The Receptionist

Singalong! Faith by George Michael

I first learned of this song when the Limp Bizkit cover came out in the 90's. A group at a local dance competition did a routine to a mashed up version of the two songs, and when it switched from Limp Bizkit to George Michael, I was shocked! Shocked! This very stupid song wasn't necessarily very stupid! George Michael's version is actually... good? Wow!

Also, it's got the words "loverboy rules" in it. That's just fun.

FAITH

by George Michael

Well I guess it would be nice

If I could touch your body

I know not everybody

Has got a body like you

But I've got to think twice

Before I give my heart away

And I know all the games you play

Because I play them too

Oh but I

Need some time off from that emotion

Time to pick my heart up off the floor

Oh when that love comes down

Without devotion

Well it takes a strong man baby

But I'm showing you the door

‘Cause I gotta have faith

I gotta have faith

‘Cause I gotta have faith, faith

‘Cause I gotta have faith, faith, faith

Baby,

I know you're asking me to stay

Say please, please, please don't go away

You say I'm giving you the blues

Maybe

You mean every word you say

Can't help but think of yesterday

And another who tied me down to loverboy rules

Before this river

Becomes an ocean

Before you throw my heart back on the floor

Oh oh baby I reconsider

My foolish notion

Well I need someone to hold me

But I'll wait for something more

Yes I've gotta have faith…

Mmm, I gotta have faith

‘Cause I gotta have faith, faith, faith

I gotta have faith-a-faith-a-faith

Before this river

Becomes an ocean

Before you throw my heart back on the floor

Oh oh baby I reconsider

My foolish notion

Well I need someone to hold me

But I'll wait for something more

Cause I gotta have faith

Mmm I gotta have faith

Because I got to have faith-a-faith-a-faith

I gotta have faith-a-faith-a-faith

Photo source: Giphy

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Learning! Roundup: Hugs Matter, Brand New Life, Lying to Yourself, and More!

Photo by Shalom Mwenesi.

Four Hugs a Day

Charlotte Diamond was right! We need hugs! A new study shows that, out of a group of people who have experienced stressful events in a day, those who were hugged were not as affected by it as their counterparts. I wonder if the effect is the same for people who don't really like hugs.

A Brand New Thing

A whole new type of living thing has been discovered! It's not a plant or an animal or fungi or anything other kingdom of life we have identified! It's called a hemimastigote, and it was discovered when some Canadian (yessss!) scientists collected dirt on a whim while hiking. A whole new branch of life we didn't even know about! The universe is so vast and mysterious!!!

Lie to Yourself

Turns out it's even easier to lie to ourselves than you think - just the attempt to tell a convincing lie about yourself makes you feel less certain of the actual facts. It goes to reason (although is not yet proven) that the more often we tell a lie about ourselves, the more we will believe it.

How to Change Someone's Mind

A common thing people say these days is to not even bother trying to change someone else's mind on political issues. While this is definitely true for Facebook comment threads, it's apparently not true in real life. Thanks to our brain's incredible ability to retcon itself, all you have to do is trick someone into thinking they chose your political view instead, through false feedback, and then their brains will do the rest. Okay, this sounds difficult to do in real conversations, but hey, it's fun to think about!

Video OCD Treatment

A new study had people with OCD symptoms related to contamination watch a video of themselves repeatedly touching a filthy bedpan. The result? Their symptoms reduced!

Expect Pain

The expectation of pain makes us feel pain more acutely, even after we have experienced the pain and should know better.

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Book Club: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Image Source: CelesteNg.Com

I recently read this gem of a book and I HAVE to share it with you!

First, a confession: I genuinely thought the image on the cover was a bunch of leaves up close, not a suburban street. I honestly have no idea how I could have made that mistake except that I only looked at it as thumbnail images when I was taking the e-book out from my library, so... hopefully don't let that colour your view of my judgment too harshly.

Second, this book is truly a beautiful thing to experience. I almost don't want to tell you too much about it: I had no idea what the story was when I picked it up and it was a joy to discover. However, I also don't believe in this whole nonsense around every little thing being a spoiler, so here you go (no actual spoilers, don't fret):

Little Fires Everywhere is set in one of those perfect little suburbs where the town was planned from the start and everyone is nice to each other.

The Richardson family are perfectly suited to the town: moderately wealthy, charitable, well-behaved (except the youngest daughter, who everyone seems to think is a total freak show of a failure but really just rages against the machine in relatively reasonable teenage ways - for the most part). They rent their second home out to a single mother and her daughter, and the two families become quickly entwined until, obviously, something goes awry.

