Oh, hi, summer. Finally! It's the season I wish for all winter long and the reason I curse when I sit on hot leather seats. The season of perfect sunsets and relentless bugs. When you love that the kids have no math homework, yet somehow can't wait for September. Summer. When pouring a cocktail at 4:00 p.m. on a Tuesday feels so right until your alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday. But! In summer, you can always hit snooze.
I recently came across a post that stopped me mid-scroll: My alarm goes off twice in the morning. Once for the person I want to be, and once for the person I am. Kind of poetic. Though…I'm still trying to figure out who my third and fourth alarms are for.
In the spring, my family and I visited Epic Universe at Universal. My husband took our two kids on separate days to explore their must-see areas while I happily people watched poolside. In the evening we'd all meet up at the pool, our girls making a beeline for the waterslide on repeat while my husband and I caught up over Tito's and soda with extra (extra!) limes. At some point he leaned over and said, "You know what the girls would love? To see you go down that slide." I cringed. Then I imagined their cute little faces filled with pure delight and disbelief. So I did it (many times, actually). And I loved it.
I wouldn't have gone down that waterslide without a nudge from someone who knows me well. It wasn't really my "thing" - but that day, it became a big thing.
Summer has a way of turning a lot of things into big things. The moments we'd normally talk ourselves out of, the invitations we'd almost decline, the slide we'd never in a million years think to go down. Socializing is no different. So! With the season of backyard gatherings and packed social calendars finally here (hooray!), it's no surprise that this month's letters are giving major summer social life vibes.
Cheers!
xx Leslie
What's the best way to handle it when you send an invitation with an RSVP deadline and not a single person responds?
Dear Waiting by the Inbox,
A pet peeve of mine, and I'll fully admit I've been the guilty party on the other side of this too. Eek.
Don't take the silence personally. Life is genuinely busy, people have partners to check with, family calendars to sort out, and your invite, as lovely as it was, is sitting in their inbox getting snoozed until they're ready to commit. RSVP deadlines are great in theory and absolutely worth including, they just tend to function more as a suggestion.
Letting technology do the nudging for you is a good solution. Paperless Post is my personal go-to, you can preschedule reminders that go out automatically to anyone who hasn't responded yet, so you're not the one chasing people down. Their ‘Flyer’ option sends invites via text, which in my experience gets a quicker response rate than email.
Don't overthink it, people need the reminder and they're always glad to get it.
Happy hosting!
— Leslie
Is it ever acceptable to simply decline an invitation, even when there's no real excuse?
Dear Permission Granted,
Short answer: yes, absolutely acceptable. And here's a question worth asking yourself...who actually needs the excuse, you or the host?
Learning to say no without guilt took me a while too, but once I got there it was pretty liberating. A few years ago a friend shared her philosophy on declining the things you just don't want to commit to, and I haven't looked back since.
The line is simple: "That doesn't work for me." Generic enough to cover almost anything, yet specific enough to feel pretty good about it. You can tailor it as needed, "that day doesn't work for me" works well and requires zero explanation. Another personal favorite: "I already have plans." Which is entirely true, by the way, even if those plans involve rewatching your fave movie in your robe with absolutely nowhere to be. Still counts!
It's completely natural to not want to disappoint people, but if you're just not feeling it, so be it. Your time is precious and yours. Spend it the way you want.
— Leslie
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