Challenge Accepted: 10 Whole Minutes Alone With My Thoughts

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz.

Speaking of morning routines, for the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to work a new element into my morning routine. (Yep, maybe I should start sharing my sweet morning routine for y'all to follow!)

The new thing is to spend a mere 10 minutes just sitting, alone with my thoughts.

I have my notebook out and sometimes journal a bit. Or I just sit there and think about things. Either way, it is quiet and I am quiet. There is a timer to let me know when 10 minutes is up so that I don't check my clock the whole time.

What's the point?

I am not very good at being alone with my thoughts. I put on the radio, music, podcasts, Netflix, basically anything that adds another voice to my brain.

Being alone with your thoughts is important. It allows them to grow, change, multiply, or fade away, as needed. It lets you actually think them.

I want to teach myself that I don't need to be afraid of being alone with my thoughts anymore. I am pretty sure I learned to avoid it when I was living with depression; when being alone with my thoughts was actually a little bit dangerous. It's not anymore.

Also, it's a bit relaxing. It's a mini-reset before the day starts.

The hardest part is starting. Turning off the radio, pausing the podcast, putting down the book, and/or setting aside my phone is the biggest struggle of this whole thing. It's like taking away my security blanket. I know I'll be okay without it, but I don't want to be without it. Also, what if I am not okay this time? What if something horrible happens?

I often have a weird FOMO-like feeling when I go to turn off whatever I am listening to, which is usually something pre-recorded. I feel like I am going to miss out on something in a recording that I have paused and will start up again in 10 minutes. There is no logic to it. And yet. The mind resists.

So it's a practice that's good for me, but that I am struggling with. Maybe I always will?

How is your relationship with your thoughts? Are you totally comfortable being alone together, or do you need to manufacture opportunities like me?


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Here is a Thing To Do Instead of Following Celebrity Routines

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz.

I keep coming across articles about following the morning or afternoon or bedtime routines of various celebrities. Like, a lot. Is there a thing going around right now to motivate all this obsession?

I get it. If Oprah got where she is by meditating for twenty minutes and then exercising every morning, or Barack Obama made it by drinking green tea and watching ESPN, maybe something good will rub off if you do it too.

Here is my revolutionary perspective: MAYBE, these famous people did so well with their routines because they found a routine that worked well for THEM. As INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE.

MAYBE, instead of copying their routine, you could try to think about what YOU need and create a routine that is good for YOU! As an individual person! Who is different than some random celebrity! Because that's what you are. A whole, entire individual person with their own needs and ideas.

To help you out, I have put together the basic building blocks of most morning routines:


  • Waking up.
  • Something mindful - meditation, journaling, etc.
  • Something physically active.
  • Something creative.
  • Something fun.
  • Something relaxing.
  • Something that will feel like an easy accomplishment to start the day (like making the bed).
  • Cleaning and clothing your body.
  • FOOD!


You may do as many or few of these as you like, in whatever order you like. Although to count as a routine, I think you need at least three, and to get anything else done in your day you maybe can't do all of them. And waking up should probably happen first.


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Inspiration! Roundup: Bad Things Are Decreasing, Smallness, Myeongbeom Kim, Discrete Artists, and More!

This Week's "I want to go to there": Let's go see some plays!
Photo by Zach Jiroun.

Bad Things Decreasing

A lot of the time I feel like the world is an upward spiral of terribleness, but no! Not necessarily! It depends what you are looking at! For example, this textbook charts 16 bad things that are decreasing in the world, including child deaths, nuclear arms, ozone depletion, and hunger. So it's not all bad.

Small

“Small is not just a stepping-stone. Small is a great destination itself”
― Jason Fried

Emm's Positivity Blog

I love love loooove this blog of adorable animals saying positive things. Go! Follow! Enjoy!

Myeongbeom Kim

I love Myeongbeom Kim's artwork! Such fun interpretations of everyday objects.


What Does It Want?

This interview with writer Douglas A. Martin is pretty fantastic. Two favourite quotes, the first on trust:

"You just have trust that the work will ultimately tell you what it wants to be."

The second on giving yourself time in writing:

"When I first began writing fiction or prose I would do what I call blind writing. I would just write and not edit myself at all. I would write every day for like a year until I had around 300 pages. Then I’d wait a year or so to go back and look at it and shape it. A lot of the time I was cutting half of the book away, but enough time had passed where I could see what was there."

The Discrete Artist

Paraskevi Frasiola's series The Discrete Artist made me laugh out loud. She hides places. It's great.


