For you, from me, with love

A blend of old and new offerings around and about that I've been dipping into this week.

Enjoy!

Learn: "The Gentle Art of Trying Something and Sucking At It," by Leo Babauta over at Zen Habits.

How do you get over sucking at something you’re trying to learn, so you can get good at it? The answer is to become curious about the suck.

(After you've read the full article, come back here and read this note — Go on. I'll wait for you... — The only thing I would add to Leo's piece is that sometimes we won't ever get good at something. Sometimes we "embrace the suck" for an extended period of time and we still don't make much or any progress. And that's OK too. Move on. Try something else. There is plenty to tackle out there in the world.)

Insight: I've read Start With Why, and found the concept awesome for the nonprofits I've worked with, but I have wondered how it applies (and how well it applies) to the self-employed life. Sarah Von Bargen has some great thoughts on how YOU can be your business' WHY.

Watch: Thank you, Harry Potter. (The power of great stories.) Via Tell The Story Please.

Read: In honor of poet Mary Oliver's birthday, which was yesterday, I want to recommend any of her books. (And if you don't know where to start, try A Thousand Mornings.)

Eat: If you make these Easy Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers before I do, will you invite me over?

Participate: The Migrant Offshore Aid Station is dedicated to preventing loss of life at sea by providing assistance to migrants who find themselves in distress while crossing the Mediterranean Sea in unsafe vessels. They've saved more than 11,000 people so far. Every dollar helps.

Listen: And laugh. JF and JT.

My Project 333 transition month

It's September and I should be starting a new three-month cycle of Project 333 (thanks to the switcheroo of my timeline that I did earlier this year).

But instead, I've decided to take what I'm calling a transition month.

As I dug out my stored clothes for fall and winter, I pulled out lots of items that made me go, "Hmmm." I haven't worn many of these pieces in nine or more months and I honestly don't know if I want to wear them or not.

My body has been shifting — a blend of food-heavy press trips and irregular exercise.

My taste has been shifting — I'm becoming more and more aware of what I really like to put on my body every day.

And my life has been shifting — I picked up an ongoing freelance gig that requires me to have a few professional items, which because I'd gone to working from home and coffee shops two years ago, I'd basically eliminated from my closet.

With that, over the past week I pulled out every item I own and placed each in one of five piles:

1) To swap or donate (I've got a large bag so far)

2) To consign (Another large bag so far, and if my local shops don't want these pieces, they go immediately into pile number one)

3) To store (for a different season — three medium-size plastic bins for this use)

4) To for-sure-include in the next cycle

5) To test

It's pile number five that I'm playing with during the month of September.

I started by making sure everything up for consideration was washed and visible in my closet. This category includes about 60 items right now — and because we're still getting 80-degree days, but temps will drop fast come October/November, it ranges from tank tops to heavy sweaters. My goal during September is to wear each of those 60-some pieces at least once. From there, the item gets redistributed to one of the other four categories.

Just yesterday I donned a denim skirt and a striped flowy top, neither of which I had worn in quite some time. I liked the skirt. It went in the probably-include pile (I need to see how many other denim skirts I end up with first). I did not like how the top fit. It's going to my next swap.

This whole process brings home what becomes more and more clear to me each cycle in regard to a capsule closet or minimalist approach:

You need to make it work for you.

Earlier in my journey, the guidelines and structure of Project 333 were exactly what I needed to get started. Now, I blend Courtney's suggestions with my own, and feel no qualms about the integration. In fact, it's fun.

My goal this month is to get my closet down by about half. I do still use "33" as my guideline. (I've always been drawn to the number three so for some reason it feels right.) I also want to leave a few slots open to add a couple "business-y" items.

Courtney writes in a recent blog post that there are five essentials to a capsule wardrobe:

Peace     ::     Ease     ::     Love     ::     Clarity     ::     Space

Letting go of the mass of clothes I used to mess around with every day has been physically freeing. But perhaps even more so, it's been emotionally freeing. It's not for everyone, but if you think it might be for you, I encourage you to give Project 333, or some variation on it, a try.

For you, from me, with love

A blend of old and new offerings around and about that I've been dipping into this week.

