When I was a tender, mouth-breathing five-year-old, I started kindergarten. On my first day I brought with me a box of tissues. Each kindergartener was tasked with bringing in a box of tissues on the first day, and the boxes were supposed to live in our cubbies and be at our disposal for all our snot needs throughout the year.
Come pickup time on my first day, my mother and my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Marshall, watched in confusion as my tiny hands struggled to jam my tissue box back in my little neon pink backpack. I was clearly planning on taking my tissues home while all around me, my classmates were leaving their tissues in their cubbies without giving them a second thought.
“You can leave those in your cubby,” Mrs. Marshall explained. “They’ll be safe here and waiting for you every day.”
Yeah, right, I thought. I’m not gonna leave my stuff in a strange room all night! Not on my watch!
I kept packing up and responded with a meek “I’m okay” as I zipped up my bag and indicated I was ready to hit the road by pulling on my mom’s coat.
Mrs. Marshall and my mom exchanged amused glances and through muffled laughter concluded that I’d leave my tissues at school once I felt ready.
This ritual continued every day. Every morning I’d unpack my tissue box, lovingly leaving it in my cubby, and every afternoon I’d pack my tissues up and take them home for the night, while my mom and teacher chuckled and reminded me I was free to leave them at school permanently. When I was ready.
And boom, one day after two weeks it happened. I was ready. I had sussed out the situation, figured out the rules for myself, and decided it was finally time to trust in the system.
This is one of my mom’s favorite stories about me, because it perfectly encapsulates my idiosyncrasies. I’m always two weeks behind. I’m always catching up on life. I’m always just a few beats behind all of life’s prescribed “normal” milestones, getting to them a bit later than everyone else. Whether it’s getting comfortable leaving my tissues at school, having my first kiss, falling in love, getting a “real” job . . . I’m always running behind.
My proclivity for being two weeks behind in life has followed me for the past thirty-odd years, and it’s why I became obsessed with self-help. During my teenage years I discovered that tons of people have written all sorts of rule books about how to live! I knew if I could read them all and implement all their rules, I could catch up to everyone else and finally stop worrying about being behind in life.
As an adult I dabbled in self-help, reading the occasional book and watching the occasional inspirational Internet video. But when one of my four part-time jobs landed me in a newsroom at a radio station, things got real. I was in charge of going through all the books sent to the show I worked on, and we got sent many self-help books that no one wanted . . . except me. I wanted them all.
Each new self-help book I’d open was a beautifully bound bundle of promises—of happiness, productivity, success, all things I desperately wanted. Each book I opened was basically saying, “Come on, Jolenta, I’ll fix you. You don’t want to be two weeks behind forever, do you!?!”
No! I did not. So I took all the books, called my friend and coworker Kristen, and told her we were going to start a project for which we’d strictly live by the rules of the different self-help books I’d been collecting.
Kristen is the kind of friend who is so on top of her life that it’s infuriating. She’s the anti-me. She’s the friend you go to when you need advice on all things “adult.” Whether you have questions about real estate lawyers or how to deal with estranged family members, Kristen has your answer. She doesn’t need fixing, like me, and that’s why I knew she’d be my perfect self-help partner. She’d keep me accountable and serve as a sort of control group, since she was the one who wasn’t perpetually trying to catch up. If the books could enhance both of our lives, they worked for real.
And that’s how our podcast, By the Book, was born. Timing, work friendships, and a lifetime of being two weeks behind all came together to create an experiment in living by the rules of self-help books for (you guessed it) two weeks at a time.