It’s summertime and, as always, it began with my underestimating how thoroughly this season would shift our daily reality. The run up to June was so filled with endings and beginnings—“Mortal Treason” book launch, “Catalina’s Chronicles” conspiracy thriller series wrap-up, two nieces’ graduations and all the unfinished business that ninth-graders and their teachers try to squeeze in before the end of the school year—that I hadn’t given much thought to how I wanted to step into summer until we were fully immersed in it already.
That is not to say I didn’t have ideas for how I wanted to spend the two and a half months my son would be out of school, only that I didn’t have a clear plan about how to pursue those things without the structure of the school day to keep me on track. I wanted to work on another sailing memoir, either a prequel or sequel to my first published memoir, “Losing Sight of the Shore: How to Live on a Boat Without Killing Your Family.” I also wanted to write a bonus story to use as a lead magnet for my next conspiracy thriller series so I can keep in touch with readers between book releases. And, then there’s this project, “Marrying Myself,”* which is the one I most wanted to nurture this summer.1
Yes, June began with plenty of ambition and a barrel full of good-intentions. In my mind, I would run things very closely to the way I did during the school year with similar levels of productivity. But, when summer saw me attempting this, she laughed good-naturedly, patted me on the head and asked me to hold her beer.
So, now here we are, more than a month after school let out and there have been trips and camps, casting calls and concerts, and nowhere near the productivity I envisioned. And, honestly, it’s been delightful. Just take a look at this video I took at the AJR concert two weeks ago. AJR is our son, Samuel’s favorite band but, like most popular bands, they don’t have any tour dates in New Mexico, so we drove up to Colorado Springs to take him to our first concert together. It was, in a word, exuberant!
If you judge this summer based only on that clip (and the obscene number of other videos and photos I recorded, which I share privately with my paid subscribers, more on that in the “Something New” section below), there’s no question that it has been a resounding success so far. But, because my tendency is to measure success by typical productivity standards, I felt like June was only mildly functional. Yes, I co-hosted my weekly indie author show, “Friends & Authors Live” every Tuesday in June. Sure, I showed up for my daily word sprints five days a week, every week2, but I’m still at least a week away from finishing that bonus story. And, when it came to this project, I did pull out a bin of old journals to bring on that trip with us, and even allowed myself to start delighting in what I found there…
…but then, after that, I spent a lot of time over-thinking and over-tinkering with the whole thing and not actually putting anything out into the world.
In other words, if my productivity were a swimming competition, so far this summer I’ve mostly felt like I’ve been treading water, but on this project, it felt more like I was drowning.
Gratefully, I remembered a conversation I had with my “Friends & Authors Live” co-host (fellow indie author A. K. Vyas) when we were first launching that show back in February. At the time, I told him, “If you want this project to work, you’ve gotta keep me from going down perfectionist rabbit holes.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, because of my broadcasting background I have a tendency to want every video creation to live up to the standards of my broadcasting days. So, when I’m working on a show—like my video podcast, New Mexicast, for example—I tend to spend a ridiculous amount of time editing and trying to make it perfect. If you let me do that, the show will never get off the ground.”
My co-host got the message and we decided to make that show a weekly livestream instead of an edit-heavy production. Because of that, I’m proud to report that we’ve been hosting that show every Tuesday at 1:00pm MDT for 22 weeks straight. You can watch it here:
Which, brings me to Marrying Myself…
It hit me that I’ve been doing exactly what I warned against, going down perfectionistic rabbit holes instead of just posting the darn thing. Then, as if that weren’t making me feel badly enough, I’ve been beating myself up about this failure to post all summer. Instead of my intention of lovingly marrying myself, I’ve basically started this project off more like an abusive relationship.
One of the creators I’ve been delighting in this summer is Kyra Faison-Gardner, creator of “Women at the Edge of the Woods.” In one of her coaching groups last week, she asked the question: “What are you already doing that you could bring to your new community?” It took me a while to answer, but it finally hit me. I could bring to “Marrying Myself” what I’ve been bringing to my author show: consistency. I could start showing up consistently every week, thereby forcing myself to let go of my perfectionism. And the simplest way I know how to do that is through livestreaming.
