1. Good stuff from Seth Godin: Closed/open (“it’s almost impossible to pick up something when your hand is in a tight fist”), and Goals and expectations, and Appropriate tension.

2. My Health and Wellness Plan? Icelandic Horses. “Serious illness gave our writer an urgent need for physical and spiritual rebirth. She found both by bonding with a unique riding breed that seems touched by Viking spirit.”

3. In Praise of Transparency from Jena Schwartz. Also, the poem at the end of this post is SO GOOD, especially this ending:

“She walks away
and you step into the water
Exit, entrance

You glide towards the reflections
of tree trunks
the clouds as your witness

All the ugliness washes away
All the fight quiets
All the questions calm down

And for a few minutes
you remember to be carried”

4. Poetry from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Above Treeline, and After a Difficult Day, and One Evesdropping.

5. Wisdom from Henry Miller: “To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.” Yes, please.

6. Panic Attacks: 11 Tips to Flip the Switch.

7. Old complaints and grievances from Austin Kleon.

8. Seriously… from BBC Radio 4, “A rich selection of documentaries aimed at relentlessly curious minds. No subject is too strange, no idea too weird. Released twice a week, this podcast is introduced by Vanessa Kisuule.”

9. Everything is talking on Instagram. “Stories are everywhere. Everything is talking.”

10. Street Art Frankey, a 60 sec doc on Instagram, “a street artist from Amsterdam whose urban interventions give everyday street elements an extraordinary upgrade. He transforms mundane objects into creative art installations, injecting a delightful twist into the concrete jungle.”

11. Activist Micro Action Dispatch: Support Your Public Library from Omkari Williams.

12. what to love when you’re running out of things to love, a 10-Line Tuesday poem from Maya Stein.

13. Wisdom from Lion’s Roar: The Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness (“Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi unpacks the Buddha’s original mindfulness manual”), and This Moment is Perfect (“No matter what we experience when we’re meditating, it only has meaning when we take it out into our daily lives, shares the late Thich Nhat Hanh. There is nothing we experience that we can’t approach with the mindfulness and compassion we develop in our meditation”), and My 49-Day Journey Through Grief (“After the devastating loss of her son, Karen Wallace Bartelt sought solace beyond the practices of her Christian faith. Finding inspiration in Buddhism, she shares how she learned to sit with her grief and create a sacred space within for transformation to unfold”).

14. Please Help Adanne Bookshop Relocate. “A Black woman-owned bookstore is in need of our help.”

15. How Your House Makes You Miserable. “What do you truly love in a house — not because it’s current, not because it’s on HGTV, but because it makes it feel like you, a person in the world, live there? And how different would it feel to look upon your space not with the harsh eye of the market, but with the warm, gracious lens of home?”

16. 3 Surprisingly Tiny Habits That Will Help You Feel Happier from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

17. An Introvert’s Survival Guide to Navigating Parties.

18. A Small Spiritual Tweak, “The extraordinary power of realistic rituals & routines” from Satya Robyn. Also from Satya, What Is Gentle Buddhism?

19. You do you: Essays on being creative, a new book from Danny Gregory. “My goal is to help you realize your amazing creative potential and to clear the crap that’s getting in the way of having an authentic, creative life. You can do this. I can help.” My copy is on its way.

20. Do Feel Free to Have an Unexpressed Thought from “Cranky” Patti Digh, “The power of wow and silence.”

21. 35 Things I’ve Learned (About Relationships) In 35 years.

22. No, Public Education Isn’t Too Woke. It’s Barely Even Awake. “Some politicians are invoking a false narrative for political gain.” In related news, Teach The Truth.

23. Barack Obama’s 2023 summer reading list.

24. The Brief, Wondrous Life of Little Leo. “When Leo Babler was born with a rare and deadly genetic disorder, his parents reshaped their lives, moving to the mountains, building out an adventure van, and making sure their son experienced the most beautiful wild places in the country during the time they had.”

25. What Not To Say To A Grieving Person When Someone Dies.

26. Miles Music Kid. (video) “Miles is proficient on a slew of instruments, and plays them on his own recordings, mixing them with his own vocals, or even recreating hits by other artists note-for-note. And other notable artists are recognizing the talent of this young musician, who’s just turned seven.”

