July journal: small

When I was a little girl, I loved small things.

I was fascinated by miniatures and dollhouse furniture, and loved to squeeze myself into teeny-tiny spaces. I used to have a Fisher Price play set that featured small cloth animals that fit inside a little cloth log home that Velcro-ed shut, and my idea of an amazing life was living inside a snug little log like that, curled up with a good book.

I mean, I still basically want to live here.

As I got older, my life became a lot…bigger. I had a lot of children, for one thing, and, as dutiful Americans, we collectively acquired a lot of stuff which required more and more space to store it. No fallen-log living for us!

But physical space and family size were only two of the ways my needs and desires seemed to expand in my 20s and 30s: I also found myself desiring more and bigger in other ways. I felt the call of big homes, big cities, big personalities, big goals.

And, of course, there was the constant quest for a bigger career.

It wasn’t just my own ambition pushing me toward “bigger” and “more”: the idea had been quietly built into the culture around me since I can remember, and over the past decade or two, the world started saying the quiet part out loud.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read or heard a business coach or influencer ask the question “Are you playing small?” implying that to say “yes” would be a terrible, shameful, self-defeating thing.

Some very tiny but extremely satisfying harvests

I grapple particularly hard with the “are you playing it small?” question, and I think it’s because, even though I’ve done a few things some would consider “big”, I also know that I’ve mostly done them in smallish ways. The truth is that there have been many points along the way when I could have gone bigger. Done more. Set a more audacious goal. Made a more dramatic splash.

For a few years The Mom Hour, which

Sarah Powers

and I officially sunsetted last week, hovered on the precipice of going truly “big” - but for a lot of reasons, the two of us opted to very intentionally go in the opposite direction. I think I learned some important things about myself from that experience: while I love making things, I’m a hard worker, and I have creative energy for days, down deep my work has always felt just big enough to me.

I like having some amount of influence and of course, I want to know my work has an impact. But I also like the freedom that comes with being able to hop from project to project, to not have to worry too much about others’ expectations, not to have to assemble a large team or string together a complex web of automation and support software just to keep it all going.

This month’s Journal episode, exclusively for paying members of The Kettle, is all about that idea of “smallness” and what that means to me right now. In the episode I share some specific ways I’m leaning into smaller-scale efforts in my real life and the results. From working on my new book (a fiction project!) a little at a time, to the small-but-oh-so-satisfying yield from my modest-sized container garden, to the small space I’m inhabiting right now in the 30+ year old RV Eric and I are using as our home base Up North, this episode is all about the beauty of small!

My cozy writing and podcasting nook inside our 2003 motorhome!

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