Blog – degan walters

March 22, 2019March 22, 2019

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

March 18, 2019

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

March 14, 2019

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

March 9, 2019

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.

March 6, 2019March 9, 2019

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

How to Stay Sharp

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.

January 25, 2019January 25, 2019

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!

January 6, 2019January 6, 2019

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

January 3, 2019January 6, 2019

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.

December 11, 2018

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.

Afterwards I, got to deliver the gifts we collected for the women at Jubilee Women’s Center and that made me really happy.

And then it was my flamenco dancing debut at our studio performance! The dogs were very involved in helping me practice.

What was beautiful:

What I’m reading and listening to:

Incredibly inspiring notebooks of a traveling artist

Farm animal donation

Corporate mediocrity

Baking Bread in Chefchaouen

November 17, 2018November 17, 2018

11.15.18

What I’ve been up to:

A quick trip to Morocco and Barcelona were unquestionably the highlights this month (especially in comparison to coming down with a cold). I wandered medinas and came across all sorts of treasures, saw snake charmers and hawkers, rode in a hot air balloon, rode a camel (again), visited ancient tanneries, bought a carpet, saw the blue city and ate so many amazing tagines and couscous.

Barcelona was super nice to revisit as well and meeting up with Matt, we visited the Sagrada Familia again, went to some of our favorite tapas spots and took in a couple of flamenco shows.

Earlier we also had the opportunity to see Barbara Kingsolver in conversation at Seattle Arts & Lectures and I was (as always), charged up and inspired by her quiet politics and extraordinary storytelling. I love this quote from the program:

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do it live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides”

And finally, US elections happened while we were away and so we were keeping a very close eye on that.

What was beautiful:

Morocco was as amazingly beautiful as I ever dreamt it would be.