Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. The One Feeling I Didn’t Allow: When joy feels risky… from Andrea Gibson. “Falsely we believe that if we feel the heights of joy, we will have a longer and harder fall. But joy is not a tall building we can crash from. Joy is the cord of a parachute that can save us.”

2. So, What’s In the eCourse? from Jena Schwartz. “From getting started to getting unstuck, Getting Words on the Page may change the way you relate to your writing practice – and yourself!” This is going to be a great course and Jena is one of the best writers, coaches, teachers, humans out there — so if this calls to you, I wholeheartedly recommended you sign up.

3. American Experience. “For 35 years, American Experience has been television’s most-watched history series, bringing to life the incredible characters and epic stories that have shaped America’s past and present. American Experience documentaries have been honored with every major broadcast award, including 30 Emmy Awards, five duPont-Columbia Awards and 19 George Foster Peabody Awards. PBS’s signature history series also creates original digital content that innovates new forms of storytelling to connect our collective past with the present.”

4. WORK APPROPRIATE Podcast | My Industry is Failing: Veterinary Medicine Edition with Karen Fine. “For those of us who are pet lovers, a good vet clinic makes all the difference. But for those working in vet clinics, things can be really hard. In fact, veterinarians have a risk of death by suicide at a rate 2-4 times that of the general public. How did things get to be this way, and what hope is there for improvement? Dr. Karen Fine, DVM and author of The Other Family Doctor, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners’ questions about working in the vet industry – and how pet owners can offer support.”

5. My Benihana, Myself. “What learning to flip shrimp tails and build onion volcanoes taught me about the gift of performance, and its emotional toll.”

6. How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education. “It bears repeating that what makes life livable is our ability — our willingness — to move through the world wonder-smitten by reality.”

7. Throwing shade or throwing light? from Seth Godin.

8. When The World Crumbles, I Eat Cereal from Frederick Joseph. “And so, I implore you to find your bowl of cereal. Your symbolic refuge, the simplicity of your past becoming a sanctuary in the complex present. You will find that there is a certain kind of magic in these memories. They do not promise to fix the world, or mend our broken spirits overnight. What they do promise is the strength to carry on. They remind us of our resilience, our capacity to dream, our ability to find joy in the simplest of things, and our inherent knack to defy the darkness and create our own light.”

9. Something Worthy of the Sea from Summer Brennan. “An essay with two poems.”

10. DMs from New York City on The New York Times. “Messages, Graffiti and Hand-Written Notes From Across New York City.”

11. Sigur Rós – Andrá (Official Video). “I wished to show how Sigur Rós is the soundtrack of our lives through happiness, pain, hope, grief, and love. The short documentary, Andrá, celebrates the way in which Sigur Rós captures and channels the humanity that unites us all.”

12. 7 Things To Let Go Of For A Happier Life from Courtney Carver at Be More With Less.

13. Tiny Love Stories: ‘I Left Any Room She Entered’ on The New York Times. “Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words.”

14. How to Make the Most of Your Alone Time as an Introvert. All of these make sense to me, but the “take solo trips” for me mostly means “walk the dog” or “go to the grocery store” but I’m also slightly agoraphobic, so…

15. America’s unique, enduring gun problem, explained. “The factors that lead to tragedies like the Philadelphia shooting are deeply ingrained in US politics, culture, and law.”

16. People Who Take Regular Daytime Naps Tend to Have Bigger, Healthier Brains, Study Finds. Have you noticed my big, healthy brain?

17. Toni Morrison Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Countries to Fascism (1995).

18. New Interactive Fort Collins Colorado Mural Is Stunning and Promotes Mental Health. I shared a picture of this last week but didn’t know its story.

19. What’s a Luddite? An expert on technology and society explains.

20. Enchanting miniature animal sculptures by Katie Doka.

21. Abandoned Materials Are Upcycled Into Charming Bug Sculptures.

22. ‘Please Be Seated’ by Paul Cocksedge. (Instagram reel) “‘This work was an instinctive response to the space and the rhythm of people through it, based on early sketches by hand. It solves the practical problem of creating an artwork that fills a public square and engages passersby, without obstructing the space.’ ‘Please Be Seated’ features 1,152 reclaimed scaffolding boards. Each one has been planed, sanded, and cut to become part of a series of huge curves and concentric circles.”

23. These wild animal encounters are crazy! (Facebook video)

24. Simple Anxiety Hacks for Dealing With Crowds.

25. Things I want to watch: SmartLess: On The Road | Official Trailer (video) and Dreamin’ Wild | Official Trailer (video).

