Strangers On a Driveway

The dopamine rush of forward momentum

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The back seat of my car on the way to Goodwill.

Hi, friends!

It’s been a while since my last newsletter. My family’s bout with COVID in early July interrupted most of my non-essential activities for the better part of a month and left me wondering where my summer went.

Most days I’m a homebody by choice. Being stuck here by circumstance compounded the sense of limbo I’d been feeling for a while. I’m happy to say the logjam has finally eased and I’m noticing progress in several areas of my life.

My daughter moved into her own apartment this summer and we’ve adjusted well to the change. Forward movement in a healthy direction overrides the inconvenience of missing her. It helps that she isn’t far away.

My workload as a freelance healthcare writer has climbed back to the steady pace I’m used to and prefer — the result of hard work and a concerted effort over the last year to nurture several new client relationships.

It’s picked up so much that last night I had a stress dream, a variation on a particular dream I have whenever I reach a certain threshold of work on my plate. I’m always back at my last corporate job, facing a backlog of emails and a pile of work I haven’t yet started. Occasionally, my subconscious will rotate in the classic “it’s finals day in high school/college and, whoops, I haven’t been to class or cracked a book all semester” nightmare.

But here’s the truth. When it comes to the often binary reality of freelance life, I’ll choose the pressure of busyness over the anxiety of sparsity every time.

The power of momentum

Lately I’ve been thinking about the passage of time. I’m in a period of closing out one phase of my life and taking steps toward the next. One of the ways I’m processing the uncertainty of change and exploring what’s possible is by writing about it. I took a humorous approach in this piece for NextTribe about my almost empty nest (I still have a four-legged son at home). I looked at it through a more serious and poignant lens in another essay that will go live soon in a major publication.

I’m a proud Gen Xer. And while there are aspects of getting older that are humbling and take getting used to, I don’t actually wish I were younger. I do recognize that if I want my life to look a certain way in the years ahead, I need to make choices now that will put me on that path.

I want my future self to be strong and fit. I want my mind to stay sharp. I want to maintain meaningful friendships and a connection to the community in which I live. I want to make space for more fun in my life. I want to write boldly, without (in spite of) fear and to continue stretching creatively. I want to eliminate clutter and minimize the noise so I can focus on what’s important.

Wanting is not doing, though.

So a couple of weeks ago, I took some steps in the right direction and began making a more serious effort to minimize 25+ years of stuff in my house. There’s a nice prize at the end of winnowing down my possessions. Within the next year or two, I plan to sell my house in the suburbs and move with my husband into a small condo by the beach.

My neighbor saw my husband and me loading our car with boxes of housewares I was donating to Goodwill. It looked like the Clampett mobile. He walked over.

“I keep saying I just need to put a dumpster in my driveway and add to it every day,” he said.

We joked about how much a family can accumulate over time and how our basements had become a time capsule of our kids’ childhoods, our long marriages, and the lives of parents and other loved ones who had passed.

The conversation got more serious. How long should you hold onto mementos? It’s hard enough to let go of items you no longer use but “might need someday.” But getting rid of cherished keepsakes that, once gone, are not coming back is a task pre-loaded with regret. Sentiment isn’t just sweet, it’s f*cking sticky.

But getting rid of cherished keepsakes that, once gone, are not coming back is a task pre-loaded with regret. Sentiment isn’t just sweet, it’s f*cking sticky.

“I’ve got it,” I said. “We’ll do it like ‘Strangers on a Train.’ You get rid of our stuff, we’ll get rid of yours. It’s brilliant — no emotional attachment, no mercy.”

We laughed and said goodbye. When I came home 30 minutes later with my trunk and back seats emptied, it felt like more movement in the right direction.

Building on my momentum, the next night I watched YouTube and learned how to take apart my old dead iMac and remove the hard drive. Now I can destroy my data and safely recycle the computer.

What a hit of dopamine that was. Or whatever feel-good hormone my brain rewarded me for tackling a task that was hanging around too long. So now I’m leaning into momentum as a source of pleasure. I know. What a nerd.

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Three Things That Inspired, Entertained, or Intrigued Me

1. I went to a local arts festival recently and discovered the work of Phill Singer, an oil painter who creates mesmerizing surrealist dreamscapes. My favorites feature ocean life. I might have beach on the brain. 

2. Speaking of dopamine hits, this piece in The Washington Post is about how to bring more joy into your life through play. I played tennis regularly in my 30s and 40s and have been talking about learning pickleball but have done nothing about it other than talk. I want to learn card games, too. What I need is to take a first step and get some momentum going, hmmm?

3. If you need a lift, check out this doggie bus birthday party. Really, name something more joyful than this.