productivity

My New Work-From-Home Setup, Part 2: My Desk

Kate Sloan

Writers can debate endlessly about whether the space where you choose to work, and the tools you use to do that work, actually matter. Some writers can throw their laptop in a tote bag and take it to a café, or the library, or a random picnic table in the park, and create masterworks; others need their perfectly-appointed desk with just the right mood lighting, soundtrack, and assortment of artisanal pencils if they’re going to produce their best work.

I can go either way, but that’s partly because I’ve rarely had an actually-functional workspace in my life. A blend of depression, body pain, and chronic disorganization has often led me to clutter up desks and tables with useless tchotchkes and accumulated trash, choosing instead to work in bed or (in pre-pandemic times) at cafés and bars. I always wanted to have a more settled, organized workspace, but rarely got my shit together enough to actually make it happen.

Earlier this year, for my birthday, a few different friends and family members very generously got me gift cards aimed at helping me update my workspace, because I’d mentioned wishing I could do that. Wanting to put their gifts to good use, I started brainstorming what I wanted and needed to make my vintage, worse-for-wear wooden desk into an oasis of creativity. Here are some of the things I bought to spruce the place up…

 

• Since one of my main issues was constantly having too many random objects all over my desk, I decided storage was a top priority. My desk has two built-in drawers, one of which I use for weed stuff + incense and the other of which I use to store logistical necessities like Scotch tape, loose change, and my passport – but everything else needed a place to go. So I bought an assortment of stackable wooden drawers from Kirigen, and a matching monitor riser that also has a couple of drawers in it. These have already made a HUGE difference for me. Some of the stuff I store in these drawers: pens, pencils, extra batteries, extra pairs of glasses, documents, cards/letters/notes, notepads and notebooks, index cards, spare sets of earbuds, cheques I need to cash, and an occasional snack.

• Buying my new monitor was a JOURNEY! I wanted a specific 24″ ViewSonic monitor (the VX2485-MHU model) because the Wirecutter had recommended it as one of the best budget monitors they’d tried, and because it has a USB-C port, allowing me to connect my MacBook Air to the display and charge it with just one cable. I ordered a pre-owned one from an online seller, but it got lost in the mail somehow, so they refunded me. Then I saw a new version of the same monitor on a semi-sketchy retail site and asked Staples if they could price-match it, which they agreed to do. But 2 weeks after I’d already placed my order through Staples, they told me the monitor was actually out of stock, and cancelled my order. So I ordered it from yet another store, and it finally arrived. I’m glad I managed to acquire this one – it looks pretty damn good for being a $300 monitor, and fits nicely in the space allotted for it.

• One of the bulkiest items on my desk, pre-makeover, was my Day-Light SAD lamp. It was a must-have for my depression, especially in the winter, but I’d had that particular model since 2007 (!!) and knew there were some less cumbersome options on the market now. I arranged to give my old lamp away to someone from a local mental health support group who needed one, and then bought this new one, the Day-Light Sky. It takes up way less desk space, and I love that its angle is adjustable. I currently have it sitting atop a small stack of hardcover notebooks, to give the computer monitor enough space to fit neatly underneath.

• I told you about this keyboard when I showed you my working-from-bed setup. Still loving it! It’s the Logitech K380. I adore its sweet pink hue, softly clicky-clacky keys, and ability to swap between up to 3 different devices as needed, so I can move from my computer on the desk to my iPad in bed with ease.

• My mouse is the Logitech M720, which is also great. I’m considering switching to an Apple Magic Trackpad, though, because after years of using a trackpad instead of a mouse, I find them much more intuitive now. But this mouse is lovely, as far as mice go.

• My spouse bought me a beautiful vintage pink Brother typewriter as a gift after we watched the movie California Typewriter together. It’s mostly a decorative item because I lack the hand strength required to really hammer out any substantial pieces of writing on it – plus I worry about annoying my roommate with the loud typing – but I love having it displayed on my desk. It’s such a gorgeous symbol of my writerly ambitions and achievements, and I enjoy occasionally banging out a poem or two on its snappy black keys.

• A while ago, my friend Thomas sent me a spinning desk toy called a Mezmoglobe, and that’s sitting underneath my monitor riser where I can periodically spin it and admire its gleaming prettiness throughout the day.

