March | 2024 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Morning walks. I can only go a few miles, and this morning was the first time I went somewhere other than around our neighborhood. It was so nice. The tricky part right now is I could probably go on a full length walk, but I can’t be in charge of Ringo yet. He’s pretty good on a leash, but he’s still a dog so sometimes I’m walking one way and he tries to pull me in the opposite direction and with a pretty big incision still healing, that’s not good. I have a follow up appointment with my surgeon on Monday and I’m hoping he’ll clear me to get back in the pool which will help build my strength back up and maybe in another week or two, I can be back to regular morning walks.

2. Rest and recovery. Every single thing I read about healing from this particular surgery said, “when you are tired, rest” and I’ve been doing my best to do that and am feeling a little better every day. I’m so grateful that I have the time and support to be able to just rest and take care of myself. Eric and I were talking this morning as we walked about our upcoming trip to Oregon, where we’ll spend most of the time at the beach. He couldn’t remember if it was two years ago or longer since we last went together, and I told him it was only two years even though it feels like longer because so much has happened since then, and he sighed and said, “yeah, we need a vacation.”

3. Good food. Cooking can be a pain sometimes, mostly because I have a bad habit of waiting until I’m already hungry to consider what to make myself to eat, which makes me hangry and impatient and resort to eating whatever is fast, which is never as good as something I cook. As I’ve had a bit more energy this week, I’ve been trying to cook myself something every day, even if it’s just “fancy” mac and cheese. I finally made the zucchini bread I’d been meaning to for a few weeks and am currently obsessed with honey roasted spicy carrots.

4. Streaming content and portable viewing devices. It’s very nice when you need to rest, to stay “down” but aren’t really up to reading the whole day, that I can take my phone or laptop to the couch or bed and watch a movie or a tv show or listen to a podcast or audiobook.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I’m realizing as I stay home more and rest how little I need that is outside this space. Sure, I miss going to the gym and have to go to the grocery store, etc., from time to time, but I’m the most content just staying home with my books and my boys and my bed. And I am not delusional — I recognize how much outside this space has to be in place and functional in order for me to be able to just stay here, and I’m grateful for all that too.

Bonus joy: not responding to the message I got from the person who has my old job asking some question about email FIVE years after I stopped working there (“not my circus, not my monkeys”), crying, all the things I’ve lost because I was lucky enough to have them in the first place, all the things I really wanted and didn’t get because I wouldn’t have landed where I am now, the reminder that “what you engage with you empower” right when I needed it, my mom having a UTI and NOT another stroke (which was the concern when my brother took her to the ER last night), how my mom might not have the best memory right now and gets confused but I can always make her laugh, homemade chicken noodle soup (Knorr Chicken Bouillon is the secret), texting with Chris and Chloe’, sharing reels and memes with Sherri and Kari and Carrie, having a few cups of coffee and realizing I really do like green matcha tea better, surrendering to what is happening instead of resisting it because it’s not what I “wanted,” Susannah Conway’s two new kittens, remembering that a breakdown or a total collapse doesn’t mean the end but rather opens the possibility for something new to emerge (“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing” ~Arundhati Roy or “Barn’s burnt down — now I can see the moon” ~Mizuta Masahide), my Wild-ish Writing sangha, good books, poetry and poets, comedy, true crime, how much Ringo loves to eat, hugging Eric, sitting with him on the couch, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.

1. Rewilding A Forest | Artist and Poet Maria “Vildhjärta” Westerberg. “Maria was a romantic, animal-loving, dreamy child who, growing up, had a hard time conforming to the demands associated with the trajectory towards ‘a normal life’. As a young adult she became depressed, and was encouraged by her therapist to go for walks in the forest. The myriad of funny-looking twigs and sticks she found along the way immediately put her on a path to recovery. Now, 25 years later, she’s a celebrated ‘twig poet’ whose art is shown in galleries throughout Sweden. When a climate related crisis strikes the forest where she lives and works, she’s forced into a new type of creativity in order to save the place that once upon a time saved her.” This film is part of a series called “Something Beautiful for the World”, which is a collaboration between Reflections of Life, Campfire Stories and Happen Films.”

2. Are You a ‘Floor Person’? Why Lying on the Ground Feels So Good on The New York Times. (gift link) “For some, just a few minutes can quiet the mind.”

