Category: Inspiration // Cool

My new fave app reads books for you (!!!!!)

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

Remember that age-old party game question: If you could have any super power, what would it be?

I am always prepared for this one because I always answer the same thing: My super power would be the ability to put my hand on a book and immediately have read, understood, and retained all of it.

Then I usually bow.

Because it’s a really great answer. (One I definitely stole from some awesome adult who answered with that when I was a kid.)

I mean, there are definitely books (most books, in fact) that I’d want to take the time to read during my superhero holidays on a secluded beach somewhere, but how cool would it be to read some books faster?

Particularly, nonfiction self-help sorta books. The kind that you’re interested in learning more about, but of which dedicating the time to reading all 200 pages (about, ironically, something like how to manage your time) is a no-go.

My Blinkist app landing page.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Blinkist!

My favorite new app. I’m still in my free trial week (they’ll let you test it out for seven days before making you pony up—$7.50 per month or $89.99 for the year), but I’ve already decided to, well, pony up. I’ve had my free trial for about two days and have listened to 12 books already.

How it works: Blinkist’s profesh readers (hello, dream job) read self-help, business, and other nonfiction books and then distill each book down to ~15 minute synopses that you can read or listen to. I love it! I just pick a book, pop on my wireless headphones, and listen to the “blinks,” as the book breakdowns are called. I feel productive and have learned a lot listening to them while I do chores around the house, walk to the grocery store, or ride the CTA to the latest superhero convention.

My current library.

Granted, you’re not going to get as much out of the book as you would reading it cover to cover, but with the books I’ve been hitting up with Blinkist (ie. “The Story of Sushi,” “5 AM Club,” “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck,” and “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” (ha!)), I get the key takeaways. And that’s really all I want out of books like that anyway.

Try it for yourself or check it out here! And let me know if you have any good “blink” reccos … and/or a better super power wishlist Q&A response.

I’ll be waiting. 😉

Quote: Mary Oliver makes a heart sing

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“I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one.

The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list.

The pine tree, the leopard…and ourselves, we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together, we are each other’s destiny.”

RIP poet Mary Oliver

“Bless the feet that take you to and fro…”

Roundup: Cute earmuffs

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

Last Sunday, Justin and I grabbed brunch at B’el Bar & Kitchen on the corner of Belmont and Elston. (The crispy hash browns and pressed coffee are da voom.)

When we were leaving, the bartender slid-chased us down the icy sidewalk. I’d forgotten my fuzzy earmuffs on the back of my chair and he had braved the cold to get them back to me. A good man. Nay, a saint.

I thanked him profusely, said a little thank you prayer that we always leave generous tips even if the servers are shitty (this guy was great), and then realized… I would have been OK with leaving behind these muffs—a Walgreen’s “winter section” desperation buy. That’s a sure sign I need/ want a new pair.

I prefer earmuffs because they don’t nightmare my hair. Going bare-eared turns my earrings into icicles. Infinity hats leave me with an unsightly coif crease. Hat hats (ie. beanies) make me look like that lady from Dilbert.

“Hello. I like wearing winter hats.”

Online shopping I went. I found a lot of cute options made from a variety of luxe materials. I like the poofy, bombastic ones best, but, depending on the material, your ears can be as coy or as loud as you like. Regardless, they’ll be warm. And that’s the real reason for the season.

Swooning for these faux fur lovelies from Etsy shop ElleVintage369.
The thin band is a bonus for thick-haired girls. $35.

On writing: Radical acceptance’s role in creativity

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

On my recent interview with The Unruffled Podcast, I listed the “DBT Skills Training Manual” as one of my essential/most helpful tools for getting and staying sober while increasing creativity.

The skills in DBT, which stands for dialectical behavior therapy, are deceptively simple and designed to help you learn to cope with overwhelming emotions. Its creator, Marsha Lineham, compiled these skillsets to help patients with Borderline Personality Disorder, but I have found them really useful even though I don’t have BPD. In fact, I think they’d be helpful for any human, really. Especially humans who are deeply sensitive. And of that I can definitely be accused. 😉

The skills have helped me learn how to be more mindful of what I’m feeling and, from there, address that feeling immediately. Addressing it sometimes just means acknowledging it and letting it go. Sometimes it means reframing the emotion toward gratitude. And sometimes—most of the time—it means just admitting that it’s there.

I know. Eureka! But seriously, how many times have you experienced an uncomfortable emotion and just pushed it down and then wondered why you feel gross two hours later? What she prescribes after seeing that emotion rolling in is some good old radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is that totally unsexy thing in which all sexy solutions can be found.

