Edition #162: Small Joys and Micro-Obsessions with My Favorite TikToker
My friend Elizabeth has the best life hacks. Plus, I've always wanted to be a stepmom, a nude dinner party, and homemade cereal.
Buenos dias from San Miguel de Allende, a charming, colorful town in Guanajuato, Mexico. During Easter time, the town creates horned paper mache dolls of well-known people (mostly politicians) who have misbehaved over the year. The dolls are strung up on the fence in the town square just in front of the giant Catholic church, everyone gathers, and the dolls are blown to shreds. My walking tour guide said a certain former US president may or may not have been blown up in 2019.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy today’s edition, full of little life hacks and cool things to try.
A Note From the Editor
I heard Elizabeth before I ever saw her. It was the summer of 2022, my first time visiting the beach town in Costa Rica that would become my second home. I was staying in a treehouse attached to a larger house. It came with a mischievous black and white cat named Ninja who would occasionally hunt down the bugs and geckos frequented the space.
A week or so into my visit, a group arrived at the larger house. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them—three American women occasionally joined by a local man named Pablo. It became apparent that Pablo was the boyfriend of the girl who, I presumed, lived in Costa Rica. I heard her mention Ninja and got mentally defensive; he was my fake cat.
A few days later, I was doing some writing at a co-working space when three women approached. Before they even opened the door, I knew they were from the house next door. As they sat down and begun chatting I recognized their voices, my suspicious confirmed. The one whom I presumed lived in Costa Rica had a distinctive drawl, thick with a sweet, animated cadence. I approached her.
“I know this is random, but are you staying at the house down the road with a black and white cat named Ninja?” I asked. She was, and we got to talking.
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I didn’t know it at the time, but Elizabeth was becoming something of a TikTok star during our budding friendship. She once told me she never gets FOMO; not an easy feat in a town whose hot, barefoot population can sometimes emulate the social hierarchy of a high school cafeteria. She doesn’t care if she misses the biggest party of the year, she said, because she's probably doing something she enjoys more than being at a crowded party.
Herein lies Elizabeth’s magic: whether whatever she’s doing comes across as cool or appealing to others doesn’t seem to cross her mind. It is an especially intriguing notion when you consider the fact that she is very much online, living part time in the digital land of comparison.
On Designing Your Life Around Joy
One of my least favorite sentiments about adulthood, especially as it pertains to work, is “It’s supposed to be hard,” or “You’re not supposed to like it.” Elizabeth’s life is proof that you can reject that notion. She’s a master at configuring her free time around all the little things she enjoys doing.
This doesn’t mean she’s always buying fancy clothes or perpetually on vacation, quite the contrary. She lives a very specific, non-frilly version of Costa Rica life. Her home has no hot water, she rides around on a motorcycle that periodically breaks down, and she cooks on a camper stove.
Still, Elizabeth has found ways to turn very ordinary moments into mini rituals worth savoring. Her morning coffee, for example, is a slow, involved process that sometimes entails securing raw milk from one neighbor and fresh honey stored in an old Malibu bottle from another. For sunset, she might make watermelon lemonade. There are lots of little treats and pleasures in her day-to-day life, none of which are overly complicated.
Some Cool Tricks I’ve Learned From Elizabeth
Tina Toast | A favorite breakfast she got from her friend Tina. A slice of toasted bread topped with Greek yogurt, chopped mango, and drizzled with honey or maple syrup.
DIY Flaxseed Mask | I missed the boat on the DIY flax mask because I’m not on TikTok, but I tried it after Elizabeth told me about it and the results were insane. My skin looked like shimmery, beautiful glass.
Waterproof camera pouch | Once, Elizabeth invited me to go play in the ocean for sunset. She had her phone in this pouch, which I later bought. My ocean content is much more Blair Witch Project, but it’s still fun to film and swim.
Feeding the Micro Obsessions & Getting Into a Flow State
If part one of Elizabeth’s secret is building more joyful moments into everyday life, part two is her propensity to become fully enamored with whatever is piquing her interest at any given moment. They’re not quite hobbies because they’re less fixed in nature, so I call them her micro-obsessions.
Elizabeth follows her interests like a sniffer dog on the hunt—and as long as I’ve known her, she always has at least one extracurricular project that she’s pumped about. Spending time doing these projects allows her to get into a flow state more easily and frequently.
Her current micro-obsession? Earthen floors, which I had never heard of before but am now interested in.
“ If you are barefoot on an earthen floor, your body reacts similarly to how you feel when you’re outside. It’s calming and grounding. I started learning how to build an earthen floor on YouTube. It’s complicated and simple at the same time. Moving material all day is exhausting but it really forces you back to the basics. Build, food, water, shade, rest, repeat. Before I know it, 7 hours have passed and I have a freaking rock wall!”
Elizabeth’s Top Sleeper Hits
Fancy tea in bed | When Elizabeth goes back to the US, she stocks up on Throat Coat tea, which she drinks every night in bed while reading a book.
”It makes me feel so cozy and like the main character of my own life. It’s a sweeter, more pronounced tea, so it doesn’t just taste like warm bath water. I used to be such a tea hater but I swear it has turned my nights into a sacred ritual. Find a tea you like and add some honey, damn it!”
