hear it. And if I had to say one thing that most allowed us to get here it’s this.

The shift that changed everything: Want vs. Need

When we started dating, neither of us needed a relationship. We wanted one. But we did not need one. And there is a huge difference between those two things.

Needing a relationship means that you have unmet needs physically, financially, emotionally, and otherwise that you are expecting a partner to fill. “Once I find the one, this undying need will suddenly be filled and my life will be great forever after.” That puts a lot of pressure on a person and can quickly lead to codependency if left unchecked.

Wanting a relationship looks like: Okay yes I would love to spend a Saturday night cooking and drinking a glass of red wine with the love of my life and I know that I want to have babies so I need to find him/her quickly BUT I also know that I can meet all of my needs on my own. If I want to have babies, I can adopt or raise a baby with other single parents or support groups. I can support myself financially. I have flourishing friendships and relationships outside of my partner. I am good on my own two feet. And, at the same time, I am so excited for when my person comes in.

That is what wanting looks like. And it’s subtle but profoundly different from needing.

And listen, I am not pretending to know what John and my relationship will look like in 7 years, 20 years, or 40 years. But I do know that a younger me would be delighted to see where I am at in love now. And that I sincerely had no idea a love like this could exist.

Finding examples of healthy love around you

When we were just “friends,” we sat on the sidewalk at Lighthouse, Brooklyn and asked each other “who in your life has a romantic relationship you’d want to emulate and why?” We both were struck by how few examples of healthy love we had around us at the time. But through the search for answering that question, we came to find that there are actually some sincerely kick ass relationships out there and I think it’s so helpful to find and acknowledge those because it helps show you what’s possible.

So don’t settle girls and boys! And if you are single and wanting to find your partner, here are a few points of reflection that finally allowed me to find mine:

Questions for reflection:

1. List out all areas of your life. Where are there unmet needs that you are expecting a partner to fill? Can you get to a place where you can sincerely imagine meeting them on your own?

2. Write a letter to your future boyfriend/girlfriend. Tell them about who you are and what you’re up to today. Imagine who they are and what they are doing. What are their values? Why do you click? What are you most curious and drawn to about in them? What do you see in yourself through the mirror this person holds back to you? Put it in an envelope and hide it somewhere for you to re-read later on.

   1. I did this and forgot about it. And then months into dating John, I found this envelope titled “you” in my drawer. I opened it and was absolutely awestruck by how much John met the description of my ‘future boyfriend.’ I gave him the letter and we are both so glad we have it.

Okay that’s all for today lovebirds! I definitely hesitated about writing something this personal about my relationship but again, I needed to read something like this years ago so I write this to a younger version of me. And if you see yourself in any of it, that is incredible to me too.

If you have any questions about this or want to chat 1:1 about a situation in your life, respond to this plssss! I obviously can talk for days about my love for John and our pathway to getting to where we are now.

That’s all for today! Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me this week!

With a stupid amount of love in my heart for John and all of you,

Char

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of Maddy of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post everything from reflections on personal growth, making meaningful connections, how to get creatively unblocked, and finding wonder in everyday moments as we navigate the very messy, beautiful journey of becoming more ourselves. Today, I am starting to post some of my recipes on here too.

My mom is a caterer/chef and I grew up watching her cook. I’ve picked up quite a few things along the way and recently starting sharing more of it on my social media. I am now going to start sharing some of my favorite recipes and hosting tips on here too!

Alright… let’s get into it!!

Oooo how I love a good Sunday meal prep. I haven’t always been this way. I abhor the idea of eating the same individually prepped container of food every day. But I do love being able to go into my fridge and throw together a DIVINE breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack in a matter of minutes.

This past year, my boyfriend and I moved in with our best friend - Allie, everyone say hi Allie!!! - and she has always said that if she came into money, the first thing she’d do is hire a private chef. So, as someone who feels spiritually OBLIGED to commit to the bit, I naturally took it upon myself to become her private chef for the summer.

And along the way, I found some tips, tricks, and routines that have allowed my family of 3 - ie me, my boyfriend, and our 33-year-old daughter aka bestie Allie - to eat healthy, delicious, and FAST meals throughout our weeks of working at home. And I am here today to give you the skinny.

Here are all the things I prep on a Sunday:

1. soft boiled eggs

2. overnight oats or chia pudding

3. homemade granola

4. roasted peppers and red onions

5. steamed beets and broccoli

6. roasted potatoes or sweet potatoes

7. a great salad base (although I am currently not eating as much salad due to requests from my Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor, aka my cousin Brehan!)

8. rice or grain

9. salmon, chicken, tofu, protein of your choosing

10. freshly washed and sliced fruit

11. sometimes I prep a nice little sweet treat too!

I thought it would be fun to start sharing my weekly meal prep menus so that you can save them and hopefully make use of them too! Let me know if this is a series that you enjoy and if there is anything else you’d like to see on here.

The following meal prep provides you with these menu options through the week!

Breakfast Options

1. Soft-Boiled Egg Bowl
Quinoa with sweet potatoes and spinach, topped with two soft-boiled eggs and a squeeze of lemon & drizzle of EVOO.

2. Carrot Cake Overnight Oats
Serve cold or warmed. Top with granola, nut butter, or fruit.

3. English Muffin Breakfast Plate
Buttered English muffin, one soft-boiled egg, roasted peppers and onions, and breakfast sausage if desired.

Lunch & Dinner Options

1. Fajita Bowl
Rice, black beans, roasted peppers and onions, chicken, salsa, and guacamole.

2. Quinoa Bowl
Salmon, chicken, egg or tofu on bed of quinoa with sweet potatoes and spinach.

3. Vegetable Plate
Steamed beets and broccoli, roasted potatoes, and protein. Add a simple dressing.

4. Chicken, Grain, and Veg
Grilled protein with rice or roasted potatoes, sautéed spinach & garlic.

5. Stir-Fry Bowl
Protein of choice + sesame oil with roasted peppers and onions over rice.

Dessert!

