There’s been a death in my family, and I need to be with my people. FGP will be back next week, although I’m not certain which day. Check your notifications and/or your Facebook or Twitter to get back in the swing.
Thanks for your patience, lovelies, while my tribe mourns my well-loved brother-in-law.
xo,
Jennifer, editor
Hi everyone,
I’m so glad you’re visiting the site. If you’re picking up what we’re putting down here, here are some handy tips to remind you to check us out more often.
• Sign up for notifications, conveniently located on your right. Thanks to the FGP peeps on Facebook, I’ve streamlined the email that comes to you when I post new essays. They don’t have images and they’re posted before anything else. (I did this because I didn’t realize how many people read the internet on their phones! Not me, man. I recently sent a text to my mother in which I called her something in Spanish. I’m not sure what.) I write an introduction (no spoilers!) to each essay; they’re just a couple paragraphs and I work pretty hard on them. You have to confirm that you’ve signed up—it might be in your spam box or, if you use gmail, it might be in your promotions box. The emails come in the wee hours, so insomniacs? Got you covered.
• You can also join the Full Group People Facebook page. The updates happen whenever I wake up—I’m not a morning person, so you’ll have to wait until I have my first cup of tea. There’s a small intro there (not the same as the one you get with the notifications). It’s a good way to share stuff.
• FGP has a Twitter page. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a great Twitter citizen, but I do update when we have a new post.
•••
I can’t even thank the people who contributed to the tip jar enough. We’re getting closer to recouping the expenses I put out to start this. I tear up every time we get one. I know that there’s a great TED talk on not making people pay for things but letting them, but if you grew up without a lot of money, it’s tough, emotionally. Thank you. Really.
Finally, I’m hoping that you’ll tell the people in your lives about Full Grown People. There’s an insane amount of talent here in FGP’s writers and artists, and I’d love for them to get an insane amount of recognition.
xo,
Jennifer
A guide to getting things done at 3 a.m.
By Jody Mace
1. Keep close track of exactly how much sleep you’ll get if you fell asleep right now. Repeat every half hour.
2. Ponder why you said the dumb-ass thing you said today. If you didn’t say a dumb-ass thing today, revisit one you said sixteen years ago, at a job you used to have, to people you don’t know anymore. Consider how badly those people must think of you.
3. Resolve to use this time wisely. Think about cleaning the bathroom but then remember that you hate cleaning the bathroom and, plus, the cleaner is in the other room and you wouldn’t want to wake anyone up. Instead, decide to do some serious writing, unlike the stupid writing you do for a living.
4. Berate yourself for doing stupid writing for a living. Imagine the disgust that the seventeen-year-old you would feel for you if she knew the kind of writing you’d end up doing.
5. Imagine the disappointment your high school English teacher would feel if she knew.
6. Wonder if your high school English teacher would remember you anyway, despite the brilliance you demonstrated in class when you wrote that farce about archetypes. Consider the notion that perhaps you were not as brilliant as you always thought you were and that maybe you were really just a smart-ass.
7. Remember the mean thing that one person in high school did to you that one time. Look that person up on Facebook and feel vindicated that he is recently divorced, not because, obviously, being divorced is evidence of a character flaw, but because clearly in this case his wife left him because he was an asshole who did mean things to people. Haha.
8. Wonder what the fuck that noise was.
9. Entertain an extremely disturbing thought: how many insects are in this house right at this very moment?
10. Become convinced that there is a microscopic bug crawling on your leg. Challenge yourself to not scratch. Dammit.
11. Remember about bedbugs. Google how to check for bedbugs. Feel sick. Seriously disgusted.
12. Read a book.
13. Realize that you’ve lost your attention span for reading. Or maybe it’s your rapidly worsening short vision that’s the problem. In either case, consider that it may be caused by a brain tumor.
14. Google brain tumors and learn that you definitely have one.
15. Think about making a video for your children with all the advice you’d like to leave them, like how to choose a mate, how to set goals and stick with them, how to do the right thing when their friends are doing the wrong thing, and just how to be a kind person. Then remember that they don’t listen to you anyway so fuck it.
16. Instead, plan the music you’d like at your funeral. Start a “Funeral Playlist” on Spotify. Include some Morrissey because every funeral should have some Morrissey songs.
17. Give some serious consideration to how much further you’d be in your career if you hadn’t majored in the wrong thing in college.
18. Compile a list of all the people you know who are younger than you who are more accomplished in a similar career.
19. Fantasize about doing something inappropriate with someone you shouldn’t think about.
20. Resolve to be more patient with your elderly father, even when he tells you about his dispute with the phone company for the hundredth time, or when he answers the door wearing just a carelessly tied bathrobe despite expressly promising on the phone that he would put on pants.
21. Reflect on what a shitty person you are because you know damn well you will not be more patient with your father.
22. Make a list of all the things you’ve been neglecting to do. Make sure to include the oil change that your car is 1,560 miles overdue for and your mammogram.
