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Collage by Camilla Engman
Today: A List
as inspired by my good friend, Amy.
Today, I woke up a bit later in the day than I had planned.
Today, I meditated for the first time in a week of doing a 21 day challenge. I tried not to feel shame, but pride towards myself that I showed up and practiced today.
Today’s centering thought is “My little changes amount to big benefits.” which I really need to be more conscious of these days. I feel like I am making so many changes, that I am not seeing any results. But how can I with so many changes?
Today, I learned the differences between shame, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment.
Today, I meant to drink more water and eat more protein. However, I did have enough healthy fat.
Today, I did not spend the morning obsessively planning and predicting what was going to happen at work today. I was too focused on being confident.
Today, I splurged on some organic facial products for my difficult and frustrating skin. The technician spent the time to really listen to what I had to say and asked meaningful questions. I am so grateful for that interaction.
Today, I had a moment on the sidewalk where I abruptly turned directions and carelessly bumped into someone. I felt embarrassed, but the person was most concerned that I was lost and needed help.
Today I learned that joy does not bring us gratitude. It is gratitude that makes us joyful.
“We must invite our minds to be our allies.”
What I took away from today’s meditation.
Sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
oh, i love this. (new york is a particularly good city for this.)
one of my favorite things to do when people watching is to picture couples at their weddings. i imagine what they looked like, how they glowed watching each each other take their vows, the smiles plastered to their faces all day. perhaps this is a very specific kind of sonder.
(via emphasisadded)
Ira Glass on storytelling …and any other creative work, really.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story [or piece of art, etc.]. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
Whole interview found here.
“The days aren’t discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn’t unweave: there is no net.
They don’t fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn’t divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones.”
Pablo Neruda
Typewriter Series #281 by Tyler Knott Gregson