Compliment

"What compliment do you wish you could receive about your work?"
-Will Allen (via Swiss Miss)

Verbing and Nouning

I got quite a kick out of this defence for the practice of verbing nouns and nouning verbs. Did you know that in 1850, CHOCOLATE was a verb? You could "chocolate and chat" with someone. That is excellent.

The Darkest Colour

Photographer Yannis Davy Guibinga's series The Darkest Colour is an amazing collection of black-on-black photos. Love.



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Focus Group: Let's Talk Insecurities

Photo by Yuris Alhumaydy.

A little while ago, I was talking to a mentor about my strengths and weaknesses, and what I am hoping to improve in the future. I pointed to my imposter syndrome and insecurities and said, "I want to get rid of these."

His response was that imposter syndrome and insecurities will always be there, taking different shapes as I move through life.

The part he didn't say, that I inferred, is that it may be better to make peace with the idea of having insecurities and to not worry so much about the particulars. That maybe I could just get used to seeing my insecurities and then doing whatever I thought was right, whether or not they came along for the ride. Or maybe even to notice and celebrate when insecurities transform into something new because maybe that means I am growing and changing!

This got me interested in the insecurities we have moved past. What are they? How did it happen? What replaced them?

I asked some friends to tell me about insecurities from their pasts that aren't such an issue anymore:

"I have been very insecure in my friendships, going back to elementary school. After an experience of bullying where friendship and access to friendship were used as currency, I spent a lot of years believing that people were pretending to be my friend so they could learn my secrets and use them against me at a later date. But in the past six to eight years I have developed some really great friendships. It’s not that those insecurities don’t poke their head out from time to time and taunt me, but the frequency and consistency of their presence has been reduced through therapy, education, and slowing re-learning how to trust."
-Lois

"My skills as a parent. This was crippling. For a good long while. I felt I was destroying myself and the new life I had created. But now there’s a lot less insecurity around the whole thing. Sure - I will forever second guess my decisions, but I now realize that the if I focus on the silliness, the love, and the opportunity for learning and then make sure to hydrate, feed, and clean her on a regular-type basis - I really don’t need to worry so much. The proof is in the pudding!"
-Alison

"It used to be that I wouldn't be caught DEAD in public without makeup. Several years ago, when my acne cleared up, I started letting this go. I'm still not crazy about bumping into people I know when I'm running errands bare-faced, but I care a lot less now about being gorgeous for every single stranger I meet, ha ha."
-Dice



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Cute! Roundup: Lounging Seals, Unexpected Friendship, Cat is Punk AF, and More!

I used to let Gertie out onto the balcony, but she has had her outdoor privileges removed since she started jumping up onto the railing, which she is definitely not coordinated enough to keep from falling off. She doesn't quite understand yet why the screen door is always closed now.

Sorry, little one! It's for your own good!


OTHER CUTENESS:

This lounging seal knows where it's at!

File this one under unexpected friendship: wiener dogs and... a LION!??!?

This cat is punk to its core.

A little bigger than the average dog in a bag.

A whole bunch of cats, but the top one!

A corgi and her support plushie.


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Singalong! Lovefool by The Cardigans

You know, the couple in this music video were literally just walking down the street when they were asked to be in this video. Seems like The Cardigans kind of lucked out on that one, didn't they?


LOVEFOOL
by The Cardigans

Dear, I fear we're facing a problem
You love me no longer, I know
And maybe there is nothing
That I can do to make you do
Mama tells me I shouldn't bother
That I ought to stick to another man
A man that surely deserves me
But I think you do!

So I cry, and I pray, and I beg

Love me, love me
Say that you love me
Fool me, fool me
Go on and fool me
Love me, love me
Pretend that you love me
Leave me, leave me
Just say that you need me

So, I cry, and I beg for you to

Love me, love me
Say that you love me
Leave me, leave me
Just say that you need me
I can't care 'bout anything but you

Lately I have desperately pondered
Spent my nights awake and I wondered
What I could have done in another way
To make you stay
Reason will not lead to solution
I will end up lost in confusion
I don't care if you really care
As long as you don't go

So I cry, and I pray, and I beg

Love me, love me
Say that you love me
Fool me, fool me
Go on and fool me
Love me, love me
Pretend that you love me
Leave me, leave me
Just say that you need me

So I cry, and I beg for you to

Love me, love me
Say that you love me
Leave me, leave me
Just say that you need me
I can't care 'bout anything but you

Anything but you

Love me, love me
Say that you love me
Fool me, fool me
Go on and fool me
Love me, love me
I know that you need me
I can't care 'bout anything but you

Giphy


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Ridiculous Enthusiasm: Let's Catch Up

Here's another taste of some of the Ridiculous Enthusiasm that's been going on over on Instagram!







