Category: Life

Suffering from Burnout? How to Know When to Rest or Push

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Earlier, I wrote about the 20 Mile March. Today I want to expand on that idea. There is one small hiccup in that analogy that usually trips people up: how do you know when you should push, and when you’re in burnout and deeply in need of a break?

Does your life plan account for enough rest?

Rest is important. Rest is actually what we spend MOST of our time doing, believe it or not.

Even for endurance athletes and for extreme sports, they spend more of their time resting than pushing. Even if you’re an extreme athlete, working out and training for 6 to 10 hours a day, you’re not in training mode the remainder of the day, anywhere from 14 to 18 hours.

We think, at times, that a 20 Mile March means we have to be hustling and pushing and “always on.”

We don’t always spend as much time thinking about all that other time that is equally important. (Even if you’re walking 20 miles a day, at 3 miles per hour, you’re only walking 6.5 hours per day.)

The problem lies in how we think about rest and recovery.

Without adequate rest, we’re headed towards burnout.

Rest is not waste. Rest is actually quite active.

In the times we aren’t walking, marching, or making our work happen, what are we doing? Here’s some of what a well-rested life includes:

Sleep

Sleep is not a thing that you can successfully skip. You might be able to push through a certain number of years in your younger life, but most people pay the price for this decision.

Sleep is a time when we recover, when our cells map out what happened during the day. There are massive amounts of brain activity that happen when we close our eyes. We provide the foundation for insight and work when we get enough sleep — not the reverse.

Yet so often we think about sleep as something that will happen after we reach a certain point. What if it’s the reverse? What if enough sleep will lead to better breakthroughs?

(For more on this, read this extensive and useful article by Scientific American on why our brains need downtime.)

Active rest

In sports, there’s a concept called “active rest” and it’s the space between pushing on a repetition and completely collapsing on the couch underneath a pile of nachos. This is: Stepping away from your computer for a brain break during the day. Listening to music or closing your eyes for a 5-minute rest to recharge. Saying no and carving out space for recovery and rest. Taking a walking meeting.

(Hint: catching up on all the blogs and news or reading email might not be active rest.)

Active recovery

Recovery isn’t something that happens by chance. We are always preparing ourselves and our bodies for the next round of work, and recovering from the past round of work. How we sleep, how we eat, how we hydrate, how we limber up, and how we pay attention all matters for our next round of work. This means: choosing activities that refresh and refuel us. Noticing what drains us or what activities are correlated with “off” days.

Preparing ourselves and our bodies

We are constantly preparing and readying ourselves for the next moment. Elite athletes and star performers have strategies and plans that work for them, for a reason. This means: How much time do you spend linking what you do in your down time to how you perform during your on time?

Should you keep going? How to decide your next actions:

So what about today, right now? How do you know what to do next? How can you discern if you’ve put in your 20 miles, and you need to rest, or if you really need to put in more effort?

Let’s first assume that you’re not burned out, but you need a plan of action. Then, what you’ll do is take the next 20 Miles and break them into pieces.

1. Ask yourself: what’s the next step?

How can you build in a small amount of forward momentum without going too big?

On the days when you’re feeling foggy or slow, when you’re wondering if you should be pushing harder, or you’re not sure what to do—this is the time to steady the pace. Find a rhythm and a march that works. Plot out a course that is even. Line up activities that are small wins that don’t take a pile of energy.

2. Make the pieces smaller, but still take steps

For me, as one example, the idea of “writing a book” can be a terrifying construct. In order to keep putting a foot forward, I have to break things into microscopic bits. Then, when I’m having one of those days where the idea of writing a book is too overwhelming to think about, I’ll open up the queue and just do the next few tasks:

  • Research the next 5 people to interview
  • Edit and revise 3 pages
  • Read through the notes from my editor
  • Write a free-flow of a few paragraphs to get the ideas loose for the next chapter.

20 Miles doesn’t have to feel arduous and complicated. 20 Miles can be done by walking a leisurely pace in the morning for three hours, taking a significant portion of the day to rest, and doing an afternoon walk for 2 hours, followed by an evening walk for an hour.

