So great to be partnering with Wanderlust to share this list with a larger audience.
1. The homeless man who turned his life around by offering book reviews instead of begging. “You don’t have to be rich to save the world,” Philani Dladla, The Pavement Bookworm. The foundation he started is really cool.
2. Students protesting Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home”: How clinging to “Christian moral beliefs” can end an education before it even begins on Salon. “Liking is not learning, of course — and learning is not always comfortable.” And in related news, Alison Bechdel Would Like You to Call It the “Bechdel-Wallace Test,” ThankYouVeryMuch.
3. A Question of Prosperity from Meghan Genge in which she considers what it means to feel prosperous.
4. Open Letter to Native College Students.
5. It’s Not Just ODU Students Putting Up Offensive Signs About Freshman Girls. Not something good so much as something you should know about. I wonder what the parents of these young men think about this? What do their mothers think?
6. Why America Needs a Slavery Museum. I’m still surprised there is currently only one.
7. Modern ‘train-nomad’ chooses to live on trains instead of renting. In related news, I secretly lived in my office for 500 days.
8. Hurricane Katrina happened ten years ago. It’s just as devastating ten years out. These Are The Forgotten Images Of Hurricane Katrina, and The 85 Most Powerful Hurricane Katrina Images, and This American Life 565: Lower 9 + 10, and 10 Years After Katrina.
9. 10 Successful Entrepreneurs on the Worst Advice They Ever Received.
10. 100 Cameras Were Given To Homeless In London And The Result Left Everyone Speechless.
11. 30 Reasons Why I Write by Jon Westenberg. Things like, “There’s no despair that can’t be held at bay with words,” and “My writing is my own roadmap – it helps me find my way.”
12. why dinner was late last night from SouleMama. It’s a beautiful reason.
13. I’m Sorry I Didn’t Respond to Your Email, My Husband Coughed to Death Two Years Ago.
14. The Greatest Commencement Addresses of All Time on Brain Pickings. I know it’s not the right season for this as most students are just going back to school not graduating, but if you want some serious inspiration this is the place.
15. Wisdom from Jessica Patterson,
If you want to know real freedom, you must learn forgiveness. That doesn’t mean collapsing boundaries or giving up or giving in. It doesn’t mean going back. It doesn’t mean absolution or sweeping things under the rug. It means you let go of grasping–and that which has a grip on you. It means reclaiming your own inner sanctuary and ushering out what’s crowding your space. Let go of the need to be right, to be in control, to be understood, to be certain. Let go of what has distracted you from the grace of each moment–your birthright, your presence.
16. No, I Am Not Crowdfunding This Baby (an open letter to a worried fan) by Amanda Palmer, a beautiful contemplation of the tenderness and terror of being a mother and an artist.
17. Boy, 13, Keeps Father Alive After He’s Badly Hurt by Falling Boulder. May we all have someone like this to help when we need it.
18. Brave Girl University is open for enrollment. It is “a one-stop gathering place for learning, growing and becoming, through hundreds of classes taught by dedicated teachers who offer soulful ways to make life better, happier and more authentic for every woman. From painting to gardening to meditation to relationships and much more. . . access it ALL for just $24.95 per month.” I’ve taken classes with many of these teachers, and am amazed by what a good deal this is.
19. Good stuff from Dances with Fat: What If I’m Not Happy With My Weight, and George Takei and Why I Can’t Take a Joke, and Telling Truth to Power.
20. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,
If something isn’t getting you closer to your heart’s most precious goals, if it isn’t making your most important relationships stronger and more valued, if it is not helping you grow and making your heart sing, maybe it’s time to think about letting it go.
If you will listen very very very closely, you will know for sure what to hold on to…and what to let go…and where to spend your precious minutes and energies.
And this,
You know SO much more than you think you know. Each of us was born with a lovely inner compass…it’s there to guide us. We must tune out almost every voice around us to be able to focus on what this inner voice tells us is true for our own lives.
Please don’t give any heed at all to the useless opinions of others, beautiful friend. Act for yourself. Face your own truths…then act on your own truths. Plug your ears when there are annoying, loud, negative voices that have no business giving you opinions about your own life. Turn off the confusing lies, and be brave enough to tune in to that inner voice that speaks your truth. Those feelings in your gut are your deepest wisdom, and you will recognize the voice of truth by the warm and peaceful feelings it brings.
21. 7 Simple Ways to Soothe Your Soul from Be More With Less. “Sometimes your soul needs time to just hang out with your heart, and your truth.”
22. I Had a Baby and Cancer When I Worked at Amazon. This Is My Story.
23. The Monk Manifesto: Seven Principles for Living with Deep Intention. I had never heard of this before Erica Staab posted about it on her blog. It is “a public expression of your commitment to live a compassionate, contemplative, and creative life.” I think if one were to live according to this manifesto, they would be ridiculously happy, completely content. Or maybe that’s just me.
24. 85 Percent of What We Worry About Never Happens. I heard once that “worrying is like praying for what we don’t want to happen.” This article gives yet another reason why worry is wasted.
25. Good stuff from Austin Kleon’s newsletter: I’ve Spent A Lifetime Building a Mighty Network. Here Are My Secrets., and Marshall McLuhan on writing, and The Steal Like An Artist Journal (I want).
26. Sarah Silverman just life-coached everyone who’s felt undeserving. Such a cool perspective. (video)
27. Write Anyway: October, a workshop with Janelle Hanchett. Sometime I really want to do one of these.
28. Good stuff Alexandra Franzen shared in her newsletter: The “Grocery List” Method To Writing Your Bio. (So Easy. For Real.), and Ask Alex & Ellen: I got rejected and now I want to give up. How can I get motivated again?, and What Does The World Need More Of In Order To Heal?, and a podcast interview Alexandra Franzen on Changing with Grace and How To Be More Intentional With Your Time.
29. Shared on Positively Present Picks: Living Your Dreams Will Piss People Off. Do It Anyway., and this quote from Oprah Winfrey, “I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”
30. Good stuff from Susannah’s Something for the Weekend list: The unconscious quality of judgment. And Mötley Crüe, and Annapurna Woman Susannah Conway, (this whole interview series is really great), The Pep Talk Generator, and Things That Will Happen If I Don’t Take My Phone Out Right Now, and Raise Your Hand Say Yes with Lisa Congdon on Passion Projects.
31. Wisdom from Aimée Reed, by way of The Pep Talk Generator mentioned above,
“Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing” — Cormac McCarthy. We all have to do things we don’t like in pursuit of our goals and dreams. However, if you are doing something that doesn’t directly correlate to you achieving them, then stop. Immediately. In reality, we have but a minute on this earth. Work, live, take chances, love, eat, argue, make mistakes, fight, and screw like you have 30 seconds left on the stopwatch.
32. Where Children Sleep, a photo series from James Mollison, “stories of diverse children around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms.”
33. When Doing Yoga by Yourself from Bad Yogi.
34. 8 Things I Learned from 10 Months Unplugged on Elephant Journal.
35. Veruca Salt has a new album coming out.
36. Fundraising page for one of my favorite bears who’ll be doing the Out of the Darkness Walk, raising money for The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
38. 4 Questions that Will Change Your Attitude (When You Can’t Change Anything Else) from Marc and Angel Hack Life.
39. On The Subject Of Your Discouragement on Terrible Minds.
40. Viral Photo Of Syrian Refugee Prompts Strangers To Give Him ‘A New Life.’
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 