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Learning! Roundup: Undoing Isolation, Diet Culture, Your Brain on Poverty, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and More!

Photo by Carlos Santos.

Undoing Isolation

Social isolation is really bad for us - our brains are, as one headline puts it, obsessed with being social. So much so that the absence of social connections leads to depression, PTSD, and a host of other mental problems. So here's a proposition that is a Black Mirror episode waiting to happen: what if we could take a pill to counteract the negative cognitive effects of social isolation? I really don't like this as a solution to the loneliness problem in our cities.

Diet Culture or Actual Health

This is a fantastic article about the contrast between diet culture, which equates thinness with both health and moral goodness, and actual health, including links to actual research and scathing rebuke where the research doesn't even exist.

Income and the Brain

A study on the impact of poverty on brain function has shown that people with lower socioeconomic status have less grey matter and fewer connections in their brains. This relationship held even after researchers controlled for other health factors, cognitive ability, and their childhood socioeconomic status.

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

There may, at last, be a cause and a cure for polycystic ovary syndrome! Polycystic ovary syndrome can cause infertility, as well as very painful ovarian cysts and irregular cycles. New research shows the cause may happen before birth, which has lead to treatments that have been successful in mice.

Neural Connections

Here's a surprising reveal: new research shows that intelligence is associated with fewer neural connections, not more. More efficient, I guess?

Stress and Bad News

While we are under stress, our brains get better at processing bad news than good news. It makes some evolutionary sense, but has some pretty negative consequences when we live in a world that is constantly stressful.


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The No Day But Today Challenge - An Update

A little over a month ago, I watched the musical RENT and was inspired to live my life with a little more urgency. I decided to remind myself that each day might be my last by writing "NO DAY BUT TODAY" in my notebook every morning for a month and see if that changed how I approached life.

Well? How did I do?

This is how I did:


I did it nine times. Nine. Out of thirty. They weren't even consecutive, because I forgot some days. Then I completely forgot this challenge even existed.

I'm not sure why my brain completely erased this challenge from my consciousness, but it definitely did.

So, what now? I do think that writing it down, on the days I did, helped keep this mantra in my mind and heart. But I don't think that setting myself up for failure by trying to do this again is that smart. Instead, how about leaning into a classic: a sticky note on the bathroom mirror. One and done.


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Action Items: Things to Do to Help Fight Evil And Save the World

Action Items are notes from the "Let's Save the World" committee meetings in my head. A collection of some news items and articles that may fire up a desire for action, and then at least one suggested action item to follow up. It won't be comprehensive of every single thing in the world and all the ways to fix it, but it will be something, and something is better than nothing.


Some of the Things That Are Happening:

A teen open-fired in a Texas high school, possibly because a girl turned down his romantic advances. Instead of controlling who can get a gun, Texas authorities are considering adding airport-style security and mental health screening - to schools. So to be clear, they want to make it harder to get into SCHOOL not to buy a gun.

The Palestinian border has seen 64 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, as well as air strikes.

Since people can't seem to figure out, there is now a robot that can tell you if your script is gender-balanced or not. Maybe we can make it mandatory for the next five years in Hollywood.

In three isolated events in India, girls were raped and set on fire. There are tensions growing among religious communities and protests for the girls.

A couple of weeks ago, I made Childish Gambino's "This is America" my singalong feature for the week. After that, I read this piece asking who the intended audience of that song really is, as well as a few others, and regretted my choice. Not because the song, and video, aren't incredible. They are. But at the very least, they should be given a bit more thoughtful treatment than just "let's learn the lyrics and sing along."

Progress around the world! Pakistan has passed a transgender rights law, giving citizens the right to choose their gender on official identification.

After a time where black people were arrested for taking naps and going to an Airbnb, the men who were arrested for going to Starbucks have settled their case for only $1 each, provided the city donates $200,000 to a young entrepreneurs program. It is incredible, generous, forward-thinking, and shouldn't have to happen for us to think of these men as good citizens.

Oh, and also two Indigenous teens in Colorado had police called on them because they were acting "strange", and by that, apparently, we mean that they were wearing dark clothes and trying not to draw attention to themselves.

Here is an important piece about the #metoo experiences of fat women and why they are being left out of the movement.

