First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee – May 29, 2026
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
On doing hard things - and recognizing that we're going to feel what we feel and that pretending otherwise is stressful. And a bit more on reading and how it can go from being an escape to being a source of pressure, like monetizing creative pursuits.
Indie Booksellers! You can buy my indie books direct from me at discount!! Submit a Request for an order here
New Releases ~
Preorder ~
Socials ~ @jeffe_kennedy on all platforms :)
Upcoming Events ~
Tuscon Festival of Books is March 14th-15th this year! See you there! https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org
Follow me on Amazon or BookBub
The posture correcting sports bra I love almost more than life itself can be found here
Thank you for listening! You all take care.
00:00.76
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy also writing as Jennifer K Lambert author of epic fantasy romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.
00:15.13
Jeffe Kennedy
Which is delicious. Ah today is say it with me people it is Friday woohoo May 29th last day of May. ah I'm not going to say that time flies I'm going stop saying that but um, times going by fast.
00:33.82
Jeffe Kennedy
Probably not any better. I am um trying to minimize clanking of the coffee cup because I can like see the sound spike. So I brought in this great little coaster. Isn't that pretty from I brought these from my mom's house. Really nice Tucson landscape with the saguaro. I it's still kind of ceramic so it might be still kind of clanky but um I'm I'm trying.
01:05.43
Jeffe Kennedy
So thank you all for the kind comments about reading ah from Wednesday's podcast. I'm all wibbly wobbly timey wimey on podcasts these days. Thank you all for being patient with me on this.
01:23.21
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, yeah, it's been nice for me to have like this weird schedule and, uh, be kicking back, ratcheting back, uh,
01:34.90
Jeffe Kennedy
I was talking with a friend of mine I'm switching topics now I'm sorry I'll come back to reading. Um, but I was talking with a friend of mine about living with someone who has want say a chronic disease or who has problems. Um.
01:54.33
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, with my partner having Parkinson's disease, uh, he can be very slow on doing things and it requires this, this effort of patience, right. To, to wait for him to do things. And it's one thing to know that the person, uh,
02:16.06
Jeffe Kennedy
that they can't do it. Right? um my friend has a partner who has severe ADHD and never leaves for anything on time and it produces anxiety, right? Um, her partner will like spend all this time doing everything, but what they need to do in order to leave for at the time they said they were going to leave ah for an important thing.
02:41.40
Jeffe Kennedy
And it produces this this tension in in us and it's like you can understand that someone has a disease and be compassionate, you know, exercise your compassion to the utmost exercise your patience to the utmost.
03:00.73
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, and David will accuse me of being impatient. Uh, he's actually accused me of being impatient our our entire relationship, but now it's worse. That's the other thing about chronic disease or various other problems like that is that it um just seems to exacerbate. Why does it exacerbate the worst things instead of like making the the good qualities better? It's like this dramatic unfairness on the part of nature.
03:35.40
Jeffe Kennedy
But yeah, so if you like But you can't change your emotional response right and and I'm learning that to own my emotional responses right I did I mentioned I'm in therapy now. It's like I feel what I feel and having to pretend to feel something other than what I feel. ah is difficult right so you know it's like I don't want to feel impatient it's not like I'm deliberately in fact I would love to not feel impatient I would love to not have that emotion I would love not to have that strumming of the nerves of the we're going to miss our flight you know kind of thing um but
04:28.67
Jeffe Kennedy
it's you You can't not feel the thing, right? And then when the people around you expect you instead to pretend that you don't feel it, you know, it's like, oh, I'm not actually impatient. I'm not looking at the time ticking away. You know, it's it's hard.
04:50.20
Jeffe Kennedy
And I guess that's all we can do is acknowledge that it's hard.
04:55.77
Jeffe Kennedy
So if you have this I see you you know a little fist bump of solidarity there. oh I think I hadn't talked about, in fact, I'm pretty sure I did not talk about um our trip up for our grandson's graduation, which was, um it was, it was very nice. so It was a mixed bag. There were lovely moments. um We got to give our grandson money, the grandparent's job. He's going off to Penn State, so he will need it.
05:31.16
Jeffe Kennedy
And we also gave him a ring of David's, a ring i had given him a long time ago that no longer fits his hands. And David's getting rid of a lot of his stuff anyway.