Pumpkin Choc Chip Cookies!

Let’s get to WORK! Who’s joining me???

Homemade granola: this is soooo easy to make - so delicious, and sooo much better/cheaper than store bought.

homemade cinnamon maple granola

2.13MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Carrot cake overnight oats: These feel like fall in a bowl. You can also heat them and eat warm if you prefer. Go crazy with your toppings & if you do make the granola (or have some store bought at home), absolutely sprinkle some on top of this. PB, too!

carrot cake overnight oats

1.26MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Soft boiled eggs: bring water to a rolling boil. Carefully submerge your eggs in water. Boil for 7 minutes. Drain water. Rinse with cool water. Peel and eat immediately OR store in their shells in the fridge for up to 4 days.

• We eat these for breakfast everyday, paired with the quinoa sweet potato and spinach. By themselves. Or with a sausage. John always has them with a buttered English muffin - so we call him English!

Roasted red peppers and onions: Preheat oven to 400. Slice to size of your choosing. Coat in olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for ~25 minutes or until soft and caramelized.

• Great for pairing with grain and protein. My fav is to do roasted peps/onion, black beans, guac, salsa, rice, and chicken and you have a fajita style bowl ready to go in minutes.

Roasted fingerlings: Also preheat oven to 400. Slice, thinly coat in oil, salt, pep. Roast until soft in the middle and crispy on the outside.

• Reheat these with some spinach and garlic and serve with a soft boiled egg. Or pair with protein and veg for lunch/dinner.

Rice: Bring 2c water to a boil. Add in 1c white rice and a pinch of salt. Cover and simmer for 19 mins. Fluff with a fork.

Quinoa with sweet potatoes, spinach, and caramelized onions: This is THE best base to have with soft boiled eggs for breakfast, salmon/chicken/tofu for lunch or dinner. Or just by itself. It’s so delicious and feels so good on my digestion.

quinoa sweet potatoes & spinach

646KB ∙ PDF file

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Download

Salmon: marinate in Soyaki for 15-20 mins. Roast on high heat 450 degrees F for ~10-14 mins depending on how big your pieces are. Or until it reaches an internal temp of 145 degrees.

• When reheating for lunch, I like to break it up in a pan and add in a bit more Soyaki for freshness.

Chicken: My foolproof way of cooking delicious, not dry, chicken is to buy the chicken strips from the store or cut boneless skinless breasts into smaller strips. Coat in a lot of salt and pepper. And then cook on medium high heat until a golden brown crispy crust forms and it’s cooked all the way through the center. For thin strips, this takes roughly 6-10 mins.

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies: Sweet treat o’clock! These are so good - and could absolutely be paired with a cappuccino as a breakfast treat.

pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

735KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Grocery list (by recipe):

Homemade Granola

Rolled oats
Nuts of choice
Dried fruit
Unsweetened shredded coconut (optional)
Olive oil
Maple syrup

Carrot Cake Overnight Oats

Rolled oats
Chia seeds
Pumpkin purée (1 can)
Carrots (2–3 for grating)
Milk of choice
Yogurt (⅔ cup)
Vanilla extract
Pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon + nutmeg
Maple syrup
Protein powder (optional - I like this one)
Optional toppings: granola, nut butter, fruit

Soft-Boiled Eggs

Eggs

Roasted Red Peppers and Onions

Bell peppers (3)
Red and yellow onions (1 large each)
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

Fingerling potatoes (or any small potatoes)
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Rice

White rice
Salt

Quinoa with Sweet Potatoes, Spinach, and Caramelized Onions

Quinoa
Sweet potatoes (2–3 medium)
Spinach
Yellow onion (1)
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Bone broth (optional)

Salmon (Soyaki-Marinated)

Salmon fillets
Soyaki (or teriyaki marinade)

Chicken Strips

Chicken breasts or chicken strips
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Pumpkin purée (1 can)
Rolled oats
Almond flour
Coconut sugar
Baking soda
Pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon + nutmeg
Vanilla extract
Coconut oil
Chocolate chips

General Add-Ons (used across multiple recipes)

Fresh fruit
Breakfast sausage
Black beans
Bone broth
Salsa
English muffins
Garlic
Any nut butter

Alright, that’s all for today!!!! By no means do you need to prep all of this - but any small amount of prep you can do today to set you up for the week, is GOLDEN.

Let me know if this was helpful to you and what you’d like to see more of from my kitchen to yours.

Thanks for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web Kitchen! This was fun for me.

More to come soon,
Char

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of Maddy of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post about once per month - you can expect to find reflections on personal growth, meaningful connections, how to get creatively unblocked, and finding wonder in everyday moments as we navigate the very messy, beautiful journey of becoming more ourselves.

This newsletter is about reclaiming the power of a weeknight hang with your friends in the name of 'creativity.’ But in all seriousness, it’s a dissection of what it means to be productive and a questioning of whether you’re allotting time for the things that truly fill your creative cup or not.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

I am embarrassingly under-watched when it comes to movies, TV shows, and most cultural references. I’ve seen She’s the Man and Hot Chick at least 30 times each but barely any of the classics. And I am not proud to admit that but I am curious about why.

I think it’s because I don’t view watching TV or movies as productive. I have always viewed it as lazy or a distraction and would rather read a book.

But as I’ve gotten older, I started allowing myself to loosen the grip of hyper-productivity and let myself view movies and shows not only as acceptable pass times but also for the art forms that they are.

I’ve started giving myself more permission to watch them.

I went on a retreat this month and we played a game where he’d label one end of the room as one thing and the opposite end as another and you had to align yourself based on where you fall on the spectrum. For instance, one side of the room was labeled introvert and the opposite was extrovert. I put myself slightly-extrovert of center for the first time ever and here’s why.

Someone asked Jed how he defines extrovert and he said: do you think in solitude or do you get clear by thinking out loud?

