The System for Collecting Tiny Human Moments with Hannah Rosenberg

Julie: Welcome back to the System for Everything Podcast. Today’s system tip: if a memory is important, never write it down. Trust your brain. It’s not like it’s ever forgotten anything before. Some people collect stamps, some people collect recipes. Hannah Rosenberg collects moments, the kind that mis- most of us miss entirely. A sentence overheard in a grocery store aisle, a passing comment that sticks around for years, a tiny observation about human behavior that suddenly makes thousands of people feel understood. Hannah Rosenberg is a poet and the author of Same, a USA Today bestseller. She lives in the greater Philadelphia area with her husband and two daughters, who often find themselves as the subjects of her poems. You can find her work on Instagram at hannahrowwrites and at hannahrowwrites.com. Her writing is thoughtful, specific, funny, and often startlingly accurate in a way that makes you stop scrolling and think, “Wait, I thought that was just me.” Welcome, Hannah. Thank you so much for being here. Hannah: Oh, thank you, Julie. That’s such a beautiful introduction. Thank you so much. Julie: Of course. We’re gonna get started as we always do with the system reboot, a quick reset to start our episode with some humor and humanity. What is the weirdest thing you get competitive about? Hannah: I think when my husband will, like, tell someone a fact or something, and then he’ll … Like, I’ll be like, “Well, I told you that.” And so it’s kind of like the, the competition of who came up with the idea first, who thought of the joke first. If he, like, repeats a joke. Julie: What is a completely normal adult task that you just hate doing? Hannah: Grocery shopping? Julie: I really like grocery shopping. I don’t like then unpacking it and, like, putting it all away. But, like, you have to ’cause otherwise it goes bad. Hannah: I don’t… And I feel like I should. I love food. I love having food in my house, but for some reason I just can’t. I don’t know. I just don’t like going to the grocery store. Julie: All right. Besides what you do for a living, what is a job you would be incredible at? Hannah: I always thought that I would be really good at being a hairdresser maybe, because I, I just think it would be so fun. L- I think it would be so interesting to learn, like, the art of, like, mixing colors to dye people’s hair, and, like, the art of cutting. I think all of that is so cool. And I love talking. I love… I have the gift of gab. I love talking to people. I love asking questions. So I think it would, I would… I don’t know. I think maybe I would be good at it. Maybe in a future, a future, um, version of my life. Julie: All right, everyone. You’ve met the personality, now meet the powerhouse. Hannah has built a body of work around something many us- many of us have forgotten to do: pay attention. Not just to the big life events, but to the fleeting observations, passing emotions, and tiny details that make us human. So let’s talk about how she developed that lens, what makes a moment worth keeping, and why the smallest observations often end up meaning the most. Here’s my conversation with Hannah Rosenberg on the system for collecting tiny human moments. Um, one of the things that I’ve always been fascinated with by your work, and I discovered your work- Not, not that, that long though. I wanna say maybe year and a half ago. And I, I love that you’re always just observing the same world, the same experiences that the rest of us are. You’re standing in the same grocery stores, even if you hate it, sitting in the same, you know, rocking chair, having the same ordinary days, but somehow you’re walking away with something the rest of us missed. So I wanna start there. Have you always been somebody who notices tiny details, or is that a skill that you’ve intentionally developed? Hannah: I think I, I do. I have noticed I’m, like, someone who definitely kind of… I’m al- in my thoughts a lot, so I pick up on things. I kind of try to… I’m always, I feel like my mind is always racing, for better or for worse. Um, I always have, like, an internal conversation going on, um, while I’m operating in the external world. But writing actually is the exercise that makes me be able to put it together kind of in a way, package it in a way that makes me see it in a different way, and also I think then comes across and kind of hel- lets other people see things in a different way. So I’m not someone who is standing in that grocery store being like, “Oh, this is a beautiful experience,” and I’m talking about it in a very poetic way. I’m having, like, the same annoyed thoughts that everyone else is. But I think that when I’m able to sit down and write and kind of like process what happens, I’m able to… The writing is kind of my tool to be able to look at things in a different way. Julie: Do you have a system for capturing those observations when they do happen? Are you like a Notes app