Hey friends. Welcome! So glad you’re here  

Anyone else get the blahs this time of year. That mid January lull, the come down after all the festivity?  Feeling a bit at a loose end?  I’ve held it off for the most part this week with a couple of afternoon swims and  strolls along the beach front. A drive down the coast, prettying up some old pots and a firm favourite cooking some good food helped too.

What do you do? Would love to hear

Right now though, pour yourself a cup of something nice, put your feet on up and enjoy a few good things I’ve put together with you in mind.

A Good Word

A Good Look

Making room for rest this weekend?

From Homebohoo

A Good Laugh

Loved this !

The case for pacing yourself – or not.    (Turn sound on)

 A Good Idea

from Anne Lamott 

Here is the anti-diet piece I publish every year just before New Year’s Day. And this year is especially hard because of Covid—the isolation, the comfort food. But a diet is never the answer. Ever. Try radical self-love and take very gentle care of your baby self, and watch the goddamn self-talk! It is lying to you: you are perfect, as is.

“We need to talk.

I know you are planning to start a diet. I used to start diets, too. I hated to mention this to my then-therapist. She would say cheerfully, “Oh, that’s great, honey. How much weight are you hoping to gain?”

I got rid of her sorry ass. No one talks to ME that way.

Well, okay, maybe it was ten years later, after she had helped lead me back home, to myself, to radical self-care, gentle Self-Talk, to a jungly glade that had always existed deep inside me, but that I’d avoided by achieving, dieting, people-pleasing, multi-talking, and so on.

Now when I decide to go on a diet, I say it to myself: “Great, honey. How much are you hoping to gain?”

I was able to successfully put on weight on book tour by eating room service meals in a gobbly trance in 13 different hotels. So that was exhilarating, to make myself feel like Jabba the Hut.

And then I accidentally forgot to starve myself in December, or to go back to the gym, which I’ve been meaning to do since I had a child, 24 years ago.

So I am at least five pounds up — but praise be to God, I do not currently have a scale, because as I’ve said before, getting on a scale is like asking Dick Cheney to give you a sense of your own self-worth.

I can still get my jeans on, for one reason: I wear forgiving pants. The world is too hard as it is, without letting your pants have an opinion on how you are doing. I struggle with enough self-esteem issues without letting my jeans get in on the act.

By the same token, it feels great to be healthy. Some of you need to be under a doctor’s care. None of you need to join Jenny Craig. It won’t work. Some of you need to get outside and walk for half an hour a day. I do love walking, so that is not a problem for me, but I have a serious sickness with sugar: if I start eating it, I can’t stop. It turns out I don’t have an off switch, any more than I do with alcohol. Given a choice, I will eat candy corn and Raisinets until the cows come home–and then those cows will be tense, and bitter, because I will have gotten lipstick on the straps of their feed bags.

A Good Read

Beauty Will Save the World

The quote “Beauty will save the world” from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is often misunderstood to mean the surface appeal of things matter most. So long as the world around you looks lovely, the world is alright.

Boots on the ground, this idea looks more like recognizing the actual beauty in all things, even if they don’t seem lovely at first glance. It means choosing to believe, even during the ordinary liturgy of living life, that beauty is there, underneath the cracked surface of all we see  – – – – keep reading

Sunsets Over Kansas

A minor miracle happened a few days ago on a secluded Kansas farm. It occurred while a nation was transfixed by what was happening in the U.S. Capitol building.

The small farmhouse sits upon a tranquil prairie, roughly 1,190 miles away from Washington D.C. I am told the sunset was one for the books that night. The sky was an arresting seascape of reds, violets, and golds.

Some are surprised to learn that Kansan sunsets are among the most unique in the world. This is because of dust. Dust particles from the entire earth travel to the central plains, riding on global wind currents.

Sometimes dust comes from as far away as the Sahara, drifting 5,000 miles to hover above the Flint Hills. At dusk, the sun shines through these particles and it sets off an explosion of color throughout a pink and yellow sky.

It was during one such vivid sunset that an SUV came barreling up the elderly cowboy’s driveway

– – – – keep reading

The 7 types of rest that every person needs

Have you ever tried to fix an ongoing lack of energy by getting more sleep — only to do so and still feel exhausted? 

If that’s you, here’s the secret: Sleep and rest are not the same thing, although many of us incorrectly confuse the two.

We go through life thinking we’ve rested because we have gotten enough sleep — but in reality we are missing out on the other types of rest we desperately need. The result is a culture of high-achieving, high-producing, chronically tired and chronically burned-out individuals. We’re suffering from a rest deficit because we don’t understand the true power of rest.

Rest should equal restoration in seven key areas of your life     – – – – Keep reading

52 Places to Love in 2021 – The New York Times

We asked readers to tell us about the spots that have delighted, inspired and comforted them in a dark year. Here, 52 of the more than 2,000 suggestions we received, to remind us that the world still awaits

  – – – – keep reading

Thanks so much for reading friends and remember you can browse through the previous articles and posts linked to in The Friday Recliner right  HERE.