I started to think about the hours I spend on the phone each week, pacing around my neighborhood, discussing the ins and outs of what I am experiencing with friends, therapists, coaches, and anyone who will listen on the phone. I thought about how much I love to coach others because I love to help people arrive at their own clarity in the same way that talking to someone helps me get to my own.

That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy slamming my heart out through my keyboard like I am doing right now at home. I do still often think and process in solitude. But I surprised myself by how much this definition of extrovert resonated with me.

It made me think of another thing that Jed said - which was that he doesn’t use journaling as a way of dictating his daily actions. You’ll never open his journal and find, “today I went to Costco and the line was long.” No. Instead, he uses it as a place to process things that are bouncing around his head that he wants to settle. The page is a place to work out thoughts and get clarity on which voices are saying what.

With all parts of oneself on the page, we can see more clearly how we really feel and can make decisions from a place of empowerment instead of listening to the voices of bitchy 13 year old boys who are still tormenting us from our middle school days.

I was aghast at the idea that maybe Jedidiah Jenkins doesn’t do Morning Pages! ie the Julia Cameron/Artist’s Way practice of writing three pages of stream of consciousness journaling upon waking daily. wHat MuSt hE Do iNsteAd tO kEep tHe cReaTive jUicEs fLowINg?!?

I asked him.

As an extrovert, he told me, he spends his days writing for his job and at night, he hangs out with friends. A campfire session or a martini at a dim-lit bar are often the places that he gets to think out loud with friends and strangers, workshop his material, and also just have a good fucking time.

This sounds so simple but it was so profound to me. How could such a successful writer allow himself to have so much fun at night?

I started to wonder what would happen if I changed my definition of what counts towards being “productive.”

One of the biggest differences between being an employee and an entrepreneur is learning how to spend your time. As an employee, most of your work is output. There are clear sets of expectations about what needs to be done in order to satisfy your roles and responsibilities. But as an entrepreneur or creative, you often need more inputs for your outputs. What counts as “productive” must change. It’s not just about the hours spent sitting at a desk. It’s also about what you do outside of those hours to sharpen or soften yourself to be able to create quality work.

With that in mind, sometimes a walk and talk with a friend is the very thing that helps you get clear on what you want to write about next. Or maybe watching a classic movie ignites an idea that you wouldn’t have otherwise had access to.

“Hanging out with your friends” and “watching movies” could arguably now be considered “productive” for your creative work. But beyond just measuring things in terms of their productivity, these are also things that are FUN, which are vitally necessary for you to stick with something for long enough to watch it flourish.

One of the main components of doing the Artist’s Way is taking yourself on a weekly artist date - which is essentially a block of time that you portion off to do something for yourself. It has to be done alone. And it can be anything from sitting in a park and doodling people walking by to reading a book in a bar to going on a color walk in which you actively look for a specific color and document it.

This is always that hardest part for me of the Artist Way because it feels indulgent. I can make a million and one excuses for better uses of my time than going on a childlike playdate with myself. But the reality is that every time I hold myself accountable to doing it, I do feel better after. And it does make me feel more connected to myself and my creativity.

I think it’s easy to forget that there are many different stages to a creative process. I was talking to a friend the other day who is at the beginning of learning a new platform and she was saying that she’s having the hardest time getting into flow because there is a hyper-active manager voice in her head that is editing her work before she’s even able to get it out onto a page. She fell down the classic rabbit hole of watching a series of videos on HOW TO create effectively for this platform, which was entertaining at first and then paralyzing. I have done this so many times with so many different things and nothing makes me want to create less than watching a bunch of different strangers coach me on the right way of making my art.

So as this friend sits to start ideating, she has to kindly ask this controlling manager part to please just let her get her ideas out. And reassures this part that it will absolutely have a say in the work during the editing stages and before she puts it out.

Making time for each of these stages is so crucially important. And I think it helps a lot with mitigating the overwhelm that can come from learning how to manage your time as an entrepreneur. I still have a full-time job, btw. But thinking in these terms is very helpful for structuring my time and staying creative, both in and out of work.

Liz Gilbert famously tells people not to quit their day jobs to become artists. Which many take issue with seeing as it comes from a mega successful artist who did indeed quit her day job (eventually). But I went to hear her speak on her book tour recently and she explained why she says this. It’s not because she doesn’t believe that each person has immense creative potential. It’s because she doesn’t think creativity actually takes that much time.

An audience member asked how to get over the hump when you are halfway through writing a book and hit a roadblock. And Gilbert says that at the beginning of a writing project, she exclusively writes by the clock. She sets a timer for 45 minutes and does not give two fucks about the quality of the work she gets out at the time. All she needs to do is:

1. not get up

2. not have her phone or wifi

3. STOP at the timer

At a certain point in the project, you will start to lose track of time. That 45 minutes will be up and you want to keep going. But STOP she says. Stop at that timer. Because if you keep writing for hours, then the next day you will let yourself off the hook on your 45 minutes. And before you know it, it will be 7 months since you’ve touched the page.

Only when she’s about halfway through a book will she allow herself to work for a couple hours per day on it.

So “don’t quit your day job” is not just about the money - it’s also her suggesting that your creativity can happen outside your normal work hours if you just make time for it.

And I bring this up because it furthers the point that our actual “output” time of sitting our butts down and writing is not all that we are doing to feed our creativity. A lot of the work happens off the chair. A lot of the work happens on the phone with a friend, on a walk in the woods, on a commute listening to a podcast, or on a Saturday night watching a movie that has a scene that sparks the final idea you needed to tie the whole project together.

So as someone who can fall into a mindset of only doing things that I deem as “productive,” something clicked for me in listening to Jed’s answer about how he stays creative.

He stays creative by staying engaged with life.

And whether you are an artist or not, I think there is a lot to learn from asking yourself if your definition of productivity is coming at the expense of your fulfillment and creativity.

Sometimes having more “fun” just for the sake of fun itself, is the very thing you need to get back into balance.

Because staying creative isn’t about working harder.

It’s about staying engaged with life.