05:41.53
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, so we gave Tobiah this ring and it is, it's a beautiful amethyst ring. And it was funny because he asked me how old it is. And which of course to an 18 year old, this is, this is an important question. And I had to think, and I said, well, it's somewhere around,
06:00.66
Jeffe Kennedy
30 years old and he's like oh and I was like damn you know is that making it like an antique in his eyes because I vividly remember having the jeweler make this ring but um but it looks great on our grandson he is you know has been wearing it like the whole time I saw him he had the ring on and it looked great on him and it was nice to see him wearing his grandfather's ring and we got to see our kids our adult children my stepdaughter and stepson and our granddaughter and other grandsons and we got to see David's sister and her husband and um, a lot of other family like that and it was it was really nice. It was it was a good time um,
06:57.46
Jeffe Kennedy
but there were also difficulties and one of the upshots of this whole thing is we have decided that um. That David simply can't travel anymore.
07:09.94
Jeffe Kennedy
It's just too hard on him. Um, and he was the one who came out with that and I you know I did everything this was drive we drove up to Denver which is about five and a half six hours depends on traffic.
07:24.12
Jeffe Kennedy
Yeah. And we stayed in a nice hotel that should have been comfortable um, but wasn't and a lot of it was the stress and anxiety on him that just make the Parkinson's symptoms worse.
07:40.99
Jeffe Kennedy
Um. and generally make him miserable, which in turn makes me miserable. But finally, David said that he felt like he just can't travel anymore, that it's too hard on him to be away from home.
07:57.24
Jeffe Kennedy
So that's a good realization to have ah for those of you newish to the podcast. He's um, 16 years into the Parkinson's diagnosis.
08:11.51
Jeffe Kennedy
So. yeah, it's it's to be expected. It's not great but it's to be expected. Ah, I'm already thinking about what am I going to do for Christmas with my mom in Tucson and me here with David unable to travel but ah hey we'll cross that bridge.
08:35.54
Jeffe Kennedy
Seven months from now.
08:38.74
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, tra la tra la right. so anyway that was a good realization to have and we can just plan around that now.
08:53.46
Jeffe Kennedy
So I was trying to think of what got me onto that was just the um I guess the anxiety the trying to to master your own response to someone else's um struggles with a chronic disease and how do you how do you handle that and um.
09:12.18
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, my therapist, I mentioned I'm in therapy. I feel like I need a hashtag. um You know, as she just says back to me, it's really hard. It's just hard.
09:23.48
Jeffe Kennedy
And yeah, there it is then, right? But it does help to acknowledge when a thing is hard. I know I often talk about the book ah by the Nagoski sisters, Breaking the Stress Cycle. That one thing really stuck with me from that book is that a lot of stress comes from when we think something will be easy and we underestimate that and we
09:54.81
Jeffe Kennedy
and then when it turns out not to be easy we get frustrated with ourselves and get upset that it's not as easy as we want it to be. But that if we go into something acknowledging that it's going to be really hard or take a long time that we become less stressed about it because we know that we know it's going to be hard and maybe that's what helps about acknowledging that something is hard.
10:21.66
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, okay, so let's talk about let's talk about books and reading because I have been thinking about that more um since all of the really nice comments on the podcast the other day where I talked about the sort of the competitiveness in the social media world in particular book talk and books to grandma and how many books you read a year and And a couple of people sent me messages, um, commented or personal, you know, saying that this is something they needed to hear. And I think, yeah, we do need to hear it because it's all tied together with this same thing, right? About like monetizing our loves. You know, there's this whole idea, which I think might be a really screwed up idea, that, you know, the whole do what you love and the money will follow.
11:16.18
Jeffe Kennedy
And or the um if you do if you do what you love, then you will never work today in your life. I mean, these really foolish kinds of toxic positivity. Right. Because even if you are doing something you love, like writing, writing.
11:35.48
Jeffe Kennedy
it's still hard work and sometimes it really sucks and sometimes it's miserable and there's aspects of the business that are are miserable and stressful. Uh, and yeah, maybe some parts of it are joyful and maybe it's better than doing a job that you loathe. I mean, i am immensely grateful that I get to have this job that I'm making my living as a writer and finally making a really decent living as a writer. And it's,
12:03.60
Jeffe Kennedy
It's wonderful. I mean, it's great. you know, like one my favorite things is, is I don't have to be in meetings or conference calls about things that aren't interesting to me. You know, it was like, that's really awesome.