27. I’m Not a Mourning Person: Braving Loss, Grief, and the Big Messy Emotions That Happen When Life Falls Apart. “From New York Times bestselling author Kris Carr, comes a transformational book about love, loss, and all the life-changing insights we receive when we embrace them.” I pre-ordered my copy.

28. The former news anchor at the center of the mindfulness movement.

29. Extraordinary tattoos of realistic still-life figures by Makkala Rose.

30. 135-Pound Mastiff Becomes Obsessed With A Tiny Kitten | The Dodo Odd Couples. (video)

31. This was posted on Facebook and I can’t find where it came from originally but it’s good.

32. Inner Eclipses: Waiting for the Return of our Hidden Suns. “The way to safely view an eclipse is through goggles or a tiny hole. You need protection so you aren’t hurt. And holding despair may be the same. You need the ability to take in just a small view of something so big. The things that happen that bring forth despair in us are things that are not only big–they are what makes us human. Despair is the ultimate experience of being mortal—of knowing that in that moment our biggest power is the power to witness what is true, even if the truth is hard, or awful or unbearable.”

33. Wild Crow Becomes Best Friends With This Family | The Dodo Wild Hearts. (video)

34. Red Rebel Armour, “a collective of urban Indigenous storytellers sharing their experiences through streetwear fashion…creating a signature and powerful style that celebrates Indigenous identity, resilience, and pride.” Their Someone’s Good Medicine hoodie and Hummingbird Joy hoodie are my favorites.

35. Elon Musk looks to rebrand Twitter with the letter X. He is such a buffoon. Every news item about him seems like something from The Onion.

36. I Love Coffee, but I Gave It Up for MudWtr. Don’t Make My Mistake.

37. Bucolic landscapes painted on the surfaces of cut tree trunks by Alison Moritsugu.

1. Getting Words on the Page with Jena Schwartz, (use the special coupon code CREATIVESUMMER to get 50% off the regular course price until August 31). And this post where she says, “Too often, we keep ourselves from writing because we afraid of not being good, or even good enough. That’s why I come back, both in the course and in my own writing practice, to these three steps.”

2. Ring the bells that you can ring. “Imagine if you thought of all your mistakes as future art?”

3. On a Day When Stillness Seems Possible, a poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. In related news, (and my apologies if I’ve already shared this), The Pen and the Sword: Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer shares All the Honey (podcast). Also, With the Stars All Around, another poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer about which she said, “I wrote it for Finn the week before he died–he was struggling mightily while in Ecuador, and we were talking on the phone a lot and I felt so helpless. I wrote it for him, but later, of course, I realize (especially with those last lines) how much I was writing it for me.”

4. Three Essential Steps to My Recovery: Rage. Reclamation. Relationship. I don’t usually like sharing things that are “old” but there are exceptions — this post is from 2019, but it’s from Carmen Cool and now just so happened to be the right time for me to read it.

5. Why Introverts Are More People-Oriented Than You May Think.

6. This excerpt from A Future We Can Love: How We Can Reverse the Climate Crisis with the Power of Our Hearts and Minds by Susan Bauer-Wu: “If we reflect deeply and examine the psychology of self- versus other-orientation, we’ll come to recognize that many of the fears, anxieties, and stresses that plague us are rooted in excessive self-focus. Excessive self-focus makes us tense, our sense of self fragile, bringing ego brittleness, and it leads us to overreact in the face of a challenge. On the other hand, if we can open our hearts a little bit and orient toward others, this simple shift makes us feel more expansive, even more courageous, I would say. There is a sense of freedom that comes in the absence of the heaviness of self-agenda. We can feel more relaxed even. Also, being in touch with our shared humanity with others, we feel less lonely and more connected with others. So, if we are truly serious about our own long-term well-being, we need to open up our heart and orient more toward others. And, of course, if we truly care about the world and its inhabitants, compassion has to be at the core of how we view the world and relate to others.”