Your job isn’t just to make things —

it’s to stay inspired enough to want to.

That’s all for today. Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me!

I will catch you here again soon.

With love,

Char

related posts: scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of Maddy of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post about once per month - you can expect to find reflections on personal growth, meaningful connections, how to get creatively unblocked, and finding wonder in everyday moments as we navigate the very messy, beautiful journey of becoming more ourselves.

This newsletter starts off as a vent sesh about the annoying reality of being “online.” And then turns into a deep dissection of what happens when you begin viewing your relationship to work as a marriage. Committing to things with your full chest. Trying things out and figuring out what works best for you. And to devoting yourself to a continued conversation between self, other, and work. Much to discuss.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

One of my highlights of the year so far was doing the Artist’s Way with a dear friend. We spent a lot of our time talking about our love/hate relationship with social media and the comparison that it breeds. Not to mention the amount of time it sucks and dopamine it depletes.

But through every conversation, we were trying to find our way to a middle ground. A solution through which we could enjoy the fruits of socials without having to suffer its consequences.

It’s true that there are many benefits to social media. As a discovery engine. As a place for finding inspiration. For creators, artists, and entrepreneurs - as a source of income and opportunity. A place to elevate voices and be discovered. A place to make a career out of being who you are.

There are also an insane amount of downsides. The crippling anxiety it induces. The time it sucks. The comparison it encourages. The constant feeling like you are not doing enough.

There is a huge draw to just delete it entirely and live without it. But for people with platforms who make a lot of their income through it or even people like me who live entrepreneurially and want to build an audience for their work, it is not as cut and dry as just deleting it.

I was talking to my Artist Way companion on the phone the other day and we were returning to this battle of how to put social media back in its box. We’ve tried together to put time limits on ourselves. To delete and redownload everyday just to post and then get rid of it. To hack our brains so that we do not become overly fixated with the stats.

But then it occurred to me that something I’d been learning in a different area of life applies here too.

Work can be hard. Work can be boring. Work can be stressful. Work can be intimidating. Work can bring up a lot of shit… But that doesn’t make it bad or wrong.

I adore my generation’s endless search for freedom and work-life balance. But sometimes, I find for myself, that it actually comes at my own detriment. Because it causes me to misread what I really want and the costs of getting it.

I really want to be a successful coach, writer, and entrepreneur. And in order to get there, I have to take the things that I love and turn them into work.

I once sat in my therapist’s office telling her about this fear - What will happen if I start doing what I love for work? Will I fall out of love with it?

She looked at me and asked (as someone who does what she loves for work): What if society has overfed us that narrative in order to keep us in jobs that it just wants us to do?

I paused and immediately felt relief. Maybe there is some truth to that.

I continued trying on what it would be like to go all in on the things that I love. And wondered what would happen if they got hard and lost their luster.

And that’s where the breakthrough occurred.

Hard does not mean it’s bad. And it certainly doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.

All it means is that you have to choose your hard. You have to choose which set of problems are worth it to you to inherit.

No matter what I choose to do with my time, there are going to be challenging components of it. There are challenging parts of being on social media. There are challenging parts of working for other people. There are challenging parts of working for yourself. Even when you do what you love most in the world, there are still hard parts of it.

But the point of acknowledging that isn’t to scare you away. It’s to reacquaint you with your ability to find joy in the hard things. Which can only happen once you’ve made an active choice about the game that you are playing.

Mark Manson writes in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck about how when we ratchet up the success ladder, it’s not that our problems go away. It’s just that we inherit a new set of problems. Which I actually find as somewhat of a relief in a weird way? Because if you know that the existence of problems does not mean anything inherently bad, then it takes the second arrowing out of it. Which is to say that you can experience the problem for problems sake without adding in a shame story about this particular problem being the worst, or judging yourself for experiencing dis-ease in the first place. Once we come to accept that there are challenging parts of any work that we do, you get clearer on which set of problems you are most willing and wanting to solve.

And if I have taken away anything from the past few weeks of reading and thinking about social media and entrepreneurship, it’s this.

It will not always be easy. But that is not the point. The point is to do work that is worth it… to you. If you do that, you will stick in it long enough to reap its rewards.

from just wrote about the importance of finding fun in the work that she does. As an author and a match maker, she has a job she could only have dreamed up in years prior. But that’s not to say it’s easy. Much of the work that she actually does on the day to day is not sexy. It’s rote and monotonous. But she enjoys or at least can tolerate the set of problems that she is working on. We often romanticize certain types of work and when we meet an author we think “oh what a dream! I would love to sit in my bed all day and slam my heart out through my keyboard in a state of blissful euphoria!” But Ava is the first to admit that her days don’t look like that. And many of the people who say they’d dream of doing the work that she does would likely hate it upon arrival.

Her reason for staying, tolerating, and even enjoying is because she finds most of the “boring” to be fun. She stresses the importance of a fun routine and bringing some lightheartedness into the set of problems that you are solving. Because again, they are not going to go away. But we can learn to sit with them differently. And trust that the current set of problems we are solving, will not be the same forever.

Take my friend, , for instance. As a poet and creative, Zoe has been making her full time income from her writing for the past 7 years, which is an incredible thing to say at her age (or any age really). In her latest post, she talks about how this past month was the most lucrative of her life. She can’t believe the amount that she is making through custom online poetry orders, events, and partnerships. Her social media is taking off and she is living her younger self’s absolute dream. And yet… she is exhausted. While a younger version of her dreamed only of making enough money to sustain her life, this version of her has exceeded that beyond measure and she is now faced with the problem of having to say no as an entrepreneur. How to turn down gigs and trust that more will come in the future. This is a whole new set of problems to have. One that I, personally, am begging for in my current season of life.

I share these stories because I think they are helpful at cutting through the noise and internal polarization that we can feel about following your passion, starting a business, or working a job for someone else. Instead of looking at it through this emotionally intense moral and philosophical framework of which one is better?, I think asking yourself which set of problems and benefits are you desiring in this season helps clarify what commitment you are ready to make.

