1. Why I Don’t Clean My House from Laurie Wagner. In related news, the next session of Wild Writing is open for registration.

2. Activist Micro Action Dispatch: Dissent and Democracy from Omkari Williams.

3. Why Write Anything from Jami Attenberg.

4. Good stuff from Lion’s Roar: Detox Your Mind: 5 Practices to Purify the 3 Poisons (“Five Buddhist teachers share practices to clear away the poisons that cause suffering and obscure your natural enlightenment. Introduction by Lion’s Roar’s editor-in-chief Melvin Mcleod”), and How to Practice Metta for a Troubled Time (“Mushim Patricia Ikeda teaches us how to generate loving-kindness and good will as an antidote to hatred and fear”), and To Practice Mindfulness Is to Return to Life (“Thich Nhat Hanh on mindfulness, harnessing compassion, and cherishing life”).

5. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön: “The two witnesses of what you do are others and yourself. Of these two, you are the only one who really knows exactly what is going on. So work with seeing yourself with compassion but without any self-deception.”

6. Love Notes From The Chemo Room: A Surprisingly Tender Place from Andrea Gibson.

7. Good stuff from Seth Godin: Getting to no, ChatGPT for you, and Convenience and scams.

8. 11 Things Introverts Secretly Wish You’d Stop Doing.

9. What if we’ve been thinking about health all wrong? from Karen Walrond on Chookooloonks.

10. Wisdom on grief from Abigail Rose Clarke: (who recently lost her dog, her “second heart,” after 17 years) “I am continuing to learn the lesson that sharing the grief is better than trying to continue on as though everything is normal, because grief is a wild thing, and in the midst of it, nothing is normal.”

11. Russell Brand is a familiar story by Rebecca Solnit. “Can we really be surprised when rich and powerful men are accused of sexual abuse?”

12. Slow Factory’s Céline Semaan Gets Real About Sustainability Activism. “Working to ‘Change the World’ is hard. Anyone who ever cared about making the world a better place in any way has learned that change is an uphill battle and resistance can come from unexpected places. Companies don’t want to change. Governments and institutions don’t want to change. Even friends and peers may turn on you and resort to shaming or bullying you for your attempts to create positive change in the world.”

13. Free Your Mind(set). “What if our jobs weren’t who we are, but something we did because our lives were enriched by something more than money? The longing to ‘get rich quick’ has survived thousands of iterations, all of which position wealth as integral to happiness. ‘Think and grow rich’ is one of those concepts, and like all the others, it robs people of the opportunity to build community and drive social progress, two things that can’t be measured by the amount of money in your bank account.”

14. I was sucked into a romantic scam and it broke my heart. “We know romantic scammers swindle thousands of dollars from victims, but the heavy emotional toll receives less attention. Alison Cutler, a recent scamming victim, tells her story.”

15. ‘It’s the great leveller, uniting people across social classes’: Grace Dent on Britain’s love affair with cheese. “From eating cheap cheddar and ‘plastic’ slices at home in Cumbria to mixing with posh owners of ‘cheese caves’ down south, the Guardian’s restaurant critic on the creamy, fatty, salty bliss of her favourite comfort food.”

16. The Ezra Klein Show: America’s Top Librarian on the Rise of Book Bans. “The American Library Association president Emily Drabinski takes stock of why libraries have become epicenters of the culture wars.”

17. 11 reasons not to make art from Danny Gregory. He made a video about the post I shared of his on last week’s list.

18. What color is your cape? from Patti Digh. “On feeling needed, choosing right helpfulness, and stepping back.”

19. Autumn Equinox wisdom from Lucian James: “It’s a transitional time. In Spring and Summer, things move up and out. From today, things move down and in. An equinox is a pivotal moment – an introduction to the flip side of the year. It’s an opportunity to reset things which have got out of whack. It’s a time to reverse what’s not working.”

20. What is silent walking? The latest viral workout trend has some intriguing benefits. We always walk in silence, because we have to be able to hear if a deer is running towards us or a bike is coming down the trail.

21. Bobby Johnson, also known as The RxCK STxR, gives voice and attitude to animals. One of my favorite Instagram accounts.

22. 7 Self-Care Behaviors That Most People Neglect.

23. Interviews with Austin Kleon: Austin Kleon: Creativity, parenting and Don Quixote (video) and (Not) Too Weird To Be Popular | The Body, Brain, & Books: Eleven Questions with Austin Kleon.

24. 24 Questions for the (Jewish) New Year from Jena Schwartz.

25. ‘Symbol of hope’: Lahaina’s beloved banyan shows new growth after fires. “Community rallies to save colossal 150-year-old tree after Maui wildfires badly singed it last month.”

26. The inside story of The Great British Bake Off: ‘We were microphoned up in the toilets!’ “As the show returns, bakers, judges and the creators of the smash hit take us behind the scenes – from the chaos of the early days to its place at TV’s top table.”

27. Planting a meadow and growing a community.

28. Fungi, Feathers, and Insects Spring from Carol Long’s Art Nouveau Vessels.

29. Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing.

30. Poems from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Saving Grace, and Ten-Dollar Bouquet, and Translation. 

P.S. Kind and gentle reader: I am making another trip to Oregon, so there will be no new list next week, but there is an archive of 598 something good lists.

1. Wisdom from Omkari Williams: “The world feels very hard right now, let’s do what we can to bring some softness to it.”

