Dear Together Friends, Fans, and Family,
Happy deep autumn! As a native New England gal, I’m all in for fall. Speaking of, my local pack of young and hipper-than-me cousins invited me to an actual ADULT Halloween party. In the past, I’ve handed out candy as this, this, or this – my favorite being, of course, Ms. Frizzle, but I’m thinking I need some sort of elevated costume for this grown-up situation. Whatcha got, dear readers? Dr. Together and Together Tech exec (husband and bestie) have nixed a group dress-up, so I’m all ears!
Who doesn’t love Ms. Frizzle (and Liz)?!
Anywhoooooo, back to deep autumn, which typically means I try to be out on my road bike for some long rides in nature (usually the Capitol Crescent Trail in Maryland/DC, because I have a healthy fear of cars when out on my two wheels, blame a decade of living in NYC!), and because I’m me, I’m often half-listening to a podcast in ONE ear. Recently there was a conversation between two women I admire – Kate Bowler and Katherine May (author of Wintering, which has been a great comfort to me in stressful times) – about both the enchantment of nature and one little digression they had about beauty of “noodling.”
Kate describes one of her favorite books, and the fact that the main character, Tom, just noodles around. “He rakes and mucks, and he does all the things that are. . .” Tom then gets in trouble for noodling because he is not being structured and productive. It got me thinking about the importance of noodling, and how we often need to build it right into the old calendars or else Noodle Time will get taken over by everything else. Sometimes, around our house, we call it “pottering” (I did marry an Irishman, after all) or “faffing.” Basically, just kind of being. And contrary to what people may assume, I spend a decent amount of time “noodling.” For me, that often looks like stuff I can do with my hands, some saving of overripe bananas, some sorting of mail on the counter, some re-homing of items at the bottom of the stairs (iykyk), but just kind of following the lead with whatever is right in front of me. I usually noodle for at least 60-90 minutes after I teach a class. I noodle a lot in the evenings. My kids, in spite of being deep in scheduled sports and theater, noodle about quite a bit. For them, it often leads to building obstacle courses, making huge cardboard cat houses, or my favorite (kidding, not my favorite, remember my four kids are basically ADULT SIZE HUMANS), noodling ON THE KITCHEN FLOOR as I’m trying to cook dinner. Anyway, are you noodling? When do you need or like to noodle?
Here in at Together HQ, we are having fun with tons of classes – both online and in-person – and because I have a curiosity about how to support Together Teenagers, the kind staff of a DC school are allowing me to pilot some coaching to their freshmen. I had a very lively conversation on my personal Facebook page about skills Together Teens need to practice, and I’m excited to put some of these suggestions into action!
#clogsandclipboards #togetherforever
MHM
Top Together Tributes
- Moleskines almost went extinct?! If you love a Moleskine notebook like we do, you will find it interesting to know how they became one of the most popular notebook brands!
- Schedule your friendships! Making – and keeping – adult friends is HARD! So schedule a standing appointment [gift link] for friendships you’d like to grow and maintain! My standing 6 AM Thursday morning swim date fuels me!
- You have 1,440 minutes in a day—how do you use them? Friend of TTG Keith Brooks (Founder and CEO of The National Fellowship for Black and Latino Male Educators and Partner at Noble Story Group) recently shared his thoughts on coaching, leadership, and how to make room in there for life as well.
