Life of Body, Life of the Mind

Dear Everyone, Hi –

I’ve been losing a bunch of paid subscribers and I have two theories.

1, I’ve been doing way too much and way too vacuous book promo.

2, the economy.

If it’s the first, I want to offer an apology. My venture into being more PR-ish and business-woman-who-gives-keynotes-talks-y than comes the least bit naturally to me – let’s chalk that up to a midlife/new-to-parenthood/fear-of-losing-my-career crisis. I mean, the fears are real, but I don’t think reacting to them has necessarily been wise.

The second reason, well, yeah, good reason. It’s shaping up to be a two-substack sort of a year.

Either way, I get it.

A third theory is Substack is doing sending you irritating notifications of some sort – if so, tell me.

Can I palate cleanse a bit from marketing myself by recommending a book I loved loved loved? It’s this one by Becky Barnicoat. Effortlessly smart. It’s the one book in during early baby time before reverting to mostly Instagram-reading, and it was a good one. (I also managed to start this one by one of my favorite journalists, Amanda Hess, and am continuing it whenever I manage myself to pry myself away from ordering groceries online, it’s gorgeous deep and interesting, and – it sees me, on my phone, wanting more – also describes some feelings I’ve never had anyone to talk to about taking a baby to a hospital for monitoring).

This maternity leave has been – among other things – lovely.