At the start of the year, when I returned to a more consistent blogging schedule and began making plans for what my content would look like in the coming months, I automatically slated seasonal What I Learned posts into my content calendar. These WIL posts have been a staple of my blog since its inception, and my history of publicly documenting what I’m learning extends back nearly a dozen years. I identify as a lifelong learner, and sharing insights gleaned from books and podcasts and the school of hard knocks has been supremely formative.
But doubts started to swirl as I sat down to write this specific post. At first I could think of too few lessons worthy of sharing. Then I did some brainstorming and the floodgates opened. Before long I had a list that was long and daunting and far too personal, but still—somehow—incomplete. The maximalist side to my perfectionism reared its ugly head, whispering the lie that a What I Learned list that did not contain EVERYTHING I learned this season was inauthentic and therefore inadequate and, ultimately, unworthy of pursuing. I questioned my reasons for starting this practice all those years ago, and my own sanity in continuing it. I wondered if it might be time to retire the practice of writing these posts.
For you reading this, that probably seems like A LOT of overthinking for a blog post. Welcome to my “crazy brain” that’s never met an idea it doesn’t need to overthink. This tendency towards obsession and self-doubt is why so much of my life—including blog content—is ritualized: it’s hard to get too in my head with things that have become routine. Getting out of a writing routine sent me back into that spiraling place that, if left unchecked, could have spiraled me right out of blogging altogether.
The fact that I not only wrote this blog post but also pressed Publish is proof that (this time at least) the self-doubt did not win. I was able to remind myself that even an incomplete list of What I Learned is worthwhile because the mere existence of these posts cues my brain to start paying attention. I don’t need to recall or write about everything I notice for the practice of noticing to be worthwhile. And while the specific observations that land on these lists may not be life-changing, they do matter in that they are proof that I am learning and growing and living with my eyes wide open.
I wonder: do you have any routines or practices that you’ve nearly talked yourself out of pursuing? What led you to consider stopping? And what was your motivation to keep pushing forward? What did you learn in the process? I’m still mulling over my take-aways from my own mini “crisis” about writing this post; perhaps I’ll have more to share in my roundup of What I Learned this coming spring. In the meantime, here are some (mostly straightforward) lessons from this winter.
1. It’s worth it to work harder the rest of the school year so we can take the full month of December off of doing schoolwork.
I always like to reach the mid-year point of our school curriculum before we break for Christmas. In November, I realized that we were close to reaching that spot so I presented Charleston with two choices: we could ease back on our schoolwork through rest of the calendar year OR we could push hard for a couple of weeks in order to finish up before Thanksgiving. He chose the latter, and I’m so glad he did because it meant we didn’t have to tackle ANY regular schoolwork between Thanksgiving and our return-date of January 6. We continued to have morning school time, but that was spent reading Christmas books, doing puzzles, and memorizing The Night Before Christmas (the kids got the whole thing down and performed it for the family on Christmas Day!). That extended break created space for extra holiday activities and lots of family time. Now that we’ve tasted the goodness of this rhythm, I never plan to do school in December again, even if it means we have to start our school year in July to make it happen.
2. I don’t need to be intimidated by long books.
I tend to steer away from any book longer than 400 pages—partly because reading longer books means I’ll read fewer books and, as embarrassing as it is to admit, that annual book count does matter to me. I also hate the thought of sinking in to a longer book that ultimately doesn’t work for me. But in the last few month I’ve set my long-book bias aside and read three longer books, and I’m glad that I did. I took different approaches to each: I broke up this book with shorter novellas between sections, while I pushed straight through this and this. Amazingly, I read each of those last two books in under a week—about as long as I spend on much shorter books—because I knew these books were long and simply settled in to longer reading sessions. (I’m not sure why I can’t seem to apply this mindset to shorter books; the mind is a strange thing.) Of these three longer books, I LOVED one, liked another, and didn’t care for the third, but I have zero regrets about my time investments, and my experiences have me open to some more long titles in the coming year. Any long books to recommend?!