Bonus tip: At the last startup where I worked, we used a tag called @easy and @10m in our project management software for any tasks that were easy to complete and quick. Then, on days when you need to slow down or stay steady, we’d just hit that pile of work.

3. Focus on Active Rest

Find the sweet spot where you don’t stop completely, but you ALSO don’t burn out by trying to caffeinate, push, and get into “beast mode” just to make it through the day. A clue is: if you’re going for an extra coffee, you might actually need to slow it down a bit and leave work early, instead.

But, there’s one other thing to consider. And this is when the above isn’t working, or a succession of days starts to feel sloggy with no end in sight. If that’s true, there are two possibilities:

4. You might need to adjust your goals.

If you’re feeling perpetually sloggy and burned, perhaps you’ve accidentally constructed a “60 Mile March” or a “100 Mile March” and the pace you’ve set doesn’t provide enough space for rest or recovery.

Personally, I’ve tried many times to set out on a 60-Mile March pace and realized that 14-hour days of writing is not sustainable.

The solution: adjust your plan to create a true 20-Mile March. One that doesn’t take more than 6 hours per day, maximum (and if you hustled on a great day, you could be done in 4 hours). A plan that allows for a very slow day that still accomplishes those 20 miles. Ask yourself:

On the worst day of the last few months, would I still be able to accomplish 20 miles?

That’s your pace.

But there’s one more thought to consider:

5. You might need more deep rest

Sometimes, especially in this culture, people are burned out.

You’ll know that you’re more than just sloggy if you’re feeling like you: (1) can’t hardly make it out of bed in the morning, (2) you’re getting sick, (3) you’re angry or mad or some other pent-up emotion, or (4) you can’t find a way to make yourself care anymore.

These are red-flag signals of burnout — and that you need a break, more than anything else.

There have been entire seasons in my life where the focus of the quarter is getting the minimum done, sleeping a ton, and saying no to things. Life is full of stretches when we need to rest and recover.

True rest, however, lets our brains and our minds and bodies melt down and reboot. This might mean that you take a day to binge-watch television _OR_ it might mean that you need to make some more active steps in your rest and recover:

  • Journaling
  • Taking time away from your job or work
  • Booking a massage or bodywork
  • Taking a bath, going for a soak, trying a float
  • Going away for a weekend
  • Spending quality time with friends
  • Letting the calendar or the agenda go to the wayside
  • Saying no when we’d regularly say yes (or vice versa)

It feels uncomfortable to do things differently than we’ve done them before. Things might come up that chase us back to our bad habits. Things might come up.

Where are you in your journey?

As you contemplate your journey and your 20 Mile March that you’re on, remember that this is about the long game: you’re setting up systems for health, for purpose, for your life.

You’re designing a life that takes you where you want to go, that’s steady, that’s consistent, that has purpose, that has direction.

Along the way, you’re cutting back and trimming out anything that doesn’t work for you. You’re experimenting and iterating.

And, you’ll learn when to push and when to rest.

Use the metaphor of the 20-Mile March to find a way to move forward every day.

Some 20 mile days might be a lot of uphill hiking, and some days might be filled with glorious views and vistas. Others might feel easy and light. And some days might feel sloggy and slow. We don’t stop just because one day feels off.

And other days you might get up and do the walking you need to do, slow and steady, and when you’re done walking in the early afternoon, you’ll rest, sleep, recover, and enjoy the rest of the day, because you’re not pushing further or faster or harder—you’re making progress, bit by bit.

The Marketing Seminar

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I don’t often stop to exclaim loudly how much I like something – but I need to stop and share how much I love a course that I’m currently taking.

I’m in the middle of taking a 100-day marketing seminar taught by Seth Godin, one of the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame inductees and one of the world’s greatest marketers.

His course is a collection of videos — 50 in all — that range from a few minutes to 15 minutes long. Every other day, I watch a video, sometimes two or three times, and I write out an essay in response to the assignment.

