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

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

1. Multitasking is Killing Your Brain. “Multitasking is not a skill to add to the resume, but rather a bad habit to put a stop to.”

2. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön, from her book Start Where You Are: a Guide to Compassionate Living, “The reason that people harm other people, the reason that the planet is polluted and people and animals are not doing so well these days is that individuals don’t know or trust or love themselves enough.” So simple. So incredibly complicated.

3. Good stuff from Patti Digh: Your life is the vision board. Better get a new glue stick. and strong offer Friday : transform terror into commitment, and entitlement into hope, which includes the video and transcript of Laurie Foley’s Life is a Verb Camp talk.

4. The Best Female Rock Climber In the World is 14 Years Old (so cool) from Great Big Story, whose tagline is “From the cosmos to cosplay and pizza to our very planet itself, it’s time to feed your feed with the most curious and compelling stories being told.” Take some time and check out their other videos.

5. Let Them Eat Cake: My Weight Restoration Story. Because this, “The only weight that I needed to drop was that of internalized misogynistic self-hate. I didn’t need to lose any pounds. I needed to lose the sound of “You’re worthless” that reverberated in my ears — in my own voice — every time I had a craving for chocolate or was too tired to go to the gym.”

6. Husband Asks Wife To Draw What’s On Her Mind, Gets More Than He Expected. #same

7. New music: Paublo Nouvelle. This is my jam. There used to be an online radio station called Beach House Radio, and if they were still around, they’d totally be playing this. I heard him first on the Chill station I listen to on SiriusXM satellite radio (so good, “downtempo electronic and deep house”), but you can also find his stuff on SoundCloud and YouTube, or buy his new CD.

8. Bringing Kindness, Full Stop on Allowing Myself. Justine told me recently that when she got her yearly blog report, it showed I shared her stuff the most of anyone — because she’s so good.

9. Dog Breaks Out Of Kennel To Comfort Abandoned Crying Puppies. This story gives me all the feels. Here’s the video.

10. 13 Plus-Size Models Killing The Fashion Game Right Now. Next step: stop calling them “plus size” and just call them models.

11. You Get To Decide from Michele Woodward. This is an older piece, but I wanted to share it again in honor of Laurie, who entered hospice this past week. Here’s a podcast she did a few years ago, Episode 7 – Laurie Foley – A Practice to Find God.

12. Life Before And After Getting A Dog (9 Pics). Word.

13. One-of-Kind Wool Rug Artworks by Alexandra Kehayoglou Mimic Rolling Pastures and Mossy Textures. These are amazing.

14. The One Thing We Need To See In Plus Size Fashion In 2016, (p.s. besides that thing where we stopped called it “plus size” and just call it fashion).

15. the shutterbugs: salva lópez on SF Girl by Bay. The colors, the wood and the plants and the light, the patina — so gorgeous.

16. 10 Reasons I Ditched Dieting from Dances With Fat. Amen.

17. Toddler GoPro Hide and Seek. “Strap a GoPro to your toddler and play Hide & Seek. So much awesome!” So cute.

18. Refugee Girls Got To Dress Up As What They Want To Be When They Grow Up. “The International Rescue Committee recently sent photographer Meredith Hutchison to meet with young girls in two refugee camps in Jordan and ask them about their hopes and dreams.”

19.‘Stop using BMI as measure of health,’ say researchers. Yes, please. In related news, BMI mislabels 54 million Americans as ‘overweight’ or ‘obese,’ study says.

20. The new Beyoncé video is nearly five minutes of unapologetic blackness.

21. The 20 Funniest Tweets From Women This Week.

22. Not Just a Death, a System Failure.

23. No exceptions from Chookooloonks. “If you want to be good at your job, at parenting and/or at life, you must practice self care. No exceptions.”

24. The Powerful Super Bowl Ad That Washington Redskins’ Owner Dan Snyder Needs to See. Word.

25. Super Bowl commercials 2016: the 9 best and 5 worst ads.

26. “Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Me” from Amy McCracken, one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite humans, and this is just one reason why.

Lory State Park, image by Eric

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

1. Adele’s latest album, 25. I’ve been listening to it nonstop since it was released. And this prank she pulled on a group of Adele impersonators is so sweet.

2. Wisdom from Susan Piver, “Love is the least safe thing there is. It’s fierce. You can’t domesticate it. It’s wild. When you find it you should rejoice. When you lose it you should grieve.”

3. 31 Days of Gifts You So Deserve from Be More With Less, “is like an advent calendar in your inbox designed to deliver the gifts you so deserve. The gifts are meaningful, some are magical, and all of them remind you to fully embrace the simplicity and meaning of the holidays with purpose and intention.” Added bonus? Pay what you want! This would make a great gift, for yourself or someone else.

4. NIH to retire all research chimpanzees. Fifty animals held in “reserve” by the US government will be sent to sanctuaries. This makes me so happy. Here’s one reason why, Chimp With Darkest Past Takes Comfort In Tiny Troll Doll.