person, voice memo, notebook, all of the above? Hannah: Yes. I love your, the first thing that you said on this podcast. Um, I know it’s a joke, and I’m like, you have to write everything down or it will leave your head immediately. I sometimes will be in a situation where I, like, have an idea of something that I want to write, like an idea or a title of a poem, or like some line, like, just kind of comes in my head, and I’m like, “Oh, this is so specific, I’m definitely gonna remember it later. I don’t have to write it down.” I will tell you, every single time I don’t write it down, it leaves my head immediately. I don’t remember it. So I have to write things down. So yeah, my, my, the note section of my phone is where I write everything, everything down. I’m not like a voice note person. I feel like that works for a lot of people, but I just, I kind of pull out my phone and, and write down. And, and I have to tell my, you know, my husband and, and my daughter, my three-year-old daughter now, ’cause, uh, it’s like annoying if you’re in a conversation and then someone’s just like… I’m like, I’m not, I’m not, like, texting. I’m not texting. I’m not, uh, leaving this conversation, I’m just noting down this idea. I’m recording this idea for myself. But yeah, yeah. My, my number one piece of advice would be write everything, everything down that you want to come back to later. Julie: You write a lot about moments that people just immediately recognize as true, that they feel. How do you know when you’ve stumbled upon something that’s even bigger than your own experience? Hannah: I mean, I don’t know on the specific kind of, uh, like, the specific instance where I’m, you know, like, where I, I say, “Oh, I know everyone else is gonna feel like this,” but because I like to write about the ordinary things- It, it tends to be… A- and I have the belief that we’re all, even if you’re not living the same life as me, you know, you’re, you don’t have the same family s- set-up, you don’t have the same life experiences, I believe, like, we’re all human, and we all have the same set of emotions. We all have feelings of happiness and grief and, you know, stress, and we all have difficult relationships and easy relat- like, we have all of that. So I do believe that, you know, a- a- and this, we can talk about this more later, but kind of like my, my book is called Same because I do believe we all have that, that feeling of like- Julie: It’s in- it’s incredible, everyone of, of It’s, it’s literally, it’s, it’s on my shelf right now. Hannah: We all have that feeling of like when someone shares something like, “Same”, like I get, you know, that makes sense, and, and I get that. But, but I do, I do love writing about very ordinary things, and that’s kind of, if I w- were to have like a mission with what I’m doing with poetry, I would, you know, try to say like, poetry does not have to h- be about, you know, like epic journeys because your life is an epic journey. It can be about, like, the very ordinary and, and be very meaningful to yourself and a lot of people. Julie: I think noticing is one thing, but turning those observations into something that other people can recognize within themselves is, I mean, something else entirely. And I mean, some memories are obviously objectively important, but some of the moments that stay with us forever I would think make absolutely no sense on paper. Why do you think that certain tiny moments stick while bigger ones tend to fade away? Hannah: Because I think it’s the specificity of what you’re writing about, and I think the more specific you can be, the more, even if someone hasn’t had that specific example of what you’re talking about, like, they rec- like the specificity helps people to feel connected in their own life. So, like, I had, I wrote a poem that I shared online recently that was laughing with my daughter in a Panera Bread. And like, I didn’t have to include Panera Bread. Like I, you know, I didn’t, I could have said like laughing with my daughter at a cafe, or laughing with my daughter while we eat lunch. But I think the specificity, I love reading things that are specific because then y- you can imagine it, right? Like, specificity. Like I, I don’t teach poetry workshops, but if I did, that would be like my, the point that I would drive home. Like be specific about your, what you’re writing about. The less specific you are, the more it becomes this like really kind of Like ethereal, you know, f- thought that is hard to connect to, the more specific, I feel like the more universal it actually is. Julie: Has being, has becoming known for this type of writing changed how you move through the world at all? Hannah: I think the practice of writing has. So I started, um, my online blog, Hannah Roe Writes, in the middle, or actually at the beginning of COVID. I’ve always loved writing. I’ve always loved writing poetry, but I never thought it was something that I would share so broadly, never thought it was