Full Disclosure.
Every year like clockwork the sun creeps away earlier each day and my usual chipper disposition slowly erodes into a melodramatic funk. The less sun I see and the more cold weather I experience the harder it is to get out of bed and socialize with the world. I’ve been battling seasonal affective disorder (also known as winter blues) for most of my adult life. Last year was especially hard due to the Pandemic + rarely going outside with the exception of walking my dog. Honestly, the only positive thing to happen because of my SAD last year was this newsletter.
What I’m Doing This Time Around
As I’ve been saying like a broken record, I’ll be launching paid subscriptions on Monday, November 1st (eek!) and will be providing TWO newsletters a week. Mondays will be free and Fridays will be paid, which means double the work of racking my brain for words to put down on digital paper. To ensure I don’t lose my sanity + have a full-on breakdown I’m going to be leaning into things that bring me joy and make myself do them even when I don’t want to.
Baking: I really enjoy baking and consider it to be one of my favorite happy places. I even posted an ad in my local NextDoor App group to bake pies for the holidays and already have a list of folks wanting pies!
Eating: I’ll continue with the Eating A-Z in NYC series of course, but at home, I will be cooking soul-satisfying meals like nourishing soups, stewed beans, lots of homemade dumplings, and of course an abundance of hearty seasonal vegetables.
Reading: I had taken a break a while back on reading anything food-related, but now I’m back into the thick of it. I’ll be getting my hands on a couple of new cookbooks such as Black Food edited by Bryant Terry, The Korean Vegan by Joanne Lee Molinaro, Nadiya Bakes by Nadiya Hussain, To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon, and reading a never-ending pile of books + academic papers on my desk for cookbook research.
Listening: Music is a universal mood lifter. A good soundtrack can really get me out of a gloomy mindset and into a more creative headspace. I listen to A LOT of different genres from across the globe and have compiled some of the playlists for anyone who wants to listen to amazing jams. All playlists can be accessed with a Spotify account.
Writing: I will be working my butt off writing newsletters, but will also double down on moving forward with my cookbook research. I put the book on the back burner for a bit to focus on writing other work + recipe development, but I’m hopping back in baby! (I’ve never used the word “baby” in such a context in my life. Does it show?!)
My work has recently been featured in Eaten Magazine’s latest volume. I wrote about Tom Bullock, an African American bartender from the 1920's who wrote the cocktail book The Ideal Bartender. He wrote this book in a time where opportunities for Black men were exceptionally limited, but Tom was committed to his craft and essentially wrote a bible for cocktails which inspired the first-ever documented cocktail party.
Movement: I live in front of a ginormous city park with miles and miles of woodland trails so I will try to get out there and do some mini hikes to get those endorphins kicking in. (Yes, this mostly concrete city has some wooded enclaves! My park even has a deer population. Oh man, imagine deers just walking up to a bodega...that would be amazing! I’m getting off topic…)
Monday is when paid subscriptions open! I’m excited, scared, and feeling oh so vulnerable, but I do have some kickass giveaways to entice y’all to become paid subbies so I think it’ll still be a good week!
Cook. Eat. Repeat.
Natalie
I feel you on the seasonal funk. I set my alarm for 8am to try feeling good about myself...but I snooze it til 9 😄
Be brave with your paid newsletter! You can do it! I launched a paid one years ago in conjunction with my old travel blog and was nervous as hell to do it. But the people came.
These playlists are giving me life! <3