jillsalahub

1. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön: “Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives. It’s about seeing how we react to all these things. It’s seeing our emotions and thoughts just as they are right now, in this very moment, in this very room, on this very seat. It’s about not trying to make them go away, not trying to become better than we are, but just seeing clearly with precision and gentleness.”

2. Take something ordinary and elevate it from gapingvoid culture design group.

3. Two ways to challenge the status quo from Seth Godin. Other good stuff from Seth: Lines and curves, and From/to, and Non-machinable surcharge, and What do other people deserve?, and Five useful questions.

4. Three books I’m really excited for: You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson, and Wonder Seeker: 52 Ways to Wake Up Your Creativity and Find Your Joy by Andrea Scher, and The Lightmaker’s Manifesto: How to Work for Change Without Losing Your Joy by Karen Walrond. I’ve preordered all three.

5. Good stuff from Rita’s Notebook: Oh, hey there. It’s me again… and Dessication. Seriously, I’m almost as excited about Rita’s retirement as I was about mine.

6. Wisdom from Michelle Maldonado, who in a recent podcast describes love as “an intelligent way of being that allows us to connect with one another, that allows for wisdom to come through and to be present.”

7. Wisdom from Adriene Mishler: “Daily or regular practice cannot only help us learn how to exist and survive inside the journey of process, but it can guide us to do so in a way in which we feel like we are working for ourselves, rather than against.”

8. Good stuff from Lion’s Roar: How Equanimity Powers Love, and What If This Is It?, and Discover the Joy of Doing Nothing, and Calm in the Midst of Chaos.

9. Ryan Crouser OBLITERATES shot put WORLD RECORD at Olympic trials. (video) “Reigning Olympic champion Ryan Crouser smashes Randy Barnes’ 31-year-old shot put world record by over 8 inches with a massive 23.37-meter mark at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials.”

10. More Happiness. Less Suffering. Podcast episode with Jena Schwartz.

11. Laurie Wagner Interview with Naomi Shihab Nye. (video) Laurie says, “I was gifted 30 minutes with the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye yesterday, and she blew my mind with her lit up beauty. Because we have worked with her poems for so many years and because we have benefited from so many of them, I wanted to share her with you. I love everything about her and I hope you do too.”

12. Ten Years In The Word Mines: One Lesson from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds. Teaser: “Initially, my plan was, let’s revisit the career and figure out what the hell I’ve learned. Did I learn anything? Can I tell people what that thing was? After all, I’m a writer, and this is a blog. Listicles are a thing, even if they sound a little like testicles? I could do a classic return to the 25 Things series which populated this space for many, many years. But —”

13. Purposefully Purposeless: My Non-Doing Life.

14. Wisdom from Dza Kilung Rinpoche: “Naturally we enter into meditation with some interest and enthusiasm, and there are goals to be attained. But in practice we must drop these. We must avoid the distractions created by expectations and not be tempted into placing quantity—the number of sessions we do per day, the ‘higher, more esoteric’ practices we know, or how many mantras we have recited—over quality. If we get in a rush, we are introducing the stress typical of samsara. Instead, we cultivate patience. Samadhi . . . will arise naturally when we relax beyond our desires, goals, and expectations.”

15. Feeling Burnt Out? Here Are 7 Ways Experts Recommend Dealing With It.

16. Good stuff from Anne Helen Petersen: “Nobody is owed forgiveness” An interview with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg and “Part of owning my own brand also means owning my age.”

17. Don’t Let Consumerism Co-opt the Zero-Waste Concept.

18. Wisdom from Stokely Carmichael: “In struggle one not only fights against something–injustice, oppression–but one must struggle for something equally real but positive. That’s the other part of the equation.” What are you struggling for?

19. Benji Is One Down Dog. “Adriene Mishler’s blue heeler, Benji, is one of the most famous canines in the country, but he hasn’t let it go to his sweet, soft little head.”