3. how to connect with your intuition from A Soul Called Joel. (video) “In this episode, I’ll guide you through a mindfulness practice and meditation to help you detach from your thoughts and access your inner wisdom. Key Points: Our intuition is always speaking to us, but we often miss its messages because we are not present or available. We can cultivate our intuition by being mindful and aware of our thoughts and feelings. A helpful practice is to ask yourself the question, ‘What do I need to know today?'”

4. My Anxiety: Is what’s wrong with me what’s wrong with everyone else? on The New Yorker.

5. 5 Daily Habits That Are Causing 90% Of Your Pain from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

6. What Happened Here? “It was just ice cream” on Short Reads.

7. What I Don’t Want To Write, on Behind the Book by Ijeoma Oluo.

8. The Shortest Path to Creativity from Jami Attenberg.

9. Welcome To Your Colonoscopy…..AGAIN.

10. Good stuff from Seth Godin: In search of incompetence and Willfully uninformed and Later or now?

11. Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar. “In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America’s most well-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II. For the first time, digital scans of both Adams’s original negatives and his photographic prints appear side by side allowing viewers to see Adams’s darkroom technique, in particular, how he cropped his prints. Adams’s Manzanar work is a departure from his signature style landscape photography. Although a majority of the more than 200 photographs are portraits, the images also include views of daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure activities (see Collection Highlights). When offering the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams said in a letter, ‘The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment….All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use.'”

12. Craft Tip from Maggie Smith: Finding the Sequence.

13. Keep making art.

14. Chip’s Wrirting lessons: Interview | Four Questions with Tom Romano.

15. My self-retrieval operation has become a self-becoming operation from Patti Digh, “And becoming never ends.”

16. Give up on happiness. Go hard at wonder. “Pathologically busy people clamoring for happiness. Founder of HATCH Monica Parker explains how we can do so much better than that.”

17. The surprising benefits of ‘awe walks’ for your health and well-being.

18. Year-Round Produce: Wyoming Gardener Outsmarts Winter With Underground Greenhouse.

19. ‘American Fiction’ And The Wet Eyes Of The Sentimentalist.

20. The 2024 Election is About the Rich Stealing From the Public.

21. Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers.

22. Wild Failure, Wild Writing, and Wild Business with Laurie Wagner on the For The People podcast on Spotify. “I have the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Wagner who’s an incredible author and writer who influences so many people in the United States to tap into their intuition and subconscious through wild writing. In this Episode we explore the journey of creative business development and success.”

23. “Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda” Brings Brilliant Trans Comics to the Famously Transphobic Netflix.

24. Joe Camp, Filmmaker Behind ‘Benji’ Franchise, Dies at 84 on The New York Times.

25. The Free Soloist Who Fell to Earth. “Austin Howell soloed harder and more often than almost anyone else in the country, documenting his exploits on Instagram and a podcast. But behind the scenes his mental health was faltering.”

26. A Maui chef’s lifeline: his restaurant as the island recovers from Lahaina wildfires.

27. One of the Best Things We Can Do for Ourselves as We Age. “This will help feed your soul and boost your overall health.”

28. My 15-Year-Old Daughter Died. I Recently Found A Box Of Hers — And What Was Inside Left Me Shaken.

29. Why People in Sweden Do Nature Right. “During a monthlong stay in Sweden, I realized that my Americanized relationship with the outdoors was off track. Here’s what I learned.”

30. Animals have overtaken our lives, and we’re having a wonderful time.

31. Faces in Stone: Japan’s Chinsekikan Museum Showcases Over 1700 Natural Rock Formations Resembling Human Faces.

32. 64 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Grief.

33. How one dog and her new owner brought kindness into the lives of many.

34. Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler speak out about battle with MS. (video)

35. Ava DuVernay: ‘I’ve got real big-sister energy’. “The film maker, 51, on her early love of film, why she’s not on social media and the importance of silence.”

36. Recipe I want to try/eat: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

37. Sculpt The World short film, (Instagram reel). “It features many works from over the years in various environments, including never before seen work.”

38. Lessons from Dog School.

39. Oprah Is Harming Black Women by Pushing Weight Loss Drugs and Diet Culture.

40. a remembering: who were we before social media? from Karen Walrond.

41. Wind, Blue Sky, a new poem from Susan Aizenberg.

42. The Unfolding is What is Beautiful from Gretchen Schmelzer. “Unfolding is a tender-hearted process. But the final blossom, while an impressive end goal, is not what holds the radiance. The true wonder –which is hard to stop watching when you watch the film of the sunflower—is in the process of becoming. It isn’t the flower, but the unfolding, that is beautiful.”