In this video Lineham explains how, “Suppressing what you want is not the way to go. You have to radically accept that you want something you don’t have—and it’s not a catastrophe.” And once you get used to the fact that not having what you want is not a catastrophe, you’ll be better equipped to start a plan to get that thing you wanted OR get closer to being a peace with not having it.

“Radical acceptance would transform everyone if it’s a regular practice,” Lineham says.

In terms of creativity, I think that’s a really powerful tool. I’ve been struggling lately with taking the time I need to make new work. I feel like I’m not getting enough done quickly enough, and as deadlines I’ve set for myself just cruise on by undone, I feel worse and worse.

I know I’m not alone in this. Writer Anne Helen Petersen’s recent Buzzfeed article “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation” went viral for a reason. And it’s not just Millennials. We are all so used to moving so fast—for financial survival, social validation, “self-preservation,” and a million other reasons—we’ve never learned how to get used to taking things slow. Taking things slowly makes us uncomfortable. It seems misaligned with how we’ve always lived our lives, achievement- and extra-curricular and pleasure-chasing culture that we are.

Plus, for me at least, going slowly also seems to be a direct affront to how much we recognize we have. As we are exposed more than ever to the injustices of this world, we feel gratitude for the unfairness we do NOT face. With that knowledge constantly top of mind, it feels like a waste of all of this privilege if we don’t do a million and one things with it; to do “nothing” with the advantages we have feels disrespectful to those who don’t have them. On top of all that, when we feel so ultimately powerless to change the world, “getting shit done” seems the least we can do.

But what, truly, are we achieving by burning ourselves at both ends? What do we avoid accepting? What real or powerful change do we avoid making when we go for the quick hits instead?

Personally, I want to take more time this year taking my time. I want to practice acceptance. And accept that I need to practice. Practice is progress and progress is better than perfection.

Perfection might get shit done faster on the surface. But usually everything is burning underneath.

TLDR:

Art you should know: Sally Nixon’s 365 Insta challenge

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Little Rock-based illustrator Sally Nixon illustrates colorful scenes from everyday life. Their bright colors pull you in, their keen observations of human movement make you stay a while, and their dynamic characters keep you coming back.

One of my first-favorite Sally Nixon illustrations (I now have too many to call it my favorite-favorite) was an illustration of a girl taking a shower and absentmindedly making shapes out of the strands of hair on her shower wall. I totally do that, too! I imagine a lot of us with long hair do. But it was the first time I had seen that private moment shown to me by someone else.

Observation and relentlessly relatable documentation is Sally’s art super power.

She draws all kinds of people but mostly women. Women eating. Peeing. Hanging out. Thinking. Not smiling, but not not-smiling. Women just being ordinarily ordinary people—which is exactly what makes her work so extraordinarily compelling.

Well, that and all the bright details in her backgrounds. I wish there was an Airbnb with rentals composed entirely of Sally Nixon apartments and rooms.

"Bri" by Sally Nixon
I’m also endlessly attracted to Bri, fab pizza-getting undercover spy queen. She’s got secrets and pepperoni up her sleeve! My kind of girl.

Check out Sally’s Etsy, her book “Houseplants and Hot Sauce: A Seek-and-Find Book for Grown-Ups,” or her Instagram, where it appears she’s doing the 365 day creative challenge and posting a new work every day. I can’t wait to see what mundane moment she makes feel like magic next.

My list of books to read this month

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Severance by Ling Ma

I activated my Book of The Month Club membership again. I have started and stopped before, based on no fault of theirs, just my indecision about whether paying $15 a month for a book is worth it when I can request and read it for free from the library.

Here’s what I’ve decided: While it’s true that I’d save money if I just used the library, I’d also have to wait a long time for my turn on the wait list. With new releases, I always have to wait at least a few weeks. That means I’m never really sure when my request will come in, so I end up borrowing other books, and then when the book finally does come in, I have to drop everything to finish it before it’s due back. There’s no way you’re getting an option to renew on a HOT new book with a wait list. It’s stressful!

Therefore. I found a compromise. I bought a year’s-worth of BOTM membership so I don’t have a weird, unnecessary panic attack every month I get charged for a book. I saved a little buying the 12 books up front, but I did it more for the mental freeeeeedom. Now that it’s all paid off, I feel like I’m getting gifted a free book each month!

AND IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER THAN THAT?

First up, I chose “Severance” by Ling Ma. Three reasons.

1) My brother, who is a voracious reader and librarian, recommended it to me.

2) It has a really rad minimalist book jacket that I just want to own and have on my bookshelves. I’m so book-basic sometimes and I don’t even care.