And overall, I think we have to stop fixating on the idea of “work-life balance.” Not because we should work ourselves to death. But rather, because the very striving for this ambiguous sense of “balance” is the thing that’s keeping us from falling in love with our work.

The best thing that I have ever read on this concept is “The Three Marriages” by David Whyte, in which he argues that there are three marriages to have in life, “to Work, to Self, and to Other.”

The reason he believes we have marriages to Work and Self, in addition to Other, is because, “at their core they are usually lifelong commitments and… they involve vows made either consciously or unconsciously.”

He points out that our first marriage - the one that’s to another person - requires an intense period of falling in love to be successful. In order to put ourselves in a position to be stretched, changed, and opened, “a certain state of blinding ecstasy seems necessary for navigating the first crucial thresholds of a loved one’s recognition.” In other words, we need the intensity of desire and longing to allow ourselves to be destabilized by love such that we can come out on the other side with a freshened sense of self.

The same is necessary for falling in love with your Work. There will be an intense period of falling in love that induces a necessary haze that subverts your ego and fear of change enough to allow you to push through a threshold to the other side of commitment. And through this commitment to a vocation or work, you become capable of enduring its challenges.

Which is to say that the battle for “work-life balance,” is one that prevents you from falling in love in the first place. If we are always trying to keep our work in its precious little box, we never allow ourselves to fall into it enough to be able to commit to its challenges.

I know this to be true from my experience of falling in love with John. I was intensely afraid that if I committed to loving him fully, I would be at risk of hurting him or losing him and the thought of that was nearly too hard to stomach. So I wanted to keep him at a distance. I wanted to keep our relationship in “balance,” in other words, in its box. Until, he asked me this question: what if our relationship could be a container for healing love?

It was an invitation to enter the portal with lowered stakes. He essentially asked me if I was willing to try falling in love with him for the purpose of healing our past patterns in relationships and through this question, I finally felt safe enough to step in.

In that moment, I looked at it as an opportunity for growth instead of something to acutely fear. And I think the same is necessary to take the leap for work.

I know we’ve now gotten quite deep for an article that started about the frustrating aspects of being on social media but that is actually the very point that I am trying to make. If you are someone who has fallen in love with a path and social media is a part of it, it will become much easier to navigate once you view it as part of your marriage to Work instead of something you are continuously trying to resist.

And the same is true for any type of work.

I have been asking myself if all people need to view their work as a marriage or if there are some for which a more casual relationship to work is healthier, and the truth is… I don’t know! I can only speak for myself. I am someone for whom the idea of viewing my work as a marriage so that I can lean into it fully and become more capable of enduring all parts of it deeply resonates.

But I wanted to see what Whyte would say in response to the question of: does this apply to everyone? And here’s what I found.

Whyte’s whole reason for suggesting that we have three marriages - to Work, Self, and Other - is because he believes these are the three most important, lifelong conversations that we enter. A marriage is, at its core, an ongoing conversation with someone (or something) to whom you have vowed certain things. And our relationship to Work falls within that definition.

Whyte says that, “Each of the three marriages is nonnegotiable … The refusal to have these conversations out loud, to take these marriages seriously, makes no difference; they will occur with our conscious participation or without it: they are foundational to human belonging.”

And beyond that, he says, “No real long-term satisfaction is possible in work without treating it as something much larger than a series of jobs. I must find, pursue and commit to my vocation as I would to another person in marriage or relationship.”

Even if you are not someone who is head over heals in love with some creative passion and turn it into a full-time job, still by viewing your relationship to Work as a marriage, you are offered a wider perspective on it all and it can help to mitigate some of the wobbliness around the daily frustrations that it may present.

I went on a writing retreat a few weekends ago with and he talked about the word “vocation.” He defined it as “a job that feels uniquely suited to your talents.” I love this definition because it breaks the mold of what it means to pursue a passion or calling. Someone who is uniquely good at organizing and leading can have a vocation in product management. Someone uniquely good at tracking and stacking numbers can have a vocation in accounting. You don’t just have to be a writer, actor, dancer, or painter to have a vocation. You can have a vocation just by doing work that feels uniquely suited to your skillsets.

I am someone who wants to do what I love most for Work. I also have a lot of close friends and clients who prefer having a more strategic job that they enjoy and find lots of their passion outside of it. I genuinely don’t think one is better than the other. I think it depends on who you are, what you want, and what set of problems you are willing to solve. BUT I do think this…

The moment you switch from seeing your job as just a job and start seeing it as a marriage to Work, is the moment that you find more fulfillment and satisfaction in it.

So if you only take away one thing let it be this: by recognizing that you are in constant conversation with Work, Other, and Self, you are able to more fully commit to their beauty and challenges with less judgement. That alone will bring you a lot more freedom and ease.

And if you are in a job that you don’t like, fear not that you have to remain “married” to it for the rest of your life. That would be a misinterpretation of this. All it means is that you can see your current job as part of the string woven through the fabric of your path and where it is leading you and in so doing, it helps lighten the load of existentialism that permeates our relationship to work and fruitless quest to find that perfect “work-life” balance from which all of our problems will be solved. The dissolving of that illusion is actually what brings you closer to the feeling of equanimity that you are ultimately after.

That’s all for today. Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me this week.

I will catch you here sometime soon.

With love,

Char

related posts: scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of Maddy of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post about once per month - you can expect to find reflections on personal growth, meaningful connections, how to get creatively unblocked, and finding wonder in everyday moments as we navigate the very messy, beautiful journey of becoming more ourselves.

This newsletter is about going on a retreat, getting a birthday voicemail from my mom, and finding strong footing in the gap between ambition and patience.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

Above is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

Today is my 27th birthday. I got a voicemail from my mom this morning that said, “And I just hope you’re really happy in exactly where you sit at this beautiful little age of 27.” I choked up.

