Reframe Your Inbox (Please Preorder My Book 🙏 Edition)
Hey friends. At long last, Reframe the Day is available for preorder (hooray!). I’m making a donation to the coronavirus response efforts of Direct Relief in the amount of all profits from preorder sales.
Where you can get the book: SilverWood Books (my UK-based publisher—they ship internationally, too!). Amazon (US). Amazon (UK). Barnes & Noble. Waterstones. Erin and Adam’s apartment. FYI: E-book sales aren’t live yet. If you’re planning to read on Kindle or another e-reader, hang tight!
When you'll get it: Print books will ship April 28th. E-books will download to their connected devices that day.
Why you should get it now instead of waiting until April 28th: For whatever reason, preorders matter—a lot, apparently—in how a book’s popularity is assessed by the algorithms that control our lives. The more people who preorder the book, the more other people will find out about the book. Plus, all of the profits are going to Direct Relief.
If you have a bit of cash to spare these days, donate it. But if you have a bit more cash to spare, I’d be grateful if you’d consider reframing your day.
With that plug out of the way (for now), here are three things this week.
FIRST THING
I’ve found that one unexpected challenge of being home 24/7 is, ironically enough, finding time and space to think. From the moment I wake up in the morning until the moment I fall asleep at night, I can be consuming information. Headlines. News alerts. News stories. More news alerts. More news stories. Emails. Text messages. WhatsApp messages (sorry, guys—I can’t keep up!). Twitter black holes. The incoming stimuli and distractions are constant, and a lot of them are pretty bleak.
This has always been fairly true in the age of the internet, but it’s even more true (and even more overwhelming) in the age of the quarantine. There are no commutes to the office. There are no walks outside to buy lunch. There are no appointments to get to. There are no classes to attend. There are no tube rides to see friends. These days, if I don’t want to spend a moment alone with my thoughts, I don’t have to. And if I don’t intentionally set aside such moments, they won’t happen.
That’s not sustainable. It’s not just that I want to give my brain time to think—I need to. When I cultivate time and space to think and process, I’m more creative. I’m more present. I’m more patient. I’m more empathetic. I’m calmer. I’m less anxious. I’m less caught up in my own head and my own micro-dramas. I’m more capable of keeping things in perspective and more accepting of how little control I have of the world around me.
As someone who’s spent probably 70-80 percent of my weekdays working from home for the past few years, I’ve had a lot of practice with all of the challenges of remote working—the need to build structure into your days, the importance of signing on and off at fixed times, the understanding that if you don’t make time to go for a walk or just lie down and think, it’s not going to happen. Even so, I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve been struggling to find headspace recently.
Some of that can be attributed to having a lot of book stuff to take care of, on top of the regular 9-5. But most of it owes to the fact that I haven’t made it a priority. As the saying goes, if you can’t find 20 minutes to meditate each day, you probably need to find two hours. If I don’t feel I can afford to carve out 20 minutes to turn off the incoming information stream and make some sense of my own thoughts, I probably need even more time than that—and need it more even more urgently.
Is anyone else struggling with finding some headspace these days? How are you tackling it?
SECOND THING
Two of my favorite email newsletters resonated with me this week:
Anne Helen Petersen: “Overreacting [to the risks of coronavirus] is just reacting as if someone you care about could suffer if you didn’t.”
Kate McKean: “Maybe this will be a time for the sloughing off of bad habits for you, not because you have to be ~~productive~~ in this time, or you have to emerge from this a new and improved person, but because all this incredible, horrible shit around the world is a much needed dose of perspective. Do what serves you and humanity. Stay home for others, and yourself. Write or don’t write. Finish that novel or not. When this is all over, and it will be over one day, I want to look back on this with open eyes and a better understanding of what I’m doing with the rest of my days.”
In recent weeks I’ve found myself gravitating toward these sorts of human reflections far more than world updates (aka “news”). I’m craving stories of how people I know are wrestling with this scary and surreal era, even if the only way I “know” them is through reading their work.
How are you making sense of it all?
THIRD THING
Earlier in the week, I made the beginning of Reframe the Day available to download for the low, low price of $FREE.95. The excerpt includes the intro (to provide a bit of scene setting) and the first two chapters. Chapter one is all about finding stillness in this crazy world; chapter two focuses on building and maintaining an awareness practice. Like the book itself, these chapters are not designed to transform your life overnight but rather to help you nudge each day in a more fulfilling direction. I think-slash-hope people will find them useful in these challenging times.
You can get the download link by signing up for my newsletter. If you’re already signed up (thanks!), just email me and I’ll send the PDF your way. Or you can have a friend sign up and share the goods…
Stay safe, everyone. Thanks for reading.
—Adam