The latest video, on storytelling, shifted how I think about stories and how we tell stories.

What does it take to become a great marketer in today’s world?

That’s the subject of the seminar, and the videos take you through world views, understanding the psychographics of your audience, defining the change you want to make in your work and in your audience, how to create trust, how to get people talking about you and your work, what it takes to truly make a difference, how to tell great stories, and why this matters more than what tactics or specific strategy you focus on in the end.

Honestly, I could go through the entire series every day for 365 days and watch each video dozens of time and still get new ideas from it.

And they’ve done a tremendous job on the community forum in Discourse: students write thousands of posts and engage with each other in discussing each of the ideas, applying them to their businesses, and connecting over a deeper understanding of what it means to truly be an empathetic marketer.

The summer session starts July 26th.

How Will You Measure Your Life? The Art of Managing Yourself

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

This morning I was fortunate enough to wake up at 5:06am, an hour before my baby wakes up, and I had a rare hour to myself to read, write, and meditate. I picked up an HBR series called “On Managing Yourself” and meandered through Clayton Christensen’s essay, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” These are some of his insights that stuck with me, from how to spend your time, to why management is such a critical art in both your personal and professional life.

For me, mornings have been different for the last two years, first because of the fatigue of pregnancy (where waking up early was a rarity) and then because of the newness and immediacy of motherhood. I haven’t had time to write like I used to.

Instead, my mornings now look like this: my little one and I rise around 6am, and we spend the first two hours of the day feeding, changing, playing, nursing, getting dressed, getting food prepped, and walking to daycare. It’s a shift of no small measure. It’s time for me to be present with my kid, and moreover: it’s a time when he needs me to be there, continuously, in service to his needs.

So waking up before he did was a pleasant surprise, and I can’t express the gratitude I have for being able to read slowly and uninterrupted. Here’s what I learned this morning about creating your life and managing yourself:

1. Create a strategy for your life.

We create strategies for our businesses and our work, but we rarely create strategies for our own lives. As a result, our personal relationships and overall happiness suffer, because we forget to invest in things like relationships, spending time with family, cultivating a strong connection with our spouse, and enjoying our children or side projects. Managing yourself and your time is as valuable as the work that you do in your career.
“Keep the purpose of your life front and center as you decide how to spent your time, talents, and energy.” — Clayton Christensen

2. We consistently allocate resources ineffectively. First, by over-allocating time and resources to our careers, and second, by under-allocating to our other pursuits.

“When people who have a high need for achievement have an extra half-hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments,” he writes. And because our careers are the easiest place to measure our output, it’s easy to spend most of our time, effort, and energy on our careers. But is this wise, and is this truly what we want? “Raising a great kid,” doesn’t have an easy metric, and probably never will. But it might be something that you want to spend time on. Knowing that it’s harder to allocate time to things that aren’t as easy to measure output-wise can help us re-center our attention across all of the things that matter to us.

3. Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well.

If you’re managing other people, or even yourself, your job is extremely important. You don’t just manage the time people spend at work, you also shape the way people leave work at the end of the day, and how they are when they head home.

If you’ve been a shitty manager, you may have people leave work frustrated, disappointed, or discouraged, and that’s who they are when they head home to their families. What if you could manage to leave people inspired, accomplished, and satisfied, and they went home feeling full, grounded, and creative?

In my own business, it reminds me that I’m not just hiring someone to “get things done.” I’m hiring for relationships, for deeply satisfying work, and for joy. The people I’m working with now on Startup Pregnant are deeply intuitive, thoughtful, and mindful. They bring me joy to work with them, and, it’s my hope that I inspire them as well.

And in your own life, if you treat it like a business, reflect: how are you managing yourself and your time? Are you treating your life like the valuable asset and creation it is?

4. Consulting and coaching aren’t about providing specific solutions; they’re about guiding people through a process that helps them find the solution on their own.

“When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly,” Christensen writes. “Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models […] and they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.”

