1. Poetry: The Brown Bird and On the Phone With Carolina from the Pharmacy Help Desk and Dear Summer and Upon My Release by Julie Barton, Just One Scene in One Movie and Those of Us Who Choose to Turn Toward Grief and A Scrap in Time by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Not the Only Thing from James Crews on The Weekly Pause, Otherwise by Jane Kenyon shared by Patti Digh, and Long Summer by Barbara Crooker on Heart Poems.

2. From Seth Godin: False scarcity, The hustle loop, Under the circumstances, and Bringing goodwill to the conversation.

3. the length of her nails, “It is Not Normal to Cling This Tightly” from Elissa Altman.

4. Why I choose to live a “boring” life, a video from Sarah M. “In this video, I talk about why I choose to live what many would call a ‘boring’ life — a slow, intentional, quiet existence that prioritizes peace over pressure, simplicity over chaos, and inner fulfillment over external validation. There are no wild nights or packed calendars here. Just cozy mornings, quiet routines, and the everyday beauty of slow living. From embracing my introversion to reclaiming my time, I share the journey that led me to redefine what it means to live a meaningful life. Whether you’re feeling burnt out by hustle culture, overwhelmed by social expectations, or just curious about the joy of slow living — this video is for you.”

5. How to Break Free From Your Phone on The New York Times. (gift link)

6. How (and why) you should embrace the “art of doing nothing”.

7. 99 Alternatives To Scrolling On Your Phone.

8. The pleasures of reading. “Jancee Dunn, author of the NYT’s Well newsletter, asked me a while back to answer some questions about reading. Just a couple of items from my reply made their way into her column — she had plenty of other people to interview! — so I thought I would post my whole email to her here.”

9. I know you’re tired but come, this is the way, “naming our sacred gifts” from Alix Klingenberg on Earth & Verse.

10. Looking for New Ways to Live. “That was as close as I ever came to death in the mountains, before I even climbed one” by Emily Meg Weinstein.

11. Ancient Wisdom: How to Die Well. “I believe death should not be seen only as an ending. It is a teacher, a mirror, a catalyst. It shapes how we live, and where we seek meaning.”

12. 10 Entrances to Hell You Can Actually Visit. “Has someone told you to ‘go to hell?’ If so, let us direct you to these potential portals to the underworld.”

13. From Satya Robyn’s Move Towards Love series: Five Pond Practices, “and how they will help you to be a healthy & happy pond/person” and How Much Choice Do We Have? “MTL 2: Moving Towards Love & Seeing Love Reach Out.”

14. From Jamie Attenberg: Factoring in the Joy in Your Writing, “Sorry to be cringe, but I do have some thoughts on the matter” and How to Deal With Your Messy Notes, “It only hurts for a second.”

15. How do you like to be supported? “It’s a simple, but difficult, question” from Patti Digh.

16. What Burning Man doesn’t want you to see. (video)

17. Help! I’ve Become a Helicopter Parent to My Dog on The New York Times. (gift link)

18. Small, Easy Acts of Joy Mean Big Gains in Happiness. “A community science project finds that modest reminders to find joy in the day can have benefits that are on par with those of more ambitious well-being interventions.”

19. I wallowed in booze for four decades. Here’s what five sober years have taught me. “To give up drinking once seemed unthinkable – and when I finally made the leap, it didn’t go quite as expected.”

20. Tricks to snap yourself out of a funk (in 15 minutes or less). “In a slump and want to turn your day around? Try these science-backed techniques to help improve your mood in a matter of minutes. They can help you feel energized when you feel sluggish, calm when you feel stressed or connected if you feel lonely. No special tools or materials required (unless you want to jump in the ice bath!).”

21. On Not Writing, and Letting Wildness Be Your Guide. “Leila Chatti Wrestles With the Daily Idea of Being a Writer.” This post was so gorgeous, upon reading, I immediately bought a copy of her book.

22. I hope death feels like…this. (video)

23. Gaza City, September 1, 2025. (video) HOW is this still happening?!

24. Teacher uses “On the Road” to teach kids kindness. (video) “Teacher Derek Brown has been showing his fifth graders ‘On the Road’ stories for more than a decade, saying the stories teach them how to be ‘grounded and good.’ This week, Steve Hartman surprised his class.” 

25. And finally, this collection of random things I saved to my phone this week.

1. Poetry: In the Dark of the Cinema and Case Study in Insanity and Sitting on the Porch at Night and The Hope Engine and Opening and Enter Here and Self-Compassion from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Summer Morning on The Weekly Pause with Jeff Crews, Words rise to the surface and the stories that surround from Pádraig Ó Tuama, On Not Hiding and When Everything Changes and Solo from Julie Barton, The Forgotten Corners by Jeff Foster shared by Heart Poems, Want by Carrie Fountain (one of my favorite poems), From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee, and To Begin With, the Sweetgrass from Mary Oliver.

2. A conversation with a death doula. (video) “‘It’s one of the most magical times of life. It’s one of the biggest things that happens to us,’ says death doula Molly Nelson of the end of life.”

