Halfway to the moon on a plane you couldn't land
You were seeing castles, they were seeing sand
They're never gonna get it, no, they'll never understand
But I believe in you, I'm your number one fan
So, after the crowd's gone
I'll be the last one

— Maisie Peters
It all breaks down, it always does
It all works out, it always does

— Holly Humberstone
Art by @ranxdeer.

To be responsible, I will mention immediately that I'm unemployed and looking for a new job. The previous one evaporated while I was on maternity leave. I'm not mad though — the company graciously offered a couple months of severance. And like, shit happens. Sometimes a business needs to revamp its marketing approach. (Don't worry, I am certain they weren't making an excuse just to axe me.)

In a way the timing is terrible, because I burned through our liquid savings and we have a mountain of medical bills from the birth. Thank God the landlord is my parents! And thank God medical bills can be ignored for a while.

On the bright side, I get to spend more time as my baby's primary caretaker while I look for the next thing. He's snoozing on my chest as I type this.

Anyway, I opened with this information because maybe you would like to hire me to do narrative strategy at your company. Reply to this email and let me know!

Yes, after eons of pregnancy, I had the baby. It was pretty harrowing — 100 years ago, we both would have died:

7 Days in the NICU
My full-term baby spent a week in the NICU, first being treated for respiratory distress, then learning to feed by mouth. It was a very hard week.
Sonya SupposedlySonya Mann

Three months later, my little son is fat and happy. That awful week feels like a fever dream. I'm glad that I wrote about the experience while it was happening. Journalling helped me endure the separation.

A few thoughts from late-stage pregnancy, before I knew anything would go wrong:

I write to you from the last weeks of my firstborn being my only child. In a sense, he already isn't; I lug the new baby around every day. It's cumbersome, the end of the third trimester! Nature plays a neat trick: by the time you must face up to giving birth, you want to get it over with already.

If you ask my two-year-old where the baby is, sometimes he points to my stomach. But sometimes he points to himself. Toddler is a liminal state, the overlap of a Venn diagram: simultaneously big baby and little boy.

Excited as I am to meet my second son on the outside, and eager as I am to be done with this pregnancy, my heart already aches for my two-year-old. He is the proverbial mama's boy who doesn't want to share me if he can help it. Thankfully he also adores his father, and my parents, who live adjacent to us. Nonetheless it will be a difficult adjustment.

Mother and child face many moments of primal separation as the child grows and attains greater independence; the arrival of a new sibling is a forcing function for one of these. It will hurt us both.

I generally find pregnancy pretty annoying, but a positive of this one is I find myself accepting motherhood as my primary vocation. At least for now. Perhaps I have completed my psychological journey out of the maiden stage. Perhaps not... maybe I'm just awash in hormones that feel like durable personal growth at the moment.

Once upon a time my grandpa told his son-in-law (my father): You can have it all, but not all at once. Not all the time. Gotta prioritize! Pick your tradeoffs!

In other words, you can't have it all, but you can have some of all of it.

Still, it is vexing to cope with more desires than one can realistically pursue. Also... that vexation is default human psychology. It is adaptive to want more, more, more. Discontent is drive; satisfaction is stasis.

One must prioritize. One must sacrifice this for that. And then, figure out how to be happy with one's lot — including the additional desires, because those aren't going away.

My own revealed preference is for the proverbial picket fence. (I wouldn't mind a real one either, they're cute.) I have chosen stability. I would rather hang out with my kids than chase the stars. Which means I won't catch them.

So why do I still yearn to trip the light fantastic? What is the point, if my self-chagrin is more punitive than motivational?

yeah

Really the question is, what am I getting out of the yearning? As long as I yearn, I don't have to relinquish my deprioritized dreams, I guess.

My friend Nick Simmons passed away suddenly. He is missed.

Henry Zhu published our conversation from October 2020 (!) about prayer, ontology, attention, and other dimensions of faith. The title he chose for it is "Salience."

Christie Clark wrote "America's Broken Psych Ward Model," drawing on both personal experience and research to evaluate how the built environment affects treatment and recovery, intentionally or not. I was honored to give feedback on this essay while she was developing it.

On a completely different topic, Christie also wrote a funny piece about dating without relying on the apps. It has some poignant moments too: "I don't need to be treated like a piece of glass but it would be nice to be held carefully."

My dad has dived into creating music and videos with AI (particularly Suno and Kling). His album Moving With the Sun recalls hiking the Pacific Crest Trail; "Cathedrals of Snow" is a lovely track about the transcendence of the wilderness. Now dad is working on an audiovisual interpretation of the Gospel of Luke.

I tried this super thick dental floss after Grant Slatton shared it. It was a little too thick for me, but high quality!

More:

And my favorite ceramicist released an album called ebb sung, suggesting: "put it on in the morning or while u sit next to a pond watching reflections across the water."

Well, how about you? Projects, creations, adventures, angst? Reply and tell me.

— Sonya