Hey, friend!

Sending a newsletter out about business or even my personal life feels tough and, honestly, silly, when we're just two days out from so much pain at an elementary school in Texas.

I've been a bit of a mess the last few days. It's part the sorrow that I would expect from thinking about the children, their families, and even from thinking about my own kids, but it's also a set of completely unexpected negative feelings–anxiety, insecurity, irritability.

This will sound like a weird analogy, but: when I switched antidepressants recently, there was a time during the transition where my emotions went haywire. I mean, completely unpredictable, completely out of sync with how I even usually have been when unmedicated. I talked to my psychiatrist, and she said: "Your body is just having trouble processing the change. Give it a few days and it'll be more familiar with the new state of its chemicals."

It's almost like my body had been a relatively peaceful sea floor, and then the change of medicines came in and (helpfully) moved some huge pieces of the sea floor around, but, in doing so, stirred everything up. The emotional turbulence I was feeling, then, was just the swirling sand. My best solution was just to wait for the water to stop swirling and the sand to slowly settle back down to the sea floor.

This feels like that's what is happening right now. Insecurities don't directly stem from my emotional response to this situation. Some anxieties do, and some don't. But the emotions I've felt in response to another elementary school massacre have stirred up the sea floor and it's just a mess in here.

I'm sure part of what processing it all will look like will certainly be figuring out my feelings about the topics at hand; effectively re-arranging the sea floor to my new sense of the world and hopefully relatively healed self. But, I also have to recognize that the sea floor has been stirred, and part of the next few days will just be waiting for the sand to settle. Things are swirling and they may not totally make sense, but sometimes they'll just need a few days.

I hope you and your family are happy, healthy, and safe. And, if your sea floor has been stirred, too, that you have loving friends and family–like I'm so grateful to have–to help you through it.

What Else?

Tighten Blog

• Why You Should Speak at Conferences
• You Are Not Your Job
• You Aren’t Gonna Need It (YAGNI)
• The Tighten Manifesto
• Extensible Blade Components

Tighten YouTube

• Dan Sheetz & Matt Stauffer: The Tighten Manifesto

Matt Stauffer YouTube

• Minimalism, with Diana Scharf
• Making a Living Off of Open-Source Software, with Evan You

Links

• How to build modals with Laravel and Livewire

Things Worth Learning

• Minimalism, with Diana Scharf
• Making A Living Off Of Open-Source Software, with Evan You

Popular Tweets

• I was just introduced to potato soup. WHERE HAS THIS BEEN MY ENTIRE LIFE In @dsheetz's words: "Take mashed potatoes, add chicken broth and spices... what's not to like? (Tweet)
• I’ve found this to be so true as I’m looking at myself, asking, what causes me to behave ways I don’t like? “When I [operate out of] fear, I show up in ways that leave me feeling out of alignment with [my core values], and outside of my integrity.” - @BreneBrown in “Dare to Lead” (Tweet)

• I asked myself “what *feels* like it would help?,” and the answer was: phone a friend. So I called a close friend and we talked about *random* shit (anime, etc) for 20 minutes. That did it! I just needed the voice of care to replace the voice of anxiety. Slept like a baby. (Tweet)

• Definitely the best backdrop of any podcast I’ve ever recorded. Also… one of my favorite podcast episodes, content-wise, I’ve ever recorded. Cannot wait to share this with y’all. (Tweet)(Quote Retweet)

That's it for now!

Until next time...

Your friend,
Matt Stauffer