The Breakroom
Weekly Wrap Up: Becoming people of substance
Welcome to the Weekly Wrap Up
This week, our team gathered in person for a retreat to think about what we’ve learned from this year, from our move to substack, from the election, and how we want to show up in 2025 and beyond.
What we made for you this week:
On Tuesday, Sarah and Beth were inspired by this clip from the Frances McDormand in Almost Famous (2000)
“‘Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aide.’
It’s not too late for you to become a person of substance.”
We know that many of you are choosing to be bold in your choices and hope that our political leaders - whether for the good of our country or their own self-interest - do the same.
Our Friday episode is inspired by the Future Problem Solving process. In this new era in American politics, we want to show up as problem solvers, creators, helpers. We want to be sturdy for ourselves, our families, and this community. Sarah and Beth went through the parts of the Future Problem Solvers process and we’d love to hear your thoughts on the problems, opportunities, and solutions you see in our Future Scene.
Oxygen Masks and Managing Burn Out from the Spice Cabinet
In our retreat, chats, and Facebook group this week, the topic of taking care of ourselves came up spontaneously everywhere, all the time. If you’re thinking like our team, what we know about the incoming Trump Administration is changing daily. We do know that we can expect unpredictability.
If the world is chaotic, we want to have a strong anchor. So, here are some of your suggestions (in no particular order) for putting on your own oxygen masks (there was a LOT more in our chats):
Forest Bathing
Yoga/Exercise/Movement/Dog Walking/Walking/Pelotons/Bike Riding/Swimming
Crafts: Crochet, Knitting, Coloring, Sewing
Trying something new (capoeira was a stand out here)
Reading
Music/Playing Piano/Singing with a group
Comfort Shows
Mineral Cocktail (here’s the recipe: a couple of ounces of orange juice, half a cup or so of coconut water, 1/4 tsp Himalayan pink salt, some true lemon flavoring, and top it off with another 24-ish ounces of water.)
Here are a few recipes for your Thanksgiving Week: (disclaimer: I have not made these, but I trust the Spice Cabinet implicitly; there are more recipes in our chats)
Roasted Pumpkin Ale Cheese (the best part is the pumpkin bowl)
Humor
A bit of controversy
Outside of Politics this week, Sarah and Beth discussed whether or not John Krasinski is, in fact, the sexiest man alive. We have some important follow-up to this conversation courtesy of The Spice Cabinet.
1. If you know, you know:
2. A few counterpoints from our comments:
John Krasinski is sexy because he is handsome and knows how to love women. Not a drop of toxic masculinity. More of him winning
I am not mad at People magazine saying hey physical appearance isn’t the only thing that makes people sexy. As Sarah mentioned Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp were on that list and if we take them as whole people, not sexy. So yeah… John Krasinski is sexy.
Is there something to the Travis Kelce moment to the (perfectly respectable in my opinion) pick of John Krazinsky? Both supportive partners of much more successful and more talented women….? I find that to be the MOST sexy!
3. From the DMs (I’m just the messenger)
Weekly Recap
We hope you enjoyed this round-up from our week. We’re excited to gather in this way each week. We’ll have episodes of Pantsuit Politics for you next week, but our Premium Shows (Good Morning and More to Say) will be paused while Sarah and Beth take the week off.
Wednesday:
Sarah discussed some of the more…outlandish…nominations from President-Elect Trump on the Good Morning News Brief
Beth had More to Say about thinking about everyone makes things better for everyone
Thursday:
On the Good News Brief, Sarah shared a Thanksgiving Good News Round-Up
Sarah and Beth debriefed from our team retreat on the Spicy More to Say
Friday:
Maggie and Alise shared a few tips for having the best substack experience available. (this post is available to everyone because we know that some of you are still in between Patreon and Substack, so we thought this might be helpful for you, too!)
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You did it!
In the spirit of managing burnout, our team will be taking Thanksgiving week off. You’ll have new episodes in your Pantsuit Politics feed, but we won’t have new episodes of our Premium Shows. We’re also adjust out production schedule for at least the rest of 2024 (graphic below).
We hope you have the very best Thanksgiving available to you.
Copyright (C) 2024 Pantsuit Politics. All rights reserved.
The visual schedule for December is SO genius and makes me ridiculously happy (?!). So thank you for that whoever had the idea for it and put it together!
I really like this roundup and the surfacing of some high quality Spice Cabinet comments - nice way to experience the chat even if I’m not fully caught up yet.