And Also! Extras | Vol. 5
Sharing poems at sunset, a great new quit-lit read, thoughts on quitting therapy, the luckiest day of the year — and still more, more, more!
Thank you for reading And Also, a weekly newsletter featuring personal stories and lesson plans to help you navigate life ✨!
Happy Wednesday and welcome back to another edition of And Also! Extras, a curated monthly newsletter featuring some fun updates from my life, a list of books that have gallantly moved on from my TBR (“to be read”) pile, and links from around around the Internet that got me thinking — or just made me smile — this week.
P.S. Clearly I have a lot to share this week, because this email is verbose. You may need to read it in your browser or click “View entire message” at the bottom to make sure you catch everything!
Without further ado . . .
Going Back to the Basics
On Monday, during our team meeting, my coworkers and I reflected on our goals for the year — personally and professionally — and checked in with one another about how we felt and where we were at as we near the halfway point of 2024.
First of all, can I just say I LOVE MY TEAM FOR THIS?! Give me a bunch of goal-loving girlies, et al., always please! And also, the reflection time showed me just how far behind I felt on many of the goals I set for myself in January: revising my novel, launching my course, growing this Substack, writing a comedy set, etc.
Admittedly, it’s been a busy four months — since the top of 2024, I’ve traveled a lot (to Nashville, Miami, LA, Eugene, and I’m in Seattle as I write this!), I’ve led two MBA-level seminars, I’ve launched big work projects, and prioritized time with friends going through big life transitions. Looking back, it hasn’t just been busy, it’s been good busy — deeply, soul-nourishingly good — and I’m grateful for that. But it’s no wonder I haven’t had much time for anything else!
That being said, now that life is slowing down a bit, I’m not feeling all that drawn to do more; I’m actually wanting to care for my foundation a bit better — to care for my physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing in a really intentional and deliberate way.
As I told my team on Monday, it’s more clear than ever that even just adding more of the basics to my life — getting more sleep, drinking more water, getting outside for long walks (and solo walks, not just with Hazel) now that the weather’s nicer — will have a positive domino effect on every other thing I want to accomplish this year.
It’s more clear than ever that even just adding more of the basics to my life . . . will have a positive domino effect on every other thing I want to accomplish this year.
Sharing Poems at Sunset
Last week, we had some of the first days that felt like summer in Portland, and I really soaked it all in. Friday night, in particular, was my favorite.
We met up with some friends at an event called Poems at Sunset featuring poetry readings from Oregon’s poet laureate, Anis Mojgani — an incredible human and artist who started reading poetry out of the window of his studio a couple of years ago. There was a car blocking his window on Friday, so we all gathered in Sunnyside School Park and listened as Anis projected his voice across the crowd, and the summer light behind us turned to dusk.
It was so incredibly beautiful and moving to me! One of my favorite of Anis’ lines was “the aching possibility of it all” — and that’s exactly what that night felt like; what it gave me. It affirmed for me that people are craving the expression of feelings through art, and that there are so many offline opportunities to share my writing — and hear others’ — in community.
It also inspired me as a budding poet, and as someone who is incredibly determined to devote the majority of my writing to the creative pursuits that pull me, instead of what I’m pushed to write by necessity.
Lessons from Falling Out the Bathroom Window
Okay, one last update that felt both harrowing and hilarious to me: I fell out of my bathroom window on Sunday.
Or really, I squeezed myself through it after getting stuck in the bathroom after the doorknob came off in my hand while home alone — and then, I tumbled into my backyard below sans the towel I had haphazardly wrapped around my body before setting off on this unintentional misadventure.
And I’ve gotta tell you, while I’m hyper-aware that there are people around the world in actual horrifically dangerous situations, those brief few moments where I thought I was trapped in my bathroom — without my phone or clothes or food or my dog — really got my heart beating. For a minute, I could feel my body go into fight or flight as I started to hyperventilate a bit.
It sounds so dramatic in retrospect, knowing that at worst, I would’ve had to sit my ass on the bathroom floor and just wait until Jordan got home later that night, and at best, I would find my way out — which I did!
Again, my point isn’t that my experience was actually harrowing, but that for a not short amount of time, my body thought it was. To my nervous system, I was stuck, trapped, and I started to freak out trying to figure out how to get myself “unstuck”. If I’m honest, even though I’ve laughed about the situation many times in the last few days, I’m still a little rattled by it. But I’m focusing on what I learned from it, which is that I can get myself unstuck from seemingly unworkable situations — and I am lucky to have the resources, ability, and relative safety to do that.
I can get myself unstuck from seemingly unworkable situations — and I am lucky to have the resources, ability, and relative safety to do that.
