degan walters – Adventureuse, rêveuse and bonne vivante. Loves dogs, motorcycles, real conversations and the sea.

2019-04-03

4.2.19

What I’ve been up to:

Booking Mexico for Matt’s birthday and he booked the Oregon Coast for our anniversary, so that is some nice beachy R&R in our future. But first DC for my birthday and then Vancouver for my dad’s birthday.

Trying to cut down on plastic and cans but I’m also trying to cut down on drinking and I have developed a powerful LaCroix habit.

Studying all the (psych) things, painting the entire house. And now also the garden is coming up so weeding in between things too.

What was beautiful:

Sand, magnified incredibly:

What I’m reading and listening to:

About the largest cave in the world

Dolphin’s experience psychological trauma after being hunted for research

Soccer Mom Hate

Highly Sensitive People. No surprise but I think I am one.

Every day mysticism at On Being

Charting a life course with diagrams

Breathing in the light

How I got my husband to help with the housework – the high cost of emotional labour

Quitting a drinking habit

Alcohol & Anxiety

Shiba Inu who runs a vegetable stand

A WW2 spy

Emotional fitness

How to think about feelings

The Hell of High Expectations

Attachment styles in Adulthood

For the love of hard work

Rethinking the battle against Depression

The Unifying Theory of Work

“Sober-curious” bars”

High-functioning alcoholics

Related: How to Relax without Alcohol

Where the Art is:

It’s in your pockets and behind your eyelids, it shares your clothes and has its hands wrapped around your throat. It’s dripping down the walls and yelling from the trees, it whispers and sings and dances and sobs, all day every day and your one and only job is to pay close attention

How to be Perfect:

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.
Be kind to old people, even when they are obnoxious. When you

become old, be kind to young people. Do not throw your cane at

them when they call you Grandpa. They are your grandchildren!

Live with an animal.

2019-03-222019-03-22

3.21.19

What I’ve been up to:

Really just more of the same – work, study, dance, walk the dogs – and it’s unlikely to change until mid-April, but we did have a lot of visitors over the weekend and that was fun.

What was beautiful:

First buds and blossoms of spring and the equinox full moon

What I’m reading and listening to:

Alain de Botton at Brain Pickings

Bluets, by Maggie Nelson

Erin’s Merrihew’s pep talk email this month

Zen Habit’s Method to Deal with Tiredness, Loneliness and Stress

Survive a Mid-life Crisis with Dancing and Drugs

The Psychopath Test at This American Life

Seth Godin asks How Big is Your Unfillable Hole?

How to find a volunteer gig that makes a difference

It’s not enough to be right, you also have to be Kind

2019-03-18

3.17.10

What I’ve been up to:

Flamenco dancing, visiting with so many friends, trying to hang out in the sunshine as much as possible.

What was beautiful:

Hella gorgeous weekend, Seattle!

This elephant

What I’m reading and listening to:

Kids who spend time in nature are happier adults

Travel less

This orangutan fighting off a bulldozer

2019-03-14

3.14.19

What I’ve been up to:

Still studying and painting.

Bluebird day on the mountains with my snow squad

Plus booking trips to White Rock and Wales for important people’s life events

What was beautiful:

The sliver of moon

What I’m reading and listening to:

Trove of Mayan artifacts found

Happiness really is just a state of mind

and why that’s a hard place to get to

Shaking things up at work by inspiring the black sheep

What it’s like to have an ADHD brain

Extreme Athleticism is the New Midlife Crisis

and not nearly enough of my psych materials…need to hit the books this weekend

2019-03-09

3.9.19

What I’ve been up to:

Still studying, working, dancing but I have now made it back to yoga and running (hooray!) and working on painting the basement in my downtime. I think I’ve been holding it together ok without turning into too much of a stress case (although I am still pretty behind) but this morning my dog walked under my desk and got tangled in the power cable, pulled my computer into my coffee mug and dumped coffee all over my notes, notebook, art supplies, and leg. I jumped up and yelled, causing her to run into the cat, who then attacked my leg and much crying ensued. The irony of this is that I was writing an article on the benefits of pet ownership, which is now going to be even more late. I hope my tutor gets the joke.

What was beautiful:

The Spellbinding Swedish Song That Calls Cows Home

The amazing grandmothers of the killer whale pod
Each killer whale pod is able to survive thanks mainly to one member, its most knowledgeable hunter: the grandmother.
Posted by TED on Wednesday, December 19, 2018

What I’m reading and listening to:

Maria Popova on On Being

Fleetwood Mac and the rest of the “Have a Great Day!” playlist on Spotify. Fingers crossed.

Indigenous Women Chiefs Protecting the Amazon

Posts about orca deaths – Kayla and Tillicum – at Sea World. I thought everyone knew they were evil but it seems like I stepped down from my soapbox too soon.

