ALL THE BEST is usually how I sign off on an email. I had a boss once who would sign every single email with the word “best” and it felt like the actual worst because she usually wrote with lists of what was going wrong. She wasn’t at her best and I wasn’t at my best and the situation wasn’t the best but she would sign every single message with that word—a tiny pebble lodged between us.
I can’t tell you how to sign off when you end a message, but I know there are some good ones out there. “Yours ‘til the kitchen sinks,” I used to say, or “Love ya like a sister,” was another. “All my love,” and “Warm regards,” will do. Just don’t end the letter with “Best” when it could be worse, and it’s already kind of bad.
I’m reading a self-help book this morning but I didn’t realize it was one when I took it out of the library. I thought it was more memoir than “you’re broken let me fix you.” It’s quite an odd feeling to open the pages to an author pouring advice into your cup when you’re not thirsting for it. Gulp down this truth, she writes, bite into this hard truth, she says, and another! But I wasn’t seeking permission and don’t think I need it to live my life, and I don’t think my life needs to be the “best.”
Ugh, didn’t some kind of first lady also mangle that word, “Be Best,” or something like that?
I can’t even with the rhetoric of anyone thinking they have soundbite advice for the rest of us. Even if it’s that you actually don’t have advice for the rest of us and that’s your soapbox, I want you to stop thinking you have to squeeze every life lesson into a digestible dollop of wisdom for any of us to chew on like a gummy vitamin, its burst of citrus to hide the bitter undertones.
I woke up this morning needing to shake off a bad dream, so I’m not at my best at the moment, even with an abundance of coffee and plenty of clean water and sunlight pouring through the windows and birds chirping in the backyard.
In the dream, I feared a bad review from a former boss who had the power to block me from ever getting another full-time job. I do have some generalized anxiety about work but didn’t think it was super active until last night, with this dream.
I had to tell myself in the dream and in this moment this morning that there’s nothing anyone could say or do at this point to block me from the sunlight of myself and the love that hums within me from a generator that’s always brimming with more and more of whatever it is that’s keeping us all alive, at our best or not.
I woke up this morning and had to remind myself of that as I cast away all the characters that had appeared the night before as if to say, I don’t even recognize you, you can all go home.
And it’s going to be a great day, I decided. Not the best day, perhaps, but a great day, a fulfilling day, an uneventful day, a peaceful day, a day full of laughter, a day I can sign off on, “With Love.”
I can’t tell you how to sign off when you end a message, but I know there are some good ones out there. “Yours ‘til the kitchen sinks,” I used to say, or “Love ya like a sister,” was another. “All my love,” and “Warm regards,” will do. Just don’t end the letter with “Best” when it could be worse, and it’s already kind of bad.
I’m reading a self-help book this morning but I didn’t realize it was one when I took it out of the library. I thought it was more memoir than “you’re broken let me fix you.” It’s quite an odd feeling to open the pages to an author pouring advice into your cup when you’re not thirsting for it. Gulp down this truth, she writes, bite into this hard truth, she says, and another! But I wasn’t seeking permission and don’t think I need it to live my life, and I don’t think my life needs to be the “best.”
Ugh, didn’t some kind of first lady also mangle that word, “Be Best,” or something like that?
I can’t even with the rhetoric of anyone thinking they have soundbite advice for the rest of us. Even if it’s that you actually don’t have advice for the rest of us and that’s your soapbox, I want you to stop thinking you have to squeeze every life lesson into a digestible dollop of wisdom for any of us to chew on like a gummy vitamin, its burst of citrus to hide the bitter undertones.
I woke up this morning needing to shake off a bad dream, so I’m not at my best at the moment, even with an abundance of coffee and plenty of clean water and sunlight pouring through the windows and birds chirping in the backyard.
In the dream, I feared a bad review from a former boss who had the power to block me from ever getting another full-time job. I do have some generalized anxiety about work but didn’t think it was super active until last night, with this dream.
I had to tell myself in the dream and in this moment this morning that there’s nothing anyone could say or do at this point to block me from the sunlight of myself and the love that hums within me from a generator that’s always brimming with more and more of whatever it is that’s keeping us all alive, at our best or not.
I woke up this morning and had to remind myself of that as I cast away all the characters that had appeared the night before as if to say, I don’t even recognize you, you can all go home.
And it’s going to be a great day, I decided. Not the best day, perhaps, but a great day, a fulfilling day, an uneventful day, a peaceful day, a day full of laughter, a day I can sign off on, “With Love.”
