Dear Liz: I don't want to go out!
Me neither! Plus: your invite to the EVERYDAY INTUITION book launch! Now THAT is something worth getting off the couch for!
Dear Liz,
Sometimes I just really don’t wanna leave the house in the winter!! But when a social New Yorker has booked up their calendar, such desire would usually mean skipping a friend’s party, bailing on someone for dinner, or paying a late cancel fee to SoulCycle. How to decide if your intuition is driving you to stay home and rest or you’re just being lazy and would benefit from leaving the damn house?
-Farting Into My Snuggy
Dear FIMS,
Thank you for writing in with this excellent question which has a very definitive answer: Don’t go! Stay farting into your Snuggy! Hibernate, it’s cold, grimy, and scary out there!!! And in New York we are getting into the most confusing late winter scenario of bright sun and freezing temps, our bodies don’t know what to do with it, and plus have you seen Andrew Cuomo is coming out of perv retirement?! Back to bed with you!
But really. This is such a good question because we all have the point/counterpoint. How many times have you been sitting across from some dullard at dinner thinking about how you put makeup on, paid the MTA, and shunned the siren call of Bravo. But then on the other side of the ledger, you have those nights where you stayed out for one more drink and ended up meeting the guy with whom you would spend the better part of your 20s and raise an anxious dog together?
And a lot of intuition is like that. We bias what worked out and forget or pay less mind to what didn’t. And in so many of these scenarios, there’s no categorical right or wrong answer, just choosing your own adventure and hopefully paying attention to the lessons it yields.
The key to developing your intuition is constant experimentation in these low-stakes laboratories to get at some deeper self-knowledge. A couple frameworks to consider as you determine whether or not to Snuggy:
When in doubt, let your body decide: If your bag of bones is exhausted and crying out to rest, honor that. Obviously there are some situations in which it’s poor form to bail. But if you are truly run down and you’re on the fence anyway, this is your permission slip, go forth and convalesce. If your doubts come as more of a neck-up situation, strategizing about doomsday scenarios waiting for you outside your door, I’d urge you to fight through those and go anyway. That’s how we build confidence—going to the party alone, striking up a conversation, taking those risks.
Test your intuition both ways: You wrote in with the more common sitch of not wanting to go out. But what about when you’d planned a rot night and suddenly feel compelled to…get out there? I know this is rare, but don’t your feet ever get itchy and you want to explore the world beyond the confines of your apartment? No? Well, if ever the spirit moves you, I urge you to indulge your intuition that way, too. Don’t, like, get on the apps and hoe out unless that’s what you want to do. Maybe just go for a walk or run an errand. It’s all just a signal to your intuition that, hi, you trust it. Best case scenario you see something on your walk that stops you in your tracks and imbues meaning into your life. Worst case you got some more steps in.
Intuition is never a “should”: Again, sometimes you have to go to the work drinks or the friend’s birthday party when you’d much rather make hamburger eyes at the Seamless app. But the bullying inner monologue that berates you about how you “should” be (more social, extroverted, what have you) isn’t intuition. That’s maladapted anxiety trying in its numbnuts way to propel you forward. Maybe you do get an intuition that you’d like deeper social connections and that’s great, but intuition won’t be mean to you about it.
I saw a thing on TikTok recently (what can I say, I’m just a lifelong learner) about how it’s ok to just be. You don’t have to be optimizing, growing, learning, experiencing every minute. So by all means, youknowwhat into that Snuggy and remember spring is coming.
Whatever you decide, commit: Be in or be out. Don’t do what I so often do, which is accept an invitation out of guilt or FOMO that I don’t really want and then attend only half-there: I declare I will stay for 90 minutes and then spend the allotted time watching the clock; I take an Uber and am salty about spending the money; I arrive and plot my exit. Or, I take to my bed only to refresh my inbox on my phone every five minutes STUPID STUPID STUPID!
No. If you are going out, go the fuck out. Put on makeup and your phone on DND. Be there with your choice. It ended up being a waste? So what, who cares?
I’ll never forget what my high school English teacher and swim coach said to me when I complained to her about some team meeting we had that started late and was of little consequence. (This was before the era of “that could’ve been an email,” but indeed, it could’ve been a Hotmail.) This was a waste of time! I lamented.
She looked back at me, who had all the time in the world and no idea about it, and said plainly, “My time gets wasted all the time. This is nothing.” That Zen outlook stuck with me. Most time is wasted.
How lovely to waste it with you.
ATTENTION! AUCHTUNG! Live in-person events!
Mark your calendars for May 6, baby! The launch for Everyday Intuition will take place at Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn, where I will be in conversation with the brilliant Melissa Coss Aquino, my muse for this project. Everyone is invited!!! RSVP here!
NYC: come catch me talk intuition with Women in Innovation on March 19!
SF: I’ll be speaking at my alma mater, the University of San Francisco, on March 22! RSVP here!
There’s still plenty of time to you know what into your you know where, and when you do might I recommend…
Get thee to the temple of Gypsy and worship living legend Audra McDonald!!! You’ve got nothing to hit but the heights.
Isabella Rossellini on Wiser Than Me is ASMR.
Have you pre-ordered BREASTS by Jean Hannah Edelstein yet?!
And the TRADWIFE THRILLER Everyone Is Lying To You by Jo Piazza?!
This isn’t, like, a recommendation recommendation, but I am very much ensorcelled by the slow motion train wreck that is The Baldwins, mostly for the most terrifying ten-year-old, Carmen, to ever grace our screens, big Regina George energy!!! +1 everything this review says.
Hollywood’s Eve, snap crackle pop writing and gossip galore.
Natasha Rothwell on Fresh Air, the bright light we need now.