1. Morning walks. It’s finally getting warm out there. We’ve had the weirdest summer, with only a couple of 90+ degree days so far when by now we usually have A LOT. We only just this week had to start watering the lawn in back and it’s the middle of JULY! We’ve had more rain and cooler temperatures but I am NOT complaining, especially considering what is happening in other places. I’m enjoying getting to walk more with Eric and love how quiet it is when we get out early.
2. Ringo. I noticed the past few weeks I hadn’t taken very many pictures of him so this week I made up for it. One super cute thing he’s always done is find things on his walk and insist on carrying them home. Usually it’s toys and often they aren’t dog toys — like the Elmo he found this past week.
3. Good friends. I made art with Janice this week, swapped Instagram reels with Shellie, got to finally have lunch with Carrie, and just got back from hanging out with Chloe’ in her backyard with her dogs and her boys. I’m so grateful for all of them.
4. Teaching yoga. I subbed my Sunday morning class this morning, was in the front of the room instead of in back like usual, and I felt like I’d finally gotten my “groove” back when it comes to teaching. It’s probably not surprising how rusty and awkward you get after a four year break.
5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I probably wouldn’t mind if Eric stayed on vacation all the time. It’s just really nice to have him around more often, especially knowing he’s going to be extra busy in the fall.
Bonus joy: Aunt Monica’s taco salad, family group texts, birds at the feeder, the call of hummingbirds, the giant dragonfly eating mosquitoes in the front yard and the tiny jumping spider eating them inside the house, fans (the one at yoga this morning saved me while I was teaching), lemonade, being cleared to go back on my HRT, that even though our tastes can be very different Eric and I always manage to find something to watch together at night, being able to get books from the library to read on my Kindle without ever needing to even leave the house, good neighbors, dark chocolate covered walnuts, leftovers, naps, catching the murder beetles before they destroyed the clematis, not having as many grasshoppers so far this year, daisies, our whole house fan, my blue jellyfish tshirt, super soft tshirt fabric, buttons, stickers, green tea, pottery, music and musicians, listening to podcasts, clean sheets, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.
1. The One Feeling I Didn’t Allow: When joy feels risky…from Andrea Gibson. “Falsely we believe that if we feel the heights of joy, we will have a longer and harder fall. But joy is not a tall building we can crash from. Joy is the cord of a parachute that can save us.”
2. So, What’s In the eCourse?from Jena Schwartz. “From getting started to getting unstuck, Getting Words on the Page may change the way you relate to your writing practice – and yourself!” This is going to be a great course and Jena is one of the best writers, coaches, teachers, humans out there — so if this calls to you, I wholeheartedly recommended you sign up.
3. American Experience. “For 35 years, American Experience has been television’s most-watched history series, bringing to life the incredible characters and epic stories that have shaped America’s past and present. American Experience documentaries have been honored with every major broadcast award, including 30 Emmy Awards, five duPont-Columbia Awards and 19 George Foster Peabody Awards. PBS’s signature history series also creates original digital content that innovates new forms of storytelling to connect our collective past with the present.”
4. WORK APPROPRIATE Podcast | My Industry is Failing: Veterinary Medicine Edition with Karen Fine. “For those of us who are pet lovers, a good vet clinic makes all the difference. But for those working in vet clinics, things can be really hard. In fact, veterinarians have a risk of death by suicide at a rate 2-4 times that of the general public. How did things get to be this way, and what hope is there for improvement? Dr. Karen Fine, DVM and author of The Other Family Doctor, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners’ questions about working in the vet industry – and how pet owners can offer support.”
5. My Benihana, Myself. “What learning to flip shrimp tails and build onion volcanoes taught me about the gift of performance, and its emotional toll.”
8. When The World Crumbles, I Eat Cerealfrom Frederick Joseph. “And so, I implore you to find your bowl of cereal. Your symbolic refuge, the simplicity of your past becoming a sanctuary in the complex present. You will find that there is a certain kind of magic in these memories. They do not promise to fix the world, or mend our broken spirits overnight. What they do promise is the strength to carry on. They remind us of our resilience, our capacity to dream, our ability to find joy in the simplest of things, and our inherent knack to defy the darkness and create our own light.”
10. DMs from New York Cityon The New York Times. “Messages, Graffiti and Hand-Written Notes From Across New York City.”
11. Sigur Rós – Andrá (Official Video). “I wished to show how Sigur Rós is the soundtrack of our lives through happiness, pain, hope, grief, and love. The short documentary, Andrá, celebrates the way in which Sigur Rós captures and channels the humanity that unites us all.”
14. How to Make the Most of Your Alone Time as an Introvert. All of these make sense to me, but the “take solo trips” for me mostly means “walk the dog” or “go to the grocery store” but I’m also slightly agoraphobic, so…
22. ‘Please Be Seated’ by Paul Cocksedge. (Instagram reel) “‘This work was an instinctive response to the space and the rhythm of people through it, based on early sketches by hand. It solves the practical problem of creating an artwork that fills a public square and engages passersby, without obstructing the space.’ ‘Please Be Seated’ features 1,152 reclaimed scaffolding boards. Each one has been planed, sanded, and cut to become part of a series of huge curves and concentric circles.”
28. Obituary for a Quiet Life. “When the notable figures of our day pass away, they wind up on our screens, short clips documenting their achievements, talking heads discussing their influence. The quiet lives, though, pass on soundlessly in the background. And yet those are the lives in our skin, guiding us from breakfast to bed. They’re the lives that have made us, that keep the world turning.”
29. The Thread Vibes Are Offfrom Anne Helen Petersen. “This is pretty much what Threads feels like to me now: a place that’s ostensibly interesting (look, so many people are already here!) but is actually totally boring. It’s “fun,” but definitely not funny… It’s not entertaining or clever like TikTok. It’s just new and there, like a bowl of sub-par chips and store-bought guac at a party, asking “Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?””
30. PBS Short Film Festival 2023. “Since 2012, the PBS Short Film Festival (originally named PBS Online Film Festival) has been a platform and partner for promoting short films from independent filmmakers that are presented by public media partners and PBS member stations. Many of the films cover social issues that traditional film festivals tend to shy away from such as identity, culture, family, and race.”
31. The Tyranny of Good. “Good is an internal tornado and an external affair—you are working off an imagined external judge and jury, or as Anne Lamott once described—you are treating everyone in your life like a flight attendant trying to make all of the passengers happy. But if you can tolerate this messiness. If you can tolerate the terror of being what you have been calling ‘bad.’ You can come to understand something crucial: good is a very, very small world.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 