1. Morning walks. I’m not gonna lie, I’m human and some mornings it just feels too early, too dark, too hard to get up, especially knowing I have to go out into the world instead of staying home in my pjs, which is always my preference. And yet, once I’m up and we are out there, I am so glad to be there, feel so lucky. Fall is my favorite season in Colorado and I catch myself multiple times on any walk right now thinking, “I love it here so much.”
2. Ringo Blue. In particular I was thinking as I was putting this post together that there are a fair amount of pictures I take of him where any one else might look and think “cute” but I look and can see just how annoyed he is with the whole process. Example A: these pictures I took of him on one of our walks. He is so OVER it.
3. Massage. The hydromassage chair at the gym, my masseuse Dana who I’ve been seeing for TEN years, and the ones Eric and I trade while we watch TV at night.
4. The shade in our backyard in the afternoon. I was sitting out with Ringo the other day, drinking a cup of green tea and waiting for Eric to come home. I was sitting facing our neighbors yard, which has NO shade in the late afternoon, thinking how lucky we are to be surrounded by yards with giant trees that shelter us, especially in the heat of summer. I know that neither of us will always be around, the trees or me and Ringo, and I’m so grateful for the time we do have.
5. My tiny family, tiny house, tiny life. Can I just stay here exactly like this forever? Is that really so much to ask?
Pancakes
Bonus joy: everything turning gold, the rabbitbrush and the asters, a washer and dryer in my house, electricity, the internet, smartphones that are also cameras and tiny computers and radios, listening to podcasts, music and the musicians who make and share it, watching TV and movies, the way the fading garden still feeds the birds, good neighbors, honey, bees, house shoes, comedy, making each other laugh, naps, training with Shelby and the gang, getting in the pool and the sauna, the radio always on in the kitchen, having a practice room and an office, house plants, cooler temperatures but still sunny days, the way grass feels on bare feet, the sound of the river in that one spot, brown noise, apples, cinnamon rolls from The Silver Grille, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.
2. So you haven’t caught COVID yet. Does that mean you’re a superdodger?“Hollenbach and her team have found a genetic mutation that doesn’t prevent the virus from infecting cells – that’s what Landau was searching for in his HIV research – but still does something remarkable: It prevents a person from having COVID symptoms.” I know a few people, including me, who have yet to test positive.
6. Thomas C. Foster on the Seven Deadly Sins of Writing. “The Deadly Seven prevent writing from occurring in the first place. Or, like overconfidence and dishonesty, they create something that is rotten at its heart, and no amount of surface grace can improve that sort of decadence.”
7. StyleLikeU | I’m Not a Thing to Be Looked At: Abigail Bengson on the Winding Road Her Body Has Taken. (video) “Abigail Bengson’s body holds endless stories. It tells the story of her miscarriages—and of the arrival of both her beautiful babies. There’s the story of her time as a 300-pound person, years filled with comfort, satisfaction, and joy. It also holds the story of her eating disorder—which arrived after she shed the protective pounds. It keeps close the story of a familial legacy of abuse, and her ability to transform that horror into beauty, time and again. Abigail’s body is never truly hers—but it is an endless moment to enjoy.”
11. On the Shortness of Lifeon Zen Habits. “We could use a daily contemplation on how limited our time is in this life. Most of us avoid thinking about it, or get worked up or sad when we think about it. But it’s a powerful contemplation. Today I’d like to share a series of brief contemplations on the shortness of life, that I find valuable.”
14. How to Work With Anxiety: 3 Techniques For Lasting Changeon Lion’s Roar. “Anxiety is a natural response to being human, says Lion’s Roar’s Chris Pacheco. When we try to control our anxious feelings instead of accepting them, we might end up exacerbating fear and worry. Here, he outlines three main strategies for moving through anxiety.”
15. Unselfing Social. I love this idea, although I suppose this weekly list means I’m already doing it: “As an experiment, for one continuous month, make the focus of one in every three things you share on social media — wherever you normally share, however regularly or irregularly you do, however many people you reach — something other than yourself or your own work: a friend’s art project, a stranger’s poem, a record by a musician you love, the tree shimmering with majesty and mystery in the low morning light, someone in your community you admire, a bygone pioneer of something you value, a book that spun you on your axis, the lost cat sign crayoned by a neighbor’s child, the new community garden a few blocks over, news of the dazzling galaxy discovered by the dazzling new space telescope a few million lightyears over.”
16. Frontline: Being Mortal. (video) “FRONTLINE follows renowned New Yorker writer and Boston surgeon Atul Gawande as he explores the relationships doctors have with patients who are nearing the end of life. In conjunction with Gawande’s new book, Being Mortal, the film investigates the practice of caring for the dying, and shows how doctors — himself included — are often remarkably untrained, ill-suited and uncomfortable talking about chronic illness and death with their patients.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 