Category Archives: Marc and Angel Hack Life

Something Good

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pumpkinSo great to be partnering with Wanderlust to share this list with a larger audience.

1. The homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews instead of begging. “You don’t have to be rich to save the world,” Philani Dladla, The Pavement Bookworm. The foundation he started is really cool.

2. Students protesting Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home”: How clinging to “Christian moral beliefs” can end an education before it even begins on Salon. “Liking is not learning, of course — and learning is not always comfortable.” And in related news, Alison Bechdel Would Like You to Call It the “Bechdel-Wallace Test,” ThankYouVeryMuch.

3. A Question of Prosperity from Meghan Genge in which she considers what it means to feel prosperous.

4. Open Letter to Native College Students.

5. It’s Not Just ODU Students Putting Up Offensive Signs About Freshman Girls. Not something good so much as something you should know about. I wonder what the parents of these young men think about this? What do their mothers think?

6. Why America Needs a Slavery Museum. I’m still surprised there is currently only one.

7. Modern ‘train-nomad’ chooses to live on trains instead of renting. In related news, I secretly lived in my office for 500 days.

8. Hurricane Katrina happened ten years ago. It’s just as devastating ten years out. These Are The Forgotten Images Of Hurricane Katrina, and The 85 Most Powerful Hurricane Katrina Images, and This American Life 565: Lower 9 + 10, and 10 Years After Katrina.

9. 10 Successful Entrepreneurs on the Worst Advice They Ever Received.

10. 100 Cameras Were Given To Homeless In London And The Result Left Everyone Speechless.

11. 30 Reasons Why I Write by Jon Westenberg. Things like, “There’s no despair that can’t be held at bay with words,” and “My writing is my own roadmap – it helps me find my way.”

12. why dinner was late last night from SouleMama. It’s a beautiful reason.

13. I’m Sorry I Didn’t Respond to Your Email, My Husband Coughed to Death Two Years Ago.

14. The Greatest Commencement Addresses of All Time on Brain Pickings. I know it’s not the right season for this as most students are just going back to school not graduating, but if you want some serious inspiration this is the place.

15. Wisdom from Jessica Patterson,

If you want to know real freedom, you must learn forgiveness. That doesn’t mean collapsing boundaries or giving up or giving in. It doesn’t mean going back. It doesn’t mean absolution or sweeping things under the rug. It means you let go of grasping–and that which has a grip on you. It means reclaiming your own inner sanctuary and ushering out what’s crowding your space. Let go of the need to be right, to be in control, to be understood, to be certain. Let go of what has distracted you from the grace of each moment–your birthright, your presence.

16. No, I Am Not Crowdfunding This Baby (an open letter to a worried fan) by Amanda Palmer, a beautiful contemplation of the tenderness and terror of being a mother and an artist.

17. Boy, 13, Keeps Father Alive After He’s Badly Hurt by Falling Boulder. May we all have someone like this to help when we need it.

18. Brave Girl University is open for enrollment. It is “a one-stop gathering place for learning, growing and becoming, through hundreds of classes taught by dedicated teachers who offer soulful ways to make life better, happier and more authentic for every woman. From painting to gardening to meditation to relationships and much more. . . access it ALL for just $24.95 per month.” I’ve taken classes with many of these teachers, and am amazed by what a good deal this is.

19. Good stuff from Dances with Fat: What If I’m Not Happy With My Weight, and George Takei and Why I Can’t Take a Joke, and Telling Truth to Power.

20. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

If something isn’t getting you closer to your heart’s most precious goals, if it isn’t making your most important relationships stronger and more valued, if it is not helping you grow and making your heart sing, maybe it’s time to think about letting it go.

If you will listen very very very closely, you will know for sure what to hold on to…and what to let go…and where to spend your precious minutes and energies.

And this,

You know SO much more than you think you know. Each of us was born with a lovely inner compass…it’s there to guide us. We must tune out almost every voice around us to be able to focus on what this inner voice tells us is true for our own lives.

Please don’t give any heed at all to the useless opinions of others, beautiful friend. Act for yourself. Face your own truths…then act on your own truths. Plug your ears when there are annoying, loud, negative voices that have no business giving you opinions about your own life. Turn off the confusing lies, and be brave enough to tune in to that inner voice that speaks your truth. Those feelings in your gut are your deepest wisdom, and you will recognize the voice of truth by the warm and peaceful feelings it brings.

21. 7 Simple Ways to Soothe Your Soul from Be More With Less. “Sometimes your soul needs time to just hang out with your heart, and your truth.”

22. I Had a Baby and Cancer When I Worked at Amazon. This Is My Story.

23. The Monk Manifesto: Seven Principles for Living with Deep Intention. I had never heard of this before Erica Staab posted about it on her blog. It is “a public expression of your commitment to live a compassionate, contemplative, and creative life.” I think if one were to live according to this manifesto, they would be ridiculously happy, completely content. Or maybe that’s just me.

24. 85 Percent of What We Worry About Never Happens. I heard once that “worrying is like praying for what we don’t want to happen.” This article gives yet another reason why worry is wasted.

25. Good stuff from Austin Kleon’s newsletter: I’ve Spent A Lifetime Building a Mighty Network. Here Are My Secrets., and Marshall McLuhan on writing, and The Steal Like An Artist Journal (I want).

26. Sarah Silverman just life-coached everyone who’s felt undeserving. Such a cool perspective. (video)

27. Write Anyway: October, a workshop with Janelle Hanchett. Sometime I really want to do one of these.

28. Good stuff Alexandra Franzen shared in her newsletter: The “Grocery List” Method To Writing Your Bio. (So Easy. For Real.), and Ask Alex & Ellen: I got rejected and now I want to give up. How can I get motivated again?, and What Does The World Need More Of In Order To Heal?, and a podcast interview Alexandra Franzen on Changing with Grace and How To Be More Intentional With Your Time.

29. Shared on Positively Present Picks: Living Your Dreams Will Piss People Off. Do It Anyway., and this quote from Oprah Winfrey, “I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”

30. Good stuff from Susannah’s Something for the Weekend list: The unconscious quality of judgment. And Mötley Crüe, and Annapurna Woman Susannah Conway, (this whole interview series is really great), The Pep Talk Generator, and Things That Will Happen If I Don’t Take My Phone Out Right Now, and Raise Your Hand Say Yes with Lisa Congdon on Passion Projects.

31. Wisdom from Aimée Reed, by way of The Pep Talk Generator mentioned above,

“Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing” — Cormac McCarthy. We all have to do things we don’t like in pursuit of our goals and dreams. However, if you are doing something that doesn’t directly correlate to you achieving them, then stop. Immediately. In reality, we have but a minute on this earth. Work, live, take chances, love, eat, argue, make mistakes, fight, and screw like you have 30 seconds left on the stopwatch.

32. Where Children Sleep, a photo series from James Mollison, “stories of diverse children around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms.”

33. When Doing Yoga by Yourself from Bad Yogi.

34. 8 Things I Learned from 10 Months Unplugged on Elephant Journal.

35. Veruca Salt has a new album coming out.

36. Fundraising page for one of my favorite bears who’ll be doing the Out of the Darkness Walk, raising money for The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

37. Brene Brown on embracing failure, setting boundaries and living through grief: “It is an act of compassion to love yourself.”

38. 4 Questions that Will Change Your Attitude (When You Can’t Change Anything Else) from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

39. On The Subject Of Your Discouragement on Terrible Minds.

40. Viral Photo Of Syrian Refugee Prompts Strangers To Give Him ‘A New Life.’

Something Good

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So great to be partnering with Wanderlust to share this list with a larger audience.

1. Wisdom from Paul Jarvis, from his Sunday Dispatch Apples to Elephants, “Everyone’s life is filled with fuck-ups, mistakes, disasters but also amazing beauty.”

2. Choosing to stop your addiction on The Washington Post.

But, in fact, addicts can and do stop. And according to Marc Lewis in “The Biology of Desire,” this reveals a basic problem with the medicalization of addiction. “People choose to stop when they have suffered more than enough,” he writes. “And when circumstances lend a hand. And when the possibility of self control becomes as attractive — more attractive — than any other possibility, including temporary relief.”

3. The Many Faces of Kristen Wiig, a hilarious video compilation from People.

4. This amazing picture from Elephant Green. I want to go to there.

silenceelephantgreen5. Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation, Susan Piver’s new book, a wonderful guide to starting and sustaining a meditation practice.

startherenow6. Roasted Tomato Soup recipe. I made three batches this weekend because our garden is producing so many cherry tomatoes right now. It was super easy and delicious. If we didn’t eat it up so fast, I suspect it would freeze really well too, for later in the year when the fresh tomatoes are all gone. I also want to try this, Crispy Chickpea Kale Salad recipe.

7. The 7 Types Of Girls You Date from BuzzFeedYellow.

8. Whine About It, a new short video series where BuzzFeed writer Matt Bellassai gets drunk at work and complains. I love this so much. I think Matt Bellassai is my spirit animal.

9. Things You Should Make, Not Buy. “From marinara to mustard, more than 20 recipes for dishes and pantry staples that are so much better homemade.”

10. Have You Cut the Cable Cord? We did a few years back, have a computer hooked up to our tv and use the internet to watch Netflix and Hulu, which allows for more intentional watching, even when it’s binge watching.

11. The Adorable Tiny Dancer In This Insurance Ad Will Absolutely Make Your Day. It’s true.

12. A Couple Did A Newborn Photo Shoot With Their Dog To Stop People Asking About Babies.

13. “Am I Too Fat for Yoga Class?” on Wanderlust.

14. How to Age Gracefully – CBC Radio WireTap. “People of all ages offer words of wisdom to their younger counterparts in this WireTap farewell video, from CBC Radio One.”

15. Surviving The Loss Of My Beautiful Daughter Tess.

16. Sandra Bland’s Legacy: The Website for Women She Helped Found Launches Today.

17. Lesbian Cartoonist Alison Bechdel Countered Dad’s Secrecy By Being Out And Open.

18. The Inner Light of Creativity: Vivian Gornick on How One Blossoms into Being an Artist on Brain Pickings.

19. 7 Things to Remember If You’re a White Person Dating a Person of Color.

20. Romanian City Gives Free Bus Rides To Passengers Who Read Books Inside.

21. Good stuff from Dances with Fat: A Little Inspiration, and Lessons from a Salad Bar, and The “Healthiest Possible Body” Myth, and That Sad Little Fat-Shaming Photoshop Project.

22. The HAES® files: Fit or Fat – Can You Be Both?

23. You Really Should Be Skinnier.

24. Truthbomb #866 from Danielle LaPorte, “Your voice is your liberation.”

25. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

To love is so easy — to judge is so NOT. To be loved is so beautiful — to be judged is so NOT. Aren’t we so lucky that it is not our job to judge others? Wouldn’t it be so hard if we were assigned to pick each other apart and decide which parts are good and which parts are bad and how someone should be living their life? or raising their children? or how someone should vote? or what they should be doing for a job? or how they should wear their hair or how much they should weigh or where they should live or how they should dress or how they should behave? Aren’t we so fortunate that the job of judging others does not fall on us?

And aren’t we so very very very lucky that our biggest job is just to LOVE each other and to decide FOR OURSELVES how WE will each live individually — how we will behave, how we will wear our hair, how we will raise our children, how we will vote, how we will live our lives, what we will do for a career, who we will spend our life with. And then WE get to live with those decisions—

Our job when it comes to each other is only to LOVE…in spite of our differences and in spite of the fact that we sometimes do not understand each other. Aren’t we just so darned lucky??? What a beautiful thing that our greatest job as fellow human beings is simply to love each other — fully and completely. What a beautiful and perfect world.

Let’s do it. YOU are loved.

26. 100 Best Sites for Solopreneurs, a link originally shared by the amazing Alexandra Franzen, who is on the list, as she should be. She also shared some great stuff on her blog recently, Is it possible to run a business without using social media?, and Why I do not use social media anymore.

27. Learning to Say Goodbye from Jennifer Louden.

28. Everyday Icon: The Creative Couple, a great interview with the amazing artist Lisa Congdon and her wife Clay Walsh, Lisa’s Head of Marketing and Operations, in which they talk about “working together as a married couple to grow Lisa’s brand.”

29. TV reporter makes kid cry when she asks him about first day of school. “A reporter at KTLA made a 4-year-old boy cry when she asked him about his first day of pre-kindergarten.” This is just about the sweetest thing ever. I kinda don’t want Andrew to ever grow up.

30. Jimmy Carter has cancer. It’s so sad, but the way he’s handling it only makes him that much more inspiring: Jimmy Carter on His Cancer Diagnosis and Jimmy Carter Dedicating The Rest Of His Life Fighting For Women’s Rights.

31. Brave Heart, best-selling author Brené Brown on the risks and rewards of daring greatly on Texas Monthly. If you don’t know much about Brene’ Brown, she was recently featured on A Person You Should Know, where they shared lots of great links.

32. I’m on a semi-starvation diet, why am I so hungry?, a question answered by The Fat Nutritionist.

33. AMA on Reddit with Chuck Wendig of Terrible Minds.

34. Exposed: The sick truth behind the great ‘wellness’ blog craze taking social media by storm and one online star battling a secret fitness addiction.

35. Shared on Chookooloonks this was a good week list, My Garden Photography & a Garden Tour. Such a beautiful space.

36. When You Struggle with Imposter Syndrome and Self-Doubt from Be More With Less.

37. Why We Create Pain from Laura Simms, in which she contemplates the way we sometimes hold on to pain instead of trading it for freedom.

38. 30 Quick Stories that Will Make You Think Differently. Bite sized bits of dharma from Marc and Angel Hack Life that hit you right in your tender spot.

39. someone you should meet: courtenay on Chookooloonks.

40. Good stuff shared by Austin Kleon on his weekly newsletter: On the virtues of brevity in writing, and The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Reuse & Remix.

41. The Elephant Whisperer Of Chiang Mai. “Her relationship with these gentle animals prove that love comes in all shapes and sizes.”

42. money talks with Patti Digh with Sherry Belul on Mabel Magazine.

43. 9 Ways to Make Your Days Simple Again on Marc and Angel Hack Life.

44. Wisdom from Rob Nairn’s book, Living, Dreaming, Dying,

Awareness of the thought process at the moment of an impulse arising is what makes freedom from thought possible, because when the mind is only at the stage of an impulse arising, the energies haven’t fully engaged. There is an almost impartial quality about the energy of the impulse. When it is driven into specific thought, the situation changes and it becomes “my thought with my feeling, therefore me.” This is what is meant by being caught in the thought. The inner energy has transmuted from being something relatively neutral and therefore not very important or compelling into something entirely personal and therefore extremely important and compelling.

45. Sooner or later, the critics move on from Seth Godin.

46. The Process Monkey Asks: What Is Your Writing Process? on Terrible Minds.