Here is what I love about this story:

It takes the topsy-turvy teenage experience entirely seriously. There are five teens in this story with varied and interesting inner lives and little journeys that are both earth-shattering and minuscule all at once.

While it is obviously critical of some elements of the cookie-cutter planned suburb, it fully respects the lives of everyone living in it.

There is so much richness in how the racial and financial differences in this town are layered in beneath the narrative before they become a part of the primary story itself.

Family is such a beautiful and complex and damaging and wonderful thing in this story, as it is in life.

There is a major conflict that arises out of a wealthy white family that adopts a Chinese-American baby girl. A custody battle that ensues, dividing the town and the Richardson family. It is written in such a way that I felt entirely torn between the two sides, swinging back and forth along with the characters, never sure if the outcome was right.

It grabbed my heart and didn't let go. It's a thoughtful, detailed, complex, beautiful story. Go read it! Go now!

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Inspiration! Roundup: Sue Austin's Underwater Wheelchair Dance, Imaginary Moon Art, For Like Ever, and More!

Time to get inspired! First, let's go to Sillyville! Then this roundup of underwater dancing, art on the moon, and more!

This Week's "I want to go to there": SILLYVILLE! Obviously.
Photo by Will Myers.

Sue Austin: Underwater Wheelchair Dancer

This is incredible: performance artist Sue Austin uses a specially-adapted wheelchair to dance underwater. It's the kind of thing I have never thought of and the result is stunning.

Imaginary Moon Art

Now for some imaginary art: eight artists were asked what art they would make if they were on the moon. The answers include painting the sphere so it looks like a perfect square; creating a colony of sexist, white supremacists; or creating a space habitat on earth in protest of the wealthy having an escape hatch into space should things get too bad on earth.

Reasons for Art

Author Chuck Wendig made a pretty incredible Twitter thread with 25 reasons to create art in terrible times. I may not have needed someone to encourage me to keep creating, but dang if it isn't inspiring to read a bunch of emphatic statements for the power of art.

My favourite:

"Because what you make is a carrier for ideas. A Trojan horse stuffed with your NOTIONS. Packed tight with arguments and hopes and fears and solutions. Even when you don’t mean it to be? It is."

For Like Ever

I like this piece by Super Rural.

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A post shared by Super Rural (@superrural) on Jun 18, 2017 at 6:26pm PDT

Two Questions for (the chance of) Success

Say you want to learn something new or get better at something you already have in your repertoire. Two questions matter:

1) Do you want to be better?

2) Are you willing to feel the discomfort of putting in more effort and trying new things that will feel weird and different and won’t work right away?

The first question is pretty obvious. The second one may be unexpected, but gaining skills is HARD. You are going to feel like you suck for a while, because you will suck for a while. You will have to use new muscles - actual or metaphorical - and they don't know what they are doing. It's good to remember that up front.

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Here's Something to Try: A To-Don't List

Try writing a to don't list instead of just a to do list.

Photo by Jose Aragones.

I am intrigued by this concept: in addition to making a to-do list, why not make a to-don't list of all the things you don't want to do that day.

This might be habits you're trying to break, like smoke or cuss or eat junk food. Or it could be identifying your most common procrastination voids and declaring that you will not stroll mindlessly into them.

What I like about this idea is that it forces you not only to consider what you want to do with your day (and by extension, your life) but also to look at the obstacles that frequently get in your way: if you want to go to bed early, but find you usually watch one too many episodes The Good Place or lose track of time while texting and scrolling on your phone, make that a to don't!

(Okay, I know there is no such thing as too many episodes of The Good Place, but we're dealing with finite time and a need to do a few other things with our lives, so let's just accept the fact that we can't spend all our time watching The Good Place and doing nothing else.)

Phrase it in whatever way will be most impactful for you: I will not scroll on Instagram past 9pm; I will not watch more than two episodes; I will not worry about what I'm missing on the internet after 9pm because I know there is actually nothing.

As I write this, I am realizing two things:

One: that we're going to want to have something in the to-do column to help us when the habit strikes. If I always lie on the couch with my phone for indeterminate amounts of time in the evening, I'm going to be hard pressed for ideas of other things to do when 9pm rolls around and I said I would stop. Best to think of some ideas of what I could be doing with that time instead. (Read a book? Do yoga? Do the unthinkable and talk to someone on the phone? I've heard other people like to take baths in the evening, so maybe that?)