something that I would, you know, have a book published, uh, of my poems. In the early days of COVID, I found myself writing a lot for my own kind of processing and, like, for my own mental health, and the type of writing that came out was the, the writing that I do, so poetry, poetic prose. And I ended up thinking that maybe I would, like, try to get poems published somewhere, and I went down that path, and anyone who’s done that, it, at least for me, it was incredibly hard. I got a lot of really kind rejections. And then I just noticed that people were sharing their own writing online, and I listened to a podcast where an artist talked about sharing her own art, like every week as a way for her to keep herself to kind of a routine and force herself to share, even if it wasn’t, like, finished. Yeah, it really stuck with me, and so, so I kept thinking about that and, and I ended up creating this blog on Instagram called Hannah Roe Writes, where for e- every Monday for an entire year, I would share a new poem. And at the beginning, it made me… It would s- take me kind of all week to write, like, one thing, and often I would be, like, very stressed out about what I was gonna write about and, you know, it’d be this big thing. And then like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it became to almost, like, incorporate into my own life. So it wasn’t like this separate thing. It was like I was living and writing and living and writing. A- and so I, I did. I, I posted one new poem every week for a year, um, and then I loved it so much I kept going, and that was, you know, now six, six, over six years ago. It, it has changed the way I see things and, and not necessarily like how I see things in g- uh, in the moment as they’re happening, but how I’m able to reflect and kind of, like, change my overall vision for, like, what, what I’m experiencing. And so it’s been a really, it’s been a really beautiful experience for me to be able to have this tool, um, for myself. Julie: I actually discovered your writing during a really specific season of life. Uh, my daughter was a month old, and we were just deep in that newborn stage where the days are so long, the nights are even longer, and you’re just trying to figure out who you are in addition to caring for this tiny person. And I remember scrolling late at night, um, during feeds and coming across your work, and what struck me wasn’t just that it was beautiful, it was that it felt so true, and you were putting words to feelings that I hadn’t fully articulated yet myself. The kind of observations that make you stop and think like, “Wait, that’s exactly it.” And I know I’m not unique in that experience. If you spend any time reading the comments on your work, it’s full of people saying the same version of like, “Oh, I thought I was the only person.” So I’m curious, why do you think being understood feels so powerful? Hannah: So I always say that when I, when I kind of explain my book title to people or, you know, why, why that, I chose that as the theme, I think that someone saying, “Same,” to you is, like, the most loving thing that you can hear. You know, I think that, that someone listening to you is a beautiful thing. Um, someone saying like, “Oh, I feel for you,” can feel really great and can also feel almost, like, in a way like, okay, you’re say- you’re, you’re n- so you don’t understand what I’m saying. Like, is what I’m saying weird, or is, you know, like, is what I’m saying unusual? I think someone saying, like, “Same,” like I am, I understand what you’re s-seeing, and, like, al-also, like, I’m seen by you and you’re seen by me, it is such a loving, um, thing to feel because I think so often We have these, we have these ideas that, like, our fears or our insecurities or, or the things we worry about are so, so unique to us and say something about th- about our- ourselves. Like, you know, I was just… Right before we joined, I was texting a friend who’s, you know, struggling through a certain phase of mothering and, you know, she has a child that’s a little younger than mine, and she was like, “This is so hard.” And I was like, “It’s okay to… It is hard. Everyone thinks it’s hard.” I think one of the hardest things is when you think everything… someone else thinks it’s really easy, and, like, it’s, you know, they’re having a great time doing it. And, like, you can love being a mom and love your kid to the ends of the world and still be like, “This is hard, and I don’t like this phase right now,” or, “I don’t like this day.” And I think that hearing people say that is just… Like, that’s… And that’s what I do. I, you know, I text friends, and I, I… You, you need that validation from other people because you get so in your head that this is, this is only my experience. This is s- says something about me. And so, so hearing that is, I think is just such a loving thing. Julie: Can anyone actually run your business? Like really run it. Access the passwords, find the contracts, contact your