Learning to Count to 100
As we’ve both been homeschooling our Kindergarten girls (one of us by choice, the other by necessity), we’ve also been learning to count to 100. You know, 100 Lego pieces, a hundred marbles, a hundred Fruity ‘O’s — anything we can find at home to make this very serious academic lesson a bit more concrete.
And it made us think about — stay with us here — what as adults we might want to count at this time. Less shiny plastic objects and tiny snacks, more the things we rely on and reach for. The things that we’re grateful for and that bring us joy or make us laugh or give us that warm feeling in our chests. The things that energize our minds, the things we are desperate to share because they are so good, the things that linger once they are over. And the things, maybe most importantly, that help displace our fears and anxieties, pause the endless loop of overthinking and help us manage our own mental wellbeing through this pandemic.
So it is with that in mind, that we’re bringing you a very adult list of counting to 100. Yes, it’s super idiosyncratic. Yes, it roams widely across subjects. Yes, you may have no idea why something is included or left out. And if you want to analyze this, yes, this is probably a way of us asserting some control in uncertain times, by grounding 100 things that do make sense to us.
It’s maybe an odd exercise, but in writing this list we found that it captured not just a need to organize but a way of marking where we are right now. Last week this list would have been very different. Next week it certainly will be. For now, right now, this is what the threads of our life and attention look like. Some of it may resonate or inspire; some of this may leave you wondering about the legitimacy of how we’re spending our time. But the key thing here is that we all do lockdown differently, and we all need to approach our mental health in ways that fit us.
We’ve arranged our list — because if you know us by now you know we love lists — into our four modern life conditions that we might all find ourselves in, particularly as life is being played out for many of us: Curiosity, Loneliness, Anxiety and that complex feeling of being Lost wherever we are. See it like a gratitude journal, but totally random and super reflecting the very personal choices that we’re all learning to make to survive life under lockdown.
As an extra gold star bonus (can you tell, homeschooling brain is taking over) you can make your own list of counting to 100.
1. Kitchen micro-discos
2. The Happiness Lab special episodes on approaching our wellbeing during the lockdown
3. Taking just a little too long to come out of the bathroom (we all need to take our pauses when we can)
4. Going to Holland when you could have been going to Italy
5. The Getahead Virtual Festival
7. Be Kind magazine making its issues free
8. Rediscovering jigsaw puzzles
9. Watching every rom-com we can find on Netflix and starting Parasite on Hulu thinking it was a comedy
10. Eating all the cookies, brownies, and cakes that we’re baking with our kids (ok, we try to bake with our kids until they lose interest and we do all the work) and then wondering why we’re piling on the pounds.
11. Every Mind Matters Campaign and William & Kate talking it up this month
12. Snack Cleanse (we only have so many options in our kitchens right now, don’t judge)
13. The calming voice of Andy from Headspace
14. Being ok with a messy house because no-one will be visiting soon
15. The game Bears vs. Babies
16. A toolbox for living with worry and uncertainty
17. Bike rides to nowhere
18. In contradiction to number 14, keeping our houses very clean for one day, even though no one else will see it.
19. Winged eyeliner. (Why now? Why ever? Who knows.)
20. Tele-therapy (I know you can see me crying in my car but I DON’T CARE)
21. Deciding now is the time to get super new-age and find a spirit guide
22. Making at-home music videos
23. Morning meetings with Glennon Doyle (helping us to feel less alone, and MUCH less shitty for our subpar parenting)
24. Focusing on the relationships that matter most.
25. Doing slow-deep breathing out of necessity, but taking the opportunity to explain the value to our children.
26. Listening to Ted Connects with Elizabeth Gilbert: on the gentler stakes of following a journey of curiosity rather than passion
27. Create a list of 100 dreams from the Before Breakfast podcast
28. Rob Walker’s book The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find inspiration and Discover Joy in the Everyday
29. A new love of the theater: National Theater Live weekly plays, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Friday night Musicals The Show Must Go On, and the original theater version of Fleabag now on Amazon Prime as a fundraiser
30. Taking the bins out in our ballgowns
31. All the animals: Going On Safari / Beluga Whales at Georgia Aquarium / Koala bears and chubby unicorns (read Rhinos) at San Diego Zoo
32. Discovering our libraries at home and finding books to read amongst our own shelves
33. Histfest Lockdown edition
34. Mo Willems’ drawing residency and lessons in pigeon drawing
35. Watching Rolly Pollies cross the road
36. The Sunday Read: The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth
37. Skill Share classes!
38. Picking wildflowers along the side of the road.
39. Online dog training courses for our whole family! (We’ll probably start a circus soon. YOLO!)
40. Khan Academy for teaching us how to do math the right way.
41. This collection of research assuring us that all the video games our kids (and, yeah, maybe we) are playing, might actually work to ease anxiety and depression.
