A new season began on the Labour Day long weekend. While it marks the anniversary of my giving birth to an entirely new human in my family decades ago, it is also a chance to give new life to my current priorities. My hope with each long weekend is to “reset.” I often buy a new notebook, crack it open, date the page, and underline a heading. It’s a typical ritual initiating a reset. It’s a gift to have three unscheduled days. Yet, between the recreation and catch-up time on the home front, I feel compelled to reflect and plan, as if the universe is going to audit my use of a Monday off.
Signals You Send Your Biology (Part 1 of the long weekend reset)
Labour Day Weekend signals time to be done with things as the year ages. Festivals, summer foods, and style, summer loves and footloose freedom turn to school and office schedules. A caveat for Living to Deadline: strive not to send signals that say you are done in life. Avoid loss and lack in nine key areas. The categories appear in social posts by an alleged 100-year-old Japanese doctor. While the character is likely a fictitious aggregate, the principles are worthy of action and are backed by science.
The Decision You Can Make Today (So Someone Else Doesn’t Have To)
I’ve relied a lot on Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer’s five decades of studying how our minds shape our bodies and our lives. Decisions and hoping to make the best ones is a topic she is often asked about, and it appears in her writing also. If you’ve read any of my ‘gettin’ ready to act’ posts, then you know that a decision, almost any decision, might be the step towards meaningful action.
Stuttering Starts … Along the Road of the Estate Reduction Plan
You’d think it’s staggered starts, like in a race with blocks and lanes for fast runners on a track. No, it’s me.. I always feel like I am just getting into my lane, but it often proves to be a false start.. Frankly, even getting down low and in position could only happen in my dreams; I just don’t have that kind of flexibility at this time. Might get it back, but need to train for that. However, even the most enticing and rewarding goals falter on the track due to inconsistency.
So, for now, the only race I am running with myself is to declutter before the clocks runs out on my mortal time.
Standing in the Clutter and Lessons (re)Learned
Where have I been for weeks now? Alternating between home decluttering to downsize and digging through my digital and hard copy archives. When moved to do so, I write about what I find, so there are plenty of posts ready to be published. I just haven’t actually pulled the trigger on that… inexplicably, given retirement now affords me all the time to write what I want and post on my own website. But then, that is how clutter robs you of energy and rational thought.
Lost Files of the Past, Found Freedom for the Future
“If we don’t need it and we can’t manage it, maybe it is time to clean out the digital garage.” This last line in a short blog (posted in full below) came up as I reflected a year ago to this day, on the loss of highly personal files. I had written and saved them as an archive of ideas and memories to be addressed when I was (mostly) done writing for clients and community. I had good intentions. Don’t we all?
Headspace After the Family Day Long Weekend & Valentine’s Celebrations
Each day of this mid February calendar week holds a different celebration. So, how do we handle the time between social calls to duty on the day?
Today is Lunar New Year with all the gallantry and power of the Year of the Horse. Ramadan begins shortly with shorter fasts as it returns to winter months, Black History Month continues and many more on the Canadian calendar alone.
How To Implement the 5 Rituals to Energize Us at Work and Leisure (Part 2 of 2)
Requests came for a post with more detail on Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s five core rituals noted in what is now part 1.These are the steps to reclaim our spaces and energy with care this February at work or in the community.
Here’s to heaping helpings of joy, health, wellbeing and belonging, expanded, in plain language, following the original outline offered in Dr. Chatterjee’s ‘Happiness Prescription’.
February Rituals of Happiness for Home-Based or Desk-Bound Workers
Break out the reds and pinks, February has arrived.
In North America, it heralds declarations of love through greeting cards, chocolate, jewelry, flowers, gourmet dinners, and reservations for spa treatments. You’d get the idea that happiness if not full-blown authentic capital L O V E is something exchanged, gifted, and celebrated outwardly. But what about those of us, well most of us now, that are deskbound alongside our automated calendars as we get closer to ‘the official day’ and all that is commercial romance?
Self-aware Solopreneur Writer or Professional Pastimer?
A virtual writers’ group I belong to, has a set check-in at the top of each studio hour we share. Its protocols include a welcome question posed to the writers, directors and managers of mostly film and theatre projects. We beam in from all over North America and sometimes Europe. 
Today, the ask in the last hour block was, “What is your favourite pastime?”