The Magical Thinking of March

I often slip into this specific kind of magical thinking where I forget that, no matter what my intentions might be, life has its own plans that are beyond my control. February and March were a reminder of that.

Although, I can say that I believe I have done a good job of keeping things much simpler this year (pats self on back), that hasn’t always involved what I imagined that it would—logistical things like water, supplements, and moving my body in more gentle and intuitive ways. I do think those things have helped make me feel better in my body, but what has really been required is a sense of flow and acceptance.

lifeNikki Van NoyMarch 31, 2024loss, slow, gentle, massage

Simple Things I Did for Myself in January

January got off to a slow start, which is exactly what I intended.

And then, about a week in, I found myself starting to panic at the slow-ness of it all [insert forehead-slapping emoji].

lifeNikki Van NoyFebruary 6, 2024water, news, supplements, simple

Word of the Year: Simplicity

I always react more cooly and nonchalantly to the various situations life throws my way in my imagination than I do in reality. My most recent lesson in this: aging.

As the years have gone by, I’ve had an increasingly difficult time identifying with my age. But this last year, various little creaks and pains have snuck into my body, alerting me that things are changing. It has felt almost like an injustice. I looked in the mirror and noticed that my face was starting to change—lines were deepening or appearing where they never were to begin with. It’s as if a slight “melting” effect has set in; it’s subtle still, but it’s there.

Nikki Van NoyJanuary 25, 2024body, health

Revisiting the Past

his week, I decided to fly my daughter to NYC to see some Broadway shows and generally traipse around the city for our summer vacation. It made sense to stay on the Upper West Side due to its proximity to Broadway and Central Park and the fact that it’s calmer than most other parts of the city. Plus, I lived there when I worked at Random House, so I have a better handle on it than other parts of Manhattan.

The only issue is that there aren’t a ton of hotels on the UWS. And of the few that are in that area of town, there is one that I was studiously avoiding. In the end, though, I realized it was the hotel that made the most sense and so I booked it, gearing up for a very different experience than I’d had the last time I stayed there.

lifeNikki Van NoyJune 24, 2023Comment

Retreat

I spent the past week on a yoga retreat at a stunning resort in Sayulita, Mexico, in a little enclave snuggled into a jungle and overlooking vast and rough seas. It was the first time I’d been on any sort of significant trip that doesn’t involve Disney princesses since I went to Bali in 2016.

lifeNikki Van NoyMarch 24, 2023retreat, relaxation, yogaComment

The New Normal?

In the uncertain early days of the lockdown in March 2020, I remember going on a quiet, lingering stroll with my daughter in the middle of a workday when she’d normally be at school. Because it was the best way of communicating with the larger world at the time, some people had placed signs of support and optimism on their lawns and in their windows. A few had even restrung their Christmas lights just a few months after taking them down and stashing them back in the attic because … why not? Ahhhhh, we needed this, I thought. We all needed a break to slow down. We’re going to be better for this. We’ll reprioritorize.

parentingNikki Van NoyJanuary 30, 2023Comment

The Prince and the Ghost

There’s a lot to say about Prince Harry’s book Spare, and all of the situations and personalities associated with it, but one of the more interesting things it's done in my corner of the world is to open up a wider discourse about ghostwriting.

Ghostwriting is an interesting job, because it’s not so much a career trajectory or choice as it is something that most of us professional ghostwriters (or “book collaborators”) happened upon or fell into. I certainly never said, “I want to be a ghostwriter when I grow up,”—although I probably would have if I had known it was a thing. Instead, I learned about it by working in publishing because I had heard of editors.

workNikki Van NoyJanuary 20, 2023ghostwriting, spareComment

Judgement via Voice Memo

The other day I got a text memo that clearly wasn’t meant for me. But it was about me.

Ah, the travails of modern life.

The message was from a mom of one of my daughter’s friends. We had been texting back and forth that day because her daughter was at our house for a playdate. This mom and I have only had a handful of brief exchanges while passing each other in the school pickup or at group gatherings. Our longest exchange had been earlier that day when I invited her into our house when she dropped her daughter off, wanting her to feel comfortable with her daughter here. We spoke for about five minutes.

parentingNikki Van NoyJanuary 6, 2023Comment

Starting with Ease ... or Something Like That

After two weeks of alternately running around and doing all of the holiday activities and then chilling hard in a succession of post-holiday Pajama Days, the first day back to school for my daughter and the first day back at work for me felt jarring. This year, I decided to take the holiday break very seriously and even went so far as to turn off all of the notifications on my phone and shut down my email boxes for two full weeks. It was glorious and much-needed—a couple weeks untethered, letting my family’s little world get very small, quiet, and stress-free.

lifeNikki Van NoyJanuary 4, 2023Comment

Hi, it's ... Me

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of blogs, none of which have lived on my actual website with my name overtly attached. That’s been for a lot of reasons, beginning with the fact that back in the day basically everyone had a Blogger account—it was practically issued in tandem with your MySpace page. And then I had separate blogs because I felt like I had to stick to writing about a niche topic, to stay on-theme. And I also kept separate blogs because I wanted to keep my work life and my private life separate. Which, when I think about it, is sort of silly coming from a writer. Life and stories and writing are my work. Telling them is who I am.

Nikki Van NoyJanuary 4, 2023Comment