42. This “make-up” tutorial that had us crying laughing!
43. This Spotify playlist we made.
44. Unexpected gifts from friends left on our front porch.
45. Jen Gotch’s book The Upside of Being Down (there really is an upside, guys).
46. Global Citizen’s Together at Home concert series.
47. Gary Vee
48. Tip Your Waitstaff (and everything Mike Birbiglia has ever done).
49. Taking the time to find all of the automatically renewing things we’ve signed up for over the years and CANCELING ALL OF THEM.
50. Realizing if it weren’t for societal pressure we would probably wear the same seven items on repeat.
51. Phone calls with friends 80s style.
52. A new research paper suggesting that however we fill our social tank — yes, even with non-traditional social strategies like listening to music or watching a favorite TV show — works just as well as the traditional ones like spending time with a friend.
53. Carissa Potter of People I’ve Loved sharing her essay On Love in Confinement
54. Paper Profanities from Erica Frances George
55. Making friends with the people who go out for daily exercise at the same time — even though all you do is exchange a wave at six-feet apart. These relationships however tentative make our mornings most days (also to the lady who walks her dog each day and witnesses our red-faced runs each morning thanks for the silent encouragement)
56. Hello (from the Inside) An Adele Parody by Chris Mann
57. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Big Read
58. Female friendships getting us through
59. The High Low being back on podcasting air
60. Organizing a Zoom Scavenger hunt with our extended family - ‘go find an elephant / something important to you / favorite thing, etc’
61. This song which contains a certain amount of irony
62. Anything Hamilton but particularly The Zoom Where It Happens
64. Kat Vellos new book Connected from Afar
65. 8pm Daily Howl, 7pm weekly clap for carers, and however you are singing into the empty streets with your neighbors
66. Hearing piano playing on our daily walks, a guitar player in town, kids playing in their yards
67. Spike Jonze, Her
68. Esther Perel’s podcast on couples under lockdown
69. Wondering what we can send in a package and why our handwriting is so bad
70. The Social Distancing Festival
71. Knowing your neighbors for the first time
72. Connecting and falling in love with small businesses (local and otherwise)
73. Being endlessly thankful for social media for…maybe the first time?
74. Basking in the glow and glory of everything Serious Mom Fun says/does.
75. Reveling in the beauty of missing things and taking note of the things we don’t. [Though we’re currently longing to go grocery shopping (without a mask and gloves) so our judgments can hardly be trusted.]
76. Foldall in Bath
77. Indhi Rojas’ spreadsheet for organizations that need our donations now
78. Some Good News with John Krasinski
79. French Fry Burritos (a real thing that you need to put in your face immediately)
80. Learning to make a decent latte at home (and also teaching our kids to make them for us cause you know #homeschool)
81. Battersea Power Station Community Choir paying tribute to NHS carers by singing ‘Something Inside So Strong’
82. Reading The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
83. Living hyper-locally (and using that exact buzz word so that it sounds much more intentional/chic.)
84. Bookstores counting as essential services in Europe.
85. The concept of practice days (if there was a time to do it all over again tomorrow but a little bit better that’s now)
86. A visit to a Pet Food Store feeling like a bad sci-fi movie
87. Looking at photos from just two months ago feeling like they were another age
88. This Human Moment — looking forward to these Friday sessions
89. Making new routines / realizing we’re bad at routines / accepting a life free of routines!
90. Mentally dedicating ourselves to ‘vision boarding’ but then forgetting to actually make the thing.
91. Keeping all the cookie ingredients on the counter so we can easily bribe our children and/or convince them that we’re fun and crafty and/or consume only cookie dough between the hours of 11am and 6pm.
92. The vulnerability and honesty of some of our favorite creative women in the world, including Megan February of For Women Who Roar
93. Distraction Tactics with Dan Smith from Bastille
95. Playing charades with our kids.
96. Following creative prompts from places like Sketch Appeal
97. Daily walks without time constraints or destinations.
98. Slowly making our way through the Top 50 Teen Movies of All Time and understanding why we are the way we are. (Spoiler alert: even if you remembered them being good, they are almost always inconceivably horrible.)
99. Looking for the helpers and finding them everywhere.
100. This quote from Jane Eyre: “I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”
Now that you have a glimpse into our lockdown life, let us know what your ‘Learning to Count to 100’ list would look like. Even better, make one of your own, tag us on social media, and we’ll spread the joy of the unique ways we are all finding to negotiate this as we’re very much alone and very much together at the same time.