3. Move up that bedtime.
We dropped the twins’ naptime right around their fifth birthday. They would still nap when we put them down each afternoon, but the naptime was interfering with their ability to fall asleep at night, so naps had to go and have been replaced with afternoon quiet time instead. But in making this shift I didn’t account for their continued need for more than twelve hours of sleep each day, and their behavior and moods were suffering. They consistently wake up at six each morning, so our only option was to move up bed time. We’re still working out that bedtime sweet spot, but it appears to be between 6:00 and 6:30. That is REALLY early and most nights we don’t get them in bed by that time, but I’m realizing that earlier really is best. That’s been a hard adjustment, since it means dinner needs to be very early and because Charleston doesn’t go to bed until 8:00; Nico’s bedtime is still all over the place, throwing another curve ball into the mix. But the results of better, longer sleep speak for themselves so I’m pushing back against the complicating factors and my own night owl biases to make those earlier bedtimes a reality for my twinsies.
4. God can use others’ stories to profoundly shape our own.
A friend recently experienced a difficult pregnancy that had a potentially fatal diagnosis for her unborn baby. (I wrote a little more about that here.) This friend and I are not especially close, but because our pregnancies overlapped, her story felt deeply personal to me and I spent significant prayer time begging God for a positive outcome for this baby. There is a happy and truly miraculous ending to the story—baby was born healthy, despite all of the doctors’ predictions!—and I literally sobbed in gratitude when I heard this good news. I was grateful to my friend for publicly sharing this journey that would have been easy to keep private. She openly asked for prayer and support, and I believe the prayers of hundreds (maybe even thousands) for this little girl played a part in her healing. This baby and her family were blessed, as were all of us who prayed and got to see God’s miraculous healing power. On a personal note, their story helped reframe my own attitude as I’ve struggled with the challenges of the postpartum season. Praying for a baby whose life was in the balance put my own difficulties into perspective as I nursed a fussy baby through the night. The whole experience was an important reminder that we are designed for community, and our stories are meant to intertwine with one another in ways that uplift all of us.
5. Easier doesn’t mean easy.
I’ve written a lot (too much) about the first few months of Nico’s life being pretty rough. I keep waiting for things with him to get easier, hoping he’ll outgrow his fussiness and neediness and transform into the happy kiddo I just know is in there. Six months into life with him, and things still feel hard. Looking back, I can see things HAVE gotten easier. He doesn’t cry nearly as much as he used to, and he’s now open to others caring for him, which takes some of the burden off of me. So why does it still seem so tough? Because I equated “things getting easier” with “things being easy,” forgetting that easy is neither a likely or even desirable outcome. I will always experience challenges with my kids, those challenges will just look different with each age and stage. I need to stop praying for mom-life to feel easy, and instead pray for strength in handling the challenges before me. There WILL be challenges, and I want to walk through them with grace, trusting that the Lord will equip me to face whatever He has asked me to do.
6. You all (my “readers”) are just the best.
In the past few months I have had so much positive feedback from many of you in the form of comments and emails, and I want to thank you! You’ve trusted me with your own stories and offered the kindest encouragement, and it has been such a delight to hear from you. It’s easy to feel like I’m writing into a void, forgetting that others are reading these words. Your comments have reminded me that my writing matters, and you’ve given me the motivation to keep going. So THANK YOU to all who have taken time to reach out; it means the world to me.
7. Starting a Substack is less intimidating and more exciting than I’d anticipated.
I’ve been at this blogging thing for more than twelve years now, and it was time to shake things up a bit. I was late to discovering Substack as a reader, but in the last year I spent more time there and was impressed by what I was seeing. It felt like a return to the good old days of blogging, with quality long-form content and lots of interaction; Substack seems to have adopted the better parts of social media, while avoiding many of its pitfalls. One night last month I mentioned to Luke that I liked the idea of starting a Substack of my own. It was more of a “some day” comment, but by that night Luke had a Kendra Nicole Substack all set up, and we launched the next day. (I should have known that my techie husband would jump at the chance to do this for me, he’s always been supportive of my writing and he’s a genius with anything web-related.) I have no plans to retire this site and will continue to publish content in both places, but it has been fun to walk into this new platform. I’m grateful that Luke made this reality happen so quickly, and I’m excited to see where this Substack venture can go.
Do you have a habit of marking what you’ve been learning? What do your rhythms look like? And, more specifically, what is something YOU learned this winter? Big or small, I’d love to hear about it!
