📖 Letter 149: Monogamous Book Reading Creates Momentum

How I started to find focus in my reading again, Kauai family travels, ohana, Jack Johnson

If you are listening to this edition’s voiceover, find humor in knowing I am recording this in my hotel’s closet. If are new here or missed last week's edition, you can catch up on the past letters here. If you are reading this for the first time, I’d love you to sign up below to join the other learn-it-alls:

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Aloha fellow learn-it-all 👋

Greetings from Kauai, Hawaii 🌺

Sure I love routines. But I also appreciate a heck of a lot in a new environment. Consistency invokes creation and a new environment can also do the same. This is my first time being in any civilized part of Kauai (not in the jungle backpacking) to meet up with my parents visiting. It’s been a hoot and a half to spend quality time with them so far.

Another exciting update is that…

☕️ Rhythm, Rhyme, Repeat 📖 successfully began!

Jen Vermet @jenvermet

☕️ Rhythm, Rhyme, Repeat 📖 launched today!! Shoutout to @EllenRhymes and the ~20 students who signed up to join along in this fun adventure of learning poetry together. Over the next 6 weeks, I’ll be sharing takeaways from the course 👇

It’s become a dream of mine to learn different ways to become a more creative writer and I am blessed to be able to co-lead this course. Loving life lately is an understatement.

Getting on with normal business, I’m stoked to share more about an experiment I ran last month, let’s dive into this week’s writing 🤓

Enjoy Letter 149!

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🖊️ Writing

I have a confession. 

For the last several months, I haven’t read much at all. I’d play the field and flirt with a page or two from different covers as my heart wandered in and out of relationships. That was all until I became a monogamous book reader and still remain one. 

It all stemmed from a conversation at the end of January with a friend who is, ironically, non-monogamous in romantic relationships. When I loaned him a book full of life wisdom from my Derek Sivers collection, he had no desire for all four of them because he was a “one-book-at-a-time type of guy”. 

Blasphemy, I thought! It’s never crossed my mind to read only one book at a time.  Yet, I was intrigued. He’s just as curious as me, so why does he deprive his curiosity of all the ideas that could be traversed across a copious amount of books?

Then I stepped back and assessed my own nightstand. My journal was a given and will always have a place there. But there was also a stack of books there, some were just collecting dust. On it was my etymology-infused storybook dictionary, the poet Yung Pueblo, philosopher Ernest Dimnet, and traveler Rolf Potts.

My polymathic ways led me away from writing and towards overwhelming inaction. 

I thought I liked having a constantly available selection since it created an air of freedom, but each night I found myself either journaling or watching a movie instead. I am being fooled by living in the age of abundant information that this is the way. Where I used to see all the options as empowering, I now feel I wasn't giving each book the attention it deserved. I was cheating on all of them.

Being a writer, not reading makes no sense at all. It's like trying to become a YouTuber without watching any videos. Your output stems from your input. It’s the wood that fuels the fire of sensational creation. Being a perennial book quitter was no longer useful. 

I made an executive decision to run a fun experiment in February: One month, one book at a time. 

I went to the library at the end of January to get a new library card. I realized checking out a book would instantly create urgency since I’d be obliged to give the book back. The book that called out to me was The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel H. Pink. I decided that would be my first selection for this experiment. Usually, I wouldn’t say I like reading new releases, but when I saw it at the library, my existentialism crept in as my birthday neared. There were fourteen chapters so I read a chapter a night each weeknight. Some nights, I was too tired to finish a chapter, so I reread it the following day. My goal with reading this was to learn how to use regrets in my life for better decisions. 

I did commit infidelity.

On my birthday, midway through my monogamous month experiment, I broke the vows of my commitment. The quick read How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh came in the mail, and the book cover was too seductive not to slip into old ways. Small self-help books are my kryptonite. All knowing it was a defiant act, I acted like it was a birthday wish to a genie. I soon realized it wasn’t worth it. I felt dirty the following morning for breaking my promise, and I quickly removed How to Love from my nightstand. It was like a miserable walk of shame that I sure as heck wouldn’t do again. I forgave myself after noticing my self-induced shame like embarrassing hickeys on my neck and went back to my love for the month with a greater appreciation. 

So is monogamous book reading for me?

I found the experience energizing. There was no decision fatigue about what to read and I found focus. The act of reading became frictionless.

Meanwhile, as the pages went by, it gave me a sense of progress, helping me get back on the reading wagon. Monogamy gave me momentum.

How to become a monogamous book reader:

1. Set an expiration date for how long you can keep a book.

2. Allow that book to be the only one on your nightstand. Put all the other love interests back into the bookshelf. Or even better yet, tape them up in a box and loan them to a friend.

3. Read linearly chapter by chapter. Similar to the route your walk in Ikea, the author curated the book in a way that would be best for your experience. The chapters are organized that way for a reason. There’s other places in life to rebel, but this isn’t one of them.

4. At the end of a chapter, mark with a sticky note a quote, question, action, or surprise that you had while reading. The point is to interact with the chapter more like you would with a friend. (More marginalia is a bonus but don’t force this on yourself. Keep it fun.)

5. Understand your intention for reading. Setting this allowed me to be more intentional with what I consumed. Are you reading to be entertained, challenged, or validated? When I picked up The Power of Regret, my intention was to reinforce what I already knew but I left surprised. 

6. Forgive yourself for cheating on your main book with another. Notice it and get back to your homeslice, since you promised you’d see it through until death do us part. 