2. Issue #252 of The Red Hand Files from Nick Cage, in which he explains the benefits of both humility and curiosity, advising that we “try to make more use of humility and curiosity – these attributes have a softening effect on our sometimes inflexible and isolating value systems. They allow us to remain true to our temporary selves but fluid and playful in our dealings with this strange and ever-changing world.”

3. Good stuff from Lion’s Roar: Waking Up in Dark Times (“In order to shed light on the realities of climate change, says Ajahn Sucitto, first we should get more comfortable with the darkness”), and Get Curious About Your Anxiety (“Buddhism and psychoanalysis take the same approach to calming the anxious mind, says Dr. Pilar Jennings—look with friendly curiosity at your anxiety and what causes it”), and How to Help When Your Heart Breaks (“Caring for people who are suffering is a loving, even heroic calling, but it takes a toll. Roshi Joan Halifax teaches this five-step program to care for yourself while caring for others”).

4. How to Stay in Touch With Long-Distance Friends as an Introvert.

5. Declutter Clothes: 10 Steps to End Closet Clutter.

6. A memoir in plants. “A Q&A with Briana Loewinsohn, author of the graphic memoir Ephemera.”

7. Healing from Trauma Step by Step from Gretchen Schmelzer. “All learning is this way—and healing is really learning—only some of the most difficult learning—because it is both an unlearning and learning. You have to unlearn all of the protections and defenses you used to survive that no longer serve you, and you have to learn new thoughts, behaviors and attitudes that can help you grow again.”

8. 11 reasons not to make art from Danny’s Essays, by Danny Gregory.

9. 3 Empowering Ways for Sensitive Introverts to Use ‘I’m Sorry’.

10. The Divine Right to Beautiful Things from Frederick Joseph. “Understanding that people in-need also deserve joy.”

11. On people-shaped holes from Patti Digh. “Acknowledging the people on the periphery of our lives.”

12. Open Secrets, “an online magazine for memorable, revealing personal essays about all the subjects we’re taught to keep ‘secret.'” 

13. Good stuff from Seth Godin: It goes without saying and I’ve been doing it wrong all along.

14. The Other Side of the Portal: Speculative Fiction in The Sun.

15. Why AI art struggles with hands.

16. How To Spend Less Money (25 simple tips) from Tammy Strobel on Be More With Less.

17. Wisdom from Sarah Ban Breathnach, by way of her book Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self: “But at the end of the day, when we’re finally alone, we’re peering down into the black hole in our hearts. Our insatiable, inexplicable, longing probes the emptiness much the same way you do when you can’t keep your tongue out of that sensitive, empty spot that once held a decaying tooth.”

18. The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul.

19. Questions for Higher Weight Patients and Their Healthcare Providers from Ragen Chastain. “Our current medical view of weight and health is deeply muddied by weight loss industry involvement. I created this list of questions as a guide to interrogation. It can be used by or with healthcare practitioners, or by anyone who wants to take a critical look at our current weight and health paradigm.”

20. A Creative Evolution from Abigail Rose Clarke. “I wasn’t an artist when I started selling my art. I’m not sure I’m an artist now.”

21. Recipe I want to try: Broccoli and Apple Salad.

22. Why Do Feldenkrais? In related news, Feldenkrais Method: a new way of thinking about health.

23. For When People Ask, a poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

24. Lost In Translation at 20: Is it still Suntory Time? “The culture has shifted in the two decades since Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson bonded in a Tokyo hotel. So, does this film still hold up?”

25. Want to Thrive? First, Learn to Fail. on The New York Times.

26. Kirk Franklin Reunites With Biological Father After 53 Years, Finds Out They Lived Just Minutes From Each Other. “To live over half a century with somebody who lived in the same city as you… I suffered so much as a young man without guidance.”  The accompanying short documentary, Father’s Day: A Kirk Franklin Story, is really beautiful.

27. ‘When it’s cold at night, it’s no longer a game’: living off the grid in Colorado. “Thousands of Americans are attracted to the idea of a self-reliant life in a remote area, but the dangers can be profound.”

28. Aparna Nancherla Is Looking for Comic Relief on The New York Times. “The comedian’s mental health got so bad she had to stop performing. Now she has returned.”

29. Complete Sentence, “a magazine of single-sentence prose. We champion punchy and poignant work that celebrates syntactical exploration—narratives that expand or contract within a single sentence.”

30. How Accurate are Dystopian Novels, Really?

31. Gorgeous figures ‘painted’ with a power washer on dirty driveways by Dianna Wood.

32. ‘An Indigenous Present’ Is a Paradigm-Shifting Illumination of Native North American Art Today.

33. Where I’m From on A Grace Full Life.

34. Craft Tip: An Exit Strategy from Maggie Smith.

35. Life In the Slow Lane: Why Soft and Slow is the new Busy from Tammy Strobel on Be More With Less.

36. Super cute animal videos I saw on Facebook: Scout the dog escaped his shelter three times and showed up to an assisted living facility so he lives there now, and Donkey Plays with Pink Unicorn, and Yukon Wildlife Cam, and Woman pulls over to rescue a teeny-tiny puppy — watch what happens when she brings him home to her huge dog.

37. Maria Bamford Is Hilariously Transparent. “The prolific comedian spoke to GQ about mental health, the importance of negotiating for better pay, and her new memoir, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult.” I just finished her book last night — so good!