macro
- Discovering a delicious carrot soup recipe.
- Richard Osman’s weekly alphabet quizzes. To take part you need to subscribe to his newsletter.
- Celebrating my middle nephew’s birthday with family (from afar).
- An early morning invigorating walk around the neighbourhood.
- Successfully recreating a friend’s recipe for corned beef pie. The ultimate comfort food.
- A park on my doorstep.
- Beer deliveries by bike.
- Being able to source flour relatively easily. If you’ve not been so lucky, try local weigh houses or zero waste stores as they’re more able, and used to, batching up larger quantities into smaller packets.
- A decent Internet connection (keeping my fingers' crossed that I’ve not jinxed it by saying this).
- My wife, who is able and willing to go to the supermarket.
Gratitude #002
Tags: #gratitude #april2020 #cv19 #lockdown
Gratitude #001
Tags: #gratitude #april2020 #cv19 #lockdown
A pure soul and a smile in your heart
Thanks Cards Against Humanity for bringing some joy to my day.
I don’t have any kids. Should I download this?
If you have a pure soul and a smile in your heart: yes.
From Cards Against Humanity Family Edition via Thought Shrapnel Weekly
Tags: #lockdown #games #april2020
Coronavirus confessions #1
As I’ve been reading over the past few days I’ve found myself forgetting that the characters in my book aren’t on lockdown. I keep being surprised that they’re free to leave the house and meet other people.
Tags: #cv19 #lockdown #march2020
A moment of bliss
I woke up this morning, stretched and got out of bed. As I walked to the kitchen to make tea the usual narrative started running through my head.
What day is it?
What’s for breakfast?
What have I got on today?
For a moment I’d forgotten life is different now. And it was bliss.
Tags: #cv19 #march2020
Change is the one constant
Today I’ve been reading sample essays on how coaching can help to facilitate change. One opens with the line:
Change is the one constant we all live with, that and the certainty of our own death.
Cheery.
Tags: #march2020 #mementomori
What is enough?
Enough seems like a radical idea in a world that is conditioned to more. The concept of sufficiency runs contrary to so many values the Western world has ingrained in us. Our autopilot strives for bigger, better, more….
Several studies have shown that once a certain ‘satiation point’ has been reached, more money has no long-term effect on our level of contentment. And yet, we relentlessly optimise our private and professional lives for more, perhaps too scared to contemplate what we would do with ourselves if we were so foolish to accept enough.
Source: Kai Brach in Dense Discovery Issue 73
#DenseDiscovery #quote #sustainability
Prioritizing wellbeing
In Adam Smith’s earlier work, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” which I think is just as important, he made the observation that the value of any government is judged in proportion to the extent that it makes its people happy. I think that is a good founding principle for any group of countries focused on promoting well-being. None of us have all of the answers, not even Scotland, the birthplace of Adam Smith. But in the world we live in today, with growing divides and inequalities, with disaffection and alienation, it is more important than ever that we ask and find the answers to those questions and promote a vision of society that has well-being, not just wealth, at its very heart.
Source: Why governments should prioritize well-being TED Talk by Nicola Sturgeon
#wellbeing #happiness #quote
Life is short, don't wait
If you find yourself thinking that life is too short for something, you should try to eliminate it if you can…
Cultivate a habit of impatience about the things you most want to do. Don’t wait before climbing that mountain or writing that book or visiting your mother. You don’t need to be constantly reminding yourself why you shouldn’t wait. Just don’t wait.
Source: Life is short by Paul Graham
#mementomori #quote
Balancing the accounts
Just because we’re working to fill one account (our bank account), doesn’t mean we should diminish our life and health account in the process. We need both accounts in good standing to have a good life.
Source: Your other account balance by Paul Jarvis
#wellbeing #productivity #worklife #quote
RIP blogging?
Here’s the thing: there are good blogs to read. Some old ones are gone, but new good ones are created all the time.
And there are good RSS readers which you can use instead of (or in addition) to Twitter and Facebook.
And — most importantly — nothing is stopping you from writing joyfully and creatively for the web! You can entertain, you can have fun, you can push the boundaries of the form, if you want to. Or you can just write about cats as you develop your voice. Whatever you want!
Source: You Choose by Brent Simmons
#writing #quote #blogging
Instructions for living a life...
Pay attention Be astonished Tell about it
Extract from Sometimes by Mary Oliver
Source: You do not have to be good by Austin Kleon
#poetry #MaryOliver
Creatives are...
People going through some endeavour trying to build or create or make something. I don’t mean artists or painters, just FYI. I mean people who are taking a risk to express some part of themselves.
Source: Sunni Brown on Self-Compassion in the Creative Process
#quote #creativity
Money doesn't fix everything
Interesting analysis of the problems at Manchester United (emphasis my own):
“It’s interesting because we keep hearing they need to buy more players. You know they have spent a lot of money in headline terms and yet the whole thing is a horrible incoherent mess. It’s just a brilliant reminder that there is more to every area of life than simply having and spending lots of money and football seems to be really struggling to process this. Why isn’t that rich person happy… Why isn’t money everything? Well because there are other things like care and intelligence and wanting to be doing this thing together. And what’s missing there is not spending money, you know people have tried desperately and in a haphazard fashion to spend money. It’s intellignce, care and love and being involved in that project. It’s a brilliant lesson that we should all heed and watch endlessly on a loop.”
Source: The Guardian Football Weekly
Carry your life lightly
Carry your life lightly Don’t overcompensate, Or turn the wheel too sharply But if you keep the handbrake on, you’ll never know The joy of moving free, countering gravity No need for fear Even at speed you can correct a swerve
Source: Carry your life lightly by Anna Starkey
#poetry #wellbeing
Look after yourself
Do less and achieve more. Take quality breaks. Take the occasional retreat. Spend time re-charging. Get enough sleep. Read for inspiration. Spend more time with those who encourage and less time with those who criticise. Look after yourself.
From How to Be Brilliant by Nicholas Bate
#selfcare #quote
Progress might mean doing an about-turn
Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then going forward does not get you any nearer.
Matt Haig shares this quote from C.S. Lewis in Notes on a Nervous Planet. He follows it with this insight of his own:
Forward momentum, on an individual or social level, is not automatically good simply because it is forward momentum… progress might mean doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road.
It seems to me that often our egos get in the way of these about-turns. We’re too fragile to admit, to ourselves as much as anyone else, that we made a mistake and so we just keep ploughing forward.
If we can get beyond that, and check in with ourselves on a regular basis to ask if we’re still heading in the right direction, then maybe we can avoid going too far along the wrong roads.
#progress #change #mistakes #ego
herein, I only talk about the things I like
This was an important decision for me, made some years ago. It is great fun to annihilate something in a storm of arch Menckenesque hail, and I’ve done it in the past. But I came to the place where I questioned its utility here. If I’m spending time and space on something that is bad, then that is time and space not be used to boost the awareness of something good. And that is a poor trade-off, these days…
I’ll only ever tell you about things I think are good. Because, really, that’s all we should be spending our time on, and all we should be raising up into the conversation…
Here, we only do the good shit. Okay? Okay.
Source: Warren Ellis, Orbital Operations 9 June 19
What should we be teaching?
schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, to learn new things, and to preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations. In order to keeps up with the world of 2050, you will need not merely to invent new ideas and products - you will above all need to reinvent yourself again and again.
Source: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by #YuvalNoahHarari