The most profound leaders all share this wise insight: that coaching and providing insight to others isn’t about telling them what to do. It’s about cultivating deep listening practices and guiding people towards a way to access insights within their own wisdom. What I’ve been reading lately — Krista Tippet’s On Being Wise, to Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, and to the deep listening practices from Thich Naht Hanh — are all influencing the models I’ve built in my private Mastermind accelerator. In our small group, where confidentiality and conversation are paramount, our monthly Deep Dive practices  are not about giving advice to each other, but about constructive, effective deep listening practices to guide people into better understanding themselves and the puzzles they’re working on.

5. “Just this once” is the most dangerous justification, and is probably why people end up cheating, being dishonest, and going to jail.

The simplest justification to yourself is that you’ll only do something once. If you follow this to it’s logical end, you’ll regret where you end up.

6. Humility comes from high self-esteem, not low self-esteem.

Having a high sense of self-esteem and a high regard for others were the traits that Christensen found were most in line with the most humble people they knew. “They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were.” People who feel good about themselves are not boastful or self-deprecating. They are satisfied and eager to connect with others, and to help others grow as well.

In his work with the highest achievers at places like Harvard, he found that people could develop and grow to a point where they felt they no longer had mentors or people to look up to. This, however, was important to learn from. “If your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited,” he writes. Instead, stay humble, stay eager, and remember that you can learn from everyone.

7. Know how you measure your life

“Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you’ve achieve; worry about the individuals you’ve helped to become better people.” — Christensen

As he gets older, Christensen says that his projects or accomplishments matter less and less, but the individual lives he’s touched are what matters most. I’m inspired to bring this into my life, and remember that now, the only thing I have is the people in front of me in this moment, and the attention and love I can bring into today.

And as I finish typing this, my baby is knocking on the crib, reminding me that it’s time to put my book down, set my phone aside, and go help him up out of the crib and into his day. Spending time with him might not get more writing done, and it might not help me check off more from my To-Do list for work, but it will be part of the whole life that I’m living, and I’m grateful to spend time with him. And I’m grateful that this morning, I woke up early enough to write again. In reflecting on my self-management, I wonder, is it time to start rising early again to make more space for writing?

Sweet Discomfort

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

The edge of comfort begins to feel mighty uncomfortable. An extended stretch in yoga class, a twist that goes a bit further than you’re used to, a run that tacks on an extra mile that your body hasn’t done before.

When you stretch into your areas of growth, you reach a place of discomfort. My yoga teacher reminded me of the sweetness inside of this discomfort. It’s not painful, it’s not terrible, but it isn’t at all easy, either.

It isn’t the most pleasant place to be, because you might be breathing heavier, sweating more, struggling to balance.

You might be pushing to find the right words, or stammering on stage as you give your first-ever live talk.

Inside of the discomfort is a sweetness. It is the awareness of growth, of the creative impetus that is the desire of being human. We long for growth and change. When we stagnate or stay still for too long, we can sink into sadness, lethargy, or apathy.

But when we struggle and strive, when we reach to achieve, when we allow ourselves to go into the area of sweet discomfort,

We grow.

The Pang (The Edge of Knowing)

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I’ve moved a number of times in my life. Every time I go through the same dance: sorting, sifting, culling, deciding what to toss and what to keep. Schlepping many mountains of stuff across airplanes makes you intentional about what you keep, and what you don’t.

Is this worth the weight of lugging it through the airport?

My Kitchenaid mixer made it as part of my carry-on luggage in 2012. I got a number of strange and bewildered looks from the travel security folks on the way from San Francisco to New York.

Each time there’s an easy pile — the “of course I’ll toss those” objects.

I realize that I’ve accumulated clutter in clothing and books yet again.

There’s the other side that’s also intuitive to know: “the things I will definitely keep.” I keep my comfort blankets, my yoga pants, my laptop. And I keep the hand-made bowls my husband and I made on our pottery date. We were bewildered at how perfectly they aligned and stacked with each other, and we kept them. They aren’t just bowls; they’re a story of when we dated.

But the middle is messy.

What do I keep and what do I let go of?

There are books with some value, some meaning. There are books that I want to read, should read.