I’ve also been thinking about how cool it is that my nervous system’s dysregulation is a natural response designed to keep me safe, and I have the tools to regulate myself again when that response is unnecessary to get myself back to stasis (and back outside my bathroom).
And bonus lesson: People really connect to personal stories that have both heart (relatable, coming out the other side of a struggle) and humor (crawling naked out your bathroom window into your backyard). The story I shared on Instagram about my escapades is probably my most responded-to story ever. I already knew that people loved personal stories — and TBH, I’d prefer a pause on any similar personal experiences for the time being! — but it was nice to be reminded :)
No One Tells You This by Glynnis MacNicol: I started reading this memoir — about Glynnis’ 40th birthday and the year that follows — very purposefully; as “research” almost, as I approach my own 40th birthday in December. (I’d also read about Glynnis’ new book, I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, coming out in June, and wanted to catch up on her first book before that came out.) I enjoyed this! In an engaging narrative style, Glynnis really takes to task a lot of the societal stories we have around who women should be and how they should behave at 40.
This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright: I’ve been obsessed with sobriety memoirs since my own sober curiosity was piqued over a decade ago, and This Ragged Grace will now forever be included in the Jenna’s Favorites™ canon. Octavia’s memoir is a beautifully braided story of the first five years following her recovery from alcohol addiction alongside the story of her father’s descent into Alzheimer’s. It’s a heartbreaking, gorgeous, and deeply personal book, with a lot of appropriate references from Octavia’s academic career, and just generally, some of the more beautifully-constructed sentences I’ve ever read.
The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell: This one made me think! I definitely don’t agree with Amanda’s take on everything, but I I don’t think she expects you to. She uses each chapter of the book to point out a different cognitive bias and ties it back to how she sees it currently playing out in popular culture. All of it was interesting and definitely shone a light on some of the places where I’m operating more from bias than from conscious thought.
Honorable Mention: Funny Story by Emily Henry. Listen, if you love contemporary romance, you’ll love this one — it’s EmHen at her finest (though admittedly, Book Lovers is still my favorite!).
The soft life: why millennials are quitting the rat race: An interesting read in The Guardian about what happens when our ambition doesn’t reap the rewards promised, and we return to a more natural (read: less capitalistic) way of being. I definitely found myself envying the simpler (and also, seemingly more satisfying) lives the women featured had reconstructed for themselves.
Try the ‘Five Things’ Method When You Need to Tidy Your Home but Have Zero Energy: Speaking of making things simpler, I love how therapist KC Davis — also recently interviewed in
’s A Year of Mental Health! — makes cleaning up far less overwhelming by removing decision fatigue with the Five Things Method featured in this article.Can I Just Quit Therapy?: As someone who’s been in both individual and couples therapy for years, I thought this take was interesting — and not far off from thoughts I’ve also had recently. Much like the article states — “even mental-health professionals will tell you therapy is not meant to be an indefinite self-improvement project” — my own therapist acknowledged last week that she suspected I no longer needed her support, at least not as much as I did when we’d started working together. At the same time, like most things, I think this is an incredibly nuanced topic. I appreciate that at the article’s end, the author writes “I know what I should be doing”. I do too — thanks, in no small part, to the therapists and coaches I’ve had over the years. I may take a break soon, but I’m fairly certain I’ll rely on therapy to reorient and remind me of the mental health support that will serve me best for the rest of my life.
This was freakin’ adorable to me. It just felt like authentic inner child playfulness and I absolutely loved it. Might steal her idea for my 40th!
Jordan and I just started planning our first friend get-together of the (almost) summer over Memorial Day Weekend, so this newsletter of tips and recipes for hosting an outdoor party from
was so perfectly timed.Did you know that Saturday is the luckiest day of the year? Or so say many of my favorite astrologers, since it’s the one day this year that Jupiter (the planet of growth, expansion, and good fortune) aligns with the sun. Chani Nicholas shared a little more about it — and how to take advantage of it — here.
Are you all caught up on my previously-curated good reads and life haps? ⬇️
Omg Jenna that bathroom story made my day. It was so unexpected and so... hopeful, somehow. Thank you –– I really needed it 🥹💫
Gosh, that story about getting stuck. Our bodies really do all sorts of stuff when they need to.
I had 2 incidents like that this week. (1) found a snake (!!!!) in our house when I was by myself that I had to sort out. And the (2) days later stepped on a bunch of glass and was profusely bleeding while my husband was leaf blowing in the front yard and couldn’t hear me screaming for help. I was alternating between laughing and crying at the absurdity.
Love Emily Henry. I’m a bit behind and haven’t read your favorite one yet but I kind of save them for occasions when I can read them in one day…preferably in a hammock.