It’s not that I’m not happy with where I am. It’s just that where I am and a lot of what I’ve been focused on in the past year has been about where I want to go from here. What types of contributions I want to make to the world. What success means to me.

I feel ambitious and driven right now, which can quickly lead me into a state of overwhelm. There’s a part of me that wants to run full speed ahead towards the career and life that I want to build. And there’s another part that fears what I will loose in myself in doing so. I’ve watched a disciplined and driven part of me wreck havoc on my life before so even when it comes in with new information and purpose, I sometimes fear this part for the separation that it has wedged between me and the parts of my life that I love most.

The main thing I’ve worked on for the past 8 years has been rewiring my system of accomplishment and reward.

Turning inwards and away from the external definitions of success to ask myself what it is that I really want out of life. And it’s improved the quality of my existence tremendously. This gentle turn inwards over the past 8 years has been effective and a priority.

But I feel my priorities shifting again. Entering a “freshmen year” feeling in life in which I’m fucking hungry to learn and grow. And I honestly just don’t always know what to do with this energy and how to keep it in healthy balance without slipping into overdrive.

I talked to Jace on the phone today - someone who understands this tension and fear intimately - and she reminded me of how much new life experience, information, and resources I’ve added to the mix since the last time I was in this “freshmen year” hungry mentality. She’s right. I am a different person now that I can allow my driven parts to lead without being taken out by them.

I told her all about the retreat I just went on with my mom. And how the main purpose of it was to use it as a no-phone mini sabbatical. To pause and take stock of where I am and where I want to go.

We journaled relentlessly. Answering the prompt of “remember when you wanted what you currently have.” I thought of John and how badly I wanted to find a love like this. How much headspace it consumed. How far off it felt. How uncertain I was that I’d ever find someone to see me and love me like he does.

Then came the question of “what’s something you think a lot about that nobody else knows?” At first, I thought nothing because I literally journal to an online audience. But as I thought deeper, I recognized that what used to be a question of “when will I fall in love?” has transformed into “will I be successful?” Which is not a great question. It’s too vague and doesn’t fully capture what I am actually asking.

What I am really asking is when will I feel launched into a career in which coaching, writing, and entrepreneurship are front and center.

In recognizing that that’s my current question, it’s allowed me two things:

1. to recognize that the questions that I have pursued before have now been answered - so… my current ones will be too

2. and, we never stop asking questions of life

That was one of my biggest takeaways from the retreat. I watched people of all ages, stages, and backgrounds grapple with their own set of questions. Which just reaffirmed that we never stop facing uncertainty. The nature of our questions just change.

It allowed me to see that on my 27th birthday, I am at the beginning of answering a new question.

And I am bad at being bad at the beginning of things. I grew up being told that I was good at things from a young age and it made me afraid of what will happen to my identity if I’m not an expert from the jump.

We watched a video called the Gap by Ira Glass on the retreat about how people who veer towards creative professions tend to have good taste. Which is great. But it also makes them painfully aware of the gap between their current art and that which they admire.

I’m right there. Right in that gap. And today I just needed to remind myself of that. To talk to a friend who’s also there. To remember that a lot of the tension that I feel stems from urgency. And that the more I work on allowing myself to be bad at being a beginner, the more resilient I become towards sticking out the gap between where I am and where I ultimately will land with time, patience, perseverance and allowing myself to be guided by my ambition without losing sight of my values.

I listen to my mom’s voicemail again. “And I just hope you’re really happy in exactly where you are at this beautiful little age of 27.”

And now I can feel pride. I can feel calm. I can feel clear again about what actually matters.

And I can remember that my life is not an optimization problem. There will never be a time in which I’ve figured out the perfect time management system to excel without interruption. Or that I’ve figured out how to overcome any hurdle put in my way effortlessly. That’s not a real thing. Nor do I want it.

Because the best thing about life is that the questions never end. So I just hope I keep getting better at being kind to myself when I am bad at the beginning so I can stick with the things that I love for long enough to watch them flourish.

That’s all for today! Thanks for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me. I will catch you here again soon!

With love,

Char

related posts: scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

If you are new here (maybe from the recommendation of of @handmethefork), my name is Charlotte and I post about once per month - you can expect to find reflections on personal growth, meaningful connections, how to get creatively unblocked, and finding wonder in everyday moments as we navigate the very messy, beautiful journey of becoming more ourselves.

This newsletter is about watching someone I love with my whole heart overcome one of their biggest self-limiting beliefs.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

Above is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!

What are you feeling my love? I asked John as we laid quietly next to each other a few nights before he officiated his cousin’s wedding. Anxiety, he said.

How do you notice it? I asked.

In my chest. It feels really tight.

Is it okay for that feeling to be there?

Yes, he said.

How are you feeling toward this anxiety? I asked.

I’m feeling really sad for it.

Does that make sense to you that you’re feeling sad for this anxious part of you?

Yeah, he said. It does.

Is there any visual or memory associated with this sadness?

I see a much younger version of myself. A boy who is small and afraid. He feels isolated and misunderstood because of his stutter. He wants to communicate so badly but he’s afraid that he’ll open his mouth and the words will come out in crumbles.

We stayed with this little version of John for a while, getting to know him well. Letting him know that we see him fully and appreciate him so much for trying so hard to feel safe and seen.

We laid there for a while cuddling and then walked through the streets of Florence to practice his speech again and again. We picked a spot near the Basilica de Santa Croce. I sat on the steps in the shade and John stood before me. He straightened his spine and took on the moment.

“As the bride approaches the isle we ask that everyone please remain seated so you can fully take in this moment.”

He takes a deep breath and looks me in the eyes before continuing. I know he’s got this. Tears arrive with their clearing burn. In that moment and every time he practices. I have the joy of watching his healing transpire right before my eyes.

He fucking crushes it. Over and over and over again. His tone and pacing is perfect. The thing about growing up with a stutter is that it makes you choose your words carefully. You can’t waste words with fillers. You have to be precise in what you want to say.