Two: The phrasing of "Today I Will Not" for the to-don't list made me realize that it would be awesome to write "Today I Will" for my daily to-do lists instead of just "to do." It just feels better. More intentional. I think I will approach what I write on the list a little differently if I do this.

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Cuteness! Roundup: Bands of Animals, a Dog Drawn to Water, Sneaky Cats, and More!

I almost always can't help but take a photo of Gertie during our morning cuddle sessions. They are truly among the happiest moments of my life and each one needs to be saved! EACH ONE.

So many cute things in the world! Lots of cats cuddling, sneaking into museums, and getting potty trained.

OTHER CUTENESS:

A bunch of animal bands waiting for their new album to drop.

This can't be a comfortable sleeping position.

A dog that can't help but go into water, no matter where it is.

Two cats have been trying to sneak into the Hiroshimi Onimichi City Museum of Art for years!

It takes this cat a minute to figure things out, and then it realizes that it is having the best day of its life!

A baby potty training a cat. They are the same size!!!

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Singalong! Atomic by Blondie

Singing along with this song is extra fun because there are so few words, but the whole thing feels very important. If you're brave and want to go big with the feelings, it would make an excellent karaoke number.

ATOMIC

by Blondie

Uh-huh make me tonight

Tonight make it right

Uh-huh make me tonight

Tonight

Oh, uh-huh make it magnificent

Tonight

Right

Oh, your hair is beautiful

Oh, tonight

Atomic

Tonight make it magnificent

Tonight

Make me tonight

Your hair is beautiful

Oh oh, tonight

Atomic

Photo by Jean-Luc. CC.

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I Don't Want to See Fantastic Beasts and it's Giving Me an Identity Crisis

Gif by Brandan Ray.

When I watched the trailer for the latest Fantastic Beasts movie, I cried.

Now, this is not special in and of itself. I cry at things, especially Harry Potter things. Every time I encounter this world, a feeling of magical joy and wonder perks up in my chest. I can't help but feel supremely excited, and sometimes (most times) that excitement comes out of my eyeballs as salt water. (The human body can only hold so much, guys!)

This time the tears were different: I wasn't crying because I was swept away in that magical world that makes me feel like anything is possible or because I was feeling nostalgic or because of a group of friends who band together to sacrifice everything and fight for what's right or even the sadness of a lonely boy who becomes a terrible villain.

Nope, I cried because I felt empty inside. I felt nothing. I had interacted with a Harry Potter-related thing and was unmoved, to my core.

There was just no magic. I mean, there was magic in the sense that people did impossible things using their wands and their minds, but there was no heart-magic. There was no sense of magical possibilities or of the other wonderful feelings I associate with Harry Potter.

It looks like a regular old "chase down the bad guy" movie with some fancy tricks thrown in, and that is not the same thing.

So now the movie is out and I kind of don't even care if I see it, which leads to some questions. Who am I??? What have I become??? Am I even Andrea anymore??? Did my heart shrivel up and die???

I don't know what to do with this. Let's watch the trailer again and see if I feel anything.

Nope. Sigh.

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Learning! Roundup: Pony Therapy, Moderate Self-Control, Stopping Pirates, and More!

Photo by Kym Ellis.

Pony Therapy

In Scotland, doctors are prescribing their patients spend time in nature, with looking for fungus and appreciating a cloud being the top two nature-related prescriptions. In November, however, they want everyone to go talk to a pony.

Self Control - In Moderation

Apparently, too much self-control can be bad for our physical and mental health. Sometimes it's better to just give in and indulge a little.

Scientists Agree to Disagree

To disagree with Trump, that is. A common statement from people who are against implementing policies that are more inclusive of transgender people (or those who are otherwise gender queer/outside the binary) is that it shouldn't be up to them to decide these things, it should be up to the experts. Well, here is what the experts say: you should not define gender as biological, nor establish it at birth.

Don't Be a Pirate

Explicit anti-piracy warnings may be just as good, or better, at reducing piracy than actually issuing fines. It turns out people don't like reminders that they are being monitored and someone knows when they are doing something wrong.

Anti-Political Political Arguments

Next time you are having a political argument, try removing all partisan information (I know, I know, it's kind of impossible). It turns out that most people (or at least, Americans who were in this study) agree on what an ideal society looks like when you don't reference actual political parties. Also included in that article are some tips on how to intellectually disarm your opponent in a political argument. My favourite is to simply ask them how the thing they are arguing about works - chances are they don't actually know much about it and then they'll question themselves on a deeper level.

