Field notes for a softer summer

Open tickets, light snacks, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s hair

There’s a time for light snacks, and a time for meaty mains.

Summer calls for slices of watermelon, distracted daydreaming, and reading field notes in a sticky t-shirt.

So, following this mood, I’ve captured some observations that kept tugging at the same loose thread and made my arm hair stand on end.

Note 001: Try softer, not harder.

This came up on my meditation app, Insight Timer, and it was right on point.

I had just come back from the gym, where I trained with Mette, a professional dancer. I watched her lift heavy with ease.

“You’re in fantastic shape,” I said, sweat stinging my eyes.

“I’ve learned how to distribute the effort. I activate my entire body.”

I imagine if you catch people and dance for hours straight, this must be a critical skill.

I tried it while doing a farmer’s walk (carrying a kettlebell in each hand), bracing my core, glutes, and legs, as I placed one foot in front of the other. A completely different movement, I’m no longer straining my arms and shoulders, waddling down the fake grass.

Where else in my life am I doing this? Powering through, huffing and grunting, when I could be doing it differently and create a better result? It’s mind-blowing how interconnected experience and outcome are. Somehow, blame it on capitalism and growing up in New York City, I learned that throwing my back into it was the only way to make it.

It turns out that I’ll lift heavy, more softly when I'm intentional, slower, and embodied.

I’ve started taking more breaks, loosening the effort, the trying harder. Instead, I’m trying softer, trusting it will come, that it’s already here. And people, it’s working. The soft trying makes my days flow. Less shallow breathing, more deep belly breaths.

Note 002: Open tickets.

For the first time since my twenties, I booked an open ticket. And I managed to convince my Ralph Lauren vest-wearing, recent-law-grad husband to do the same. He’s in between jobs, so it was an easier sell.

Since launching Kollektiv Studio four years ago, I’ve found myself in between more often than not. Between gigs, creations, identities. The in-between is an uncomfortable place to be, because it’s uncertain. That’s the nature of the beast.

Anything can happen because nothing is fixed. It can be dreadfully frightening, or an absolute thrill, Six Flags style. But if we can get on board with all the amazing perks of the in-between, life opens like a steamed mussel. Leaning into it, instead of resisting it, is the open ticket.

So, we’re off to Sicily, and the trip beyond that is wide open. I feel like I’m twenty-six again, riding trains through Europe, and refilling my water bottle with homemade wine in Brindisi before heading to Greece.

Teddy and I started saying, “Open Ticket” to remind ourselves to stay in the sweet, unfixed, uncertain space in between. It’s a heart-palpating and ALIVE place to be. Anything is possible here.

Note 003: Messy hair.

I felt vindicated when I read this NYT article that claims we’re in the era of messy hair. My unruly, wavy, thick hair never took well to flattening irons or any kind of styling. It took me years to learn to only wash it once a week, revive curls with water and conditioner, and let her live.

So I loved reading that fashion houses sent models down their runways with unkempt, frizzy, just-rolled-out-of-bed hair. Call it a mini revolt against perfection. Against polished AI phrases that sound good until you realize they’re empty. Against a diet of Twinkies parading as protein. Against filters that erase time and plump lips. Against trying too hard.

In the article, creative director Isabel Wilkinson Schor said, “It’s about a desire to create something that is slightly off and never too perfect.” Fuck perfection. It means we’re trying to be other than we are. I get the irony that this message comes from the fashion world.

Guido Palau, who styled the Prada show, said Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was notorious for not brushing her hair. “Carolyn’s hair was such a thing,” he says. “It oozed confidence.”

I’m picking up what he’s putting down (not a hairbrush).

Recently, I’ve received messages about “noticing.”

In an interview, Anne Lamott said this about writing, “It’s about stopping hitting the snooze button and starting to pay attention to people’s faces, their eyes, the landscape, the sky, and the ground beneath you. What we do to meet our writing self is to meet it halfway by noticing.”

Field notes are observations on this creative life.

I’d love to hear what you’re noticing.

Keep creating,