As I explored the possibility of creating a weekly livestream for this project, a joy-sparking idea3 came to me. I’ll call it:
“Marrying Myself Mondays”
It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
So, coming up next Monday, July 13, 2026 at noon mountain time (MDT), I’m going to host the first Marrying Myself livestream. You can join me live here on Substack or over on my author page on Facebook or YouTube. Here are the links:
What will the livestream be about? I’ll take a deeper dive into the things that made this week’s list of “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed and Something Blue.” Here’s a preview:
I always break the “Something Old” category into two parts: the old and rotten and the old and precious. This week’s old and rotten is my tendency to beat myself up if something isn’t perfect. In one of the wonderful workshops with the aforementioned, Kyra Faison-Gardner, she asked the group to identify one “should” you are ready to let go of to help in reclaiming your voice. Here was my answer:
“That I ‘should’ know it all and be perfect and have it all figured out before I can begin creating the magnificent things I envision.”
That “should know it all” and “should be perfect” are old and rotten ideas and it’s time to deposit them squarely in the garbage pail.
I much prefer the other half of the “Something Old” category, the old and precious. This week, the old thing I’m holding dear comes straight out of that bin of old journals I mentioned: my still-precious-to-me, old-school, Lisa Frank, Sandylion, 80s-era sticker collection. It is extensive and triggered so many memories for me. Here’s a little preview:
Rediscovering these old sticker books was like reuniting with old friends. I’ll be sharing a lot more about them on Monday’s livestream.
In the “Something New” category, here’s a song I recently discovered that felt like summer and made me smile:
Speaking of music, the next “Something New” came out of that AJR concert I mentioned above. As I’ve been building this project and deciding what I want it to actually look like, I realized that I love sharing the things that make me smile, but don’t necessarily want to share them all with the whole wide world. Luckily, my daughter who is spending the summer on an exchange semester in London, introduced me to a cool new app called, “Polar Steps.”
As you can see, Polar Steps allows you to share photos and videos of your adventures privately. I’ve been loving her updates and it gave me the idea to use the app to share our adventures with paid subscribers. I’ll talk about this more during Monday’s livestream.
In the “Something Borrowed” category, I’ve already mentioned, Kyra Faison-Gardner’s “Women at the Edge of the Woods.” Her Substack focuses on women over 50 forging intentional community and provides a daily dose of inspiration for me. Here’s a good post to start your journey:
You can bet I’ll be sharing more from Kyra in future posts.
Meanwhile, speaking of women over 50, another creator I’m really enjoying here on Substack lately is Jo Barnes. I identify with Jo so much as she has a nomad’s soul (and lifestyle) with an entrepreneurial spirit. In this recent post, she took readers through a core message clarifying exercise that I found super helpful for my business.
It turns out my core message is that:
I am so excited to finally be getting this clarity after so many years of dabbling in various business ventures. I’ll definitely be digging into this exciting self-discovery in Monday’s livestream.
And finally, with the heat wave so many of us have been hit by lately, my “Something Blue” category is all about swimming pools!
I mean, what’s not to love about swimming pools? You get to move so freely, feel like a mermaid (or in the case of the video below, merman) and cool off all at once.
I hope you’ll join me for Monday’s livestream where I’ll share a lot more about these things. My favorite part about livestreaming is that people can actually join the conversation and we can interact live. Just click one of the links above and type a comment or question during the show. I’ll do my best to respond to it while I’m live on the air. Hope to see you there!
If you enjoyed this post, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. You can get emails if you want, or just follow along in the Substack app. However you join me, I am glad you’re here as I continue to explore the fascinating process of “Marrying Myself!”
**Author’s Note: A friendly reminder that this article is the intellectual property of Rosa Linda Román. While I give permission to share quotes and snippets, please only do so with a link back to this original article. You do not have permission to copy and paste my work without proper attribution and a link back to this article. Join me in fighting systems of oppression by giving credit where credit is due. I thank you for your ethical support of creators like me and grateful whenever you share my work. You can do that easily by clicking this button:
FYI, you can learn more about this “Marrying Myself” project from the first two posts:
Or from this video episode:
These writing sprints are hosted through my favorite writing app, Dabble. If you’ve ever thought about writing a book, you should join us for writing sprints Monday through Friday, 10:30 am to 11:45 am mountain time (MDT) at wordsprints.org. It’s totally free and you don’t have to be a Dabble user to join us.
To borrow Marie Kondo’s mantra from her book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and the KonMari Method.
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