clients, locate the invoices, figure out what’s due next. Most businesses are living on one person’s brain, and that is terrifying. This episode is brought to you by the Entrepreneur’s Death Folder, the system that organizes everything your business literally cannot afford to lose. This is probably could apply to most of your work, but have you ever written something that just felt so deeply personal only to discover that it belonged to thousands of other people, too? Hannah: Yeah. I remember writing… And I don’t, I don’t just write. I, I think I write about, like, my life as I’m going through it. I don’t plan ahead what I’m writing about. So I don’t only write about being a mother, I also write about different other relationships and, and about friendship, and about relationships with myself. But this poem is, I, I wrote when I was, I guess it was, like, the first year of, I have two daughters, and, and the first one was a few months old, and I kept getting, this is very specific, but I kept getting clogged ducts for breastfeeding. And I wrote a poem once that was, like, about my clogged ducts, and I was like, “Oh, maybe this is a little too, like, uh, I don’t know. Or people are gonna be like, mm.” But so many people were like, “Oh my gosh, yes. Like, this is ab-” And, like, the poem… And yeah. So I feel like I was like, maybe this is just too much of, like, I’m in this moment, and you know, this is my journey. But yeah, it, it was, like, a reminder that, like, no. Everything that we think is, like, weird or, or you know, or, like, unique to us, I think is, is not, in the best of ways. You know? I, I think it feels really nice to be like, we’re all human. We’re all, we all have all of these things. Julie: Oh, 100%. Do you ever have an inkling when you’ve written something that you know is gonna just really hit a lot of people hard? Hannah: No, I, I think, like, I don’t, I, it’s not… You know, sometimes I’ve shared poems where I’m like, I fe- like, it’s a poem that I love, and it, it doesn’t hit necessarily, like, in the same way. And sometimes I write a poem where I don’t expect it to get that, that much of a, um, you know, that much of a, of a response. So I, I don’t think I have a great sense for, like, wh- which ones are going to really hit, hit home with people. But yeah, I did write, there’s a poem that’s getting a little bit of, like, I feel like it’s, it’s one of my most shared ones recently. I shared it again recently, and it’s a poem that I wrote in the middle of the night. It’s about a middle of the night thing when my daughter has a fever in the middle of the night, and I think about how I take care of her, and kind of I imagine… It, it’s called If My Daughter Has a Fever When She’s 90 Years Old. And, and so, like, then it’s imagining, like, future generations caring for her and kind of like the idea of generational love passing down. Julie: Uh, I actually read that one to my mom because I was like, “I feel like this is gonna really hit her.” And you don’t know me, but something you should know about my mother is that she’s kind of a robot. I mean, it’s rare for something, like, besides, like, an actual big life event to, like, make her, like, tear up or anything, and she, it just really hit her deeply. Hannah: Yeah. And, and I think that one of the things that- I, I feel like if you say to anybody that was a surprise to me, even though I’m an emotional person, and like I think everyone says it’s a surprise, is like how often you think about your own mortality after you have kids. And it’s just like this crazy thing that you just I, I don’t think I ever ta- or maybe someone did say it to me before I had kids, and I was just like, “Oh, okay.” Like, you know, you don’t think of … You don’t actually think it’s gonna be a thing, and then you just almost become like obsessed with it and like this idea that you are, you know, you’re caring for these things that you love more than anything in the world, and the goal is for them to outlive you, and like that you won’t, you know, be there someday. And it’s just, it’s just too much. It’s too much of a thought. Julie: Are there moments that, that have happened that you’ve deliberately chosen not to write about? Like, I get that there maybe there’s some things that you don’t publish, but are there some things that you’re like, “No, I’m not even gonna write about this”? Hannah: I don’t think writing, no. I think writing is, yeah, it’s such like a, a practice for kind of like separate than sharing and publishing everything. Like, writing is my … Like, writing in this way is like almo- it’s my journaling. Like, my husband loves to journal. I don’t like do traditional journaling. Like, this is my journaling, so if I’m struggling with something, if I’m perseverating, if I keep thinking, like this is what I go to, is, is this writing. It helps me write, yeah. It helps me work through, yeah, for sure. Julie: How do you balance the vulnerability with privacy? Hannah: You know, I think