Savoring the Tiny Struggles

"As long as you imagine that the outside world will one day deliver to you the external rewards you need to feel happy, you will always perceive your survival as exhausting and perceive your life as a long slog to nowhere. Instead, you have to savor the tiny struggles of the day: The cold glass of water after a long run. The hot bath after hours of digging through the dirt. The satisfaction of writing a good sentence, a good paragraph. You MUST feel these things, because these aren't small rewards on the path to some big reward; these tiny things are everything."

"When you worked hard in the past, you were doing it to GET SOMETHING, to END UP SOMEWHERE. This time, I want you to work hard just to enjoy the work and to breathe and sometimes just to sweat and suffer. I want you to be right here for a change. Not focused on some moment in the future when everything turns to gold or turns to dust. I want you to look around you as you work, and see that it is brilliant and glistening and you are at the center of everything right here, right now, all alone."

Heather Havrileski (is a genius)

But beauty?

Everything we make in this world follows the same process. We must think it, imagine it, dream it, then we make it. As the artist Elle Luna said: “I dream my painting, then I paint my dream.” Everything is designed. And if everything is designed then we have the opportunity to make it beautiful, restorative, engaging, valuable and meaningful. We all need something to believe in so why not make it with beauty and grace.

Alan Moore via

Manifesting plainness

I'm liking the idea of plainness lately. Unfiltered. A glass of milk. Stacks of mail. Out-of-fashion kitchen cabinets. Mary Oliver. African violets. Two eggs and toast. Old college sweatshirts. Morning walks. Not minimalist. Not modern. Not clean. Not messy. Not branded.
Not on point.

Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.
- Lao Tzu

Symptoms of Hibernating

I discovered the diaries of Anaïs Nin when I was a freshman in college, ambling around the library looking for buried treasure. They were revelations. I would love to own a set now. The library edition. For reference. For inspiration. For waking up.

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.” 

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Weather Report

It looks like this:

And sounds like this: