1. Morning walks. It’s turning toward spring and I could really tell this week because the birds were getting rowdy in the mornings, in particular the redwing blackbirds, (they are so small but so LOUD). We saw an owl one morning who was getting blasted by the wind just like we were. Then there was a fat robin sitting on a branch next to the river, a sure sign that spring is coming.
2. Practice. No Red Sage Yoga this week (everyone was sick) and a smaller group to write with on Friday morning. Luckily, writing and meditating in the morning only requires me to find my seat, so that was the same. My practices are regular and ongoing but simultaneously shifting and changing.
3. Eric. The pictures he sends me when he goes for a run or a hike, sitting in the sun with him in the backyard, lunch at Mount Everest Café, 30+ years of shared memories, watching Iron Chef and “trading some” (i.e. massage), hugs in the kitchen, all the love and heartbreak we’ve experienced together, making each other laugh.
From his run this morning at Greyrock
4. My brother, Chris. He is really taking one for the team right now caring for Mom while we wait for a definite move in date for her new “apartment.”
5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I love it here, with them, so much.
Bonus joy: Pilates, getting in the pool, sitting in the sauna, good books, finally cleaning up most of the tiny piles I’d made all around the house, taco salad, sweet & savory, hot cocoa to sweeten my coffee, KIND nut clusters, crunchy and chewy, Icelandic Skyr, watching TV (just finished Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke on Hulu — I thought I already knew the full story, but WOW), listening to podcasts, my Shakti mat, down blankets and pillows, when it’s warm enough out to open all the windows, payday, being able to help from a distance, comedy, true crime, libraries and librarians, poetry and poets, art and artists, music and musicians, streaming content, vaccines, texting and sharing reels, stickers, pineapple, breakfast burritos, eggs from Shaun’s chickens, other people’s kids and dogs, twinkle lights, blackout curtains, wireless internet, my HappyLight, the sound of an owl in the still dark of morning, how good Ringo was for Dr. Foster, a deep sigh, a whole new month, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.
3. The Wisdom of Pulling Back from the News from Krista Tippett. “I can’t count the number of people I’ve encountered across the last weeks who have reported that they are deleting apps, limiting their consumption of news, boycotting or disrupting the barrage of information overwhelm. I’m beginning to see this as a spiritual discipline for being alive in this time. It is not to be confused with disengagement or passivity. It may be an essential tool for sanity, and a key to discerning and sustaining a sense of agency for the time ahead.”
7. Good stuff on writing as practice from Lion’s Roar: Nothing Is Wasted, (“If you use your difficulties to create art, says Ruth Ozeki, it will give them meaning”), and Zen Mind, Writer’s Mind, (“Author Natalie Goldberg discusses Zen and the writer’s practice”), and 5 Tips for Mindful Journaling — which mentions my beloved friend Laurie Wagner, (“James C. Hopkins on how—through writing—you can find the flow of awareness, free of judgment”).
“I still consider dogs to be the mankind’s greatest achievement. Sure, you could make an argument for science or philosophy or coffee, I guess. But when’s the last time any of those loved you unconditionally besides coffee? And I want to be very clear that I’m not throwing any shade at cats by leaving them out of this conversation. I just don’t really consider them an ‘achievement,’ necessarily, because I’m pretty sure we had nothing to do with the whole cat ‘situation.'”
AND
“…many years ago, one of us saw a wolf and was like, ‘omg I would love a cute scruffy little version of that,’ and then we, as a species, got together and knocked that wish clean out of the fucking park.
And it’s a good thing we did too, because have you seen things? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve watched or heard or read or seen or experienced or felt or thought about anything lately, but it’s rough out there. And I love cats (most of the time), but we’re just not gonna survive this on cats alone. We need more. So lucky for us, we adopted a machine that eats stress and shits love and thinks we’re some combination of god and spouse and best friend and soulmate. And by the way, it’s adorable. Oh, and also it will protect you with its life. Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but if you rub its ears, that’s how you get the serotonin out.” YES.
11. If the despots can engage in magical thinking, then so can we on The White Pages. “On telling ourselves a story (about our strength, about our capacity for love, about how we’re going to win) and then making that story come true.” Also on The White Pages, Soon, there will be a spark, because this: “The thing about gathering kindling is that you can only do so before long before a spark is lit and a flame starts burning. And because the current emergent movement is rooted in love and protection for all, the flame I anticipate will not be a destructive one. Trump and his allies have already been setting plenty of those. It will be a source of light, a bonfire that sends the signal to many more of us that there is safety and warmth, that we are not alone.”
17. What can I do to fight this coup? from Choose Democracy. “We can’t put everything you could do in here — including ways to ground yourself in these times — but here are some starting points on how to orient and help fight the coup.”
19. 14 Little Things We Stopped Worrying About. “Here are the little things successful authors, CEOs, astrologers, and others have stopped worrying about in 2025 and beyond” on Bustle.
21. Is America Great, Yet? I’ve Been Asking Around on The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. Also from John, No, Christians, God is Not in Control, because this: “God works through the hands and words of the people who aspire to this love and goodness, and choose to exercise the individual power they have been entrusted with right where they’re standing. Jesus is not beamed down from Heaven, he is incarnated in the flesh and blood of those who believe that other people are worth sacrificing for, that mercy is the greatest gift, that love is revolutionary.”
22. Times 13 Women of The Year. “These extraordinary leaders are working toward a better, more equal world.”
23. Fleeing your past may be the beginning of your story… on Writing at Red Lights. “As we grow into the person we are meant to become, at one with the soul inside our body, we recognize the truth when it is spoken or written. Writing story is a way to set those truths free.”
29. Make life possible on A Working Library, a blog about work, reading & technology by Mandy Brown. Because this: “It’s a long-held maxim in movement circles that the people who work for liberation and freedom will always be outgunned and out monied by those who fight for precarity, oppression, and exploitation. Our power is not measured in weapons or cash but in humans; our power is with and through each other. Making life possible in uncertainty is to make room for more life, your own and many others. It is, as ever, to practice solidarity and reciprocity, to show up and to be present. To recognize that what happens next is—not now, not ever—written in stone.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 