1. Truth: I am mourning the end of the summer harvest, hard. When I went to the grocery store the other day, the watermelons were from Texas not Colorado, and the corn looked terrible, wilted with fat kernels that meant it would taste more starchy than sweet. Even though I bought the oregano and purple onion I’d need to make more roasted tomato soup, I’m not sure there are enough tomatoes left. Eric hasn’t brought me any strawberries from our plants out front for days. There’s only a few grasshoppers and the bees are almost all gone. The weather is cooler and the leaves are starting to finally turn and drop (much later than usual), and while I was ready for it to not be in the 80s every dang day, I’m sad.
2. Truth: There are times at my CSU job when I feel like I’m just wasting time. Yesterday it was when I was coding a departmental faculty and staff picture board, converting an older version to a page on our WordPress platform. It felt so tedious, so unimportant, so dumb, and it hit me that this is how I’m spending a large amount of my time. I tried to cheer myself up by telling myself this time would be converted to funds that I could use for better things, but it didn’t really work.
3. Truth: I don’t need to be great or popular or adored. I was telling a few friends, fellow yoga teachers this after my class yesterday morning. I told them I was happy that I’d had three return students, which is a big deal for a 7 am class, and how I don’t let myself believe it means I’m so good that they came back but rather it means I don’t suck, and that’s all I want. That makes me happy. That’s good enough for me. I know that if I keep at it, I might someday be adored by a few students, a couple of humans, and in the meantime I’m so grateful to the ones that keep showing up, keep allowing me to practice with them.
One wish: That we can feel at ease, content, satisfied with all the ways that things are changing, as well as all the ways that they are staying the same.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. ~Hermann Hesse
3. I am my own worst enemy by Paul Jarvis. (Just to be clear, I am one of his rat people, “the people that get what you do, appreciate it, and love you for it”).
6. Francine’s interview, from Human (the movie). “Born in 1933, Francine Christophe was deported with her mother at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Released the following year, she continues to share her experience and memories, particularly with the younger generations.” (Confession: I’ve had a lifelong obsession with stories from the Holocaust, specifically the way that moment in history brought out the best and the worst in those involved).
What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery? Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.
8. Bryan Chapman of Mississippi has hummingbirds drinking out of his hand!
10. Wisdom from Chögyam Trungpa, “In the garden of gentle sanity, may you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.” I love this quote. I also hate this quote.
16. One-Pot Butternut Squash Alfredo. I bought two butternut squash at the grocery store this weekend, not really surewhat I was going to do with them exactly. THIS, this is what…
19. I never should have followed my dreams. “I quit my steady gig to fulfill my potential. Instead I went broke, and got fired from a job in doggie daycare.”
20. Six-year-old’s heartfelt lecture to mom and dad. An adorable little girl’s words of wisdom have gone viral after her mother uploaded a video of her pleading with her divorced parents to be friends. The video has been viewed more than six million times. In the video, Tiana tells her mom, “I think you can do it. I think you can settle your mean heights down to short heights … I just want everything to be settled down, nothing else. For everything to be as good as possible. Nothing else.” She’s so earnest and sweet that you can’t help but want to try harder to be nicer after listening to her.
24. He Wears Nail Polish Because He’s a Good Father.
The only thing that is missing from this video is Nathan’s backstory. He’s even more amazing than what they show here — in 2011, he was diagnosed with Stage 3 rectal cancer, and nine days later, his wife Elisa was diagnosed with breast cancer. Nathan beat his cancer, but Elisa died in March of 2014.
28. Library Haul – September 2015 on Allowing Myself, one of my favorite blogs/bloggers. I love Justine’s description of the power of books and reading, “Non-fiction holds my attention. Fiction keeps me afloat. Reading calms and centers me in a way that not much else can.” And if you need more proof of why I love this blog, just read Tiny Shifts — honest, vulnerable, tender, and sad, but so inspiring. Justine writes about what is hard, but she makes it clear she’s also not giving up. Tender and terrible, beautiful and brutal.
30. 100 questions to discover yourself from Positively Present. I love this kind of thing, use them as journal prompts, as well as regularly torturing friends and my significant other with them.
31. A Blog Is Only Dead When You Are, more on the topic “is blogging dead?” (which honestly is a silly question, akin to something like “are books dead?”).
33. AngelList, a platform for startups to hire people. If I were looking for a job, I think I’d check this out.
34. A Person You Should Know: Courtney Carver. I shared this site on a Something Good list a while back, and the creator Josh Spector asked who I thought he should profile. Courtney is one of the people I suggested.