How to Get Unburied
Up first, then out.
Hello, friends!
I realize that using this headline in October might make it sound like I’m doing some sort of zombie thing, but I’m not. Apologies if the only reason you clicked through was for spooky stuff.
Zombies are welcome, though. Or people who FEEL like zombies, maybe because your young children have been repeatedly walking into your bedroom at 4 AM and then standing there creepily in their footie PJs, refusing to speak. Just as a hypothetical example.
What I’ve Been Writing Working On
Since I turned in the first draft of my book at the end of August, I’ve been…let’s say waiting with Zen-like patience for my editor’s revision notes. Which are taking a little longer than I expected. I get it! We all have too much to do. My editor is lovely. But it’s been awkward trying to drum up work during this interval because I don’t know exactly how soon I’ll have to drop everything and dive back into the book.
I’ve written some pitches. I’ve written some emails about money that’s owed to me. I’ve submitted some things that got rejected or ignored, then resubmitted them elsewhere. This is my way of telling you I have zero links to share today.
But! I decided on October 1 that, to give my hands something to do besides tearing out my hair give my brain a creative reset, I’d paint one fall leaf every day this month. This has been working great because now I have a different thing to be frustrated by it’s nice to accomplish a concrete thing every day!
Dear Inkfish
(As a reminder, this is a question I invented as an excuse to write about some cool new research.)
Dear Inkfish,
I’m feeling absolutely buried! I’m behind at work, there are a million household tasks that need doing, my kids keep outgrowing their clothes and shoes, and I owe emails and texts to more people than I can count. How can I get ahead when I don’t know where to start?
— Can’t Thrive UndeR Task List
Are you my book editor? Just kidding.
C. TURTL (if I may), I know the feeling you’re describing. With so many obligations piled on top of you, it feels like you’ll never see daylight. Maybe it would help to consider the plight of a newborn sea turtle.
A sea turtle mother lays several dozen squishy, spherical eggs in a deep hole that she’s dug on a beach. She uses her back flippers to bury the nest. Then she scoots back to the safety of the ocean, leaving her offspring to sort things out on their own.
When the babies hatch, they find themselves in the nearly airless dark, in a wriggling mass of other damp and naive reptiles who will have to get themselves unburied to survive.
What happens next has been sort of a mystery to scientists. They know it can take up to a week for the hatchlings to dig themselves out, but it’s hard to observe exactly how the tiny turtles accomplish it. Knowing more might help us protect at-risk turtles. (In U.S. waters, it’s easy to remember which sea turtle species are endangered: all of them! Sorry guys!)
Scientists in Australia addressed this question by monitoring 10 green sea turtle nests. When a probe buried in each nest told them that hatching had begun, the researchers very carefully scooped away the sand until they uncovered the topmost hatchling (who presumably thought, “Hallelujah! Daylight!”). The researchers glued a tiny accelerometer to the baby’s shell. Then they put the baby back and reburied the nest (“What the hell?”).
Days later, when the hatchlings finally made it out of the sand, the researchers collected the accelerometers before sending the turtles on their way. The data showed that hatchlings didn’t crawl out of their nests. Instead, they swam. They pitched their bodies up and down, like a dolphin, to escape the sand.
Maybe the hatchlings’ most important trick, though, was getting themselves right side up. From the moment they hatched, they spent most of their time with their heads pointing toward the sky.
How did they know where the sky was? The hatchlings were under about two feet of sand. In the final 24 hours before emergence, they did most of their digging at night. Yet even underground—swimming from one kind of dark toward another—they knew which way was up. The turtles likely found their way by sensing the earth’s gravity.
I’m not sure whether a buried human could accomplish the same feat. And, frankly, I don’t want to spend a lot of time Googling that question and fill my computer with serial killer web cookies. But, as an overwhelmed person, maybe you can use the tools you do have (calendars, spreadsheets, a prefrontal cortex) to orient yourself and choose your priorities before you start digging to daylight. Watch out for seagulls!
