In Failblog, Bethany writes:

You don’t see when I stay up late night after night trying to catch up and not making it. Or when I fail to be there for a friend, or let down my family. Or when I don’t exercise or take care of myself. I think there are lots more of those than the triumphant posts I put up.

So let’s normalize failing, and give each other a little grace when it happens, and remember to congratulate people all the more for the good posts they put up!

In this week’s The Quack, Dave writes:

One tiny programming note: a few times over the years, I’ve had people say they’re glad to hear everything is OK with my family literally all the time, because they read about our lives in the Quack. And while I will say we are absolutely lucky and happy in many ways, I hope you don’t think the Quack reflects absolutely everything in our lives… and that we don’t have, like, problems. That was never the point of this newsletter. This isn’t my whole life in a newsletter. This is the collection of (mostly) lovely mundane things that makes life worth living. This is the cup of tea on the deck in a stolen moment with Erin. This is the sink I figured out how to fix myself. This is the glimpse of the sunrise before a busy day. This is the good stuff.

So there’s owning-up-that-everything-isn’t-perfect in the air.

My summer has been dreamy, by times. I’ve swum in the ocean more times than I can count. Enjoyed wonderful meals with family and with friends. I’m in love. The world is grand.

My summer has been dreadful and hard and angry by times. Grief continues to raise its hand at inconvenient times. I’m discovering that I have so much to learn about how to thrive in a relationship. My daughter has meltdowns, and is worried and anxious a lot of the time, and supporting her, and finding supports for her, is a part-time job. The world sucks.

Both stories are true.