that I write about … I think that the beauty of poetry is you can be very personal, and also you don’t have to share details that you don’t wanna share. And so it can be something that feel, that is authentic and that really touches on things that you, that feel vulnerable to you, but it’s not like it is a creative way of writing, so you don’t have to write details that You know, it’s not like, um, if you were writing a story and you left out things and you’d be like, “Well, I feel like this, I have to include this to make sense.” I think that’s the really beautiful thing about poetry, is it is like this kind of super creative form of sharing something. And I love to write, I, I’d say like story-like poems, so I love to write like mini stories in a poem. But it is really nice that I c- you know, I, I can maintain a level of like this is something that I wanna share about the story, this is something I don’t. And I can still write in a way that feels like I’m authentically kind of like processing the emotion or the time of whatever this was without like including things that I don’t want to include. And I don’t know that that’s like, it’s not like a, a very systematic process for me. It’s almost like a, kind of like it, it just happens naturally that that’s then what I tend towards in the poem. Julie: Has there ever been a piece you wrote that people interpreted differently than you intended? Hannah: So I think sometimes- And this has been, I have such a beautiful community of people online who read and share my writing. I, I actually like, I think that the internet can be a really scary place and it can be a really beautiful place, and, um, I’m so lucky to feel like the little corner of the internet that I, that I have with this community is really beautiful. I, I do think sometimes what has happened is people interpret my poems as advice, and it- it’s not advice. It’s more like my, or like I’m saying that someone else should feel the same way that I feel And that’s not what I’m doing. There was one poem that I shared, it was when my daughter first went to preschool, and I was saying it was, like, about me being at the, a coffee shop that I always go to with her, and the coffee shop experience is usually very stressful because she’s a really active toddler and always running around. And then our bathroom, you know, the bathroom experience is me being like, “Don’t touch anything,” and like that, you know, like, and like having to buy, like, 10 snacks and all these things. And so I’m at this coffee shop that I normally go with her, and it’s, you know, actually a really peaceful experience, but, like, I keep thinking of, like, how much she would like this or that, you know, like how, like I’m thinking of her the whole time. I got a lot of comments on that poem where people were like, “Oh, I actu- I feel bad now ’cause I actually love being away from my kids,” and like that makes… And it was surprising to me ’cause I was like, oh, I, you know, like, I also love the experience of having alone time. Like, I’m not saying that it’s… You know, I think that so many things in life there’s, like, two opposing feelings, and you feel both of them. And so it wasn’t that I was saying that, and I wasn’t even telling someone that they should feel like that or that I feel like that all the time. It’s like capturing this one moment of opposing, um, feelings. So yeah, that was kind of an example of when I was like, oh, that’s interesting that this was the interpretation of it. Julie: Was there ever a piece that you thought, oh, nobody’s gonna care about this, but, like, it ended up resonating really, really deeply? Hannah: Oh, gosh, where I was like, “Nobody’s gonna care.” I think I have a poem in, in my book, out of my book too, um, in Same that I took my thighs to the beach, and that poem is, uh, ’cause people have sent me really, really beautiful messages about that. Like, the, the poem is basically, like, you know, me being at the beach and, and, like, using my thighs to do all of the things that I want to do, but then feeling embarrassed that they look the way they look, and it’s r- it’s, it’s kind of, it’s humanizing them, so, like, their perspective of… And I, and I try to do that a lot with things that feel, like, icky and sticky to me. Like, uh, you know, like, if my, if my thighs were, like, a friend or a child and I’m treating them the way that I treat that, like, you know, how would they feel? But it’s kind of a weird thought, and you know, like, I don’t know. I, I don’t know. I didn’t think necessarily that it would resonate a lot, but people have, you know… Someone told me that they, like, sent me a message recently that they were at the beach, and they were thinking of the poem in their head, and it totally changed, like, the experience that they had that day. So that was really beautiful. That was a, you know, I, I’ve, I love hearing things like that. I love getting messages like that. Julie: If someone wanted to become better at paying