Hello friends.

How are you?

We’ve made it to Friday so I say that’s an achievement and a blessing in itself.

I hope the weeks been kind to you.

As always friends here a few simple things,  fresh and friendly, to get your weekend started on a relaxed note – – – –

A Good Word

by Adrienne Oliver

Image by Maria at Little Walks Simple Joys

A Good Look

 by Lore Pemberton

Lets call this one “Lingering”

(To linger is to stay in one place longer than necessary because of a reluctance to leave)

See more of Lore’s gorgeous artworks  here

A Good Idea

from Shannan Martin

I took (two) photos (recently) a few days apart. The first was from a walk in my neighborhood. The second was up near Lake Michigan. They’re both beautiful; awe-inspiring for different reasons. The thing is, we have to train our eyes to discover beauty in humbler places and things. If doesn’t always come naturally. Our culture is constantly corrupting us toward bigger, better, flashier. I love watching design shows and drooling over fancy things. But it will begin a slow decay, if we let it. Meanwhile, our neighbors are artists in our midst, using what they have to reflect the sort of beauty that can only come from God.

Here’s our mission: seek the beauty that defies empire. Maybe it’s near you. Or maybe you’ll have to go out of your way to find it. When you do, pay attention. Notice what it does to you, inside. How does it feel?

Here’s how it usually feels for me: a slow exhale. A settling in my soul. A permission to slow down. A well-kept secret. An urge to create. A sense of home.

PS: I’d love to see what you discover.

See the two pics Shannan is referring to here

A Few Good Reads

Wake Me Up When September Ends

It seems to me that September has often brought change and transition into my life. Obviously, there’s the years of navigating those first days of school, first as a student and later as a teacher. There was the year in high school when September brought me an unlooked-for breakup, and another year when it saw the same boyfriend (now ex, again) move away, which ended any chance of us ending up together.

September always brought the settling back into routine from the joyful chaos and frivolity of summer, but it often brought pain with that transition. The aforementioned rocky high school romance, sure, but it also brought tension back to our home as my step-sisters returned from summering with their mom, and we had to learn how to function as a family again. It brought the realization that the next time I would see my dad was likely to be months away, because a 6 hour drive was just a little too long for Thanksgiving break.

September makes me nostalgic for high school and college football games, Homecoming parades, and melancholy songs. And while there’s nearly always been joy in September, the melancholy of Fall hits me hard more often than not – – – – –  keep reading

What Would Happen If We Slowed Down?

In my recent New Yorker essay on overload, I noted that many knowledge workers end up toiling roughly 20% more than they have time to comfortably handle. This is, in some sense, the worst possible configuration, as it creates a background hum of stress, but is just sustainable enough that you can keep it up for years.My explanation for the universality of this 20% rule is that it arises as a natural result of leaving knowledge workers to self-regulate their workload. It’s difficult for even the most organized and intentional among us to manage a constant influx of requests, and messages, and project proposals, and, God help us, Zoom meeting invites — so we default to a simple heuristic: start saying “no” when we feel stressed, as this provides psychological cover to retreat in an otherwise ambiguous terrain of never-ending potential labor.

The problem with this strategy, of course, is that we don’t start pulling back until after we have too much going on: leading to the 20% overload that’s so consistently observed.

The question left unexamined in my essay is what it would look like if you rejected this rule. What if, for example, you aimed to work 20% less than you had time to reasonably handle?  – – –  keep reading 

6 Ways Becoming a Mom Has Transformed My Relationship With My Home

(That very nicely translate into life in general)

That’s all for now friends. Enjoy the reads and have a beautiful weekend, rest up, do something you love xx