23. Panic.
24. Find a bottle of expired Ativan and wonder if expired Ativan will just not work or if it will harm you.
25. Do something productive. Plan menus and a shopping list for the week. Start with eggs.
26. Notice that you’re really hungry.
27. Deny yourself food because it’s 3:30 a.m. and people who eat at 3:30 a.m. are either teenagers or have a big problem.
28. Think about your own teenagers and compile a list of all the things that worry you about them. Start with your older one, who’s in college. Is she eating enough? Does your younger one spend too much time texting, playing video games and watching Dr. Who reruns?
29. Move onto things that they don’t do but might do someday, like binge drink, drive recklessly, and smoke crack. If people still smoke crack. Research what the popular drugs are with the kids these days. Feel nostalgic about smoking pot in college.
30. Check your spam folder in case a really good writing assignment ended up there. Read about how you can get a sexy body that sizzles, rock-hard abs, and lose fifteen pounds in four weeks with just one brand new product. Also read a nice message from a hot Ukrainian girl with beautiful eyes who is ready to “correspond to erotic themes.”
31. Consider what the chances are that, in your forties, you’ll actually lose weight and decide that all your exercising has been a waste of time. Think of other people in their forties who are skinny and hate them. I mean, seriously, seriously hate them because they eat whatever they want and don’t exercise and look at them. Assholes.
32. Read an article about how lack of sleep can make you gain weight and can also adversely affect your mental health. Freak out about how you will never sleep again and you’ll end up the size of a house and also deranged and when you die they’ll have to take the door off its hinges to carry you out, and they’ll put you in a double-sized coffin and that’s all anybody will think about at the funeral, not the playlist you put together for their enjoyment.
33. Have a sudden, searing realization that one day your dogs will die. Cry. Because dogs are the best thing ever, especially your dogs. The way they look at you with those big eyes and wag their tails so hard their butts slide back and forth on the floor. The way they sigh and lean their bodies against you when you take a nap. My god, why do they have to die?
34. Calculate the very latest you can wake up and still get your son to school on time. Set your alarm.
35. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.
•••
JODY MACE is a freelance writer living in North Carolina. Her essays have appeared in O Magazine, Brain, Child, The Washington Post, and many other publications, as well as several anthologies. She publishes the website Charlotte on the Cheap in Charlotte, North Carolina.
by Jennifer Niesslein
Thanks so much for checking us out! On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, FGP publishes essays that tackle those moments in life when you wonder, what’s next?
Maybe you’d like to know more.
A couple of years ago, I interviewed Nicholas Christakis. Christakis studies how people—even people who don’t know each other—influence one another’s choices in life, from weight gain (or loss) to divorce to mood. One thing he said stuck with me: people are open to change when they’re in a “liminal state.” Which is fawncy talk for being in transition.
“In transition” pretty much describes where I am. Last year, my beloved friend and business partner, Stephanie Wilkinson, and I sold our magazine. For me, that meant I pretty much sold my identity. (Read all about it here.) I looked around at my friends, and they were all going through different, but no less earth shaking, transitions. We were all done with the celebrated firsts: first kiss, first sex, first long-term relationship, and in many cases, first child. We were left with the sometimes glorious, sometimes messy, stuff that comes with adulthood.
From way back, I’ve looked to writing to help me figure out the difficult stuff in life. Before I discovered reading for wisdom, I read for information. I learned about sexual intercourse from the World Book Encyclopedia that my mom ordered one book at a time. (In case you’re wondering, it happens by a man inserting his penis into a woman’s vagina. In practice, this is not an especially helpful description.) I founded Full Grown People because I find comfort, empathy, and intellectual stimulation in reading other people’s stories.
The topics here run the whole gamut: romance, family, health, career, dealing with aging loved ones, and more. But what draws everything together is the sense that we’re all feeling our way along. There are a gazillion how-to books on all of these subjects, but I’ve always been interested in the how-come.
I hope you’ll find here what I’ve been wanting to read: well-told true stories of how different people have figured it out as they’re going along. I think every age has the potential to be an awkward age, and as my teeth migrate steadily back to where they were pre-braces, I’m revisiting those feelings of let’s pretend again. Let’s we pretend we know how to dance. Let’s pretend we know how to kiss. Let’s pretend we know how to dress for work. Let’s pretend we know how to date after many years. Let’s pretend this new career move isn’t scary and thrilling as all get-out. Let’s pretend we know how to deal with our father’s dementia. Let’s pretend we know how to say a final goodbye to our mother.
Thanks for pretending with us.
P.S. To stay in the loop and help us spread the word, you can sign up for the weekly newsletter (over there on your right), like FGP on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and do what one does on Google Plus.
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JENNIFER NIESSLEIN is the founder and editor of Full Grown People.
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