Action Item:

Pay attention to your biases. Reflect on the current news and take note of any moment when you think "they shouldn't be doing that" or "those people seem shifty/dangerous/like they're breaking the law" about a bunch of people who are black or Indigenous. Ask yourself point-blank what about this situation seems wrong, and why you think there is a problem.

Honestly ask yourself, would you think there was a problem if they were white?

PS: Follow my Resistance Roundup series at Loose Lips Magazine for more actions that are focused directly on the madness happening in America.


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Inspiration! All the Best Butts, Cut Scenes from Harry Potter, Abstract Sunday, Pretending You're Divorced, and More!

This week's inspiration includes camping, the best butts, cut scenes from Harry Potter, the Untethered Soul, and more!
This Week's "I want to go to there": CAMPING! It is summer now and I wanna go camping!
Photo by Sandis Helvigs.

The Best Butts

An ode to butts. Most of them, anyway.


The Mind

“The mind is a place where the soul goes to hide from the heart.”
– Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul

Cut Scenes

Comic book artist Katie Knudson has drawn scenes from Harry Potter that didn't make the cut in the movies. They are some of the smaller, more touching scenes that reveal the humanity of the characters and the result is pretty beautiful.

Abstract Sunday

Artist Christoph Niemann has a delightful Instagram feed called Abstract Sunday. I love it!

!
A post shared by Christoph Niemann (@abstractsunday) on

For Sure

Andrea Zittel's list, "These things I know for sure" is gorgeous. Here are a few:

1. It is a human trait to organize things into categories. Inventing categories creates an illusion that there is an overriding rationale in the way that the world works.
2. Surfaces that are "easy to clean" also show dirt more. In reality a surface that camouflages dirt is much more practical than one that is easy to clean.
3. Maintenance takes time and energy that can sometimes impede other forms of progress such as learning about new things.

Bright Eyes

Dawid Planeta has a stunning series of bright-eyed animal guides. This is my favourite.


Pretend You're Divorced?

Here's a non-intuitive piece of advice for parents out there: parent as if you are divorced. Say wha??? Here's what this means: try a version of rotating custody with your kids like divorced parents do. When you are on with your kids, you are 100% on with them. Don't make other plans, avoid your phone, act like this weekend is your only weekend to hang with them. Then when you are off, be off. Do your thing, be the person who is not the parent.

Depending on your work/childcare arrangement, this may not be feasible. But if it is, seems like it's worth a try.


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Life Lessons from a Beginner Runner

Things I have learned from the self-induced torture of running
Photo by Justyn Warner.

I have started running. Regularly. It's a weird activity for me. I have always been one of those people sharing memes like, "if I'm running, then look behind me because there are zombies and you should run too."

Well, apparently I've changed. I now run three times a week with my boyfriend, doing one of those apps where you mix running and walking as a way to try to trick your body into thinking it can do things.

Turns out that actually works, and I have gone from running for 90 seconds and regretting all my life choices that led to the moment where I am doing this to myself to running for 10+ minutes and regretting all those same choices. The point is that I can run longer while wishing I wasn't running now, which is kind of cool.

I have learned two lessons from running:

ONE: You are capable of more than you think you are. But only a little, tiny bit more.

For example, you don't think you can run at all? Maybe you can run for 60-90 seconds. (It will be the longest 90 seconds of your life, though.)

TWO: You can do anything. You just have to move slowly enough.

The first time we had to run without a break was last week. I really thought that I might die. But I didn't! I survived! How? We ran very slowly. Slower than we had ever run before. It is possible that you could conquer the world if you moved slowly enough.

BONUS LESSON THREE (I remembered it after writing the first lesson): You will gain a new appreciation for the relativity of time.

Run for five minutes, then walk for five minutes? Those two time intervals are going to actually be reallllllllly different from each other, and nothing can convince me that I haven't entered a time loop during the running intervals that somehow straightens itself out while walking.


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Word Games for Fun and Creativity

Twitter gave me some ideas for word games that might even be creativity boosters
Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem.

I've come across a few fun word games lately that I think would make great creativity practices.

The first comes from Lifehacker, and it's an insult generator. Take any noun, and add the words "you absolute" in front of it. Now it's an insult. It doesn't take a whole lot of creativity to come up with a list, but it sure does get you seeing words differently.

Examples:

You absolute mug.
You absolute flower-handled scissors.
You absolute construction site.
You absolute raindrop.
You absolute weed.
You absolute backpack.

Even if you put something that is technically nice, it kind of sounds back-handed at best:

You absolute ray of sunshine.
You absolute gift.
You absolute flower petal.
You absolute cup of tea.
You absolute informational brochure.