5. Outlaw Willie Nelson Opens Up In Two Classic ‘Fresh Air’ Interviews. Confession: I adore Willie Nelson.

6. In ‘Just Eat It,’ Filmmakers Feast For 6 Months On Discarded Food.

7. Roasted leek and white bean galettes, a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Yum. And this Honey Maple Roasted Carrots recipe from the Cafe Sucre Farine. (I get a little obsessed with roasted veggies this time of year.)

8. Florida Teacher Starts Each Day Complimenting Students One by One.

9. Finding Your Way Back to the Practices that Serve Your Soul, Willo O’Brien on Medium. This, in particular, is brilliant, “Fully allowing and feeling the emotions. Letting them be and letting them come through. Listening to what they have to say, giving them love, compassion, and space. This is the ultimate practice at the heart of it all.”

10. The incurable creative virus from Paul Jarvis. Have I told you lately how much I adore him? (P.S. Here’s a call for stories that will be published in the book this piece will also be in).

11. 365 Collage Journal Flip Through from Jamie Ridler. This looks like a fun project.

12. “You can always just listen” from Judy Clement Wall.

13. One letter can change your life–or someone else’s, “a free digital booklet all about the art of letter writing” from Alexandra Franzen. With the holidays coming up, this is a great practice to start cultivating.

14. Good stuff from Chookooloonks’s this was a good week list: let us attempt to spill light, and Still learning lessons, and Karen’s advent of light journaling course.

15. The *new* Black Friday hosted by the amazing Sherry Richert Belul. “This Black Friday, go with the new black: Spend at least part of the day making a Love List as a holiday gift for someone you love.”

16. Good stuff from Susannah’s Something for the Weekend list: Visible Mending as an art form, and Shinning the Light on Sensitivity, and Elizabeth Gilbert on dealing with criticism.

17. A Funny Thing Happened When I Was Typing My Suicide Note…

18. Health at Every Size Lies from Dances with Fat.

19. READY ♥ SET ♥ REFLECT an online retreat being offered by the amazing Susie Stonefield Miller. This is for “anyone who is yearning to take some time to reflect on the past year, to let it inform this next year, to choose a word for the year and to make a gorgeous deck of inspiration cards,” and will include “short guided meditations with art journaling prompts, video tutorials, thoughtful worksheets, and community connection.” Good stuff.

20. Planning Day: Design Your 2016 from Jamie Ridler, a webinar to help you design the year you want.

21. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club, “…each minute we spend lending ourselves, our time or talents or energy or thoughts to something that we really want little or nothing to do with is time is stolen from the things that really do matter to us. Each minute spent with the parts of our life that we want to be free from is a minute that we are not at peace….a minute that is spent feeling miserable instead of joyful.”

22. Buddhism by the Numbers: The Four Noble Truths, a simple, clear description.

23. Ladybug take off – in slow motion. Nature is so fascinating, so amazing.

24. How our Feelings Weigh Down our Bodies on Elephant Journal.

25. 10 Things Black People Fear That White People Don’t (Or Don’t Nearly as Much).

26. 5 ways Christian fundamentalists completely misread the Bible.

27. The Gnomist: A Great Big Beautiful Act Of Kindness.

28. 20+ Cute And Funny Puns By Arseniic. Part of me feels like I’m too smart and too grown up to laugh at these, and the other part is laughing her thunderpants right off.

29. WATCH: A French Father Tries To Explain The Attacks To His Young Son. Sweet and heartbreaking. The way he smiles at his dad at the very end is worth the entire thing.

30. Three Reasons Frozen is Better.

31. Artwork is Work, Supporting the Arts Means Paying the Artists, a really great bumper sticker.

32. Nurse Writes This Heartbreaking Letter To The Parents Who Just Lost Their Daughter.

33. 48, written by Christine Mason Miller on our shared birthday, in which she says,

For now, while I’m able, I’m going to keep creating, feeling, living, crying, laughing, breathing deep breaths and being of service in whatever way I can. I will continue opening up my home to those I love. I will keep on trying to create the best I can create, whatever that means.

Today, I am turning 48 years old. Today, I am in awe of everything my first 47 years have given me. Today, I’m here to do one thing: LIVE.

34. Company is Coming. This is funny because it’s true. Anyone who is hosting Thanksgiving this year understands how it feels, the particular way you can lose your mind getting the house ready when you have people coming over.

35. Liz Kalloch’s redesigned website. LOVE it.

36. Watch Anthony Bourdain’s Mind Get Blown Eating At The Waffle House With Sean Brock. I always wonder where I’d take Anthony if he ever visited Fort Collins. Where would you take him where you live?

37. This quote from Arundhati Roy’s War Talk, which seems especially timely.

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

38. Horse Head Squirrel Feeder. This is the best, a great gift idea.