annotation: A Weekend to Change Your Life
May. 27th, 2025 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matsushima posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
pineislandContinuing my self-help kick, I picked up A Weekend to Change Your Life: Find Your Authentic Self After a Lifetime of Being All Things to All People and was almost immediately turned off by the book's origin story: author Joan Anderson, in her own telling, "ran away" from her life (husband, grown children, empty nest) and moved to Cape Cod for a year? All I could think was must be nice - and then for her to go on about "buts," how "but" is why you stay stuck…
I guess it's "just an excuse" if you have the financial resources to move to the Cape for a year with no employment planned and take nice long walks on the beach? but what to do if your family doesn't own a beach house in a community in the midst of a housing crisis or you need health insurance? [Anderson doesn't mention this niggling little detail; I assume she's covered through her husband's job? because although she moves away, she writes about their marriage in present tense].
So… what to do if running away and taking a year long sabbatical from your life isn't an option, not because of your emotional baggage but because things cost money? I guess that's the point of this book, A Weekend to Change Your Life but I have hard time taking life advice from someone who is wealthy (and [apparently] abled) enough to up and move to the Cape and live there for a year enjoying solitude and long walks on the beach. Anderson apparently couldn't do it in a weekend but I guess the rest of us will have to make do.
I guess it's "just an excuse" if you have the financial resources to move to the Cape for a year with no employment planned and take nice long walks on the beach? but what to do if your family doesn't own a beach house in a community in the midst of a housing crisis or you need health insurance? [Anderson doesn't mention this niggling little detail; I assume she's covered through her husband's job? because although she moves away, she writes about their marriage in present tense].
So… what to do if running away and taking a year long sabbatical from your life isn't an option, not because of your emotional baggage but because things cost money? I guess that's the point of this book, A Weekend to Change Your Life but I have hard time taking life advice from someone who is wealthy (and [apparently] abled) enough to up and move to the Cape and live there for a year enjoying solitude and long walks on the beach. Anderson apparently couldn't do it in a weekend but I guess the rest of us will have to make do.