This experiment shifted me to think more about intentional consumption. 

Before, I was treating my books like they were TV channels that I would flick through after a long day. A bunch of quantity without any quality. The ideas would be forgotten because they weren’t consistently given time to understand. I don’t want to unintentionally consume something just because it’s there. 

Moving forward, I will set containers on how I read something before I start reading it. Monogamous book reading worked swimmingly well for me with nonfiction. I’m in a season of my life where I am attempting to converge and crystallize rather than explore new genres, so the books I am choosing are reinforcing my worldview and take less time to process. The timeline of a month for me as a dyslexic reader feels achievable and not too strenuous. I have no desire to book chug.  

All in all, I loved the simplicity of monogamous book reading. I’m excited to continue with another month going on this March. It is refreshing to remind myself that I can finish a book and feel accomplished for committing to something, even if it only started out as a month-long experiment. My stagnant state is diminished and my focus has blossomed. Monogamous book reading creates momentum.

🌺 Pure Aloha Post Launch

I launched a separate Substack for the House of Pure Aloha last week called the

Pure Aloha Post

.

It comes out every other week sharing spotlight stories on the community and how they define Pure Aloha. This is alongside issues with ways to live like Uncle Clay, the co-founder of the House of Pure Aloha, who is one of the most genuine and loving people I’ve ever met. I’m grateful to be one of his hanai nieces and to be a part of the ‘ohana and support this his vision in my day-to-day work. He lived out his childhood dream of owning this shave ice shop and creating the mission to bring Pure Aloha to the world and unite them as One World ‘Ohana.

I invite you to check it out and sign up if you are looking for some more Hawaiian inspiration, stories, and empowerment:

🎧 Listening

I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs
This world keeps spinning and there's no time to waste
Well, it all keeps spinning, spinning 'round and 'round and

Upside down
Who's to say what's impossible and can't be found?
I don't want this feeling to go away

This will forever be one of my favorite songs. While driving back from our shaka tour to Waimea Canyan aka the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific”, I was on aux and played Jack Johnson on repeat. To my delight, they’d never listened to him before.

It wasn’t until after I moved to Hawaii that I found out Jack Johnson grew up and lived on the North Shore of Oahu. I felt like such a silly goose. He planted the seed in many ways of the lifestyle and vibes that I desired in college far before I ever moved out to an island.

🔍Word to define

ʻOhana is a Hawaiian term meaning "family".

The term is cognate with and derived from Māori kōhanga, meaning "nest". The root word ʻohā refers to the root or corm of the kalo, or taro plant, which Kanaka Maoli consider to be their cosmological ancestor.

This phrase became popularized by the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch in 2002.

🌟Quote to inspire

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” —Jane Goodall, the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees

📸 Photo of the Week

Enjoy this selfie of me: my 5’4’’ Polish mom and 6’4’’ Dutch dad in front of the beautiful Napali Coast on the northern side of Kauai — known as the Garden state of Hawaii.

It’s been such a blast the last handful of days to be in Kauai with my parents. This is the first holiday I have had that is with them without my siblings, I’m liking it!

They came here to Hawaii 33 years ago for their honeymoon and wouldn’t stop raving about it most of my life. The beauty feels out-of-this-world to experience. I always wanted to go and see it for myself, little did I know that I would come for 2 months and never leave after. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Jen Vermet @jenvermet

The fact that sights like this waterfall exist on our planet and that I have the opportunity to witness and experience such beauty is an absolute blessing. It was such a glorious day today. 🥰

It’s even more bonkers to me as I reminisce about the Napali Coast and remembering when I backpacked the 11-mile Kalalau Trail 5 months ago. (written about in ⚖️ Letter 130: The Pendulum of Pain and Pleasure)

🙏 Shoutouts

• To the ~20 students that signed up to learn poetry alongside me and Ellen Fishbein :-)

• Thank you to all who have contributed to this piece of writing including Steven Foster, Allie Crawford, Michael Shafer, Theresa Murphy, Karen Frances Eng, and Brendan Stec

• To Camilo Moreno-Salamanca’s blog on Book Chugging: a continuation of inspiration for me to continue my monogamous book reading

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I appreciate you reading this!

If ideas resonated, I’d love you to leave a comment, reply to this email, or send me a message on Twitter @JenVermet. If you forgot who I am, I welcome you to my online home.

Never stop learning 😁

Mahalo 🌺

Jen

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👣 Footnotes

On my new running shoes that came in:

Jen Vermet @jenvermet

Just shifted all my evening plans because my new running shoes just came in and I’ve gotta give these bad boys a whirl 🌀🌀

On long-term commitment:

Jen Vermet @jenvermet

"Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity." - Bruce Lee Note to self: have patience young padawan, there is a long horizon ahead. So buckle up and keep showing up.

On writing love letters:

Jen Vermet @jenvermet

I wrote my best friend a love letter this morning. It felt glorious. Affirming someone that you know their heart’s song and affirm the way that they live and move through the world is one of the best things a friend can do. Note to self: do this more often.

On my travels to Kauai and intentions:

Jen Vermet @jenvermet

Flying off to Kauai to bond with my parents for a week. This will be my first time having a vacay with them without my siblings. I’m excited to get to bond with my parents as adult friends instead of as my “just” my parents.

On how everyone has a place to express:

Jen Vermet @jenvermet

“Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best.” - Henry Van Dyke Note to self: unique expressions from everyone matter, no matter the shape or size.