The Pranamat Eco | Sleeping on a prickly acupressure mat might seem counterintuitive, but Elizabeth swears by it.
“When you lay on this thing, it sort of feels like you want to jump out of your skin. But if you can manage to breathe through the acute discomfort of 500 spiky points jabbing into your back for just a few minutes, you’ll be rewarded with euphoric bliss. Almost without fail it will put me into a deep, restorative sleep.”
Eucalyptus shower spray | Fancy up even the most basic show with this spray.
“This spray transports me to a spa even though my shower head is a PVC pipe and I don’t have hot water.”
On Making Content + Making a Living
Elizabeth seems super likable and down to Earth in her videos, which is precisely how she is in real life. I don’t have hoards of influencer friends, but the congruence between her online and IRL identities seems to be something of a rarity. I suspect the continuity stems from the fact that Elizabeth’s content isn’t overly curated or perfect.
“I like to keep it as raw as possible and allow people to glance into the life of a stranger. When I am doing a morning in the life vlog, I love to focus on the details and the noises. It makes me appreciate every little thing I am doing in real-time. What sounds will transport someone here? What are the little things that I do every day that will make this come to life?
Whenever I talk to Elizabeth about her content creation process—something that, to me, feels high-pressure and anxiety-inducing—her whole face lights up. True to form, she makes these videos because she sincerely loves doing it.
Elizabeth’s Perfect Day
I love asking people this question. Parameters: your perfect day must be in your current reality within your current life circumstances, i.e. a day that could ostensibly be made a reality.
Wake up at 6:00 am
Start filming a morning in my life vlog—my favorite time to create is in the morning and if I make a video in the morning my day is always more productive and led with intention
Head to the ocean for a surf session by 7:00
Make a perfect brunch (my favorite pancake recipe with a side of bacon) while my hair is in a hair mask
Take a shower
Edit video
Spend the day with Pablo at the river or a waterfall (but ultimately have no plans)
Get a sweet treat
Watch the sunset in a place we don’t usually see the sunset
Moto ride back home under the stars
Eat a delicious dinner
Drink tea and read the Twilight saga before falling asleep on my Pranamat
Sometimes when I am away from Costa Rica for a prolonged period of time and I watch Elizabeth’s TikTok, I ache a bit inside—especially if I’m in a big city far from the ocean. For when I witness the way Elizabeth lives her life, I am reminded of the choices I have each day; to live mine precisely the way I want to, abandoning all notions of what I “should” be doing, the things I “should” be buying, the clout I “should” be chasing. I am reminded that it’s up to me to make the small moments in my life count, to follow my interests and not rush through the ordinary stuff.
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Cheers, my dears, and as always, thanks for reading! I’m off to New York for one final weeklong stretch before heading to Africa for two months (!!!). Looking forward to seeing my sweet friends, eating dumplings and noodles, and checking a dizzying number of tasks off my to-do list as I finalize my travel plans. More to come on Africa soon!
Until then, have a wonderful weekend. Make yourself some Tina Toast, slather your skin in a DIY flask face mask, make a list of your sleeper hits. On that note, I’d love to hear about your sleeper hits—reply to this email and let me know what they are, or leave a comment. Mine: tea candles, Hydro Flask water bottle, and aloe vera in place of face moisturizer. Maybe we’ll do a reader round-up edition of all the underrated things you love.
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
I Always Wanted to Be a Stepmom. This article articulates something that has gently skirted across the back rooms of my mind several times before. A beautiful essay that challenges the tired old stepmother trope. Well worth a read.
The Great American Novels. When I was recently putting my things into a storage unit the Brooklyn, the mover laughed. “All your stuff is books, miss,” he said, and I couldn’t argue. I love books and the novel is the most superior form of book in my opinion. Grazing through this list made me feel smug about my literary taste but it also made me want to read more novels.
Private Dinner Party: Clothing Optional. Fantastic reporting, fascinating concept. I was invited to a nude dinner party last month in Costa Rica, but it was way overpriced so I passed. Would you attend a naked dinner?
Perhaps You Should…Watch a Movie!
Watching a movie is a little joy worth taking the time for. Whenever I’m in another country the streaming service situation get wonky, so I do most of my best movie watching on planes. I recently saw Anatomy of a Fall—quiet with a complex protagonist. There are a few more things I’d like to squeeze in before my departure, including a coming of age story, a doc about the importance of joining a club, and a story about raising kids in an alternative way.
**Bonus Content** (Home Made Cereal)
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Would you give this homemade cereal a try?
Also, Elizabeth is hosting a self-love retreat in Costa Rica in May. This will be her third (and final, for a long while). I taught a writing workshop at an intuitive eating retreat she hosted last year it made me wish I was attending. If I weren’t on the other side of the world in May, I would seriously consider joining this one.
A Quote From A Book You Should Read:
“The problem, though, with trying to be the ideal anything is that eventually the definition changes, and you realize that what you'd been pursuing all along was not a single truth but a set of expectations determined by context. You leave that context, and you leave behind those expectations, too, and then you're nothing once again.
-To Paradise by Hanya Yanigahara