#10: Merit Badges

A small celebration of the efforts we make to stay human.

Welcome to 2024. I hope your year is moving forward in a slow and steady manner.

I’m not one for resolutions, but I generally look forward to the fresh start a brand new calendar provides. This particular newsletter had been in the works for awhile, but before I could write up the blurb you’re reading now, I got a who-knows-what-kind-of-respiratory-virus-from-hell that pretty much knocked me on my ass for a solid month. Add in an art deadline, fatigue, a sick pup, a canceled vacation, a broken down car and subzero temperatures you get a domino effect that left me no choice but to do the bare minimum to get through the day.

When life looks like this it can be tempting to punish myself with judgments about productivity, worthiness and laziness. But like I say regularly to my clients who find themselves in similar chapters, “Welcome to the Good Enough Club”. Your free membership to rest and recovery in the face of life’s most stressful and daunting moments.

Long live letting the dishes “soak” in the sink and hiding piles of dirty laundry under neatly folded blankets.

Cheers to ignoring the pointless tasks in favor of cuddling up as a family on the couch to watch old seasons of Survivor and Vanderpump Rules.

Salute choosing your sanity over someone else’s “urgent” email and for god sakes turn off those freaking notifications.

Below are a few merit badges I created to honor the courage and effort it takes to care for oneself when the world tells you that others’ interests and capital are more important than your survival.

Wear them proudly.

Someday I’d really like to turn these illustrated merit patches into actual merit badges. We can wear them around on a sash like a troop of proud Girl Scouts.

Some days our greatest feat is starting the day.

When I say “Back to Basics” I’m talking specifically about eating, sleeping, processing emotions, connecting with the people who love us and drinking water.

I got the idea for this one after reading this article. “Maybe this is vanilla’s trick, to elude us. As an ingredient, it can be deceptively reticent, seeming to cede the spotlight to the more forceful pleasures of sugar and cream. Yet it transfigures every flavor it encounters. It calms and contours, steadies and exalts. It is the spice with the Midas touch that makes more more.”

On days when getting anything done seems difficult, I make a to-do list of all the things I’ve already done that day and then check them off. Nothing is more cathartic to staleness than Done! Done! Done! And just like that, so is this newsletter. CHECK!!