Oops, there’s that “should” word. That’s a clue.

Let it go.

Invariably, however, it’s guesswork in the middle.

And each time, I dance at the edge of the line. And I find that once or twice every time, I let go of something that I wish I had kept.

There’s a kernel of regret that forms in my stomach, and I think, “Oooh. I really did like that.”

And this feeling: this knot of knowing. This aftermath of uncertainty.

It is a clue. And it is a gift.

It means that I inched towards the edge of my comfort zone. It means I let go of something I cared about, and perhaps I learned more about what I cared about simply by letting it go.

My definitions grow stronger with mistakes.

And I find a way to love this edge. Because if I never engage with it — if I never feel an ounce of regret, or a moment of the sting of forgetting: then I won’t know for sure that I was there.

There. Dancing in the edge of uncertainty, finding my own place of knowing.

And the pang is not painful.

It is a pang that reminds me that
I was there.

And that
I chose
to engage.

A Few Glimpses of Life With A Newborn

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Leo_Newborn-3

Some thoughts on life with a newborn:

He has an uncanny knack for knowing just when I’m about to even think about doing something (showering, writing, eating with two hands, heck, even just going to the bathroom) — and deciding that NOW he is hungry, NOW he needs attention, NOW he must be bounced for two hours.

He’s so serious. Such a quiet, thoughtful, observant little guy. He has a steady gaze and already seems like he’s staring at me with more clarity than I expected.

As for Alex and I — it’s like we both enrolled suddenly in a PhD program called “parenting,” but we are somehow also of the belief that we will continue to pursue all of our original jobs & functions, on far less sleep, while massively studying and learning up on this ever-changing phenomenon called “your child.”

The way you organize your life and time changes.

For example: when you have two hands, you don’t do things that would only require one hand unless it’s urgent. For example, I can watch TV or read a book with one hand, or no hands. I’ll put a TV show on while I change the fiftieth diaper of the last blurry three days. I’ll tap out a messy text-message with one hand while I’m nursing.

But when I have HANDS!

HANDS! Hands I will use to write and type furiously onto my computer. Hands I will use to take a glorious, delicious shower. I will not waste my time with two-hands to do something as frivolous as eating. I can eat with one hand while I’m nursing with Leo.

Nursing takes a tremendous amount of time. Maternity leave is nothing like a vacation.

I am with Leo every 2 hours, feeding him. The feedings can take 20 minutes to 45 minutes. Then we have burping, diaper changing, smiling, cooing, napping, and … then a brief moment of mama time.

(Um, also. Leo is the messiest eater. He bobs on and off, slurps a bit, drools a bit, spits up a bit, lets the nipple spray him… who knew that every single item of clothing I would have would be covered in milk? My next memoir will be called “Breastmilk Everywhere,” because that’s what my life is currently.)

My writing ideas are coming at me differently. I have to reorganize how I think about capturing ideas.

Sometimes I will resort to videos and dictation on my phone when the idea comes, and I’m strapped underneath the weight of a fourteen pound (and holy moly, he’s already 14 pounds!) human being who is munch-slurping furiously at my nipple.

This is my new life.

The life, as it is right now.

My new life consists of a delirious lack of sleep, shuffled around in increments of two to three hours; a whirlwind of never-ending diapers and poo explosions (who knew that newborns had such… LOUD… poop sounds? Apparently their digestive systems are so immature that they just BRRRAPPPPP fill the room right up!), and a non-stop, never-break-from pattern of nursing.

We are here.

This is right now.

Going to the Coffee Shop

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

In the morning, I love going to the coffee shop. Call it a force of habit, a craving, an addiction — it’s hard for me not to start my day without popping into our corner store. Recently, however, I’ve been limiting my caffeine intake (due to pregnancy and headaches) and I was stuck: do I drink coffee or not? Do I continue the habit? Should I tempt myself by going into the store?

The obvious costs are easy to debate and rebuke — caffeine and $4 a day? You don’t need that!

