Hello cannolis,

I am coming to you from the vacation induced lull of a Thursday afternoon. And you know what thinking about? Grandma Domenica and her 7-Up. I don’t know if she drank it. I actually don’t recall ever seeing her drink it. However, it was always in her fridge, and always offered to all of the grandchildren before we even walked in the door. We would be taking our shoes off, taking our coats off, and she’d be already asking us what she could feed us, and whether she could make us a 7 course meal.

Looks like they’re drinking something other than 7-Up in this photo. 

At work, a couple months ago, all of a sudden, diet 7-Up showed up in the fridge at work. Now that I think about it, she probably put it there, if you believe in that sort of thing, which you will know by now, I do.  

And if you know me well, you could guess that I have a Pavlovian urge to drink the diet 7-Up the second I walk in the office. I am nothing if not predictable.

This week I’ve been really thinking about habits. Probably because all of my habits changed while I was away, and now I’m getting to choose which habits to add back in now that I’m back. Using all my D’Abate-learned rationalizing, I am avoiding going back to the go go go lifestyle I’ve known for so long. I’m scared to step back into feeling overwhelmed and like there’s something I’m missing and like I’m behind.  It's ironic, because I'm not exactly doing the things and responding to emails, so I am actually behind, but maybe my inaction doesn't matter.

My laziness kind of scares me. My identity for so long has been wrapped up on all the things that I've been getting done for so long. But I am convinced that the overwhelm does not actually help my productivity, and probably hurts. So, I'm optimistically thinking that if I just get through this correction period, I'm going to end up on the other side, back to my productive self minus the overwhelm. I'll say a Hail Mary and hope that Grandma Domenica can deliver me there safely, 7-up in hand. 💜

Always, 

XIMXIA

THANKS FOR READING!