Hey Listies,

This week has been one of the worst for me in awhile…

You see, I was mincing one up for a recipe, got the juice all over my fingers, and… just let it seep into my skin like a derp.

I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise that not long after that, my fingers started to burn. I also accidentally touched my eye with my hot pepper fingers, because, of course.

Once I got the eye situation under control, I tried a few home remedies to try to soothe my hands until I started getting tired and figured the pain was isolated enough that I’d be able to fall asleep.

But sleep was quite evasive that night.

I couldn’t shake the pain and tried at least 10 additional home remedies up to and including trying to sleep with my hand in a galloon bag with yogurt.

Nothing was working until (I think) I reopened the pores in my skin with hot water (not exactly painless when dealing with capsaicin) and drew out the heat with some coconut oil.

Sometime around 6am the following morning, I finally drifted off to sleep. 🙃

And to be honest, that was actually the least of my problems this week. But that’s all the news that’s fit to print here.

But there is some good news left to report:

I’m taking a temporary break from the insanity of the world for nine days starting this weekend.

Dan and I are taking a reading vacation.

- Basically, everyone after I tell them we’re taking one.

I definitely did not make this up — I took inspiration from Bill Gates, who takes two weeks out of every year away from technology and society in a cabin in the woods.

And he just reads.

The whole goal is to open his mind up and challenge his perspective. So that he can focus on this goal entirely, he hires a caretaker to cook him two meals a day.

It’s all about the reading, no distractions.

Truly, I have never needed to decompress from real life more. I’ve felt burnt out for the past few months.

Dan and I didn’t take time off after hosting our own wedding at our house (definitely should have) and while we had always planned on doing a longer honeymoon after the fact, we had to cancel the short ski getaway we originally planned for after our original wedding date in the heat of COVID-19 shutdowns.

It’s been an incredibly stressful past few months and past year. I’ve felt like I’ve been operating past my capacity since my dad passed and have cancelled several trips that were supposed to help me decompress since then because of this pandemic.

If only my business systems and processes were a little more developed — I’d probably extend this trip until after the election. But I’ll take what I can get for now with hopes of doing this again in the near future!

At any rate, here are some of the things we’re planning for our trip:

Clearly, we’re going to deviate a little from the absolute focus on reading that Bill Gates demands during his version of the reading vacation.

But although we won’t have a caretaker making us meals, we’re planning a Costco run for some pre-made meals and snacks to cut down on the time we normally spend on food prep so we can have more time to enjoy being away from work and technology.

I’m not planning on bringing my computer and limiting my phone use to 15 minutes per day or less. Neither of our Airbnbs have wifi. :)

And I absolutely cannot wait.

I’ll tell you all about how it went in my next newsletter.

Until then,

Maddy Osman, The Blogsmith

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