For me, however, there are a number of other benefits that I love:

Connection. The act of saying hello to people in the morning, and checking in with my neighbors. I know the baristas and the owners of the restaurant, and they are always curious about how I’m doing and how the pregnancy is going.

Walking. Surprisingly, the coffee shop feels so close (it’s just down the block and around the corner), but when I leave the house I tack on another 1,500 steps to my FitBit fitness counter (I’m obsessed with this thing). On a day when I pop out to get a coffee, head to the post office later, and make a stop to the grocery store, I can walk 5,000 steps without feeling like I’ve done anything at all. This surprised and delighted me when I discovered it.

The routine. Something about the habit of my morning routine, and breaking around 8am or 9am to pause, greet the day and the neighbors, and then settle back into work keeps me focused. It clears my head of the junk from the morning and lets me get back to one single focus for the next few hours. There are probably all sorts of triggers and clues wrapped up into the process, and I appreciate them.

So, it’s a decaf almond milk cappuccino for me nowadays, but I still love the taste of coffee. And, more than that, I love the ritual of going to the coffee shop.

I Can’t Sit Still, But When I Write,—

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I can’t sit still, but when I write,

When I write,

I lose track of time, and space. The numbers on the clock rotate and I fall out of the month, outside of the place, out the person.

Sometimes I lose an entire day, lost in ten thousand words of a story, one word at a time, an idea so mundane, a sentence of an idea, a piece of a frame. I go through the computer screen like the back of the closet in the escape to Narnia, setting off into the world of my writing, into worlds and patterns and daydreams, teasing and tickling small thoughts to take shape and formation.

My mind moves at a different pace. Sometimes when I write, I get so lost, I forget who I am, or where I am, my leg, numbing itself to sleep, tingling me back to the present, nudging me that I’m here. I’m not really here. Sometimes when I write, I write myself into an hour of tears, of crying, crying over people who I’ve lost, people who I’ve forgotten, people who are unfairly treated.

I’ve written so many unfinished essays on racism, and cried over them all. They are broken thoughts, fragmented essays, stuttering starts of inadequate “I’m sorry’s,” and “why am I apologizing,” and “what the hell do I do?”. I’m so sorry. My friends. My community. We need to talk. We need so much more than talking

I’ve been trying to write about how friendships end, and how new friendships are formed, and why acquaintances aren’t enough, why we need people, why we need each other, what community builds, for us all. I’m trying to grasp, handle, tell what I’m feeling, share what I’m seeing, unpack the wires in my brain, I’ve been trying to articulate

I’m here,

writing.

How We See Ourselves: On Identity, Labels, and Privilege

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Do you know the story about when a man is asked to look in a mirror? He’s asked what he sees. He says “myself” (usually he says his name, “I see John,” etc).

A woman looks in the mirror and says, “I see a woman.”

A black woman says, “I see a black woman.”

How we describe ourselves says a lot about where our labels and distinctions lie. When you are an “other,” that identity is put in front of your name, your personhood. You are now a {category}, {category}, person.

We describe ourselves based on our inclusions and our other-ness. If we’re the only white person in a group of people of color, we might shift our narrative and self-describe as “I am a white man.” We define within and against the groups around us.

Listen to what labels you use to describe yourself. Are you a “quiet” person? This suggests that the norm is not to be a quiet person; that society expects extroversion and gregariousness to be the defining factors of human jubilance.

If you want to know what group of people has the most privilege in a culture or society, look for the group of people that just sees themselves as people, no labels.

Little Quips on This Not-So-Little Pregnancy

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

This is post #5 in my month-long writing challenge. Join me here.

I find pregnancy to be quite weird. My body has taken over. It’s running a long-embedded script I didn’t know I had inside of me.

I’ve taken to writing short bits on twitter under the hashtag #pregrealities.

Something about Twitter makes me feel like I actually exist, or something. Confirmation of identity. Proof of existence.

Or I’m just talking out loud to myself. Whatever. I need to talk.

A warning, though. Don’t ever look up the hashtag #pregnancy. It is too alarming and too strange. Just don’t do it.