12:15.00
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, But that doesn't mean that it's not hard work. So this idea that like, oh, and you'll never work a day in your life. Like, yeah, okay, no, that's not, that's not how things work.
12:28.82
Jeffe Kennedy
But one of the things that happens when you take something that is a joy to you and you monetize it in some way, whether it's literally monetizing it as like some, you book influencers are doing or people who uh are doing merchandise based on you know like being vendors for book events you're taking something that you love this joy in reading and in the books that adore reading and you're turning it into something that is
13:10.74
Jeffe Kennedy
dare I say work, that it is something that has deadlines and has stress. And if you attach making money and paying bills to that, it increases the stress.
13:22.87
Jeffe Kennedy
And it happens whether you're a creator of, of the writing, or if you are Like out there reading and so like even if you're not monetizing even if you are and we love you all. you know on a street team or if you're a bookstagrammer or a book blogger and you just want to share the love.
13:47.54
Jeffe Kennedy
Ah, it still can become a thing that's about pressure that this thing that was an escape from your life now becomes a thing that is um, an expectation of your life. It becomes yet another task for the to do list.
14:09.53
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I was talking with ah, one of my besties my local bestie Megan about like trying to fit in time to see each other because ah, between my book travel and this all that stuff and her demanding job. Ah, we don't always see each other and I told her about something I saw online about young women planning to run errands together. You know, like you have to go to the grocery store anyway. Why not go together?
14:38.62
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So far we haven't done that but it's this thing where our friendship is a joy to both of us. But then it also becomes something for the the list. It's like oh I've got to you know check this off of the list.
14:53.24
Jeffe Kennedy
And reading I think for all of us starts as an escape right? You know it was the book that you took and read in your bedroom or in the back room or out on the hammock or the beach in the summertime and it was the time when nobody would bother you. You had no expectations, nothing that you were supposed to do. You could just go and escape, right? Escape into this other world and be other people and have these adventures.
15:30.33
Jeffe Kennedy
And that um there's there's nothing like that. Is there that that experience of deep reading where you you forget who you are? You forget the stresses of your daily life.
15:43.48
Jeffe Kennedy
And so when you connect that, to the stresses of your daily life of like oh I have to read this book by this date uh I have to i have these responsibilities and I need to think about what am I going to rate it and you know will such and so be mad at me and all of these things and then at the same time there's these other people in the world who are maybe don't love reading the way you do. ah
16:15.45
Jeffe Kennedy
I've, I've been encountering a few people like that recently who like tell me that they love romantasy and they just want to read more romantasy. And it turns out that actually they, they love fourth wing or they love a court of thorns and roses and they actually don't want to read anything. That's not that. And there's nothing wrong with that, but there is a certain,
16:40.06
Jeffe Kennedy
um, glorying in the social milieu of reading a book that everybody else has read and adoring it. Um, I'm trying to remember what book it was back in the day, like be back before social media, really, uh, there were some books that my colleagues were reading and it might have been Black Dagger Brotherhood.
17:04.98
Jeffe Kennedy
something like that. And they'd found out that the ah new book had released and they were going to go to the bookstore. These two girls who worked together discovered a mutual love and that this book had just released and they were going to go to the bookstore when we were done working for the day. And there was this great energy and excitement about the fact that they discovered they both liked that. And, and that's now on social media and it's a great thing, but also,
17:32.98
Jeffe Kennedy
It's not the same reason as maybe why I read a book or why you read a book or why we want to tell people, you have to read this book that I loved. You know, here, let me gift you a copy and then let me hover over your shoulder waiting for you to read it.
17:48.70
Jeffe Kennedy
oh I don't know if I have a point there, except that maybe it's about recovering the joy of reading, you know, just that. um And I know that's kind of how I finished up on Wednesday, but I realized I had more things to say about it because there are so many things in our lives where we have to.
18:08.12
Jeffe Kennedy
Pretend not to be impatient with our partners or our children. And we have to put a good face on things and where we are responsible for other people and responsible for other things. And reading should be one of those things where we don't have to do that.
18:27.16
Jeffe Kennedy
So. Hope you all a wonderful weekend. I hope you get to have some deep reading time. And i will talk to you all on Monday. That's my plan.
18:38.42
Jeffe Kennedy
a You all take care. Bye-bye.