• While it isn’t new, I do want to mention that my coaster was a gift from Penny, who is an incredible photographer and used to make these adorable sex toy photo coasters. This one features a picture of the NobEssence Romp, easily the prettiest butt plug I’ve ever owned. I use it every day for water, coffee, cocktails, or whatever else I happen to be drinking while I write.

 

Things I’d still like to acquire for my setup:

• A webcam. I used to just use my laptop’s built-in webcam for Zoom calls, video podcast recordings, etc. but that’s less convenient now that I keep it tucked under my monitor riser. I’m hoping to pick up a Logitech C920S on the Wirecutter’s recommendation. It’ll sit nicely on top of my monitor and make all my video calls and livestreams look way better.

• A better system for getting my microphone and headphones out of the way when I’m not using them – like maybe a boom arm.

• A better desk chair. Right now I’m still using the blue faux-leather one my dad bought me for about $50 at Staples when I was in university, and it’s really seen better days. I’m considering getting an Albin task chair from Wayfair. It’s surprisingly hard to find an armless chair that’s slim enough for the space under my desk, ergonomic enough for my chronically achy body, and costs less than a zillion dollars!

 

What workspace essentials are you loving lately?

Rest is Crucial, Sacred, & Sexy

Kate Sloan

I recently quit my part-time social media job after 4 years of working there. I’ve long called this gig my “dayjob” because it did the thing for me that dayjobs do for creative types: it gave me a steady, reliable income that tethered me to the working world and afforded me the time, money, and brainspace to do my passion projects on the side. But in recent months, my “dayjob” had begun to bring in only about 7% of my total income, while taking up about a quarter of my working hours – and with book deadlines and health issues weighing heavily on me, I decided it was time to move on.

This was a challenging decision for me, in no small part because I have loved working at that company and with the people there, albeit remotely, these past 4 years. I had other resistances to leaving, though, and spent a whole hour discussing them with my therapist recently. I worried that my other projects would dry up, leaving me regretful to have quit – although there’s no evidence that will happen. I worried that without time-sensitive morning tasks to complete each weekday, I’d let my depression get the better of me, lazing about in bed into the afternoon. I worried that firm daily deadlines were the glue holding my life together, and that without them, I’d lack the conviction and self-direction to manage my time effectively.

But as my therapist reminded me, this is internalized ableism, internalized capitalism. The discourse around “laziness” is too often aimed at people whose systemic struggles and marginalizations are framed as personal failures. The freelancer community’s obsession with “hustling” is borne of capitalistic imperatives. A person’s “hustle,” or lack thereof, says nothing about their inherent value as a human being. Not all people have the same abilities; we can’t all hustle as hard as we think we “should.”

It feels shameful to admit that one of the reasons I quit my job was so I could rest more. I feel like I already rest a great deal, certainly more than my friends who work long hours at cafés or retail stores. But this mindset comes from holding myself to able-bodied standards despite being increasingly, invisibly disabled. My chronic pain and chronic fatigue are worse and more frequent than they’ve ever been. I often need a 3-hour nap just to get through the day, or to “catch up on sleep” into the luxuriant afternoon hours on weekends. The simple fact of living in a pain-wracked body is uniquely exhausting. I can’t pretend that away.

I have to banish culture-borne ideas of “laziness” in order to plan a schedule that actually works for my body and my brain. Now that I’ll soon be fully self-employed, with most of my deadlines being self-imposed or flexible, I can rearrange my schedule as needed to fit with my lifestyle and desires – something I’ve longed for my entire adult life. I’ve been fantasizing about “Weekend Wednesdays” and impromptu staycations and “the 4-hour work week.” It feels blissful, in the truest possible sense of that word, to envision the freedom my self-employment will now afford. And I know it is an enormous privilege, one that comes from my position in society as an educated white person as well as my many years of hard work to establish this lifestyle for myself. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s wrong somehow to rest as much as I do, or as much as I want to. That I “should” work more, to “earn” the happiness I get from having a career that genuinely delights me.

