aligning with what matters
on finding clarity and direction by unearthing my true values
Last Sunday I walked with my daughter.
We meandered from our isolated campsite tucked beneath a towering stand of ‘silly’ ponderosa pines and wandered up a silent, sun-soaked road of soft sand, searching for the dry-mud-preserved ‘footprints’ of deer and jack rabbits and foxes. Twenty minutes later, we found ourselves 0.12 miles away at the edge of the ‘main’ dirt road, from which we’d heard cars pass a handful of times but had never seen them. There we stayed, on the edge of that road, for two whole hours.
We ate snacks, lined up stones, and smeared sunscreen on our sandy faces. We pretended to be woodpeckers, bears, and frogs. We took photographs with my husband’s fancy camera, drew pictures in the sand, and spared some of our precious water to make ‘mud bagels’.
Time warped and slowed, then sped up. For one blissful morning we had no where to be and nothing to do, except be together.
As we walked back to camp, my daughter spotted our truck and paused. “It’s too far,” she said, little legs sagging. So I carried her, hungry and sleepy and happy, the last hundred yards back to her bed.
That afternoon while she napped, I journaled in the shade of the ponderosas, gazing out at the distant too-dry expanse of Utah desert 2000 feet below us.
I love how slow it is when we camp, I wrote. It’s hard to remember what matters when we’re at home, but out here it’s like breathing.
I’ve been thinking a lot about values lately. Specifically, what I value.
In January when I dove down the rabbit hole of digital detoxing and restructuring my relationship with technology of all kinds, I read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.
Newport’s definition of ‘digital minimalism’ is as follows:
A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else. (emphasis mine)
I was particularly intrigued by this idea of intentionally using tech to support what you value. Newport makes the argument that if you do all the tech ‘hacks’ people talk about without actually thinking through the whys (why do you use this tech? why might you not want to? why should you continue?), then you’ll slip too easily back into old habits. The book walks through how to question the purpose of every app, program, and technology in your life to ask yourself: what value does this bring me?
He goes even further to suggest then asking:
Is this app/program/tech the BEST way to serve that value?
That question blew my mind.
For instance, let’s consider text messaging.
I live far from family, far from my childhood friends, and far from the writer friends I’ve met on the internet. Many of my deepest relationships are not in-person ones. My relationships with those people is something I cherish, and I connect with so many of them through texting. The problem is, text messaging is not conversation, it cannot build or foster a relationship, not truly. But phone and video calls can. So I told my closest friends that I would be less available on text messaging (since I now keep my phone plugged into a corner of my office), and asked a slew of them to schedule phone calls. I’ve re-discovered old (and new) depth in so many relationships already.
Text messaging was the app I was using to tend to my long-distance relationships, but it wasn’t the best technology to do so.
Another example is photography.
I love the creativity of taking pictures, always have. Now that I’m a mom, I treasure the memories they help me capture. But taking photos with my phone requires me to be connected to a highly distracting device that pulls me out of my memory-making every time I turn it on. So, I’ve started using a real camera (my husband’s fancy one) to pursue the art of capturing memories in a more intentional and fulfilling way.
I was using my phone to take pictures because it was convenient (they’re right there to post on IG and send to my mom asap!), but it wasn’t the best technology to serve my values.
This little assessment has been incredibly helpful over the last couple of months as I’ve considered what value every app/program/tech I use brings to my life, what values they serve, and if they’re the best way to serve those values.
But then another interesting question arose…
What do I value?
Newport makes the assumption that his readers know what they value, that we can name all the things that bring us fulfillment, satisfaction, and alignment. But I’m not sure most of us do. I certainly didn’t.
I kept trying to make lists of things I valued and felt a strange pressure. There is so much baggage to the question of what we should and shouldn’t value. There are culturally acceptable values and values that are scoffed at. Everyone has opinions, and oftentimes we try to impress our values on others.
The haze of what I 'should’ value made it quite difficult to determine what I do value at a subconscious, true level.
So I went on a little side quest to unearth my values and found myself returning to an exercise that a coach my business partner and I once hired had us do.
It’s very simple:
The coach had us print out a list of a bajillion values, cut them into little squares, and then look at them in pairs, discarding one for another over and over again until we ended up with our top ten values. As I searched for this exercise again, I discovered there are actually websites that will help you do it in a fraction of the time.
I took several of these online assessments for fun (Personal Values and Think2Perform were my favorites) and curated a custom list of my top ten values.
Here they are:
Creativity
Family
Excellence/Competence
Inner Harmony
Ecology/Environment
Autonomy
Health
Meaningful work
Privacy/Solitude
Community
It feels strangely intimate to share this list with you, like I’m giving you a little window into my soul and you might scoff at the view (how dare she value this but not this!), but these are the things that drive me. You will have your own list.
When I spent those two hours with my daughter on the side of the road, I felt so fulfilled because I was organically living so many of my deepest values. Meaningful presence with family. Creativity in play. Inner harmony by slowing down. Health and ecology in the fresh air. Autonomy through responsibility to no one but myself and her. Solitude and privacy in the wilderness. Camping creates a space where I feel most aligned with my values.
This list has become a very clarifying guiding light.
I’ve used it to help me decide what projects and events to say yes to, as well as what to refuse. It helped me shape how I came back on social media, and how I continue to pivot to ensure my presence online is aligned with what I care about. I even noticed that my values have subconsciously driven the messages in all of my novels and how I write best, and I have started to allow it to steer me as I draft.
There are so many things in life—capitalism, culture, and circumstance—that make it incredibly difficult to live within my values, and as I grapple with that depressing fact, I’ve also found liberation in the awareness.
My list of values has become permission slip, again and again, to prioritize the things that matter to me versus what the world tells me should matter.
By unearthing what I value, and building my life around it, I’ve found more fulfillment and satisfaction than ever before.
xo, E
In other news…
This week I finally found my way back into my current story, which I’m calling Project Gold. I wrote over 8,000 words of backstory for my main character and then eagerly scraped and rewrote 8,000 words of my Act One. This story is swiftly turning into a ‘fuck-capitalism’ book (a sexy, thrilling fuck-capitalism book) and I am very, very in love with it.
My husband and I just discovered that Aoife O’Donovan is also Crooked Still and have been listening to some new Crooked Still CDs we really love.
My 10 and 3 year old cats have started snuggling and grooming each other. The older one generally wants to disembowel the younger one, so this feels like the world has flipped upside down in the best way.
With how unsettled I’ve been about the state of the world, I’ve been eager to do more than just complain. So I’m excited to announce that I just got accepted on the Board of Directors of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, an environmental profit I worked for when we first moved to Colorado that does incredible work protecting the land, air, and water of southwest Colorado (which right now need it more than ever). I’m very excited to get back into the loop on local energy, climate, and water issues and support the org in news ways. If you have any $$, they’re a great place that always needs (and more than deserves) some.
Over the weekend I devoured Isola by Allegra Goodman. It was a fascinating take on a little-known woman in history, and really peaked my inspiration.
Oh, and I finally watched Season 4 of Bridgerton. I adored every second of it.