2019-03-062019-04-19

2.17.19

What I’ve been up to:

So much! I started school so am now busy cramming all kinds of psych knowledge into my brain and basically jettisoning anything I don’t need.

but then I also went to Cuba and Mexico City with my sister, checked off several life list items, chilled out on the beach and ate many tacos.

I saw enough of the snow to love playing with the dogs but then swapped to turquoise waters and sunshine – and am loving the winter sunshine in Seattle these days as well.

What was beautiful:

So many artifacts at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City

Lynda Lowe’s exhibit at the Patricia Rozvar gallery

This video

This door, by Architect: Ernest Delune
📸 Manda on Flickr via Streetart Globe

Meet the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Francisco’s Order of Queer Nuns

What I’m reading and listening to:

The 4 Pillars of a fulfilling career

Puppy pictures help

Maybe Why You’re Always Apologizing

Body Shape and First Impressions

The Psychology of Supermarkets

Communication over Compromise

Unconscious Bias Favors Men at Work

Microdosing

The Deadly Truth About a World Built for Men

We’re Optimizing Ourselves to Death. What happens when tech gives us more leisure time? We work.

And then some more ways to be hyper productive.

2019-01-252019-01-25

1.24.19

What I’ve been up to:

Had a great time taking the train to Portland for a few days…shopping, wine-tasting, eating and wandering.

And then I painted the top floor of the house, went to Vancouver to check out Adler University and got back into running, yoga, flamenco, and eating well.

What was beautiful:

Murals, street art and old neon in Portland.

An updated description for “degan” in the Urban Dictionary prompted a bit of a deeper search that sounds like a poem:

Earth, grain. Little fish
Dagger, a thrust-oriented dueling sword – on a black-haired degenerate dean
From the Old High German, from the Proto-Germanic, from Proto-Indo-European Cognate with Dutch degen, English thane, Icelandic þegn, Ancient.
Someone who will help you out through tuff times,
a loveable person,
a person you can count on.
Degan, I need help, what do you need
Degan, can you do something for me, yea what you need. ##keepyourheadup
(Don’t) put hos before bros,
ditch friends.
John deganed out on us
“What a “pussywhippedassclown”
A fucking idiot who copies people’s words and drives an Accord.
From the 17th century, degan contains Metoclopramide hydrochloride in Bulgaria and –
a town in Ethiopia.

After 2 years of not being able to wear my wedding ring after I broke my hand, we got my stone set into a new setting and it is so pretty.

What I’m reading and listing to:

How you do anything is how you do everything

Society’s problem with patience

How to be more resilient

Why the 15 Hour work week never happened

The Art of Intimacy

A pill for loneliness. This is not the right way to go, but it is interesting.

Attachment as a response to perceived threats.

Existential therapy

A therapist in therapy

Plus a STACK of psychology books and e-texts, poetry books and travel guides for Cuba and Mexico City. Busy!

2019-01-062019-01-06

01.05.19

What I’ve been up to:

We spent a quiet Christmas at a cabin in Skykomish, watching the snow fall on the river and listening to the wood stove crackle in between walking the dogs, and doing very little else. It was blissful.

And then we spent a busy weekend visiting family rounded it off with some bubbles on the couch.

Last month I also had a couple of really special dinner parties (and brunch!) with some amazing people in spectacular locales that I am still relishing, went roller-skating a bunch of times and of course worked on my goals for 2019.

What was beautiful:

Some beautiful pieces of artwork, vintage pinball machines, wintry PNW landscapes, and my hair!

What I’m reading and listening to:

One for my psychoanalytic travel journal – How Personality and Place affect Personal Flourishing

A lot of success is just picking something and sticking with it

What to do when we’re checked out and withdrawn

On microdosing

Powerful ways to treat depression without medication

On giving up booze for a year

How your phone contributes to your loneliness

On letting go of your baggage

What lonely humans can learn from lonely mice

When Self Help makes your life worse

How to be more patient

2019-01-032019-01-06

So long 2018

In October I re-posted an image on Instagram that read, “2018 is almost over and all I gotta say is what the fuck was that”. It felt like Matt was working all the time and between my work, canceled yoga retreat in Hawaii and most especially the news, I was bitter and resentful and frustrated a lot of the time. And tired. We were so tired.

But then Matt released his product (hooray!) and I got to go to Morocco, and I realized that while it was largely about connecting dots, introspecting and doing the daily work to shore up parts of life, it was also pretty special and amazing.

My niece was born in the last days of December so I got to meet her in January, I got a new motorcycle, I got to go to Morocco and back to Spain, rode in a hot air balloon, did the altMBA, was a maid of honor, dyed my hair blue, and immersed myself in flamenco.

Onwards and upwards in 2019! It’s going to be a big plot-twist year and I’m really excited.

2018-12-11

12.10.18

What I’ve been up to:

The 4th annual Rainier Ravens Holiday party – about as Christmasy as I get these days but it is always a lot of fun and this year Matt came out and manned the piñata.