My therapist told me, “You’re working as much as you comfortably can, and you’re earning enough money to live on. That’s all that matters here.” I felt my body relax when she said this. It’s so wild that capitalism instills in us, from birth, the belief that our work, our productivity, and our output are what define our value as human beings. Even sworn anti-capitalists sometimes still struggle to unlearn this. It’s as if we’ve forgotten that “jobs” and “careers,” as they are defined in modern times, did not always exist and do not need to exist. If human didn’t need to work in order to survive, what would we do instead? Would we make art, socialize, have sex, eat, drink, sleep, think? Would we feel fulfilled then? Would we feel we had done “enough” at the end of each day?

It’s impossible to say. But I’m working on accepting that my rest time is every bit as valid and important as my work time. When my achy, sleepy body demands a 1 p.m. nap, I need not admonish it or deny it. When my inner child pipes up to say that Wednesdays should be days off for playing in the sunshine, I can and should listen. When all I want, at a bone-deep level, is to stay in bed all day playing Pokémon games and listening to comedy podcasts, that’s likely a signal I should heed. This feels sinful and embarrassing to even type out. But that’s because it’s a new belief system for me, one that butts up against bullshit I’ve been inundated with my whole life.

We need rest to survive. That’s especially true for disabled folks. I feel no sensuality and sexiness in my body when my nose is constantly pressed to the grindstone. I get precious little joy from life when my every waking minute is mired in work and worry. I have no time or energy left over for the fun things, or even the necessary things, when work swallows me whole.

Rest is crucial. Not all of us have the ability, or the privilege, to honor that fact and live it out fully. But don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. You deserve the rest you need – and the rest you want.

What’s Your Creative Ritual?

Kate Sloan

Today I read an article about Stephin Merritt, the lead singer and songwriter of the Magnetic Fields – arguably one of the best songwriters of my generation – which had this to say about his creative process:

[Stephen is] a crazily prolific songwriter… The problem is that he can only write songs in bars. And not just any bar – it needs to be “one-third full of cranky old gay men gossiping over thumping disco music.” Plus he needs a glass of cognac, to be slowly sipped, and a corner with a light so he can see his notebook.

I was immediately captivated by this description. I knew Stephin liked to write in loud bars, but I didn’t know he only liked to write in loud bars – or that cognac factored into the equation.

What artists of various sorts like to do to stoke their creativity has long been a source of fascination to me. My own process is ever-evolving, in part based on what I read about other writers’ and creators’ processes. So today I thought I’d create a little survey, which you are free to duplicate on your own site if you’d like to answer these questions yourself. Here are my answers…

 

What’s your workspace like? I have an antique wooden desk that was rescued from the side of the road many years ago and has come with me to 3 different homes. It’s big enough for my computer, microphone, and headphones, plus all the various medications I take, a notebook and pen/pencil, and a black Museum of Sex mug containing all my writing implements.

Beverage of choice while working? During the day: a latte (I like a lot of different kinds, but a soy toffee nut latte from Starbucks is a common one lately) or a cup of tea. At night, when I occasionally also write: a dirty martini to help keep the words flowing without self-consciousness. I also try to continually drink water throughout the day, though I’m not always great at remembering to do this.

Favorite snack while working? Sometimes I do this thing where I order coffee and breakfast from Starbucks in the morning and throw in a slice of lemon loaf for later, which inevitably I suddenly remember exists around 3 p.m. and get extremely excited to eat. Aside from that – I’m a very snacky person but not organized/methodical enough to habitually keep snacks in stock, so these days I don’t snack much throughout the day even though I want to. If I ordered Mexican food last night and still have tortilla chips and guacamole left over, that’s my favorite mid-day snack.

Music of choice while working? Something instrumental and either peppy or dramatic. Most often I just hit shuffle on my “I’m a Writer” playlist. If there’s a particular mood I’m trying to embody in what I’m working on (e.g. fun, melancholy, energetic), I’ll put on music that makes me feel that way.

Favorite tools? My MacBook Air for nearly everything, and my iPad mini on bad pain/fatigue days. I journal in lined Moleskine notebooks with a Retro 51 Tornado pen. There’s also often a pink Poppin task pad and matching pink Palomino pencil next to me at my desk, for scribbled notes and to-do lists.

Favorite software? The plain ol’ Notes app for on-the-go note-taking and drafting. Scrivener for book-length projects. Evernote for some projects that require a lot of research, sources, and interviews. Google Docs/Drive as a backup compendium and for the vast majority of my non-blog writing (I love that it autosaves constantly).

