Last week was the first week of part-time work for me, which was a bit of a strange feeling. All of the “extra” time this frees up (which accounts to only 16 hours) was eaten up quickly by the kids and house so it didn’t feel more relaxed. If anything, it just felt like I needed to squeeze more out of the same fruit. Going to take some time I think to adjust.

Anyway, on to the weekly selection of what I was writing, reading, drawing, etc.

Based on all the changes in the works, I’m taking a break from my amplify and reduce goals this month. I’m just going pause and let life be.

“Pausing as a technique may feel unfamiliar, awkward or at odds with our usual way of living. But actually there are many moments—showering, walking, driving—when we release our preoccupations and are simply aware and letting life be.” (Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance)

Last month, I broke my streak of writing daily at 107 days and it was totally ok. Not breaking the chain can be a great motivator but it doesn’t need to be daily to count as a chain.

I learned a really good perspective shift last week: take your “self” out of it.

I finished Radical Acceptance and my analytical reading experiment. Writing a summary of what I read is a game changer for my retention and I can tell that I get a lot more mileage out of the material. This is something I’ll keep experimenting with this year.

Some other things that caught my attention last week:

• What would happen if humans tried to land on Jupiter? – answer: they’d all be trapped. Another space thing to make you feel insignificant.
• How to Embrace Doing Nothing

If scheduling leisure seems unnatural to you, consider the way good health requires you to schedule your meals and exercise at more or less a certain time each day for a particular amount of time. Schedule “white space” in your day, and keep it off-limits from the tyrannical urgencies of your work (as well as from eating and exercise). If your guilt creeps in, or if you’re worried that “wasting” this time will somehow make you poorer, try to remember the words of the Welsh poet William Henry Davies: “A poor life this if, full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare.”