3) The story sounds really intriguing. Candace Chen is a first-generation American, busy New Yorker, and #bossbitch Millennial doin’ it fo’ herself… and is increasingly disillusioned by what all of that means—and doesn’t. Soon, Shen Fever consumes the city and, in its zombie-crusted aftermath, Candace joins a group heading to Chicago for survival. However, Candace is hiding a mystery that could soon put her in danger with her apocalyptic pals.

“Rather than an Average Joe, Ma gives us a Specific Chen, conjuring an experience of the apocalypse through the lens of someone whose variegated identity is not an exotic distraction but part of the novel’s architecture. The chapters of ‘Severance’ alternate between the narrative present—in which Candace, having been rescued by the survivors fleeing New York, tries to adapt to their tense group dynamics—and extended flashbacks that take us through her life, in reverse. The layers of Candace’s distinctive personal history are peeled away slowly, imitating the tentativeness and ambivalence with which many second-generation immigrants reveal themselves, caught between the desire to belong and the longing to be known.”

“Ling Ma’s ‘Severance’ Captures the Bleak, Fatalistic Mood of 2018,” from The New Yorker

The Best American Essays 2018 edited by Hilton Als

I so enjoyed my recent read of “The Best American Essays 2016,” I decided to give the newest edition a go. Editor Hilton Als won the 2017 Pulitzer in criticism, and I look forward to reading his picks.

I’ll admit, I didn’t understand what an essay was before I read the compilation in BAE 2016. I’d wager my misconception is common, since the literary version of the form is so different from what we all slogged through in undergrad. I think they’re so great! A potent mix of journalistic technique, creative narrative, and critical transience, a well-done essay can give your brain something to chew on for days, months, years.

Most pumped for: Leslie Jamison’s entry, “The March on Everywhere.” I just read her book “The Recovering” and am, predictably, smitten. Aaaaand, turns out she edited BAE 2017, which means my to-read list just got one entry longer.

On writing: How to survive the Taste Gap

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A goodie from the one and only Ira Glass.

Just. Keep. Working.

Even when your output sucks. Because it’s going to suck. For a long time.

I love this video by artist David Shiyang Liu.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish somebody had told this to me: all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there’s, like, this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good. It has ambition to be good. But it’s not that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You know what I mean? A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people, at that point, they quit. The thing I just would like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. It didn’t have the special thing that we want it to have. And, the thing I’ll say to you, is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase, you gotta know that’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap, and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

OK?”

Ira Glass

To do: Eat dumplings in Chinatown

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

It’s 4 p.m. on New Year’s Day. We’ve done nothing but watch TV in bed, eat in bed, read in bed, play video games in bed, anything that didn’t require us to leave the bed. Really, it’s the perfect start to a year in which I hope to slow down and allow myself a little more time doing exactly this kind of nothing.

This lounging has an unintended consequence, however.

We’re watching something forgettable on TV as Justin rubs my back. Both of our eyes are glazing over as his hand grazes a spot on my lower left side. This sloping hill is home to one lone hair that sprouts like a bamboo stalk in a pool of milk. It’s one of those hairs that seems to grow to its full size overnight.

Bamboo for sale in Chinatown. (Not my back.)

“Did you know you have a back hair? Like… one back hair?” Justin asks, laughing and using his fingers to seek out the thick strand’s exact location.

Oh boy, we’re both awake now. My cheeks start to flush. Then I remember it’s just Justin. (And then, later of course, it’s just a body. Just a back, a hair, an aging exterior, healthy.)

“Haven’t I told you about that before?” I say. As my instinctual insecurity unhitches, I giggle at the thought of it chilling all by itself back there. “It started growing about a year ago. I shave it.”

This sends him rolling off the bed in laughter. Literally, he falls off. Amused, I try to reach back and find the hair. It’s obviously been a while since I shaved it—I could weave a poncho with this thing.

Justin goes to the bathroom and comes back with tweezers. I lay on my belly as he plucks the lonely thing right off my back.

We inspect it together, like one does a popped zit or a tissue your nose (or whatever) just desecrated. We both determine it is thinner than it felt root-deep in the dermis, but where it lacks in girth it makes up for in length. Overall, a very impressive performance by one hair gone wild!

Next, I roll over on my back and ask Justin to do the same for the lone hair that similarly sprouts out of my chin. I’m better at shaving this one more regularly.

We giggle at each other as he lets it rip.

OK, but so these dumplings.

Intimate back and chin two-hair plucking comprised New Year’s. Chinatown dumplings *made* our Christmas Day.

This was the first year Justin and I stayed in Chicago for the winter holidays. Partly because we were so over traveling by that point in the year and didn’t want to spend 12 hours in the car again. And partly because we were hoping to purchase a condo over the holidays and wanted to be around to vulture something up if it came on the market.