Favorite places to work in your home? There are 3 options in my tiny apartment: bed, couch, and desk. Most often I pick bed, which I’m not proud of but is sometimes necessary as a result of chronic illness/pain. My building also has a rooftop patio where I did some book edits once and should probably write more often. Once in a while I stay over at my parents’, where I have a small desk (also rescued from the roadside, incidentally!) as well as their kitchen table or back yard to choose from.

Favorite places to work outside the home? I’m mostly relegated to my home right now ’cause coronavirus, but in normal times, I love writing at cafés (usually on my laptop) and bars (usually in a notebook) – men try to hit on me occasionally and there are a lot of distractions, but the overall boost in creativity, energy, and motivation is worth it for me. Sometimes, if I’m writing a piece that takes place at a particular location that’s accessible to me, I’ll go there to write so I can capture the details better. Also, oddly I get a lot of writing done in airports – maybe because I’m stuck there for a while and bored enough to want to work.

What times of day yield your best work? Honestly, any times when I’m not wracked by chronic illness symptoms. For me, that’s usually late afternoon, early evening, or very late at night. (Before I met my partner, anyway. Since meeting them, I’m typically on the phone with them til at least midnight so I haven’t had nearly as many of the obsessive wee-hours writing marathons as I often would in my youth.) I try to follow my natural impulses in this area and take advantage of any sudden “I feel like writing!!” whims, even if they happen at odd times.

Favorite work clothes? Anything comfy. Usually loungewear from MeUndies or the Gap. As I write this, I’m wearing my full-body black modal hooded onesie from MeUndies and it is truly ideal. Occasionally I put on a “real” outfit and some makeup, to make me feel more put-together and focused, but many days I can’t quite manage that and it usually works out okay anyway.

Start-of-workday rituals? Not as defined as I would prefer, mostly because I am very much not a morning person and I have to get up at 9 a.m. every weekday to do some morning tasks for my part-time social media job. Usually I just take my antidepressant, put on some music, and get started.

End-of-workday rituals? Close my laptop and physically walk away from it so I don’t feel tempted to just keep answering emails and drafting blog posts all evening. Wash all the dirty dishes in the sink – which may not seem creativity-related but is actually one of those boring, methodical tasks that can be oddly fertile soil for random creative thoughts. Make a cocktail and eat dinner while watching videos on YouTube or catching up on the articles in my RSS reader.

How do you handle distractions while you’re working? Not very well. When I’m doing a good job at this, usually I put my phone and computer on “do not disturb” (making sure to notify my partner and best friend if I plan on doing this for a long time, so they don’t worry about me) before I dive into a writing sesh. I also use a site blocker to keep myself off Twitter, and close my email app before starting a piece of writing.

Do you take breaks? What are they like? I used to be able to work for hours on end, but now that I’m plagued with daily pain and fatigue, I take a lot more breaks than I used to. Sometimes that just means a 20-minute lie-down between tasks to play a game on my phone or read a random weird Wikipedia article; other times it’s a full-on 3-hour nap, complete with eye mask, drawn shades, and soothing music. I’m trying to get better at listening to my body and doing what it asks of me.

How do you track your progress? My daily to-do list is kept in my Notes app, which my partner can access and keep an eye on (they’ll often send me a sweet congratulatory text when I get everything done). Other than that, I like looking at the full-month view in my Editorial Calendar plugin for WordPress; it gives me a sense of which blog slots have already been filled and which I still need to write content for. I don’t focus as much on word count as some other writers do, because most of the writing I do day-to-day is inherently unrestrictive in terms of word count. I guess looking at my income spreadsheet is also a way of tracking my progress!

How do you celebrate or cap off a completed project? My partner reads aloud to me, on our nighttime phone calls, any articles or blog posts that I wrote throughout the day. Hearing them out loud, and getting Matt’s feedback, helps me figure out what I might need to change before publication.

Do you have any superstitions about your work? Not exactly, but on deadline days I have been known to adorn myself with a whole lot of blue topaz jewelry because blue topaz is known as the writers’ crystal and is said to amplify your communicative powers. The effect may be placebo-based but there is an effect nonetheless, so I say, why the hell not?