3. Detect Fakes. “How do you spot a deepfake? How can you tell if an image is AI-generated? How well can people distinguish between AI-generated media and images, audio, and video recorded by a traditional camera or microphone? Detect Fakes is research project hosted at Northwestern University by researchers at the Kellogg School of Management to examine how people distinguish truth from fiction in online media, especially as synthetic media becomes more and more realistic…The goal of this research program is to reveal what synthetic media looks like, benchmark how well people can distinguish synthetic media from ‘real’ media across a variety of contexts, and generate insights for how to help people distinguish between the two.”

4. Signs Your Social Battery Is Running Low on Introvert, Dear. “In social settings, the introvert brain is busy processing every word and detail, which explains why it can feel so exhausting.”

5. Telomeres: A Strange Fate, “Love, loss and the biology of endings.”

6. The Mystery of the Invisible Fish, “Why aren’t we already moving towards love?” from Satya Robyn.

7. The Purity Culture of Food? “The eerie similarities of wellness and religion” from Gina Luker.

8. A new way to look at the weekend, “and a different way to celebrate” on Hannah Ro Writes.

9. Good stuff from Jena Schwartz: Now Go Sweep the Porch (“Sometimes we all need a reset”) and Freewriting My Way Towards 5786 (“Let the spiritual preparation begin”).

10. A Pep Talk For The Grownups Who Show Up. “It’s part pep talk … part resource … part reminder… all let’s do good stuff together. A video packed with encouragement for anybody anywhere who cares about kids. It’s about tiny big changes, a few vocab words I picked up while visiting schools, and why you are the secret to making this a better world for kids. It’s the pep talk I would give to you if I could be right there with you. If you’re a teacher, parent, librarian, or just someone who cares about the next generation: please watch and share.” from Brad Montague.

11. The Holy Ordinary from Amy Marie Turner.

12. The Question of Missions, “A gesture, a feeling, a prayer” from Jami Attenberg on Craft Talk. Also on Craft Talk from Jamie, Two Pieces of Hate Mail, “On ‘politics’ and book reviews.”

13. The Night I Ended My Pregnancy by Julie Parker on Short Reads.

14. The secrets of lost luggage auctions: I bought four bags for £100. What would I find inside? “Unclaimed suitcases were once destined for landfill. Now people are ‘suitcase gambling’ – bidding for bags and their unknown contents, and diving deep into strangers’ lives.”

15. I would rather share in your earnest mistakes, “Than be pandered to by a slick talking savior” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.

16. Radical Pleasure: Why I Keep a Good Things Jar. “Athena Dixon on finding the right balance of what you want and what you need.”

17. 7 Daily Rituals to Release Stress and Worry from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

18. ‘Crafting Sanctuaries’ Sheds Light on Black Experience in the South During the Great Depression. “In a collaboration between Art Bridges and Museum of Art + Light, a new exhibition titled Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Black Great
Depression South revolves around more than three dozen rarely seen images from the FSA archive that shed light on Black spaces during the Great Depression. Photos of homes, churches, schools, and barbershops demonstrate how ‘interior and public gathering spaces became canvases for self-determination and cultural preservation.'”

19. Why We Climb (2017). “Revisiting an old lesson about the value of our struggles” from Connie Sun.

20. Curiosity as an act of courage on Nonviolence Radio. “A conversation with journalist and bridge builder Mónica Guzmán on the power of curiosity in a polarized world.”

21. 5 Quieter Kinds of Success Worth Claiming as a Creative. “Defining success for yourself” from Alix Klingenberg on Earth & Verse.

22. Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert on leaving her marriage for a dying friend: ‘She said, Let’s just live balls to the wall until I die!’ “One was a happily married and internationally famous writer, the other a cool, funny hairdresser and ex-drug addict. Then a shock diagnosis pitched them into an intense love affair.”

23. The Tension Between Rest and Living Fully. (video) “We all want to ‘make the most’ of our time. But what happens when that urge makes it hard to simply enjoy a slow, unplanned day?”

24. 100 things to support your mental health that aren’t go for a walk and drink more water, “with all due respect to going for a walk and drinking water” from Lauren McQuistin.

25. Unmade beds and overdue books: Photographing the rooms of kids killed in school shootings.

26. A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In on The New York Times. (gift link) “More people are turning to general-purpose chatbots for emotional support. At first, Adam Raine, 16, used ChatGPT for schoolwork, but then he started discussing plans to end his life.”

27. Book burning, Latin prayers – and a lot of kids: inside the American ‘trad family’ movement. “The movement towards simple, Christian living can be a yearning for order in a chaotic age. It’s also alarmingly retrograde.”

28. Why more and more people are tuning the news out: ‘Now I don’t have that anxiety.’ “Emotional toll of constant negative news and unlimited access to ‘doomscrolling’ has led to record-high news avoidance.”

29. Photographer Ulric Collette Splices Portraits of Family Members into Uncanny Composites.

30. And finally, this random collection of things I saved to my phone last week.