What was Beautiful:
The tropical lushness, turquoise seas, and volcanic activity of Hawaii.
My new Triumph T-120 motorcycle.
My garden bursting with food and flowers.
What I’ve been up to:
Wrapped up my project at work and headed to Oregon for Flock to the Rock, but then lost my wallet so turned around and headed home. The next week I went to Hawaii for my yoga retreat, except that the retreat part of it was cancelled so I rented a motorcycle and rode around, did yoga at the beach and went diving. It was alright but I need community and connection more than I need a tropical location and so it proved to be an exercise in discipline and letting go more than a holiday. Next was the purchase of a new motorcycle that I had been considering for the past year and the requisite, immediate road trip to break it in. Looking forward to summer.
What made me Laugh:
Not much lately, honestly. I have small moments of joy but they are easily overshadowed by the larger anxieties. Still, I delight in the dogs playing in the yard, having dinner with friends and making light of occasional absurdities.
What I’m reading and listening to:
On TRAVEL –
Why we travel.
On RELATIONSHIPS –
Psychological Tips to Make Your Marriage Happier
On WORK –
Why it’s ok to be bored at work. Boredom is trying to tell you something.
How to keep your bad mood from affecting your work.
How to ramp up quickly
How to handle negative situations at work
A hilarious bonus episode of Revisionist History where Malcolm Gladwell debates Adam Grant loosely about organizational psychology
Walt Disney on how to truly love what you do
On MOTORCYCLES –
The Happiness of the Motorcycle
On BEING BETTER –
The cure for an anxious, sucky life
A depressive’s guide to microdosing
Why Are we Getting More Depressed?
Being Bored is Good
Redefining Work, Love and Play – find people who want to color outside the lines
Happiness is tangible – “The goal with simple joys is not to crowd or rush them, not to chase or exhaust ourselves or make ourselves sick in overindulgence, but to enjoy them gently — to drink them in fully, but then just as gently put them away.”
5 Ways to Have a Good Life – “You have to commit yourself entirely. You can’t love people half way. You can’t leave important business unfinished. You can’t deliberately half-ass your job or your relationship or any other area of your life because you feel more comfortable when you have one foot out the door. You have to decide what you’re in for and then go all the way with it. You have to realize the freedom and possibility that exists within commitment…Be braver than you feel. Achievement doesn’t come with ease or comfort.”
Being Sober for 21 Days Has Improved My Life
How Social Media Impacts Our Reality
On Midlife – “Midlife is not about the fear of death. Midlife is death. Tearing down the walls that we spent our entire life building is death. Like it or not, at some point during midlife, you’re going down, and after that, there are only two choices: staying down or enduring rebirth.”
Fuck where you see yourself in 3 years – apropos, as I write my 3-year letter…
The new prime suspect for Depression – Ketamine could be our best lead in the hunt for depression.
The power of emotional decision making
It’ll work out for you
On FEMINISM –
There are no Safe Spaces for Women
On AMERICA –
Why America is the World’s Most Uniquely Cruelest Society – “America is the most cruel nation among its peers — even among most poor countries today. It is something like a new Rome. It has little, if any, functioning healthcare, education, transport, media, no safety nets, no stability, security. The middle class is collapsing, and life expectancy is falling.Young people die for a lack of insulin they cannot crowdfund. Elderly middle-class people live and die in their cars. Kids massacre each other in schools — when they’re not self-medicating the pain of it all away. The combination of these pathologies happens nowhere else — not a single place — in the world. Not even Pakistan, Costa Rica, or Rwanda. Hence, the world is aghast daily at the depths of American cruelty — yet somehow, they seem bottomless.”
The birth of a new American Aristocracy – “Family, friends, social networks, personal health, culture, education, and even location are all ways of being rich, too. These nonfinancial forms of wealth, as it turns out, aren’t simply perks of membership in our aristocracy. They define us.”
On Writing –
How to be successful
