1. Morning walks. I love spending the time with Ringo, getting the exercise, seeing the sun rise, hearing the birds sing.
2. Practice. At Red Sage this week, there was a puppy, lots of laughter, moments of both calm and chaos — I loved it. My Friday morning writing sangha was magical, as usual. I’m currently reading Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn and it’s making me appreciate my meditation practice in a whole new way.
3. Cooking. I find it so empowering and lucky to be able to cook for myself the things I like to eat, to be able to modify recipes to my particular needs and tastes, and 90% of the time whatever gets cooked at home is so much better than anything you might buy. I also love feeding other people. Eric is always so appreciative of what I cook. Yesterday, I made mini zucchini breads and gingerbread muffins and shared them with our book club and another friend whose birthday had just passed.
4. Streaming and on demand content. TV, films, music, podcasts, videos, articles, books, readings, classes, lectures, etc. It can get overwhelming sometimes and I don’t always make the healthiest choices, but I love being able to access pretty much whatever I want, whenever I want — without having to leave my house.
5. My tiny family, small house, little life. Home.
Big stretch
Bonus joy: being able to schedule things online (including rescheduling and even cancelling), Sunday morning Pilates, clean sheets, a warm shower, sitting in the backyard with Ringo, napping in the living room with Ringo, hanging out with Ringo doing just about anything, that his belly is doing better, that my brother and I are able to support each other and make good decisions regarding our parents and the care they’ve needed over the past few years to assist in their aging and dying and taking care of what is left behind after those tasks, toasted walnuts in quick breads and cookies, gummies, stickers, books, libraries and librarians, poetry and poets, comedy, true crime, Rom-Coms, crime dramas, documentaries, strawberries, fall turning everything into gold but the grass is still green, cute animal videos, the way the top of Ringo’s head smells after he’s been laying out in the sun, the chance to start over, writing in the morning in front of my HappyLight with a mug of hot green tea with matcha, dreams, pjs as daywear, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.
18. Whatever you can still do, you can still do. “On what despots want you to forget” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages. Also from Garrett, The Internet is killing us, “But the bigger problem isn’t what we (and our kids) are doing on our screens, it’s what we’re not doing off of them.”
20. Harmen Hoek on YouTube, “an adventurous YouTube filmmaker, known for silent hiking films that transport viewers into nature through stunning visuals, ambient sounds, and evocative music.”
29. A string of beads on The Imperfectionist. “What is within our power is to thread beads, one after the other, and gradually to develop the internal trust that we’ll be able to thread the beads that need adding in the future, too. (The opposite of anxiety, I’ve seen it said, isn’t calm, but trust in your capacity to handle what happens later on.) All you need to do, to paraphrase Carl Jung and also Anna from Frozen, is the next right thing. Indeed, when you think about it, that’s the only thing you ever could do: select the next bead and add it to the string, then choose and add the next, and the next, through apocalyptic times and happier ones, for as many years as you’re lucky to get to do it.”
31. Roxane Gay on Memoir as Manifesto. “From the Memoir Nation Podcast, Hosted by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner.” P.S. LitHub, stop asking me to become a supporting member of your publication, to give you money, when you run SO MANY ads.
32. Artisan Apple Bread recipe from I Am Baker. This looks so good. I would destroy a fresh warm loaf of this right about now.
33. I do like dogs, clips from SNL skit. (Facebook reel) Oh, Molly Shannon.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 