Thinking about
The ebb and flow of emotions and sensations and seasons. I’ve been listening to Andrew Huberman a lot lately and he does something called Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR). One of the things that he mentions is that we control our perception (or which sensations we focus on). I have been working nights recently and am feeling so exhausted from switching between nights and days with work, but thinking about how we control our perceptions has allowed me to kind of name and come to terms with how I am feeling.
John O’Donohue in his book of blessings To Bless the Space Between Us has a blessing: For One Who Is Exhausted. “You have been forced to enter empty time. The desire that drove you has relinquished. There is nothing else to do now but rest And patiently learn to receive the self You have forsaken in the race of days. You have traveled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back. Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through… Be excessively gentle with yourself…” He says “Draw alongside the silence of stone Until its calmness can claim you.”
I am resting, slowing down, noticing what is around and in me.
Learning
How I’ve been coping (healing, feeling motivated, etc) with everything that is going on:
reading Your Local Epidemiologist and Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American
pulling back from the news and social media, as much as I can
finding things that inspire me — talking to people about new ideas, spending time outdoors, going to my favorite radical bookstore where I am continuously challenged to think more broadly.
yoga and meditation
doing my job — caring for little humans and validating their fear and trauma about procedures and being in the hospital.
It is a continual question for me of how I am supposed to help/make a difference with everything going on. I wonder if it’s a cop out for me to use my job as the reason for why I don’t do more. This will probably always be a question for me, but I find hope that small actions do make a difference. How have you been thinking about everything going on in the world?
Asking
How do you self soothe?
What are some of your own magical questions?
Priya Parker asked this of her followers/readers and has been sharing them periodically on her insta. She defines a magical question as one that everyone is interested in answering and hearing each other’s answers. I’m genuinely curious of yours, so please let me know! (I’m also always curious of your answers to the questions here!!)
Cooking
I saw a video of someone making a pizza with a crust made of mashed potatoes and it looked amazing so this is on my list to make. Otherwise, I’ve been eating a variation of kale and quinoa salads before my night shifts, a yogurt bowl in the morning before I go to sleep and snacks like hard boiled eggs, nuts and dried fruit to keep myself awake through the night.
I made a rye bread the other day and it was fun to have throughout the week. Justine Snacks has a recipe for spinach banana pancakes that I’m going to try tonight for dinner :) Also, she has a salted date brown butter carrot bread. I do realize that this newsletter has slowly become an ad for Justine Snacks, but I lost my school-sponsored NYT Cooking subscription, so had to find a new place for recipes!
Reading
Intermezzo (Sally Rooney)
I didn’t love Rooney’s other books, but this one has captivated me so far and I can’t tell you exactly why yet
Rodham (Curtis Sittenfeld)
This was SUCH a fun read about Hilary Clinton and her life, if she hadn’t married Bill Clinton. Crazy and amazing
March (Geraldine Brooks)
A telling of the story of the father in Little Women and his time as a chaplain in the civil war. I’m also slowly re-reading Little Women
Claire Keegan’s Foster and So Late in the Day and Small Things Like These (my favorite of the three!)
Babel (R. F. Kuang)
Just picked up from the library today: The Life of Herod the Great (Zora Neale Hurston’s unfinished novel), Taiwan Travelogue (Yang Shuang-Zi), and The Bee Sting (Paul Murray)
OH also — I asked lots of people for their favorite book of 2024 and here is the book yeast list. It’s fun to see it grow every year.
namaste,
anna