What do you do when you’re creatively blocked? Go for a walk. Read writers I admire. Read generally. Write something in a different medium than my usual (e.g. fanfiction). Listen to podcasts. Take a day off, if possible, to just rest and do absolutely nothing (I get bored and remember why I enjoy writing). Look at the terms people are searching for on my site, or typing into Google before they stumble on my blog, to get a sense for what questions people need answered and what subjects stress them out. Talk to a friend on the phone.

Is there anything about your creative process that other people might think is “weird”? Possibly the weirdest thing is that I play Scrabble on my phone whenever I need to clear my brain and/or calm down. I felt validated in doing this when I learned that Angie Kim likes to play Jacks at the start of every writing session and whenever she’s stuck. There is something about playing a game – especially a game you’re good enough at that you don’t have to consciously think about your technique all that much – that can feel very calibrating and calming.

What aspects of your creative process do you hope to improve upon? After all these years of doing what I do, I feel like I’ve mostly got my own patterns and rhythms figured out, so I know how to optimize for them – but chronic illness has really thrown a wrench into that. Now I’m working on re-learning what works best for me in my new body and brain. I know I can; it’ll just take time!

What are some aspects of other people’s creative processes that you find inspiring or admirable? I mentioned Stephin Merritt early in this post and I still find his process fascinating. How do you write well – let alone write songs well – in a loud bar?! Every time I read about someone whose process is radically different from mine, it makes me want to try their method just to see how it would affect me. I also admire Esmé Wang‘s commitment to beginning each day by pulling tarot cards and journaling.

 

If you feel like filling out this survey on your own blog, or even just on Medium.com or somesuch, feel free to post a link in the comments!

How to Write 1,000 Blog Posts

Kate Sloan

I literally cannot believe this, but… this is the 1,000th blog post to be published on girlyjuice dot net. WOW.

This somehow feels like a more momentous milestone to me than more time-based ones, because just saying “I’ve been blogging for eight and a half years” doesn’t give you a whole lot of info about what that has actually entailed. But it’s a whole different ballgame when I say it this way: I’ve been blogging here for 3,114 days, and have written 1,000 blog posts in that time, which averages out to 2.25 blog posts per week EVERY WEEK for nearly a decade. Yeesh. I’m so proud of myself that I’m not even trying to rein in the congratulatory self-indulgence in this paragraph!

With that in mind, I know a lot of bloggers and other types of writers follow me here, so I thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned about creating massive amounts of blog content over multiple years. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve always found my way back to it whenever I strayed or slacked for a while. Here are some tips that I hope help you if your goal is to make it to 1,000 blog posts or beyond!

 

Pick a subject you’re enthralled by. Maybe don’t start a blog about, like, 18th-century Viennese architecture, unless you’re actually so captivated by it that you think you have several dozen blog posts’ worth of thoughts to share on the topic. The vast majority of blogs burn out – and while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that (I know not everyone is aiming to make their blog their job, as I have), if you’re in it for the long haul then it’s best to set yourself up for success. I chose to center this blog around sexuality because I could think of literally zero other subjects that I genuinely felt I could keep writing about forever, and it turns out I was right: the landscape of human sexuality is always changing, and so is my own sexuality specifically, making it a rich vein of blog post ideas.

…but also, don’t limit yourself to one subject. If this blog was only a sex blog, I don’t think it would be boring, exactly – there are infinite subtopics within the field of sexuality – but it certainly would be less fun for me at times. I’m only human; I’m not always horny. Sometimes I’m too depressed or ill or heartbroken to contemplate sex, and that’s typically when I dive into writing about relationships, fashion, feminism, or mental health. Thanks very much to the ladies of the Blogcademy for introducing me to the idea that your blog can be like a magazine: geared toward a particular type of reader, and the topics (yes, plural) that they’d be interested in.

Develop a storage system for ideas. Frustrating but true: far too often, when you have a fantastic idea for a blog post but are too busy to jot it down, you’ll end up totally forgetting about it. Either it’ll languish forever in the back of your mind – “I really should write that one of these days!” – or you will actually forget you even had the idea in the first place. It’s crucial that you develop a way to collect all your random blog post ideas somewhere so you can use ’em later. I try to always jot down not only the title/main idea of the post, but also a few notes about its contents; for example, for this post, I wrote down “how to write 1,000 blog posts” followed by a few bullet points about the kinds of tips I was hoping to give. This helped jog my memory later when I sat down to actually write this post.