26. Roller Kingdom Commercial. (Facebook video) So bad it’s hysterical.

27. Modern Love: Kissing a Fellow Janitor Amid the Trash on The New York Times. “After two assaults, I sought healing on the coldest, driest and windiest continent on Earth.”

28. Obituary for a Quiet Life. “When the notable figures of our day pass away, they wind up on our screens, short clips documenting their achievements, talking heads discussing their influence. The quiet lives, though, pass on soundlessly in the background. And yet those are the lives in our skin, guiding us from breakfast to bed. They’re the lives that have made us, that keep the world turning.”

29. The Thread Vibes Are Off from Anne Helen Petersen. “This is pretty much what Threads feels like to me now: a place that’s ostensibly interesting (look, so many people are already here!) but is actually totally boring. It’s “fun,” but definitely not funny… It’s not entertaining or clever like TikTok. It’s just new and there, like a bowl of sub-par chips and store-bought guac at a party, asking “Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?””

30. PBS Short Film Festival 2023. “Since 2012, the PBS Short Film Festival (originally named PBS Online Film Festival) has been a platform and partner for promoting short films from independent filmmakers that are presented by public media partners and PBS member stations. Many of the films cover social issues that traditional film festivals tend to shy away from such as identity, culture, family, and race.”

31. The Tyranny of Good. “Good is an internal tornado and an external affair—you are working off an imagined external judge and jury, or as Anne Lamott once described—you are treating everyone in your life like a flight attendant trying to make all of the passengers happy. But if you can tolerate this messiness. If you can tolerate the terror of being what you have been calling ‘bad.’ You can come to understand something crucial: good is a very, very small world.”

1. Morning walks. Yesterday, even though there were mosquitoes and the risk of ticks, I really really needed some river medicine. It was totally worth it even if it was only for a little bit. We are still having so much rain that everything is super green.

2. Good people. I am surrounded by them — neighbors, students, friends, family. I’ve had to lean a little extra on a few of them this past week and they were right there and ready. And then there’s you, kind and gentle reader. 🙂 ❤

3. Practice. In two more days I’ll complete a sadana (dedicated disciplined spiritual practice) of 40 days of yoga asana. I have a consistent daily meditation and writing practice, but because I wasn’t teaching again until recently, my yoga practice wasn’t as consistent or intentional. I did at least one sun salutation every morning when I first got up for the past 38 days. The “rule” with this sort of short commitment is that if you miss a day, the 40 days start over.

It’s always so interesting to commit to anything for a period of time. It’s how I built my blog in the beginning, so many 30 day or month long posting challenges. It’s the thing about practice in general that is so amazing — you return to the same activity every day, see how your experience changes while the practice itself stays the same. You really start to see yourself and your situation clearly. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, “Yoga is the practice of tolerating the consequences of being yourself.”

4. Books. The above pictured trio by Michelle Cassandra Johnson were especially good. And I’m still wrecked from reading Educated, which wasn’t at all what I expected. I’m also rereading all of Andrea Gibson‘s work, trying to contend with their most recent health update.

5. My tiny family, small home, little life. I love my life so much — even when it’s hard, even when it hurts.

A neighbor built a new front porch and I want it

Bonus joy: keeping promises to myself, pizza, the smell of basil, writing with my wildish women sangha, training with Shelby and the gang, working out and walking with Eric, sitting in the sauna with him, the hydromassage chair, the pool, teaching yoga while it storms outside, rain and thunder, good TV (even when it’s bad), listening to music, a warm shower, clean sheets, dog tail wags and sighs, how Ringo makes me laugh (last night he was on the couch barking, trying to get my attention, so I threw a blanket over his head and he just stood there, then barked again but it was muffled and it cracked me up), sitting in the back yard with Ringo and Eric, every time a swallow tail butterfly floats over the backyard just like that one the day Sam died, all the recognition Eric is getting lately for the good work he does, that our nephew Jesse is okay after a motorcycle wreck last week, switching our internet provider, books for my Kindle from the library I can borrow and read and return without ever having to leave the house, the collapsible wagon I got to move yoga props when I teach at Red Sage and how Eric always helps me load and unload at home, crying (sometimes it’s the only thing that will make me feel better), other people’s dogs and kids, that people in our neighborhood seem to have finally run out of fireworks, new neighbors who have a kid and a dog, the four dogs across the street getting loaded up into their truck by their human (they have a ramp he sets up while they all wait and when he says “go ahead” they run up it in a line, three labs and a cattle dog, and they are clearly so happy), getting to see the July 4th 5k (on accident — we were out on a walk and apparently were on the same route as the race so had to pause and watch all the dogs and humans, many of them dressed up), that we are within walking distance of so many things but also in a quiet part of town, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.