attention, where would you tell them to start? Hannah: Write down thoughts you have. So take your phone. I know we’re all trying to be on our phone less, um, but, you know, just… Or, you know, use a voice note if that works for you. But whenever you have an idea that feels, like, interesting to you or, you know, like something that you’d want to think about more or write about more, like, note it down. And I think, like, just the act of noting it down will make you come back to it and notice more about what the experience is. Julie: Hannah, thank you so much for your time today. Before I let you go, please tell everyone where they can find you online, how they can follow you, how they can support your work, um, where they can buy your book. We’re gonna have all of this linked in the show notes, too, y’all. Hannah: Thank you, Julie. Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at Hannah Roe Writes. I have, um, and you can find, I, I have prints on my website of some of my poems, hannahroewrites.com, and you can also reach out to me there and hanah@hannahroewrites.com is my email. I love hearing from people. Um, my book Same came out in October. You can, it’s available anywhere books are sold. If your local independent bookstore doesn’t have it, they can always order it for you, and the best way to support me is to, um, is to buy my book for yourself and someone you love. So thank you. Julie: Yay. All right, Hannah, one thing I have learned from your work is that sometimes the smallest moments can tell us even more than the bigger ones. Nowhere is that more obvious to me than in movies and TV where a single look, a throwaway line, or a tiny gesture somehow becomes the thing we remember forever. So we’re gonna end today’s shutdown with a little pop culture. Today’s Fast Five is tiny moments from TV that somehow murdered me emotionally. Number one, Mr. Feeny saying, “I love you all. Class dismissed.” For seven seasons, Mr. Feeny wasn’t just a teacher, he was a constant. He watched these kids grow up, mess up, fall in love, and figure out who they were. The series finale could have gone for a really huge emotional speech, but instead it lands on two simple words: class dismissed. It’s not really about school ending. It’s about childhood. Number two, Michael Scott asking Pam, “How much?” The entire emotional weight of the scene at Pam’s art show is that Michael sees what everyone else overlooked. Pam is standing there alone at her art show feeling invisible. Michael quietly walks in, looks at her drawing of the office building, and asks what it costs because he wants to buy it. No grand gesture, no dramatic speech, just someone recognizing that something she created mattered. Number three, Moira showing up and performing at Alexis’s graduation. Moira isn’t exactly known for putting her children first, which is why this moment hits so hard. She didn’t just attend, she performed. In true Moira fashion, it’s dramatic and over the top, but underneath it is something incredibly simple. She showed up for her child when it mattered. Number four, Chidi opening Janet’s note that says, “There is no answer, but Eleanor is the answer.” The Good Place spent years asking impossible philosophical questions about meaning, ethics, and the purpose of existence, and then somehow one tiny handwritten note cuts through all of it. Chidi has spent his entire life searching for the perfect answer, only to discover that love isn’t something you solve, it’s something you choose. And finally, number five, Jay saying to Mitch, “Actually, I thought you and I would take a little walk.” Modern Family was full of big family moments, but this one always gets me. Jay is not a naturally sentimental character. He rarely says exactly what he’s feeling, which is why this tiny moment lands so perfectly. He chooses Mitchell. He chooses connection. And in a show about family, that’s often what love looks like. It’s not speeches, it’s just showing up and taking the walk. I think what I loved most about this conversation with Hannah is that it reminded me how much of life happens in the moments we almost overlook. Not the milestones, not the big announcements, not the things we already know we’ll remember, but the passing conversation that stays with you for years, that look across the room, that tiny moment that somehow tells you everything. Hannah has built a remarkable body of work around paying attention to those moments, and maybe more importantly, helping the rest of us pay attention to them too. If this episode made you slow down, notice something differently, or immediately think of someone you want to send it to, I hope you’ll share it with them. If you’re enjoying The System for Everything, it would mean so much to me if you would subscribe, leave a rating and review, and follow along wherever you listen to podcasts. Those little actions help more people discover the show, and unlike a grocery store observation, they don’t have to stay a secret. See you next week.