Enjoy!

Learn: "The Art of Daily Ritual," by the amazing Courtney Martin for On Being (read the whole piece here): "Even washing the dishes can be a kind of ritual if you treat it as such. It’s about pace and intention, the senses and the symbols. It’s about the meaning you imbue into an object or an act, rather than a script you inherit. It’s about noticing."

Participate: Just a little more time to get in on this cool portable aromatherapy Kickstarter. (It's guaranteed to be funded!)

Read: Alice's Adventures in Underland: The Queen of Stilled Hearts, by author-friend of mine DeAnna Knippling.

Watch: Dogs and pigs. Equally awesome. (From Mercy for Animals and ChooseVeg.com.)

Eat: Really want to give these Turmeric Cashews a try.

Insight: Death By Chrysalis — I saw this poem come through in a Goodreads newsletter this morning, fell in love, and went out seeking the poet, Danny Earl Simmons. I'll be adding his site to my Feedly because it's a wealth of good poetry, his and others'. "Death By Chrysalis" was originally published in the Fall/Winter 2011 issue of Pirene's Fountain.

Not everything that dies becomes a moldering rot like the sticky black ooze of the weeds of ancient seas.

Take that wooly mammoth, for instance, found in a block of ice on the edge of the middle of some frozen nowhere, flowers half-chewed in its mouth. What luck to be unlucky in such a way – in a cold flash just after a little dinner-salad – so that, all these centuries later, heads wag in disbelief and grunt smirks at the shaggy once was of him.

And what of the death by chrysalis of the caterpillar – a voracious, needy, earthy thing that dies from cramp and forced revision only to be resurrected with two thin surprises connected lightly to the same center of it all?

For you, from me, with love

A blend of old and new offerings around and about that I've been dipping into this week.

Enjoy!

Learn: Are 140-character tweets hurting our writing or helping?

Participate: For introverts (from a fellow introvert), a Quiet Revolution.

Read: The Infernal Devices trilogy, by Cassandra Clare.

Watch: French-Tunesian street artist eL Seed and his awesome calligraffiti:

Eat: Heidi Swanson's Baked Oatmeal (I made this for a brunch potluck with gluten-free oats — it fed a lot of people and it was so good!)

Listen: "Angels of the Get Through" by Andrea Gibson, with Kaylen Krebsbach:

Insight: Quote below from an essay I love a ton. Read the whole thing, "The Stories We Tell Ourselves," by Terri Schanks here.

Who are you, and who are you becoming? Are you the same person you were at seven? Well, yes and no. Yes, you probably have the same name. And theoretically you have the same body, but science tells us even that is an incorrect illusion. What is the same? Probably the stories. The memories. The intangible, ineffable qualities that make a life are still there, hopefully with some more wisdom and patience, hopefully with some insight, but probably that insight came as the result of experiences — some pleasant and some not so much. As my father used to say, “experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

Sunday sadhana

To me, sadhana is a daily spiritual practice allowing time and space for an individual to turn inward.

As Yogi Bhajan (of the Kundalini yoga tradition) says, "Sadhana is self-enrichment. It is not something which is done to please somebody or to gain something. Sadhana is a personal process in which you bring out your best."

Sadhana could be taking a walk in nature, doing breath work or yoga asanas on a mat, spending time meditating or chanting, reading and reflecting on a poem, or simply watching the sun rise.

Please accept this post as a possible starting point for your own practice today, including a story told by Soren Gordhamer about his work with an incarcerated man, found in an essay by Maia Duerr:

A guy named Michael was in for a gang-related murder and used to come to the classes. But during the yoga, he would never really do the yoga very much. During the meditation, he would just kind of look around. He wasn’t very involved. But afterwards he gave me a big hug and always thanked me. Over the weeks I started to get frustrated with him. Like, ‘Why do you show up to class if you’re not interested in practicing?’ And then one day it hit me: he didn’t come for the meditation or the yoga. He came for the hug....

If you never formally sit and close your eyes and meditate, but [if] you’re creating a space that supports people where compassion can come forward and where they feel accepted, that is actually more the central issue, and really maybe the heart of contemplative practice.