7. Good stuff from Seth Godin: Remarkable pronouncements, The good news, (Without the bad parts), and “I don’t like it.”

8. On Want, a poem from Kai-Lilly Karpman.

9. Living a life we don’t have to escape from from Kaira Jewel Lingo.

10. Eating disorder non-profit pulls chatbot for emitting ‘harmful advice.’

11. From Barbara Kingsolver: (by way of Hugh Hollowell’s Life Is So Beautiful newsletter) “There are days when I can’t live in this country. Not the whole thing at once, including the hateful parts, the misogyny, the brutal disregard of the powerful for the powerless. Sometimes I can only be a citizen of these trees, this rainy day, the family I can hold safe, the garden I can grow. A fire that refuses to go out.” In the same newsletter edition, he shared this (and I’m shook): Antisemitism, False Information and Hate Speech Find a Home on Substack.

12. Activist Micro Action Dispatch | This week’s 10 minute task: Refining Our Focus, a great reminder from Omkari Williams.

13. Good things from Lion’s Roar: How to Cultivate Resilience in Tough Times (“Shauna Shapiro explains how to face difficult emotions, re-center, and find calm”), and A24’s “Past Lives” is a Meditation on Love and Longing (“Lion’s Roar Associate Editor Noel Alumit reviews A24’s new movie, Past Lives, the debut film of director Celine Song”), and The Tathagata’s Ten Wisdom Powers (“The Avatamsaka, or Flower Garland Sutra, details the path and practices of the bodhisattva. Among these are ten powers that arise from the awakened human mind. Rev. Heng Sure on how teacher and student alike might realize them”).

14. Pause for Summer from Frederick Joseph, “A poem reminding you all to remember to be alive today.”

15. A great set of prompts to ponder from Alexandra Franzen: “What’s something that angers you? Or, something that breaks your heart? How could you channel your emotions into an art project, a book, or solution?”

16. ‘I was the rejection queen.’ “Most wannabe authors would give up the will to write after 98 refusals, but not Bonnie Garmus. The first-time novelist tells Lynn Barber about the female rage that led her to write Lessons in Chemistry and the rescue dog that became one of the book’s best loved characters.”

17. Lifeboat from Jami Attenberg. 

18. Invite others to imagine from Patti Digh. “Our questions make all the difference in the answers we live.”

Please note: I am sitting here having a meltdown because somehow I obliterated items 19-26 on this list as I was working on it and I don’t think there’s any way of getting them back (yes, I checked my drafts) and retracing my steps to rebuild that portion of the list would take WAY too long and be incredibly frustrating so I’m going to start where I am now, call it 19 and move on… *sigh* A few of them were about climate change and white nationalism, so maybe it’s for the best. And, life is just like this: sometimes you lose things, things that mattered, things you can never get back.

19. Penguin Hops On Kayak To Ask For Help. (video)

20. Benicio Bryant Singer sings “The Joke” AWESOME | America’s Got Talent 2019 Audition. (video)

21. Lost in the Milky Way, a poem by Linda Hogan.

22. On Being with Krista Tippett: Pádraig Ó Tuama | “This fantastic argument of being alive.” In related news, Pádraig Ó Tuama reading his poem “The Facts of Life.” (video)

23. Recipes I want to try: Peach Brussels Sprouts Crunch Salad with Creamy Tahini Poppy Seed Dressing and Vegetable Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce.

24. Uncurated Thoughts 22: Make stuff even if it’s bad! (Instagram Reel on Facebook)

25. 75 Pictures That Make Me Grin Uncontrollably No Matter How Many Times I’ve Seen Them.

26. Sthira and Sukha – Finding balance on and off the mat. “How do we strike the balance between doing too much and straining, and doing too little and feeling like we’re not trying hard enough? Laia explores the concepts of Sthira and Sukha.” I’ve been working a lot with this concept, in my teaching and my own practice.

27. There’s a massive free catalogue of Indigenous films online — here are 5 picks to get you started.

28. Casey Grim’s Video Resume For A Minimum Wage Retail Job Is Everything That Was Right With The Internet. Having worked retail for 10+ years, I really appreciated this.

29. Dog Has Been at Shelter for 500 Days ‘Because of Black-Dog Syndrome.’ This never makes sense to me, but I will ALWAYS pick the black dog.

30. Good stuff from Austin Kleon: Never waste your midlife crisis and Laziness and discipline.