John has explained to me before that he can see a stutter coming down the pike of a sentence and before he gets there, he’ll try to swap out a different word to avoid a mishap. Sometimes he can’t do it in time but he usually can.

This affliction has made him extremely intentional with his words. And it’s one of the things I love most about him. Each word that comes out of his mouth is chosen and true. Which also makes him an incredible speaker, writer, and communicator in business, friendship, and in our relationship.

This practice run at the church is a particularly meaningful one for him because he feels most in touch with that anxious little boy version of him. And yet, he carries on flawlessly. Through this process, the little John who felt so scared, broken, and ostracized gets to see first hand the 29 year old version of him who is poised, grounded, eloquent, and so deeply in love with his life.

We both finish this practice round in tears. And though he still felt nervous leading up to the ceremony, in this moment, he knew he had it.

The day came. He hadn’t slept as well as he hoped and when he’s tired, his word recall feels more strained so his nerves increased. We were silent on the 40 minute bus ride from Florence to the vineyard. One final practice round in a private spot we found while waiting for the ceremony to begin. And then it was showtime.

He looked so fucking handsome in his tux with his big brown eyes, dimples, and bright white smile. And he stood tall at the podium at the most beautiful vineyard in Tuscany. The procession began. His unbelievably beautiful sister and cousins made their way down the isle, tears already flowing. John embraced Tyler, the charming groom who’s also a dear friend and now family. And then his cousin, Gabrielle, floated down the stairs. Breathtaking doesn’t begin to capture it.

I made eye contact with John. He took a deep breath and began. I knew from the first word he uttered that he had it. I watched his mom and her twin, the mother of the bride, sob through the whole speech before me. They kept saying “ Aw John,” in a maternal coo. He was landing each line perfectly. The crowd laughed and sobbed and then was silent enough to hear a pin drop as they devoured his every word.

When he read Gabrielle and Tyler’s poetry selection, I mumbled the words under my breath alongside him as I had it perfectly committed to memory by this point too. A testament to the volume of practice that John had done.

He finished and then my tears really stared to flow. I’d been holding back a bit, wanting to ensure that he showed himself that he could do this. So when he finished and I knew it was over, the floodgates opened. There is nothing like watching someone you love with your whole heart transcend one of their biggest self-limiting beliefs.

I am not exaggerating when I say that every single person at the wedding came up to him after to let him know that his ceremony was the best they’d ever heard. The vendors, too, who work weddings every weekend assured him they’d never cried so much at a stranger’s wedding. He floored the whole audience. And most importantly, he showed himself that he could do it.

It’s not in spite of his stutter that John was able to do this. In large part, it was because of it. Because of that little boy who, scared as he was, found ways of protecting him. One of which was through the empathy that John developed for others. This man loves with his heart wide open and it shines through the way that he speaks. He sees people fully. His delivery was extraordinary but so was his word choice. And that little boy has played a really important role in allowing John to become the nurturing, magnanimous man that he is.

In the days following, we recapped each moment. Soaking it in and reveling in how liberating it is to address your fears head on. This was a huge moment for John. And for me too. Because it reminded me of what happens when you really lean in to your biggest fears.

Back in April, John and I sat in Central Park and he thought about this impending responsibility of officiating his cousin’s wedding. There was a part of him that doubted his ability to do it. The fear felt insurmountable and he worried that he would fuck up his cousin’s perfect day. But little by little, he started telling himself that he could do it.

It wasn’t in one grand moment that he became capable. It was through the many, many iterations of practicing, watching the fears arise and overcoming them that he showed himself he could do it. He was mostly afraid of getting blocked and stuttering over his cousin and her groom’s names. And in his most challenging moments, this part would trudge up a whole history of times that this had happened. It would tell him that he was bad and wrong and broken. And underneath that, the part reaffirmed a feeling of brokenness, a feeling of being bad, isolated, and dependent on others to make sense of his words. But there was another part of him that so desperately wanted to prove to others that his stutter didn’t exist. And the pressure that this part put on him increased the amount of internal polarization that he felt.

Through each practice round, each moment of watching these parts arise, identifying the messages they had to share, and tending to them individually, he got to better understand his whole system. And more importantly, he got in touch with the root of his fear. In so doing, he was able to ask himself this question: can this opportunity to speak publicly at Gabrielle and Tyler’s wedding be a container for healing some of my deepest fears and insecurities?

He got curious about this question and rose to the occasion. He showed himself that not only could he do it, but he could crush it. And that his purpose is deeply intertwined with this fear. As most of ours are.

John is the smartest person I know. And he has a tremendous amount to share with the world. Rising to this occasion of facing his fear of public speaking, just opened a doorway to more closely accessing his power and purpose.

My love, I know you are reading this and I am unbelievably proud of you. And so deeply inspired by you. I left this weekend with a much clearer view of what happens when you lean in to your fears with love, patience, support, and intention. And I hope this story helps you see that whatever it is that you fear, is not only surmountable, but it will also bring you closer to your purpose and truth.

With love,

Char

If you’re craving clarity, deeper self-trust, greater confidence, and a grounded path toward what you really want, I’d love to work with you 1:1. You can apply for coaching here or just respond to this email.

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related posts: scraping your own knees, how to ask better questions, how to get rich, you make the rules f*ckers, what does it mean to be ready?

If you are new here, my name is Char and I post about once per month - you can expect to find reflections on personal growth, meaningful connections, how to get creatively unblocked, and finding wonder in everyday moments as we navigate the very messy, beautiful journey of becoming more ourselves.

This newsletter is written to you from Paros, Greece and is a reflection on how it’s even possible that John and I are spending 6 weeks in Europe right now??! The gratitude that we feel for it. The levers that had to be pulled. And some good ol’ Jedidiah Jenkins wisdom about how novelty slows down time & how we can continuously reshape our identity throughout our lives.