The next comes from The Bloggess, who tweeted about a woman who called the game Fortnight "Fork Knife". Her followers replied with an epic array of mispronounced and forgotten words, like when they said "salad sauce" instead of salad dressing. The game that comes of this is to pretend you've forgotten the word for some everyday item or activity. How would you describe it instead? Keep going. Get weird.

Example: Let's say I forgot the word for a spatula. How else could I describe it?

Food-mover.
Rubber pushy thing.
Soft flipper.
Kitchen microphone.
Scraper.
Batter-stealer.
Food squeegee.

It probably won't be even close to the hilarity of The Bloggess' collection, but that's like comparing a brainstorm list to the final cut of Whose Line is it Anyways? Also, it's beside the point. The point is to think about words and descriptors in different ways.


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Cute! Roundup: The Mouse is Caught, Hug Mistakes, Alpaca Loaf, and More!

Gertie has started experimenting with jumping up on the railing on our balcony. I am not sure what to do about it, so her days of stepping outdoors might be numbered.

There is a lot to awwww at this week! Including a caught mouse, alpaca loaf, and very enthusiastic puppy hug

OTHER CUTENESS:

This little birdie is very excited that it caught a mouse.

Sometimes a simple hug will go awry.

A lil' alpaca loaf.

A pet duck who is obsessed with poodles!

A fluffy dog on a slide - it goes just how you might expect it to, and yet is exciting nonetheless.

A baby moose hanging out with his mama! (Probably it was Mother's Day.)


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This Wedding is ROYAL

Giphy

Yes, I am one of the people who woke up early to watch the Royal Wedding.

I also failed to wake up early ENOUGH, because I trusted the fact that I heard in passing that coverage began at 4am, but the wedding started at 5, so I got online just in time to see the procession. Then I tried to go back to sleep, couldn't, and waited half an hour for all the live feeds to flip into regular videos so I could watch. I might as well have slept in until a humane time, but heck, what can you do?

I don't have a particularly HOT TAKE on the wedding, but here are the things I noticed:

The screen blacked out for a second as Meghan was getting out of her car and I almost threw my cat off my lap.

Harry and Meghan are one of those couples who, every time they look at each other, seem to suddenly be overcome by the joy of being together. I don't care how much you don't care about this wedding, that kind of love is super sweet to see.

Can you imagine the nerves of being asked to do a reading for the ROYAL WEDDING? It's cool, only millions of people will see if you mess up. Everyone looked pretty nervous and serious.

That nervousness didn't even TOUCH Bishop Michael Curry, who gave the homily at the wedding. His sermon was spot on, and it definitely made some people in the crowd uncomfortable. I took notes.

A friend of mine (who woke up at the appropriate time) texted me before I watched that "there were some very simple ways in which this was revolutionary." This Bishop was one of them! He got excited! He quoted Dr. King! He talked openly about slavery! He imagined a world where LOVE rules nations and poverty is irradicated! Think about the context for that kind of a sermon. Freaking. Awesome.

Karen Gibson and the Kingdom Choir singing Stand By Me was amazing. Cry when you listen to it. Cry!

Also, don't hands always look a little funny right up close?

Giphy

Congrats, Harry and Meghan!


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Singalong! Never Ever by All Saints

I always get All Saints mixed up with Sugar Jones, the band that was created via reality show. They are definitely different! Also, apparently this is the number two single by a UK girl group, ever. So good job, ladies.


NEVER EVER
by All Saints

A few questions that I need to know
How you could ever hurt me so
I need to know what I've done wrong
And how long it's been going on
Was it that I never paid enough attention?
Or did I not give enough affection?
Not only will your answers keep me sane
But I'll know never to make the same mistake again
You can tell me to my face or even on the phone
You can write it in a letter, either way, I have to know
Did I never treat you right?
Did I always start the fight?
Either way, I'm going out of my mind
All the answers to my questions
I have to find

My head's spinning
Boy, I'm in a daze
I feel isolated
Don't wanna communicate

I'll take a shower, I will scour
I will rub
To find peace of mind
The happy mind I once owned, yeah

Flexing vocabulary runs right through me
The alphabet runs right from A to Z
Conversations, hesitations in my mind
You got my conscience asking questions that I can't find

I'm not crazy
I'm sure I ain't done nothing wrong, no
I'm just waiting
'Cause I heard that this feeling
Won't last that long

Never ever have I ever felt so low
When you gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling yeah, you got me feeling really bad

Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, I just don't feel right

Never ever have I ever felt so low
When you gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling yeah, you got me feeling really bad

Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, I just don't feel right

I'll keep searching
Deep within my soul
For all the answers
Don't wanna hurt no more

I need peace, gotta feel at ease
Need to be
Free from pain, going insane
My heart aches, yeah

Sometimes vocabulary runs through my head
The alphabet runs right from A to Z
Conversations, hesitations in my mind
You got my conscience asking questions that I can't find

I'm not crazy
I'm sure I ain't done nothing wrong
And now I'm just waiting
'Cause I heard that this feeling won't last that long

Never ever have I ever felt so low
When ya gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling yeah, you got me feeling really bad

Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, I just don't feel right

Never ever have I ever felt so low
When ya gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling yeah, you got me feeling really bad

Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, I just don't feel right

Never ever have I ever felt so low
When ya gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling yeah, you got me feeling really bad

Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, I just don't feel right

Never ever have I ever felt so low
When ya gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling yeah, you got me feeling really bad

Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, I just don't feel right

You can tell me to my face
You can tell me on the phone
Uh, you can write it in a letter, babe
'Cause I really need to know

You can tell me to my face
You can tell me on the phone
Ooh, you can write it in a letter, babe
'Cause I really need to know

You can write it in a letter, babe
You can write it in a letter, babe

Giphy



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Action Items: Things to Do to Help Fight Evil and Save the World

Action Items are notes from the "Let's Save the World" committee meetings in my head. A collection of some news items and articles that may fire up a desire for action, and then at least one suggested action item to follow up. It won't be comprehensive of every single thing in the world and all the ways to fix it, but it will be something, and something is better than nothing.



Some of the Things That Are Happening:

Beyond 94 is a CBC initiative that tracks our progress on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, intended to bring healing and restitution to the relationships of settlers and Indigenous people. It's been out for a while but is always worth checking in on.

What is the job of the press? To fact-check and report when politicians lie, or just repeat what the government is saying to the people? Might depend on whether you think free speech and free thought matter.

I'm sure everyone has seen it by now, but Michelle Wolfe's roast at the Whitehouse Correspondent's Dinner is a-mah-zing, smokey eye and all.

This is an incredible piece on what the heck we can do with the men who have been brought down by #metoo (as many of them are preparing to make their comebacks).

It happened with the Jian Gomeshi trials and is happening now with Schneiderman: an attempt to pass off domestic violence as consensual sex play.

After an incel drove a van through a crowd and killed 10 people, the media started to actually wonder about this world of "lonely men on the internet". Some of them were kind of sympathetic. It's gross.

Some people think that Amazon will never really be able to compete with the indie bookstore. Fingers crossed.

This one made me giggle: an artist made awards for men who do the bare minimum in life.

This protest photo also made me laugh:

Source: Imgur

Action Items:

ONE: If you are white, read this article on 100 things white people can do to make life less frustrating for people of colour. Pick a couple of things that are new to you and start to do them.

If you find yourself feeling defensive as you read the list, remember the title of this piece. It is a list of things "white people CAN DO to make life less frustrating for people of colour", not a list of things every single white person does and this is why they are all bad people. If you feel yourself gearing up to exclaim, "not all white people!", know that they weren't saying that in the first place. Also, know that if that is your reaction, you may need to spend some extra time examining how this list interacts with your life.

TWO: Pull Together and donate to the Tsleil-Waututh Nation as it fights a pipeline running through its territory and destroying the land and water for all of us.

PS: Follow my Resistance Roundup series at Loose Lips Magazine for more actions that are focused directly on the madness happening in America.


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Learning! Roundup: Dry Months, Nap Benefits, Master of None/Everything, Happy Finns, and More!

Image Source: Nathz Guardia

Dry For a Month

It looks like giving up booze and going "dry" for a month can actually have a positive impact on your health!

Take a Nap

More research on napping! This time they are showing that taking daily naps of 30-60 minutes can improve your attention, nonverbal reasoning, and spatial ability. This study also shows that frequent nappers have better sleep at night.

Jack of All Trades

It has long been thought that being a "jack of all trades" meant you were a master of none, but it turns out that many studies support the idea that having broad, diverse competencies is correlated with increased creative impact. I like this because I like doing a lot of different things!

Happy Finns

Finland was recently named the happiest country in the world, and yet Finns routinely downplay and criticize positive emotions. There's a theory out there that this blasé attitude towards happiness actually helps increase it.

