Hi !  Welcome bac, or welcome if you’re new here :-). This week I am thinking (and writing) about long weekends, long walks, stray cats and never having to say you’re sorry (but doing it anyway) . - Eve D.❣️

Week in review…

📆 It’s a long weekend this side of the world, and let me tell you…short work weeks are my absolute favourite things in the world. I take most Fridays off anyway, but there is something utterly delicious about an official off day. And I take it much further than that…anytime I have an officially short week, I treat the whole week as a take-a-step-back week. I still work, but at a much slower pace, and I use the time to catch up on things that are “important but not urgent”. And that gives me a sense of calm and direction. It’s a massive win for me, and the good news is that March/April/May are full of short weeks in South Africa. Bliss.

❤️ In the spirit of my slower week, I also took some time to play around with the Cricut machine. It’s cute and nifty, and I am in awe of its capabilities. To be honest, I am struggling to figure out exactly what I would use it for full time (there are only so many pantry labels and drink bottles to decorate), but for now I have a lot of notebooks and files I can’t wait to make prettier. Above everything, it’s a reminder to me how much I love tinkering around with random craft stuff. It’s somewhat frivolous, expensive, and time consuming but it brings me so much joy. Also, the first thing I printed with the Cricut was this:

🚗 I finally got my car sorted out fully (we were waiting for parts) and my little baby is like new. Now I have a deep urge for a long road trip.

🚶‍♀️ Speaking of long trips, I now also have an urge to walk the Camino. That’s over 750km! More on that below.

🐈️ I think I have adopted a cat. This cat has been coming to my back garden for years, and would just sun himself for hours, then disappear. But lately we’ve noticed he’s spending more and more time with us, and eventually I asked on my neighbourhood group if he belongs to anyone, and …no one came forth. So now I feed him daily, which basically means he’s mine, right? There is no way Lisa is going to tolerate him (in fact, this cat and Lisa had a fight, years ago…Lisa lost) but if the cat (whom we’ve named Chester) sticks to the back garden, we’ll be fine. I just need to sort out some warm housing for him, and start getting him to trust me more.

Great news! Ted Lasso is renewed for a fourth season, and Jason Sudeikis is coming back in the main role. If you haven’t watched the first three seasons, do yourself a favour and get on it. It’s a wonderful show.

Last week I wrote about judgment and curiosity, and this week I was reminded that these are the exact themes that Ted Lasso addressed in probably the most famous scene of the show. I still get goosebumps when I watch it. It will make even more sense if you watch the whole show, but watching the scene is not a spoiler:

Camino de Santiago 

I was browsing YouTube and saw the thumbnail for this video:

I clicked and watched (at 2x speed!)….and then I went down a rabbit hole of the Camino Trail. If you don’t know, the Camino de Santiago is a network of trails that take you through Italy or Portugal or France or Spain, that end up at the tomb of the apostle Saint James in Santiago de Compostela. The trails range from about 10 days to 45 days, and the longest one is over 750km long. And I am definitely going to do this long one.

Some of my friends have already suggested we do this together, and I know I could also rope in Laura (my current hiking partner) to do it with me, but I really do believe that this is a journey that needs to be taken alone. In the ideal world, I would want my friends to do their own trail, and for us all to meet up for the last 100km. (Having said this, I must say I really see myself doing it with G or with my kids, so go figure. But…people do the trails multiple times in their lifetime, so there are plenty of opportunities for all sorts of experiences).

The point of the pilgrimage (because that is exactly what it is) isn’t the destination (obviously) but the actual journey. It will end up being for you whatever it needs to be (which is why I think it should be undertaken alone). Of course, taking 2 months away from home is a massive undertaking, and I won’t be able to do it until Zac leaves home is self sufficient. (I had to change the “leaves home” timeline because Zac informed me just this morning that “given the current economic climate I will probably live with you until I’m 25” 🤣 ). He’ll at least be done with high school in about 5 years, so that’s my tentative timeline. Of course, we make plans and God laughs, but this is a fun goal to work towards.

What I learnt this week:

✅ The reason that most elevators have mirrors is to distract us from how long the journey from one floor to another takes. It’s also calming for us to look at our own image (which is why, I guess, my local hospital elevator has mirrors on all walls). So that’s a good example of how we can use psychology to overcome technical limitations.

✅ The food laws in Japan require images on packaging to depict the accurate size of the goods inside:

✅ There are two types of happiness / joy: Type-1 and Type-2. Type-1 happiness is the instant kind, what you experience when you eat a bar of chocolate, or see your best friend. It’s the quick dopamine hit. Type-2 happiness is happiness that you feel long after the act…like the good feeling of accomplishment after a hike is finished, or the joy you feel when you realise you’ve lost weight as a result of cutting out sugar. I love this new vocabulary, because now I can repeat “..type 2 happiness, Eve! Type 2!” to myself, as a motivation when I’m walking up a steep slope, or forcing myself to go to bed early.

💔 Sorry, not sorry

Women apologise all the time, even for things that are clearly not our fault. If someone bumps into me, I’ll apologise to them. I’ll apologise for calling someone on the phone, or for asking them for a favour. Similarly, I once read that women are forever using the word “just” in their e-mails, something that men apparently rarely do. The “just” is a form of apology for our existence, as in “Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to know if you can confirm our meeting next week?”. That’s clearly a woman speaking, right? A man would say “Haven’t received confirmation of next week’s meeting yet, are you in?”. I consciously tried to eliminate the word just from my correspondence, and I can officially tell you that I cannot do it. It’s here to stay.

I loved this piece by Kasia Delgado, titled I followed the advice that tells women to stop saying sorry - it made my life worse. She goes deep into the psychology of women apologising all the time. Here is the good news: we might think it is us being the weaker, submissive gender, but in actual fact it’s probably it’s simply us being a more empathetic, kinder gender. We apologise to other people not because we think something is our fault, but because we are conveying to them that we understand that they have been, or are about to be, slightly inconvenienced by what we’re about to do or say. For example, if you send a dish back to the restaurant kitchen because it’s not what you ordered, and you apologise for doing this, you are actually saying: I’m about to introduce an inconvenience, and I sympathise that you are going to have to deal with it. You’re not saying that you are at fault for the incorrect dish.

Also, and very much related to the above, the reason that women apologise more often than men is because we have a lower threshold of what we consider is worthy of an apology. Men apologise just as often as women, when they think the situation calls for an apology. As the author says, “A few weeks ago, while out walking on a nature trail, I apologised to a man who waited for me to pass on a narrow path. He told me: “There’s really no need to apologise.” He was right, by his measure of the threshold. But she was apologising for the inconvenience, not for something she did wrong.

What I liked most about the piece is its conclusion: the author tried to stop constantly apologising, and realised the effort and discomfort was not worth it. So…we women should just (ha ha!) carry on being ourselves, and apologise as much as we want. It doesn’t mean we are weaker than men, it just means we are different.

I’ve been watching…

This week we watched Last stop in Yuma County. I bet you’ve never heard of it before, and that’s a pity. “A traveling salesman is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel.“ It’s really good. It’s only 90 minutes long, but every minute is gripping: It’s a strange combination of both calm and totally enthralling. There is a point - about half way through the movie, quick and unexpected - where the whole plot changes direction and goes a bit apeshit crazy. But in a captivating way. Apparently this is a first-time director, and I think he did a brilliant combination of shots, music, pace, story, visuals and dialogue.

No idea what we are watching next. It’s my turn to choose, and I’m tempted to go for the new Bridget Jones Diary, but we’ve only seen the first one, so not sure that would work.

Thanks for reading!

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PS