I’m like, let’s get dinner. Hubby says, sure, I’ll be about 45 minutes? I say great, I’ll see you there in 45 minutes. I leave for the restaurant.

(I’ll have two dinners, no problem.)

The confusing feeling of being both physically full but still RAVENOUS. No more room in stomach. Must eat again in 1 hour.

Tall pregnant ladies don’t look pregnant when they most need to: months one through four, the vomit months.

Everything about this pregnancy is confronting my need for, and my sense of, control.

CEO comes over, says ‘Hey wanna smell this new startup cologne,’ ME: NO PLEASE NO—He sprays it. I’m dying.

Will I have a big bump or a small one? Will I be a waddler or a speed-walker? I CAN’T KNOW! I WON’T KNOW! I have control issues.

Thinking about this won’t make it go any faster, will it?

It’s a good thing I’m not being paid to organize this. If my mind ran the pregnancy, we’d obsess over the weirdest shit and other things wouldn’t get done.

I’ve gotta stop serving the portions at dinner. Hubby and I are gaining weight at the same pace. Only one of us is pregnant.

5 months in and already I feel like I can’t eat fast enough for this baby.

Sometimes I eat food and I feel the baby punching up towards my stomach like he’s trying to get the food faster.

Everything on my front side is ballooning outwards. My boobs have never been this big.

Actually, my boobs are starting to rest on top of my stomach. This I distinctly do not like.

Wait, wait! Make it slow down! I’m not ready yet!

Only four months left? Oh, shit.

I made a joke about falling down and dropping dead and my OBGYN looked very worried. Maybe my sense of humor is too dark. #Don’tJokeAboutBabies

I bet there are some people, when they get a pregnancy announcement from a friend, are like “Damn. Another friend lost.”

Never read the mommy blogs. Just don’t do it.

Well gosh, everyone has advice! Thank you so much!

Why do they all want to rub my tummy? I’ll rub YOUR tummy. Does it feel weird when I rub your pot belly? K.

No, I have no idea what the heck I’m doing.

Yes, I work at a startup and I’m pregnant. I might be insane. Did you ever think I wasn’t?

When you have to write out your maternity policy because you’re building a startup (and a human) from scratch. #StartupPregnant

OH: “Where is the baby exactly?” #InMyUterus #WhatIsAUterus #OhGod

The list of things pregnant women should not do is like a cracked-out version of everything everyone gives up for Lent. Except… who gives up going to the sauna for a 9-month lent?

I’m gonna have a nice Bourbon when this is all over.

I have a baby boy inside of me.

Pregnancy is so strange, and so weird.

If I forget for a second that I’m pregnant, my body definitely reminds me.

I can feel you kicking inside of me. You have a tendency to kick me in the stomach whenever I start eating. You hungry too? I know, I know.

Hey Little Mister. I took you to see Star Wars today in the theater. Your dad says it’s the first movie you’ve seen in the theater. We’re training you right.

I can’t believe I’m growing a person.

I can feel myself slowing down, and it actually feels all right. I like this. There’s a sense of peace growing.

When I look around at all the men in the world, I realize, I’m growing one of them.

We were sitting on the train today, you and I, on our first trip down to Philadelphia. Already you’ve already been down to Philadelphia and on a plane to Colorado and in a few weeks we’ll be taking you to Kentucky.

If you’re anything like your mama, you’ll be a bit of a traveler in your future. If you’re anything like your dad, you’ll love cuddling up with a good book and staying warm by a fireside (or in a sauna).

We found out you were a boy and I said something like, “the Little Mister in here wants a lot of food,” because you made me super hungry again, and your name stuck.

I have no idea what we’ll name you when you arrive, of course, but for now, you’re in there.

Thanks for choosing me to be your mama.

We feel so lucky that you’re going to come into our lives.

We’re scared about being parents, but I think we’ll do a fairly decent job at it.

I hope we can teach you a lot and give you so much love and support and space.

Space to enjoy being a child, space to play, space to grow up and grow wise and become whoever you’re going to become.

I can’t wait to meet you, Little Mister.