On six years of showing up

and stumbling into sacred dates (letter 308)

Hello fellow learn-it-all 👋

Greetings from Amsterdam!! Typing that has still has not gotten old. It’s been six days since I made it! Today it my first Saturday of 2026 in the Netherlands and I’ve been feeling the allure of past behaviors to be a go-go girl who does everthing all at once. But not this time. I am trying to teach myself not to rush. That finding a desk or bedside table isn’t as urgent and important as my mind makes it out to be. And besides, it helps that i have a gnarly blister that makes movement more challenging.

Now, let’s dive into letter 309 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!

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❓Question to think about

What the heck is a sacred day and why would I care about it?

🖊️Writing

Today is April 4th. I was waiting for an epiphany that never came. Instead, night after night, I found myself marveling at the full flower moon up above. And honestly? That felt like enough.

You’d think after six years of publishing week after week, the blank page would stop being scary. Wrongo. It still is. Alas, here I am anyway.

I like anniversaries because they demand reflection. They show a journey. They create a trigger to pause, look back, and recognize that those connecting dots were a significant part of what got me here.

An anniversary is about choosing which dates hold more weight. But how does one know which days those are?

Sometimes you don’t choose. Sometimes they choose you.

An anniversary doesn’t have to be romantic or grand. It just has to be a date worth returning to. My first one was the day I was born, though I had no say in that. Grief gave me my second. Intention gives me the rest.

April 1, 2006

I was ten years old on spring break in Florida when my Polish grandpa Dziadzia passed away. I didn’t know what “pass away” meant. I definitely didn’t know what a “hard attack” was, but I was smart enough to know it wasn’t good. All the prayers from me, my siblings and cousins nestled into a pullout bed didn’t work. But what I did know was that I could go to the page and write it out. Confused, unfiltered, honest. I didn’t know then that I had just begun something.

April 1, 2019

Thirteen years later, same date. I decided to journal every single day. This was not because inspiration struck, but because I was telling people I was writing a book and felt like a complete impostor without a daily practice to back it up. I chose the practice before I felt ready for it.

March 30, 2020

I hit publish on my first Substack letter a week into COVID, with no plan and no audience. My book Be a Learn-it-all never got finished so instead I pivoted it and spun off a title as Letters from a learn-it-all to serve the same function of actively documenting what I learn as a student of life. WhenI hit that publish button, I jumped like a lemming off a cliff on the last day of a writing program called Write of Passage cohort four. I didn’t notice until years later how close that date was to the others.

These sacred dates were quietly choosing me. Now I’m paying attention on purpose.

And what I notice is this: I’m less scared than I used to be. What hasn’t changed is that this, the writing, the showing up, the noticing, has always been feeling-based rather than logic-driven. And that’s okay. Most of the rest of my life requires me to be frontal-lobey. Writing doesn’t.

Which sacred dates have already chosen you? And which ones are you ready to claim?

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6️⃣ Six Years of Showing Up

If you’re interested to learn about my relationship to writing and some notable letters, here’s a paper trail from over the past six years:

2020

• Letter #1 from a Learn-it-all

• Ship It Daily Goal. This 100 day project of publishing culminated in over 100,000 words online in 2020 and finally giving me the confidence to identify publicly as a writer and to start charging money to clients for my work.

2021

• 25 Lessons from 25 Years. My first time sharing about my birthday in this format, which made me feel viral after being featured on Matt D’Avella’s newsletter leading to a spike with 22 new readers

• 🎂 Letter 52 from a learn-it-all: What I’ve learned from one year of publishing

• The Art of Journaling presented as a capstone at OnDeck’s Learning Conference: A one-hour workshop from 2021 I gave on to guide discovering the benefits of creating and experimenting with your journaling practice to improve your well being.

2022

• 💯 Letter 100: 15 Lessons from 100 Weeks of Writing Online — What have you learned from writing online?

• 📱Letter 103: Friendzoning Your Phone. How can I have a better relationship with my phone?

• 😈 Letter 110: The Temptation of Thought. Pondering freedom from the prison we build within our thoughts, Lake Street Drive, George Saunders

• 🏝 Letter 116: Unknowing Myself. My first year in Hawai’i, aloha ke akua, anxiety, mistakes, So Far Sounds, gratitude

• 🚶‍♀️Letter 132: My 12 Hour Walk. Learning to get less lost, patience, epiphanies and taking off pressure to figure ‘it’ out

• 🙉 Letter 137: My Letter to Expectations. Stop shoulding on yourself & my sister visiting

2023

• 🎉 Three Lessons from Three Years of Writing. Letter 152: Writing reflections, Matt Corby, Biking

• 🏄🏻‍♀️ Why the heck do I surf?? Letter 161: a surfing rant, my monthly reflection & my first reggae concert

• 📲 Breaking Free: A Journey to Intentional Living Without Social Media (Letter 180)

• ❤️ Passion is for People. Letter 184: People love you back. Things don’t.

