1. Heart advice from Pema Chödrön: “Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you’re sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you’re coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things. We are all in this together.”
2. Lingering in the Sweet Spot on Going Gently from Satya Robyn. “Taking a break from ‘working on ourselves’.” I’ve been following Satya’s work for a long time, and have enjoyed and appreciated every version of it. She wrote another post recently clarifying what Going Gently is about: “Helping you be kinder to yourself. This is what stitches my work at Going Gently together.” What’s not to like?
3. Hind Rajab: A poem for the generations stolen in front of our eyes, a heartbreaking poem about another heartbreaking loss in Palestine. Look at this sweet face and understand that there are now 28,000+ who are no more, with 10,000+ of those being children, and FOR WHAT?!
4. Good stuff from Seth Godin: What’s the right size? and Jump in the lake and Transitions are difficult.
5. Can the Inner Development Goals help us create a more sustainable future? “The UN sustainable development goals are badly needed. But progress is slow. Do we lack an inner capacity to make the necessary changes? Shifts on a personal level could be the missing part of the puzzle to unlock huge progress, believe the team behind the Inner Development Goals.”
6. The hiking movement to reclaim green spaces. “Racism and unequal access to green spaces are just some of the reasons people of colour and ethnic minorities tend to spend less time in nature. Meet the groups working to bring the benefits of the great outdoors to all.”
7. What Really Makes Us Happy on Lion’s Roar. “As a Buddhist teacher, psychiatrist, and leading researcher, Dr. Robert Waldinger studies life from three very different perspectives. But he says they all come to the same basic conclusion about what really makes our lives happy and meaningful, and what doesn’t.”
8. Good stuff from The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz: Five Unhelpful Phrases for Grieving People (“Some well-intentioned words those in mourning can do without”) and Of Course a Left Third Party Vote is a Vote for Trump (“The simple reality of November and what’s at stake”).
9. Don’t Look Down Either. “There’s no secret way to be successful at this. Everyone’s using a different set of measures. The best thing I can tell you is ignore it all. Write whatever the fuck you want about whatever the fuck you want however the fuck you want to write it.”
10. Being a Full-Time Writer is the Worst Job. “Buckle Up for Some Tough Love.”
11. The “1000 Hours Outside” Movement, Explained.
12. 5 Little Ways to Be a Better Friend When You’re So, So Tired.
13. 20 Things We All Need to Stop Wasting Our Time On.
14. Stinge Watching Is the Opposite of Binge Watching. I absolutely am a Stinge Watcher. There are easily at least 10 shows right now that are over and I can’t bring myself to watch the final season.
15. What Does Enough Mean? from Jami Attenberg. “Enough to me lately feels like I tried hard, accomplished the right amount of work, put in all the effort I could. Whatever I get out of it in return is up in the air. I just want to walk away feeling like I did enough.”
16. For the introverts: I Embraced My Introversion and Quit Doing Things That Left Me Stressed and A Therapist Explains How Introverts Can Increase and Protect Their Energy and 6 Things My Therapist Taught Me to Stop Bottling Up My Emotions.
17. 10 Daily Habits That Will Help You Simplify Your Life from Tammy Strobel on Be More With Less.
18. I love this drawing from Jenny Lawson’s art Substack.
19. Dream Lover on Short Reads.
20. Things I do not understand, a list from Patti Digh.
21. Love Is the Container, “Not everything has to make sense” from Jena Schwartz.
22. The Pre-crastinator stumbles from Danny Gregory. You need to sign up for his newsletter.
23. What I Saw When I Came Back to the Internet, 3 Years Later.
24. jacobsimonsays on Instagram, “Good stories [about the environment] for a breath of fresh air.”
25. Bigger, stronger, faster: how my exercise addiction nearly killed me.
26. ‘Is he a good guy or a bad guy?’: an online hunt to solve a shocking death. “New Max documentary covers 2018 death of a hiker known as Mostly Harmless – and the flurry of internet sleuths trying to find out who he was and why he died.” Currently watching.
27. Poetry on Facebook: Look up, Love by Julia Fehrenbacher and Self-Portrait by David Whyte.
28. Shuck what the world put on you, wisdom from Andrea Gibson. (Facebook reel)
29. Speaking Tree, a poem by Joy Harjo.
31. Humans of Animal Advocacy: Patrick McDonnell. “MUTTS cartoonist makes good on his pledge to free Guard Dog and discusses his creative process.”
32. Recipe I want to try: Devil’s Food Snack Cake. Any chocolate cake that includes coffee in the recipe is my friend.
33. balance theory from Karen Walrond, “some thoughts on technology, and fighting for the very soul of the world.”
34. Artvee. “Discover the best in Classical & Modern Art. Browse and download high-resolution, public domain paintings, posters and illustrations.”
35. Self-Compassion from Hugh Hollowell. “These days, I’m wanting to be who younger versions of me needed, and what that younger version of me needed the most was someone who looked out for him, who told him it was OK to put his needs first, that advocated for him when he was afraid, or unable, to do so. These days, I’m working on embodying the truth that if my compassion for the world does not include me, then it is incomplete.”
36. Wisdom from Lao Tzu: “If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.”
37. A letter of love to trauma survivors from Gretchen Schmelzer. “Survival mode makes it hard to experience and understand love. Where survival is an experience of tension or tightness, love is an experience of openness and expansiveness. Where survival is an experience of longing, grasping, clinging, or vigilance—love is an experience of patience, of being able to breathe and look around. There is a brittleness and stiffness with survival. There is an elasticity to love.”
38. 27 ‘Strange’ Things You Do Because You’re a Highly Sensitive Person. In related news, 10 Biggest Mental Health Game-Changers for Highly Sensitive People.
39. Meet Mark Lewis Wagner | Traditional & Digital Artist, Author, Educator, World Record Chalk Drawings.
40. It’s Complicated: Love Poems, a collection curated by the editors at Poetry Foundation.
41. Snoopy is real, her name is Bayley. “Bayley is a 1-year-old mini sheepadoodle, which is a cross between a miniature poodle and an Old English Sheepdog. Her sweet face is something you have to see to believe and even then you may question if she’s real.“
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 