This week has been a nice change of pace. I’m finally feeling a tad more productive starting this week because my husband and I finally hammered out a childcare schedule. Seriously, I don’t know what took us so long. This whole time we were divvying it up willy nilly and I ended up taking a lot of the “shifts” since my schedule is more flexible. But that meant I’ve been neglecting the blog and other work. Now that we have a formal schedule, I can count on the time to be productive and I’ve been feeling great. This coronavirus thing is going to be a marathon (ie getting back to “how it was” is going to be a long time from now—until the world makes a vaccine). So figuring out how to make it work as it stands now is key. I hope you guys are also getting more of a routine to things.

I enjoyed this piece from the NYT about JOLGO (the joy of letting go). Here’s the part I liked the best:

Still, I had to wonder: With few beauty tools at hand, and no pressing reason to get gussied up, would I work more efficiently, reflect more profoundly and get in touch with my authentic self?

Femininity, it’s been noted, is a performance (as transgender women know all too intimately). Would functioning without an audience make hash of our self-image? Would it undermine the foundations of our identity? Or would it free us to divert our energies in loftier directions? Who knows?

What I have learned during this interval is that it can be liberating, even enlightening, to sign on with a sisterhood — people of varying ages, racial and social backgrounds, professions, and styles, openly engaging in a little self-neglect. We may be reminded of Germaine Greer, who famously said: “If a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?”

For years, outrageous social media displays have aggravated FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out. Now we can revel in the Joy of Letting Go, technically JOLGO, but, amalgamated with You Only Live Once: JOLO!

I guess I’m still getting dressed for Insta shots (especially now that there’s the #May30x30 challenge that I’m participating in). For those shots I’ll sometimes wear eyeliner and lip gloss (my Kosas lip oil since it’s also a lip treatment and I love it). But I’ve pretty much stopped wearing any kind of foundation altogether. This is a big deal for me because I’ve been wearing foundation since middle school due to really bad skin. Now I just wear sunscreen when going out, especially since a mask covers my face anyway. What things have you let go of? I’m also keeping it bra-optional these days lol.