Develop regular features. I do a “Monthly Faves” at the end of each month, “12 Days of Girly Juice” at the end of each year, and have experimented with various other recurring features in the past. These are especially helpful when you’re going through a period of being extra stressed/busy/sapped of all creativity (hello, 2020!) because they give you structure and some kind of prompt. You don’t have to come up with 1,000 completely unique and different ideas to write 1,000 blog posts (although kudos if you can)!

Read social media, forums, and the news. Not all the news, certainly (god, I think my brain would explode from sadness oversaturation), but at least enough to know what’s going on in your field at any given time. You never know when a random news story might thrill/incense/sadden/alarm you into writing something brilliant. Keeping an eye on social media and relevant forums also helps you keep your finger on the pulse of what people actually do/feel/think, not just what mainstream news says people are doing/feeling/thinking – so you can answer questions a lot of people are wondering about, provide guidance on issues that confuse most folks, or unpack your own feelings on the hot-button issue of the day.

Talk to friends, family, partners – and people you disagree with. Conversations have been some of my best catalysts for good blog posts over the years. Sometimes all it takes is a simple statement like “I’ve been thinking about writing a piece on [insert vague topic here]…” and before you know it, you’ll be in a profound dialogue or heated debate with someone about the issue at hand. Often, conversations with smart people – whether or not they know much of anything about my chosen topic – can help me figure out a unique angle, an offbeat consideration, or a hot take. It’s most useful to converse not only with people you like, but also people who rub you the wrong way, because they may offer you a perspective you’d never considered before, or present a perfect ideological springboard for your argument. (Just don’t get sucked into debating alt-right trolls as if their arguments have any merit… Been there, done that; it’s never worth it.)

Pay attention to readers’ search terms. Certain services, like Google Analytics, allow you to see what search-engine queries lead people to your website. These are always illuminating; they tell you not only what you’re already helping people with, but also what you could be helping people with. Obviously, not all blog content needs to be helpful to the reader in order to be valid and good, but informational and “how-to” articles are often the most “shareable,” so it makes sense to focus on them at least some of the time. If you notice that a lot of your readers seem to be fruitlessly searching for answers to the same questions, maybe that’s a cue that you should answer those questions for them in a blog post.

Take the money (if you want to). It’s simply a fact of life in a capitalist society that you will be more able to devote time and energy to an activity if that activity pays. Not everyone gets to a point with their blog where it starts attracting hopeful advertisers – and sometimes that’s due to entire industries or genres of writing being chronically undervalued, which sucks – but if you do start getting that type of offer in your inbox, at least consider it. Some people are very hesitant to “sell out,” especially within a vocation that they adore, because they think money will drain the joy out of the whole endeavor – which indeed can and sometimes does happen. But for me, getting paid to blog has almost always just been a motivator. The more income I’ve earned through this site, the more I’ve been able to set aside other jobs and projects to focus on what I’m doing here – and (for me at least) that results in better, deeper, more interesting work.

Allow yourself to grow and change. While it can be tempting to stick with a successful formula once you’ve found one, your best writing will happen when you step outside the box you’ve inevitably created for yourself. Any reader who’s actually invested in you as a person will happily follow you into new territory (so long as you haven’t, like, taken the red pill or joined a pyramid scheme), and to the extent that you lose old readers when you switch things up, you’ll also gain new ones who are more in line with your present-day vision. I certainly would not have been able to write 1,000 blog posts solely from the limited perspective of the 19-year-old sex nerd I was when I started this blog – but writing 1,000 blog posts from my ever-shifting perspectives from ages 19 to 28? That was no problem at all.

 

What strategies have you found helpful in long-term blogging?

What’s Your Sunday Routine?

Kate Sloan

Sundays are the most anxiety-provoking day of the week for many people. For those of us with a standard Monday-to-Friday work week (which is, itself, a privilege in many ways), pre-emptive Monday nerves can sneak into Sunday and turn it from a relaxed respite into pins-and-needles panic. It doesn’t have to be this way!