Fasting

There is a lot of research out there that calorie restriction can be good for your overall health and lifespan, if that's your thing. Because of this, some people get really into periodic fasting, where your eating is restricted to a small number of hours or days at a time, but there hasn't been a ton of support for fasting in and of itself being beneficial, aside from the normal benefits of eating fewer calories. Well, now there is a start! A new study says that eating all your meals before 3pm can reduce your appetite, blood pressure, and diabetes risk.

Twitter Lies

A new study that was attempting to discover how good Twitter users are at spotting and calling out fake news actually discovered the opposite: fake news spreads easily when all you have to do to share information is click a retweet button and add the word "verification?"

What's With All the BS?

My boyfriend has a trait that can sometimes get in the way of kitchen table debates: he doesn't like to spout off opinions or information about something he doesn't know anything about. Most people, on the other hand, are very willing to share their views on a matter, whether or not they have any factual information about it. Why? A new study shows that there are two factors at play: whether or not we feel compelled to give an answer, and whether or not we think we will be fact-checked. The more pressure we feel to respond to something, or suspect nobody will know either way if we are right, the more BS comes flowing out of our mouths.


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This Week in Church: All the Anger

Welcome to the series wherein I share my takeaways from church. The things that, I think, are beneficial to all of us to know or think about, whether or not we believe in any church-related things.

I think that church can teach things that are beneficial to everyone, whether or not we believe in church-related things.

This week in church we talked about anger being just as bad as murder.

In my experience, the church has a confusing relationship with the concept of anger. On one hand, God gets angry. Jesus drove merchants out of the temple with whips. On the other hand, Jesus also says that anger is just as bad as murder.

Is it "do as I say, not as I do"? Is there a different standard? It's a bit awkward. Plus, maybe a slight case of false equivalence?

This week's unpacking highlighted something I haven't yet heard - that the Greek word Jesus uses for anger when he says it's basically murder isn't just the feeling of being mad. It's the kind of anger that is nursed, that leads to contempt.

It's the anger that judges the heart and soul of another person, saying they will never be more than they are now. (Or really, then we perceive them to be now.)

Ah yes, that is different. And maybe still functionally not as bad as murder, because nobody is dead, but in our hearts, it is certainly on the continuum.

This week in church we talked about egos.

When we have anger that we hold onto and polish, how often is it the simple result of a wounded ego?

Probably a lot.

(Man, I wish that we didn't all care about our self-image so dang much! What a gift it would be to go through life not trying to protect our lil' baby egos against every bruise.)

This week in church we talked about making amends.

When you are holding that kind of anger for someone else, chances are, you've got to confess it. It may be the only way to rid yourself of it.

But more than that, when you know that someone else has a problem with you, according to Jesus, you should go to them and make it right. This is pretty counter to the prevailing attitude of, "If someone has a problem with me, they can come talk to me about it." Instead, this model says that if you know someone has a problem with you, you should be the one to take the first step in reconciliation.

Kind of different. Kind of terrifying.


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#RetirementGoals

This week in ridiculously unrealistic things:


The replies, however, are golden.





So, you know, take heart, I guess?

Giphy


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More Fun on Society6

Have you been to my Society6 shop recently? There is more fun stuff on there! Here are some of the things you could pick up on everything from tote bags to greeting cards.

You can do things! Feel powerful!

I Think I Can

Exciting Moments!!!

It's a quiet night.



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Inspiration! Roundup: Better Ice-Breakers, Le Nuage, Three Balls of Wool, Limbo, and More!

This Week's "I want to go to there": Somewhere the flowers are bigger than me.
Image by: Ana do Amaral

Ice-Breaker Questions

I am all for ice-breaker questions that deviate a bit from the norm without asking strangers to tell you about their deepest passions, which is just plain weird. Here is a fun one: tell me about something you love doing that you are terrible at. OR, tell me about something you are good at that you don't like doing. (Found here.)

Le Nuage

This animated short about the creative process is simultaneously adorable, inspiring, and a bit infuriating (because of the whole art-needs-misery trope as well as the spritely-young-woman-cares-for-broody-male-artist trope). But I want to keep watching it, so that is saying something.


Three Balls of Wool

This is a beautiful story of nonconformity as well as the immigrant experience.

Limbo

I love this piece by Robert Proch.

A post shared by Robert Proch (@prochrobert) on

Escape Your Money Troubles

I love this news story about an Iowa newsroom that has opened up an escape room to help solve its money problems. In some ways, of course, it's got a sad foundation: they need the money because newspapers on are on the outs. However, it's cool to see them finding a fun new source of income that engages their community.

