august dump: it's not f*cking fall yet

plus a brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipe!

Hi sweet humans! Before we get into this month’s dump, I wanted to let you know that this will be the last letter until September 22nd. I’ll be taking a few weeks off while I travel to Italy to go on a hiking trip with some dear friends! I can’t wait to see what new insights I’ll get to share with you from my travels.

In the spirit of that, I’ll be running a sale on paid subscriptions—30% off—from now until the end of September. Upon my return, there will be some changes to this Substack, including:

two weekly newsletters, with some exclusive content for paid subscribers, along with weekly breathwork sessions.

Thank you for being here and supporting my work!

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If there’s one thing I know, it’s that the internet is rabid for fall. It’s a phenomenon as old as social media itself—sometime in mid-August, you can start to hear the faint sound of drums in the distance, getting louder and louder as September approaches, like you rolled a 5 or an 8 in Jumanji. Only, instead of getting sucked into the most horrific board game ever (seriously, what sadistic person created that thing? Probably Wyna…), you’re about to get sucked into a world of pumpkin spice, baking, fall movies, everything being described as “witchy”, and the ~fall aesthetic~ that’s pretty much Practical Magic meets Dead Poets Society, meets Gilmore Girls (which I’ve never watched but it still seems like the obvious choice)—you know the one.

The internet’s compulsion for fall is insatiable. And, honestly?

I’m on board.

Call me basic but fall, especially early fall/late summer, just hits.

But, listen

August is too goddamn early.

Summer doesn’t end until late September.

LATE September.

Not August 20th.

Definitely not September 1st.

But September 22nd.

Our relentless addiction to rushing has somehow spilled over to the seasons—the one thing you can’t bend to your will no matter how hard you try. Ushering in fall in August feels like a weird attempt to speed up the timeline and I kind of hate it. Can we not just let things be as they are? Melt into the juicy transitionary period, with its crispy mornings and warm days, and just love it for what it is without going full send into fall, practically shaking the leaves from the trees, begging them to fall?

Ok, now that that’s out of the way…

I actually am really looking forward to fall. 🙃

My husband and I had a conversation this morning on a hike about all of the projects (and revenue streams) I have in the works, and how eager I am to lean into them after we get back from our trip.

Eventually, the conversion turned to how great the fall is for deep work. The summer is over, the days are shorter and colder—perfect for hunkering down and getting work done.

I love the summer. Generally, I’m a “never want the summer to end” type of gal. But as I grow into myself, the more present I become, and the better I can settle into and accept, the cyclical nature of the seasons.

Summer is for playing, fall is for preparing, winter is for resting, and spring is for producing.

And there are even cycles that exist within those.

We can never live our lives permanently in any one season (literally and figuratively). That’s how we burn out. Learning to ride the waves of life, and enjoying each one for what it brings to the table, is the ultimate freedom.

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Reading…

My Perfectionism is Actually Gorgeous by

Kristen Garaffo

for a refreshing take on perfectionism

wellness girlies + happy (?) little hermits by

happy little lists

for the value of our wellness girlie era

Stop Labeling Yourself as a 'Morning Person' by

Olivia Noceda

for more revelations from the post-wellness girlie era

self-hatred and a diet coke by

Valerie

for the most real talk about body image I’ve ever read

Saying yes to…

Picnics

I have a bad habit of trying to cram all of the things I never ended up doing during the summer into the eleventh hour. The sudden turn where the weather is still nice, but the mornings and evenings are starting to get crispy fills me with the same slight sense of panic as my boomer mom feverishly cleaning the house before company comes over (who am I kidding, I do it too).

But something I’ve been doing, which started as something born from this panic state but has quite a calming effect, is having picnics in the park with my girlfriends.

First, I want to point out that having “girlfriends” at all is a huge deal to me. Part of the reason I moved to a new city was because I had a hard time making and maintaining female friendships back in my hometown. Call it the stain of having grown up there as a “guy’s girl”, or that my mindset had outgrown the bounds of small-town thinking, where most things (and people) tend to stay the same… it just wasn’t happening.

But here, I find it quite easy. It’s a place where people actually do things. Have hobbies. Really are “up for whatever”. Most people move here from elsewhere in search of the same thing, so people are more open to new friendships. A real “clean slate” vibe abounds.

There’s something about sitting in the grass, with a good meal (I’ve done Thai steak salad, and smoked chorizo and kale potato soup +charcuterie—you won’t find me half-assing a meal) people watching, listening to music from the concert happening in the amphitheater across the street in the soft light of a late summer evening that I find so…grounding.