Quickly, before diving in, I wanted to mention that I just turned on paid subscriptions for those who want to support my creative work. I am keeping all posts free for anyone to read BUT if you have enjoyed my writing and want to support me in transitioning more of my time into writing, I would be insanely grateful. Link to do so HERE.

Alright… let’s get into it!!

“What levers had to be pulled for you and John to spend 6 weeks in Europe this summer?,” a friend asked me over FT audio as I laid on the beach in Greece next to John.

I started by answering in the short term: 6 weeks of unpaid leave, remote contract work, not having a lease anywhere in the world right now, savings that we’ve individually been building up since we were 12. All of those are true. And there is an even deeper answer. Which is, we’ve both been optimizing our lives for freedom for the past 8 years.

For me, that goes back to when I was a freshman in college. A tightly wound perfectionist with an eating disorder, I knew I wouldn’t graduate in time if I didn’t find better coping mechanisms for stress. I started practicing yoga and found myself floored (lol savasana) by the wisdom of teacher, Kat McGee. I approached her after a deeply empowering class one day and asked if she could recommend me the book that most changed her life and informed her way of thinking about the world. Freedom From the Known by JD Krishnamurti, she told me. I bought it hastily and devoured each word during my summer break. I remember exactly where I was and what the air felt like when I read this book. It did change my life, partially because of the words it contained. But also because it encouraged me to start working with Kat 1:1 in her transformation coaching practice.

I learned how to label my mind. How to be present enough to notice when a thought captured my attention and give it a name. How to recognize that if I could name the thought as something separate from me, it would create a natural distancing. I was now the observer of the thought and not consumed by it. A softening would follow. I learned how to do this over and over and over again. I learned how to recognize when my emotions were driven by unmet needs. Kat helped me recognize the root of what was causing my reactions and behaviors and then how to meet those needs without codependency.

Over and over again, she guided me back to my own truth. Asking questions that allowed me to create my own tooling. Sparking the curious & engaged student in me who has always been on a quest to be the best version of myself. She helped me discover how to do that without being on a desperate, draining, and falsified path towards salvation. She was and continues to be a mirror for the best version of me.

For the past 8 years (and counting), I have been working relentlessly yet easefully to observe my patterns, question my embedded stories and beliefs, and reorient myself towards values that I choose instead of inherited. Freedom has always been at the top of that list.

And so while I lay here on the beach in Paros feeling an overwhelming amount of gratitude for the life that I live, for the partner I get to do it with, and for the peace of mind that I have cultivated (for the most part - you can also ask John about a couple crash outs I’ve had here), I recognize that these types of moments are not created in an instant. They are the culmination of a bunch of tiny decisions and reframes that continuously and gently guide you to be honest with yourself about the type of life that you really want to be living.

That changes tremendously overtime.

For John and I right now, freedom means freedom of time, freedom of location, freedom to take risks, to adventure, to try new things, to keep figuring out who we are.

In the future, our values will likely shift more in favor of purpose and abundance as we raise a family and want more stability. But the best part of knowing that our life direction will change over time, is having evidence that we have already been able to shift our compass in the past and watch how small, daily, diligent decisions in the direction of what you care about pay compounding dividends over time.

I’ve been freakishly obsessed with the work of on this trip. I read all 3 of his books in a week and last night, John and I re-watched his TedTalk “How to Slow Down the Passing of Time.”

For those unfamiliar (get ready to have a new fixation), Jed is most known for his book To Shake the Sleeping Self, in which he chronicles his journey of quitting his job at 30 and biking from Portland to Patagonia over a 16 month span. Upon returning, he was struck by close friends and family that would say “holy shit you’re already back??!!” and his reaction was “ummmm I have literally been gone for a lifetime??” He was intrigued by this warping in perception of time. How is it that his 16 months felt like a new childhood whereas his friends who remained home felt like he’d left and returned in the blink of an eye?

What he ultimately arrives at is this. Novelty slows down time.

When we are in new and uncertain environments, our amygdalas are more active. We are more present and assessing the curvature of every road we are passing. And this is particularly true in moments where we are reassessing our identity.

When people are interviewed at the end of their life, studies have found that memories are strongest from ages 15-25. Some of that is because of the amount of firsts that happen in that period of time. But it’s not just the first time that something happens that leaves an impression. As Jed says, no one remembers the first time they had a bowl of plain cheerios. Deeply engrained, time-bending memories are formed when we are doing something that reimagines our identities. That shifts how we show up in the world.

The beauty of that realization is that it doesn’t have to stop when you turn 25. The reason it does for most people is because we relax into these comfy and lazy patterns of routine. And our brains loooooove that! They do! Because they expend less energy by having predictive models of what time you are going to wake up and where you will wipe your butt.

But if you exert the added energy to break that, to get out of routine and into unfamiliar territory, you expand your surface area for identity shifts to transpire. And not only does that slow down time, but it also prolongs the experience of becoming.

This means that we can have that invigorating, life-giving experience of following the path to who we are at many points in life. Not just when we are growing our first body hairs.

So, if you read the first part of this and thought “damn I want to go to Europe for 6 weeks,” or have been questioning how much your present life is reflecting your deepest beliefs and values, I have really good news for you.

We are always changing. And those of us who enjoy the continued experience of becoming can continue to cultivate that over and over again through the years by welcoming in more novelty. Trying new things. Changing scenery. Listening to Jed’s talk!

And if you are just in need of a grounding place to begin, I would absolutely love to talk to any of you about how to start orienting towards the life you want to live. So here is a link to a free 30 min discovery call with me! And I will create you a short program for continued reflection after we chat.

book a free discovery call!

Thank you for getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me! I will catch you here next week.

With love,

Char

If you’re craving clarity, deeper self-trust, greater confidence, and a grounded path toward what you really want, I’d love to work with you 1:1. You can apply for coaching here or just respond to this email.

PS: Out of gratitude to those who support my work and a deeper commitment to keep writing here, I have turned on paid subscriptions. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who continues to read and support my writing. If you want to Pledge your support, you can do so HERE.

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