We didn’t. Purchase a condo. But what we did establish a new Chicago Christmas tradition: Dumplings for dinner at Qing Xiang Yuan.

Best. Dumplings. Ever.

Take it from me. Or “Check Please!” if ya nasty.

I had recently eaten at QXY with a dear friend. She ordered for our whole party. Don’t you love when that happens? I do. Going to a restaurant with someone who knows where all the hidden menu gems (and, in this case, wood ear mushrooms) are buried is the BEST.

Her recommendations are now mine: Try the spicy shredded seaweed salad with chili pepper, flavorful wood ear mushroom salad (don’t look at the pictures, just do it), and grilled lamb kebab for starters. Then go straight to the dumplings. Your server can tell you which style (steamed, boiled, or fried) would be the most tasty for your combination. Order a bunch. They go fast.

On Christmas Day, we tried the pork and cabbage boiled and the beef and coriander steamed (yessss! definitely thisssss!). So delicious. So fun to eat. I love plucking them out of their little baskets, where they’re presented and unveiled together.

Like little stockings stuffed with care.

This is the only photo I took on Christmas:

The beef and coriander steamed dumplings at Qing Xiang Yuan.

I think one pic is review enough: I was too busy stuffing my face to take any more. But, Chinatown is really cool and I’d be remiss not to give you pictures from other visits we’ve taken there. Chinatown is a visual feast as much as it is a culinary one. Enjoy.

Thai rolled ice cream.
Dishes at MingHin.
Almond cookie desserts come standard at MingHin!
Lol… Look, I know this post was maybe not exactly what you expected… so here’s a distracting picture of a salt and pepper shaker from a Chinatown gift shop that will leave you with even more confounding questions. Namely: Wut?

Byeeeee!

List: 10 things to trust in 2019

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I played basketball as a kid/ teenager. Point guard. Fast. Short. Five feet, two inches powered by a burgeoning rage the color of crimson and those little caramel apple suckers.

That is to say: I was a terrible shooter and unreliable athlete, but I was aggressive and determined as fuck, which often went unsuspected by new opponents. I could steal the ball then pass it to someone actually competent at the actual/ main/ most important objective of the game. I’d steal. My teammate would score.

At some middle-school point, though, I must not have been passing enough. My coach, frustrated by my inability to look at anything other than the ball when I was dribbling it—thus missing wide-open teammates who were posted-up undefended directly beneath the basket—had me spend an entire two-hour practice doing drills where I had to dribble with my head up, eyes forward.

That’s exactly what she said.

“Head up, eyes forward, Mantey.”

Over and over again I heard this shouted toward my solitary dribbling practice station. “Head up, eyes forward” rose up above the startling gunshot squeak of sneakers doing suicide drills and basketballs bricking off the backboard (we were, mind you, new to this thing called the three-point shot).

Head up, eyes forward. It seemed so simple a directive. But insecurity mixed with an encroaching need to feel in control of an increasingly uncontrollable teenage body/ mind, kept me turning my face back to the ball. I just wanted to make sure… make sure it was going to bounce back and forth from hardwood to hand… make sure it was still mine, still there, and nobody stole it.

At some point, my coach stopped me and, with head up, eyes forward, I watched her tell me something that has been bouncing up and down in me ever since.

“You have to trust that the ball will come back to you. You have to trust that better results are coming when you keep your head up, eyes forward. There’s no point in having the ball if you’re not going to risk doing something with it. Stop just looking at it.”

I am drawn to the notion of setting a “word” intention for the year instead of a specific annual goal. Specificity, I think, is more effective when it’s applied on a quarterly or monthly basis.

I’ve chosen two word intentions for 2019, one of which is “Focus.” I want to focus on being present with my loved ones; focus the content and tone of my writing; focus my professional work and be more selective in what I take on and why; focus on the shit that really matters to me because, I think, maybe, I’ve finally got the bronze framework of that hammered out into a shape I really like.

Breaking “Focus” down is easy.

“One hour of writing each morning.”

“No phone when Justin and I eat dinner together.”

Etc.

The other word I’ve picked for 2019 is “Trust.” That’s a little trickier to break down.

How do we “Trust” when we know we might not win?

10. The truth may set you free, but vulnerability will give you the truth.

9. Assume positive intent of those you love, and you will get what you except.

8. Letting go can have surprisingly positive consequences.

7. Ball hogs are never heroes because their arrogance is so obviously fear.

6. Play small, feel small.

5. A game is not a game without the buzzer. A life is not a life without death.

4. But you can always go get the ball back while you’re here.

3. You have been preparing for this very moment your whole life.

2. You are exactly where you need to be.

1. Head up, eyes forward.