Recently I read, with fascination, Rachel Syme’s Twitter thread about her favorite way to spend a Sunday. She calls it “Sunday Expert” and it’s a game in which you choose a subject you’re organically intrigued by and decide to make a day of becoming an expert on that thing. This can involve doing research in the form of article-reading and video-watching, or you can take a more feet-on-the-ground approach and physically go to a location that would help you in your research – you might, for example, scope out a house near you where a historical legend used to live, or (in pre- and post-COVID times) even visit a library to satiate your nerdy cravings. To me this seems like such a great way to infuse some fun and frivolity into a day that can otherwise feel so high-pressure and scary.

Rachel Syme also, incidentally, started the #DistanceButMakeItFashion movement, which encourages participants to dress up on Sundays and post pictures on social media to combat lockdown loneliness and pandemic melancholy. There is something about wearing heels and lipstick on a Sunday that helps me feel like I spent my weekend well and am ready for the week to start up again.

I know a lot of advocates of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system like to do their “weekly review” on Sundays. It’s all about processing “loose ends” – like that cheque on your desk you’ve been meaning to deposit, or that note you made early in the week that says “call mom” – as well as reflecting on how you did over the past week and setting goals and intentions for the week to come. This is all very Productivity Nerd™ and I admire it a lot, although I have to admit that my own workflow and energy levels are too chaotic for me to decisively commit to such a system.

My blogger heroine Gala Darling, on the other end of the productivity/relaxation spectrum, has oft advocated for “Sunday Funday,” a weekly ritual of just… not working, all day. For those of you who leave your work at the office when you go home on Friday, this might be a bit confusing, but for freelancers and other self-employed folks (as well as many people whose workplaces just don’t have a good handle on boundaries), it’s all too easy to let your work week carry over into the weekend. This creates a shitty cycle where you don’t get the rest you need and then suddenly it’s Monday morning and you’re just as exhausted as you were last Thursday. Not ideal! I’ve been trying to take this one to heart over the past few months, typically eschewing emails and other less-than-exciting work tasks in favor of rest and recuperation, and it’s lovely.

I asked my Twitter followers about their Sunday routines (thanks, if you contributed!) and the answers varied greatly, though there were some recurring themes: cleaning, planning, laundry, aesthetic top-ups (like re-painting nails or doing an elaborate skincare routine), exercise, and meditation. This all sounds pretty excellent to me!

As for my current routine… Recently my partner and I overhauled our protocol agreements, and one of the things we added was a weekly to-do list for me to complete over the weekend. This list of tasks was always done unofficially before – which is to say, sometimes it didn’t get done at all – but now it’s codified into a digital note which syncs to my partner’s devices so they can keep an eye on my progress. The list is pretty simple: tidy my room, clean out the fridge, take the trash out, do all the dishes, and wash all the dirty sex toys that have piled up over the course of the week. I can do these any time throughout the weekend, but I usually leave ’em til Sunday so I get at least one full day beforehand to do nothing, guilt-free.

What I like about this list is that I can alter the way I complete it in accordance with my energy levels and health status on any given Sunday. On healthy, happy, energetic days, I can knock out the whole list in an hour. When I’m feeling more sluggish or depressed, I might complete one task, rest for a while, do another one, read a chapter of a book, do another one, play video games for a bit, and so on. I do feel motivated to complete the list ASAP, however, because then I get the feeling of accomplishment of having ticked off every item on a list and I don’t need to feel guilty when I take the rest of the day to just chill.

This all sounds very Jordan Peterson of me – “Keep your room tidy and your whole life will feel structured and satisfying!” – but, hey, even a bigoted conservative clock is right twice a day (I guess…). Starting the week with a clean apartment makes me feel so much more able to take on the challenges the week will serve up. It also means I don’t have to juggle multiple energy-draining tasks on work days, when I’m already generally pretty tapped out by the time I close my laptop at 5 p.m. (or 6, or 7, or… 10).

As part of my tidying, I usually come across items I’ll need for the week ahead – like a sex toy I’m on deadline to review, or a page of notes from a client call – and I’ll collect those in an orderly way on my desk so they’ll be accessible when I want ’em. This makes me feel so much more sane and less stressed out all week long.

This is what works for me right now – I’m sure it’ll continue shifting and evolving as I learn more and more about my own patterns and needs. What are your Sunday routines and rituals?