Jenna Barton Art

I could stare at this work by Jenna Barton for ages.


Job Descriptions

Seth Godin has suggested a list of qualities that are likely missing from your job description. My favourites: can tell a joke at no one's expense, invent a moment of silliness, and find obsolete things on your task list and remove them.


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Do We Really Need Geniuses That Badly?

Paul Klee's "Ghost of a Genius" - CC

A GQ piece by Michael Chabon is making the rounds.

Michael Chabon, if you don't know (I didn't), is a novelist. He wrote The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier and Clay, among other things.

The piece talks about how Chabon was at a party, and an unnamed older, more successful writer advised him to never have kids.
Excellence plus productivity, that was the formula for sustained success, and time was the coefficient of both. Children, the great man said, were notorious thieves of time. Then there was the question of subject matter, settings, experiences; books were hungry things, and if you stayed too long in any one place, they would consume everything and everyone around you. You needed to keep moving, always onward, a literary Masai driving your ravenous herd of novels. Travel, therefore, was a must, and I should take his word for it because he had made a careful study: Traveling with children was the world's biggest pain in the ass. Anyway, writers were restless folk. They could not thrive without being able to pick up and go, wherever and whenever it suited them. Writers needed to be irresponsible, ultimately, to everything but the writing, free of commitments to everything but the daily word count. Children, by contrast, needed stability, consistency, routine, and above all, commitment. In short, he was saying, children are the opposite of writing.
You lose one book per child you have, apparently.

This would be disastrous if you have 1-4 books in you, I suppose. For Stephen King, who Google says has written "at least 97" books, the loss of three, for his three children, may not be the end of the world. Although perhaps King wouldn't qualify as "great" to this unnamed genius.

Regardless, I had a reaction to this article. I will admit, I am not entirely proud of it. It wasn't my best self that reacted in this way, but it was real and I might as well be honest about it.

I was happy. For once - ONCE - in my life, I was hearing about a man who was told he had to choose between his career of choice or having a family.

While it is unfair and kind of terrible for anyone to have to make that choice, it was nice to know that at least one man on the face of the earth has had to grapple with the decision most women (who want to work) must face. The difference, of course, is that he wound up having it all: four children, 14 books. Knowing nothing about his personal life or the division of labour in his home, I don't know how much of the compromise was his, and how much belongs to his wife.

Next, I read another article, one about the dangerous problem of the male genius. Dangerous because it is inherently male and it inherently devalues women.

Inherently male:
Here is the etymology the Oxford English Dictionary provides for the word genius, imported to English straight from the Latin: “male spirit of a family, existing in the head of the family and subsequently in the divine or spiritual part of each individual, personification of a person’s natural appetites, spirit or personality of an emperor regarded as an object of worship, spirit of a place, spirit of a corporation, (in literature) talent, inspiration, person endowed with talent, also demon or spiritual being in general.”
Devalues women:
Genius, a means to godliness and its best evidence, cannot be argued with. Genius cannot be reasoned with. Genius is the answer and the question. It will be heard. It will be respected. Even when it kicks and stalks and climbs up the side of the house at night.
(The kicking and stalking and climbing the side of a house refers to a few of the things David Foster Wallace, genius author, did to poet Mary Karr in his obsession with her. Things everyone knew about, including police, but nobody did anything about. Because his books were so good.)

So basically, a total reverence for genius and a movement like #metoo are not entirely compatible.

What if we smushed these two articles together? What if they smushed and smashed and we realized that, just maybe, the sacrifices involved in holding up geniuses is not really worth it? That whether or not genius is inherently male, there is plenty of incredible art made by non-geniuses and geniuses alike and maybe it is just not that big of a deal.

Not so big of a deal that, if you are a genius, you need to be tortured and lonely. Not so big of a deal that you are beyond reproach. That we have to protect you lest future work be interfered with. That we must treasure everything that you do.

(This is, I believe, different from the discussion of whether we can separate the creator from their creation, and what to do with the works of artists we know to be terrible people. At this moment, I will simply say that it is possible to both love something and be critical of it, but at some point, there may be a line of horribleness that overwhelms the good. This discussion, however, is about how much we worship genius in the first place.)

Right now, we tread lightly around geniuses. We don't want to hurt their process, even when their process hurts other people. We are all expendable, at the feet of a genius. And for what? Perhaps for a transcendent piece of art. Art is important. Vital. But perhaps humans, in general, are at least as vital as a good piece of art.


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