Thinking about…

How humans can collapse infinite possibilities into a single material reality

Two months ago, I had an idea to host a workshop with one of my colleagues at our gym. Me, a functional breathwork coach and he, a functional range coach, found a lot of crossover in our respective practices. So we imagined combining forces to teach people about the nervous system and the “mind-body connection”, and how to leverage it to find more ease in their physical experience. Fast forward to last weekend, where we packed that gym full of people wanting to listen and learn.

From an idea.

Last summer when my friend came to visit before moving to Amsterdam, we were talking about all the places we’d love to travel to, and we found we were both equally excited about the Dolomites. “Let’s do it,” I said, half-joking. We started sending each other Dolomites content whenever it came across our Instagram feeds. I don’t know at what point it transitioned from joke to reality, but one thing led to another and, seemingly out of thin air, with a life and consciousness of its own from somewhere in the ether, the trip began to materialize.

We leave next week.

Something that fascinates me about the human species is our capacity to create. Not just our compulsion to make art, but how we create our realities, in much of the same way one would carve a statue from stone. There are infinite variations of how things can turn out, all colored by our past experiences.

Sometimes it trips me out that I’m having thoughts and, in real-time, those thoughts reach my fingertips and turn into words on a page, that someone then reads, interprets through their own unique lens, and etches its way into the fabric of their reality like a single strike of a chisel. But the strike hits differently on every single piece of stone it touches, depending on what has already chipped away at it.

It’s one of those thoughts that makes you want to throw up lol

Treating…

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

If you described me as a jack-of-all-trades, you would hear no protest from me. Maybe it’s ADHD (it definitely is), but there are so many things in this world I love, want to try, or get better at. At the core of my essence is a person who simply wants to get as familiar with as many aspects of the human experience as possible (hence, the name of this Substack. If you didn’t know, now you know).

One of those things is baking. I fell in love with it as a wee babe and even tried my hand at recipe development content creation earlier this year (turns out, recipe development is really time-consuming and very expensive).

Instead of abandoning it as health and wellness became more of a priority, I let it morph with me. I was early in the “healthy desserts” movement, back when we didn’t know how to make them taste good and ingredients were hard to find.

Now, things are different:

1. you can make an incredible dessert with no refined sugar, gluten, dairy, etc

2. I’ve come to settle into the fact that there’s a time and place to go all out. Desserts are one of those earthly delights that we shouldn’t deny ourselves. Mouth pleasure is one of the fun things about being a person.

Over time, I’ve found balance in this. Sometimes, you just really want a sweet treat in the middle of the week that’s not going to make you feel like shit. Sometimes you want to eat a cinnamon roll the size of your head.

This recipe strikes that balance for me.

It’s one of my go-to’s when I just want to make something that’s quick and easy, yet packs an indulgent punch

If you make it, comment on this post to let me know!

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup butter

• 3/4 cup coconut sugar

• 1 large egg

• 1 tsp milk of choice

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/2 tsp fine sea salt

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 2 cups blanched almond flour

• 1/2 cup dark chocolate gems

• flaky sea salt

Method:

• Preheat oven to 350°F

• Add butter to a saucepan over medium/medium-low heat and melt until browned, stirring constantly (it will start to be fragrant and nutty. Be very careful not to burn it—it happens fast!)

• Remove butter from heat and add to mixing bowl with sugar. Mix until combined. Add egg and beat until mixture begins to ribbon.

• Add the remaining ingredients and mix until dough forms

• Fold in the chocolate chips

• Place in the refrigerator for 10+ minutes to allow the dough to firm up

• Scoop into 2 TBS-sized balls, place on a parchment-lined baking tray, and bake for 10 mins. Remove from the oven, gently flatten with the back of a spatula and return for 3-5 more minutes.

• Top with flaky sea salt immediately out of the oven.

• Place on a cooling rack for 15 minutes

Recommending…

Drinking out of mason jars

This is a silly revelation, on par with the rotisserie chicken thing. I almost didn’t include this because it probably makes me seem like an idiot, BUT I recently started drinking out of a mason jar and let me tell you…

First thing’s first: stop drinking out of your Stanley/HydroFlask/stainless steel bottle of choice all day. I know it’s an easy way to track your water intake, but they’re disgusting—I know you’re not washing them near enough.

I used to be this person until I realized that it was kind of gross, and switched to drinking out of a regular ol’ glass while at home.

The only problem was it was hard to have any sense of how much water I was drinking, and because of the size, I’d often sit at my desk, dying of thirst, not wanting to get up to fill my glass and interrupt my workflow.

But a mason jar? It’s big enough that you only need to fill it a few times a day, it’s got lines so you know exactly how much you're drinking, and because it’s glass, it doesn’t harbor as much bacteria and is easy to clean.

I used to make fun of the mason jar girlies. I didn’t get it. I was wrong.

Bonus

My favorite note of the month:

Via

Katherine H.B.