Tetris Relieves Anxiety

A new study shows that Tetris may be the perfect anxiety-reducing activity because players reach a state of flow. I haven't played Tetris in years, but I also remember it being a little bit stressful.

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It's a Start: Prince Charles Recognizes Britain's Role in Slave Trade

Photo by InSapphoWeTrust. CC.

A little while ago, Prince William and Kate Middleton visited Vancouver and I, being the dorkiest of my friends, lined up to greet them. I love the royals!

Of course, I also felt conflicted: the royal family represents a lot of badness in the history of the world and my country. They were the ones who said, "yeah, sure, go to that other continent and take it over, don't worry about the people who already live there, you need not treat them with dignity." (Actually, I have no idea what their orders were or if they intended things to go differently, but I'm guessing they didn't care that much.)

So many people have suffered, and continue to do so, thanks to the legacy of the royal family.

But... they're so PRETTY!

So yeah, I feel some cognitive dissonance over my love for them.

At the very least, this happened: Prince Charles has acknowledged Britain's role in the slave trade calling it a 'profound injustice' and 'indelible stain.'

That's one profound injustice recognized, and how many to go?

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Just One More Thing for Women Who Want to Have Babies to Worry About

There are so many things women are supposed to think about when they want to have babies.

Photo by Melanie Brown.

I just came across this article, called How to Time Your Next Pregnancy to Reduce Health Risks, and my first thought was, "oh for pete's sake! Can we just let women who want to have babies take five seconds without feeling pressure to do it perfectly???"

If you want to have a baby, you're already supposed to stop drinking before you've even gotten pregnant, get fit, avoid stress, eat and sleep well, and take prenatal supplements. You should also have money and a job and a stable relationship, be happy and full of love, hopeful for the future, and feel like a life-giving goddess. You need to know exactly what is going to happen with said job and be prepared for the judgement you will inevitably receive no matter what your choice is.

Then there is the timing. The TIMING! Did you know that if your baby is born in January they will probably do better in school? Is your work seasonal and therefore you should ideally be starting maternity leave at a particular time of year? Do you have other life events to work this pregnancy around? How old are you? Are you too young or too old? Trick question! You are both! At the same time!

And now, into the mix: the timing of your subsequent children.

I don't know, guys. Can we just chill?

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Inspiration! Roundup: Venus With a Smoothie, 100 Rejections, Elizabeth Cotten, and More!

A roundup of inspirational things, including Rodrigo Pinheiro's art, Elizabeth Cotten's guitar playing, Anais Nin, 100 Rejections, and a solstice clock.

This Week's "I wan to go to there": Somewhere a little weird.
Photo by Lava Lavanda.

Familiar Faces

Artist Rodrigo Pinheiro has taken classic paintings and mashed them up with some modern photography for a pretty fun twist. Honestly, looking through his Instagram, I don't love a lot of it - there's a lot of "let's use naked ladies but cover up their faces and it's art" kind of thing that loses me when I realize that's basically all you do. But there are some real gems in there, including Vincent, Lisa, and that girl with pearl earrings. And, of course, Venus:

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A post shared by Creative.Fashion.Studio ® (@pasteinplace_) on Jan 20, 2017 at 12:59pm PST

100 Rejections

I just came across the 100 Rejection Letter Challenge, and I love it. It's not the first time I've heard of the concept of making failure into your goal, but it is the first time I thought of it in this particular way. This one is geared towards writers pitching to magazines and publishers (perfect for me), but what rejections can you rack up?

Create From the Excess

You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.
-Anais Nin

I love this notion of creation coming from the excess. This means that in order to create, we must take care of ourselves. We must fill ourselves up with inspiration, love, food, longing, and everything else. We must be full so that our creativity can overflow.

It also means that the fact that I am full of SO MANY FEELINGS, ALL THE TIME might be a good thing!

Elizabeth Cotten's Guitar

"I taught myself how to play, no one helped me. And I give myself credit for everything you hear me play."

That Feeling

that feeling. that you can not name.
that. is your heart. growing.
– Nayyirah Waheed

Solstice

I realize that sharing this is basically product placement, but whatever, I really like it. It's a beautiful wooden clock that expands and contracts throughout the day, created by Animaro Designs.

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A post shared by Animaro (@animaro_design) on Nov 13, 2018 at 2:27am PST

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