2024

Letters to My Life Book Launch on Amazon —> lead to my work being a bestseller

• 💌 Five Years in Pages: A Love Letter to My Journals: Chronicles of Growth, Reflection, and Discovery

• 🖋️ 200 Weeks Later: Reflecting on My Writing Journey. Discover how a weekly newsletter can transform your world like it did mine.

• 🫂 Friendship means to Forgive: To have you, my friend, feels vital to live.

• ✨ 🦄 I Practice Magic & It Works! ✨ 🦄: How my journal manifested my desire (Letter 206)

• 🌱 Essence Over Excess: Too many things limit how I can be. I don’t need these things. (Letter 202)

• 🔍 Finding Certainty in Uncertainty: From panic to peace on plane bathrooms

• 💔 Feeling Heartache from Leaving Hawaii (Letter 224)

• 🌱 Growing into my Identity as a Writer: Four years of writing later… (Letter 203)

2025

• 🇹🇭 100 Lessons from 100 Days in Thailand: A Crash Course in Thai Culture, Traveling, and Teaching English

• 🥳 Still Writing, Five Years Later: What I’ve learned, what’s kept me going, and why I still show up (letter 255)

• ✨ Learn Out Loud: Writing coaching launch to support you to show up, stay consistent & have fun

• How to Start Writing: Spice up how you show up with a 6–5–4–3–2–1 menu of tips

• The month I almost skipped And why I didn’t

• What’s the Five Year Plan? A love-hate letter to planners for the rest of us still figuring it out

2026

• The most consistent thing in my life: Celebrating 300 weeks of showing up(!)

• Dear Younger Me: What I’d tell fifteen-year-old Jen on friendship, love, and taking the winding road

• On what it means to be interesting and the question of whether newness is the point

🎤 Recording

I found this video that I filmed five years ago today. Looking back on the journey is wild. I mention in it my new habit of journaling for 15 minutes a day. I had no idea back then what I was just beginning.

Crazy that I never shared what my speech was about. I was so fixated on how I was evaluated, versus how the experience was. I’m pretty sure the talk was about my journey of learning how to learn.

📜🖋 Poetry Corner

From my birthday Bloom poem I wrote when I turned 28. These stanzas have been holding weight for me lately as I see flower sprouting around me:

How blessed am I?
Salt on my skin
Brine in my brows
Cake in the kitchen
Serenades of Sto Lat
Friends having fun.

Was this all in my fate?
Sometimes I feel like I am late.
I remind myself,
I am just on time
Just like this rhyme.

All of this gratitude,
feels like a platitude:
Timing is timing.

I am twenty eight
and I am feeling great!

To read the whole poem Birthday Bloom.

🎧Listening

Dive (Acoustic) by Olivia Dean

It isn′t working I’m a tidal wave of question marks And you′re just surfing Leaning into me like it’s an art

What I like about this song is that it’s not about falling in love with someone else, but about the rarer kind of love where patience is necessary to make you feel safe and secure enough to relax and love yourself and dive in anyway.

🌟Quote to inspire

“Do not discourage yourself with what you haven’t done, encourage yourself with what you will do.”

— Neale Donald Walsch, author, actor, screenwriter, and speaker

📸Photos of the Week

🇳🇱 Some Dutch Updates

Wasn’t sure where to add this in so plopping it here.

Some hiccups from week 1:

• Albert Heijn closed early for Aaster and I had no idea and ate a very barren dinner

• I forgot a hairtie and my hair fluffed into a poof and kept going in my face. Never doing that again.

• When I eat too many tomatoes on an empty stomach I will get heart burn and need to sprint to the store to buy Rennie

• That swapfiets bike rental isn’t as good of a deal as it sounds with the extra fees in the beginning.

• When water boils over it sets the electric stove off like a mad man and I need to stop letting that happen

Some wins from week 1:

• built some furniture from Ikea successfully!

• met a girl at a generalist meetup who recommended a dutch language school

• Spoke Dutch 5 of the days. “Eeva denke”. Going up to neighbors while parking their bikes. Shrugging solidarity about broken bridges. Asking my roommates to repeat themselves. Tea bags I’m translating.

• Roommate is loaning me her winter coat because I didn’t have room for mine.

• Noticing the tulips and daffodils sprout gives me joy

• Wandering accidentally into Oosterpark

• Meeting in-person at a cute cafe with my coworker Julia and being in a sofa chair

🙏Shoutouts

• To my new roommates for being chill and helping me settle in to making this new home feel like a home

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I am grateful you chose to fill part of your day here.

If something in this letter resonated, press the ❤️ , leave a comment, reply to this email, or reach me at vermetJL@gmail.com. I love hearing from you.

Keep on learning 😁

Tot snel 🌺 🌺

Toodles :)

Jen

P.S. #1 - I wrote a book. Letters to My Life is my favorite way to share my writing with you (and it keeps your screen-time stats down). Grab your copy here.

P.S. #2 - Here’s what you missed. Last week I wrote a letter from Amsterdam on making the most of the toilet paper roll of time 🧻

P.S. #13- I coach writers. I guide them to build a writing routine and have fun hitting “publish.” Let’s chat.