Unsolicited Advice

you should sing made-up songs to your dog

1. Buy the longer coat. If it’s designed for precipitation or extreme weather, get something that covers your butt and part of your legs. You will be so much happier. Warmer. Drier.

2. Be excited when your friends do things without you. This is a practice that will enrich adult friendships. And it will take practice.

3. If your therapist isn’t helping you be kind, as well as honest, to/with yourself, get a new one. 

   

   Took this picture to show my writing mastermind the rain jacket I bought thinking it was a winter coat. But I adore it so I kept it. The pocket is roomy enough to hold a whole book.¹

4. Read fiction. Essays. Poetry. Don’t think your nonfiction alone makes you a well-rounded human. 

5. Be a superfan of something. Right now, for me, it’s Taylor Swift. Next year, it might be something else. 

6. Download Voxer. Convince someone you’ve connected with on Instagram to chat with you there and see what happens.² 

7. Pray for your community when you are walking, or even driving, your neighborhood or town. Try it in the mall, on the sidewalk. You’ll see differently. 

8. Every day you’re practicing being a certain kind of person. Is it the person you want to become?³

9. Add everything to your calendar. When an invitation comes up, don’t just look at that day, look at the whole week.⁴ 

10. Plan fun mini-parties for January and February. Maybe March too. Those months are long and dark and cold and nothing happens otherwise.⁵

Share your unsolicited advice. We’ll learn a lot together.

1. That’s a poem by Billy Collins on the wall behind me.

2. Both of the women in my mastermind are women that I only know from Instagram. And Voxer. And facetime. And text.

3. Notes to my kids that ring true, as all the good ones do.

4. I do my best to not schedule anything on Thursday nights. Occasionally, I can’t get around it, but I’m beat by Thursday.

5. This is advice I haven’t tried yet but it’s my plan for the winter.