What Summer Are You Manifesting?

I will finish my TBR, learn to build a fire and no more phone scrolling

Summer is not a break. Not for parents. Not for people who work from home with feral children running around. Not for people going on book tour for three weeks. Which is to say, not for me.

And here’s the thing, all of this is good and sometimes great and I truly do love my life. I just want the semantics to line up with the reality so I would prefer no one refer to this as a BREAK. It’s just summer people. Just summer.

I’m not a manifesting person. I’m more of a planner and a list maker so I’ve asked every member of my family to list out three things they want to accomplish or learn to do this summer and I will let those be our north stars (can you have more than one north star…whatever) to craft a list of summer activities and plans. More on that in a bit.

We didn’t do camps this summer. I’ve talked a lot about the burden of summer camp planning or moms and the socioeconomic shit storm camps truly are. The below episode is just one example.

Not doing camp this summer was just practical and frugal. I hate spending money so much. We’ve got full-time childcare (because you don’t take summers off from fulltime childcare bc it is a job for someone!) and a bunch of trips on the calendar so paying for camp on top of that felt like lighting money on fire just to feel like I’m nourishing my kids’ brains.

I went full museum mom and stocked up on memberships to the science museum, the dino museum and the art museum. With memberships I do one hour museum jaunts (or our caregiver does) where the kids go in and do one thing they love for an hour and then fuck around on the museum playgrounds so they don’t burn out on the museums. We’ve also got the neighborhood pool (FREE) and a pool at my mom’s new apartment building. We will be pool people.

I did have a moment of panic that I didn’t enroll them in ten weeks of structured fun. But then I remembered: kids are allowed to just hang out. They’re allowed to be bored. They’re allowed to run around playgrounds, dig for worms, fight about nothing, and splash around in museum fountains until someone gets yelled at. They will be fine.

I’ll be on tour for Everyone Is Lying to You for a lot of July. My brilliant husband, Nick Aster, made a beautiful, organized list of events. Oh also I made this weird book trailer myself on Canva.

Most of the stops are ticketed and selling fast, so go grab yours before they’re gone. Also get your book orders in. I know it is dumb to preorder books. I agree. And yet the publishing industry favors authors with preorders and I want another book deal. That’s why I ask. Literally so I can keep doing this. Again, it’s dumb.

But also you get this substack free if you order it now, so why the hell not.

You can send me your receipt at the link below. This is a list of purchasing options, but it is also available at a lot of indie bookstores and you can get signed copies mailed to you here and here.

OK back to this summer. I have three things on my list that I want to accomplish and my kids have come up with a couple already too. I also want to hear all of yours.