20. Solo Notes from the beloved Laurie Wagner. “You baked as many birthday cakes as you could.”

21. Relocate your darlings, writing advice from Austin Kleon.

22. Feel Good’s Mae Martin: ‘If you put a teenage girl in any industry, people will take advantage’. In related news, Mae Martin on “Feel Good,” Labels, and Getting Kicked Off Hinge.

23. How radical gardeners took back New York City. “Seed bombs, the ‘tree lady of Brooklyn,’ and the roots of urban gardening.”

24. Retired Woman Gives Tour Of Van She Lives In Full-Time.

25. Passion for Peonies: Generations rally for La Resolana farm. This seems somewhere I need to visit.

A more accurate title might be “what I remembered,” “what I realized,” or simply “what I thought about.” Being on vacation is quite a lot like going on a practice retreat, in particular the way it allows you to step out of your regular routines, your normal life, to simply be with yourself in a difference space, to look back and view where you usually live from a bit of a distance. If you allow it, if you take the time to notice, if you are willing to stay open, it has something to teach you.

I’m still officially off Facebook and Instagram. After having to try really hard at times to stay away (but sticking to my plan because I knew if I didn’t I’d be so disappointed), now that I “can,” now that my official fast is over, I find myself reluctant to go back. Eric asked me the first night at a motel on our drive back if I was back on or if I was going to wait until we got home. I told him not only was I going to wait, I was going to wait until the day after we got home. The next night however I was really tempted to go back. I gave myself some space instead and realized that if I got back in, I’d feel like I had to do something, share a picture or make a post, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.

This morning I’m trying to keep in mind that coming back from vacation, as on retreat, there’s a necessary period of reentry, that I need time to process and rest and unpack, to reintegrate into my every day life. Contemplating the awareness, the insight I’m bringing back with me feels like a good place to begin.

What I learned while I was on vacation:

1. The ocean is the supreme white noise machine. I miss it so much already. It is so soothing to my highly sensitive nervous system.

2. If you pay for a house with a view of the ocean, the foggy gray days when you can’t see it are a real bummer. And yet, the days it’s clear, you just want to sit by the window all day and stare at it. Added bonus if there are bald eagles hunting and bunnies munching the grass and a spot for the dog to nap.

3. Kids move a lot, but when they are hungry they eat and when they are tired they rest. My brother and his granddaughter Lia came to visit us at the beach and he said, “she does something for five minutes, and then she’s off to do something else.” After our second trip to the beach the second day, she came up to me, after flying her kite and playing in the sand and water, and very seriously said, “Let’s go back home. My legs are tired.” When we got back, got her cleaned up, and put her on the couch with a movie and her blanket, she was OUT. I could learn a lot from her, I think. Also, I do not regret not having kids of my own, as much as I love other people’s kids.

4. I love reading SO much. When we got to Oregon, my mom gave me a bag of books she’d saved for me. I read Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive; Ask Again, Yes; Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory; Daughter of Moloka’i; and on my Kindle I read A Kind of Freedom and Norwegian Wood. They were all really good. And it’s funny how much more you can read if you aren’t on Facebook and Instagram.

5. It’s clear that I need to live near trees and water. Colorado and Oregon are very different, but I have both in both places and this time I realized how necessary they are to my sanity.

6. The only summers I get any kind of tan are when I’m in Oregon. In Colorado in the summer, you can’t stay out in the direct sun long enough to tan.

7. I love potatoes and bread in all forms: chips, baked, fried, smashed, toasted, etc.

8. Unpacking from vacation is the perfect time to downsize. Being gone, away from all your stuff, clarifies what you really need, what you really want and use, what you want to keep and what can go.

9. When something you thought was true turns out not to be, it can break you or set you free. I choose freedom.

10. There’s a real chance that Ringo is going to stay an only dog. I would have never thought I’d say that, that I’d be happy with “only one,” and yet, we have been through some really hard things with our dogs, things that feel like they need space. I am craving some ease and more joy in that aspect of my life, and Ringo was SO good by himself on this trip, it made us start thinking we might like to keep things that way — easy. I’m not sure how long we’ll feel this way, but I’m honoring it, allowing it for as long as it wants to stick around. There will be more dogs, for sure, just not for now.