That’s what it takes to keep me working in my tiny apartment with southern exposure. All day sun and the heat that comes with it. I worried for months in advance due to the memory of previous summers’ heat, acrid air, and pollution. It billowed in from British Columbia’s increasingly dangerous, longer, and life-changing forest fire season. 
Creativity at work begins first with creativity in making my space comfortable. Does my ‘hack’ work?
Of the 70,000 daily thoughts we have and our brains filter, surely a big percentage that we have on permanent repeat are the ideas of new and improved habits. One has found its way through the filter trap to this page. I’m taking a practical route by starting with a physical filter cleaning to get my mind and motivation to resume writing…unstuck.
This is a repost from a 45-day daily personal writing exercise I undertook when I was both invigorated and also challenged by a major home and office move some years ago. Then and now, I still get stalled.. so.. here is the reminder…..
My writing has a program supervising my keystrokes. The installation points out typos and the occasional MIA comma in my public posts installed. And apparently, it also calculates my effectiveness in all my document drafts. It sent me a personalized email today stating this week’s yield:
8818 words written
“Seek community and routine.” This is the calm counsel I got during some challenging times after I moved, alone, to my current stomping grounds – Vancouver, Canada. That advice came from a military member. He was expected to move as seamlessly as possible every few years into a new physical and cultural context. Each move came with a new role, new home, and demands for energy and consistency on tap. He crisscrossed America with his wife, children, cat, and canine in the service of his country more than a dozen times, and counting in his career. As a family, they learned that seeking community and taking solace in familiar routines, was key.
Being less disciplined than my colleague, I’m currently coming up short on community and lagging a bit on the implementation of routine. But, I do have a plan and I’ll share some of the tips.
It’s an odd time for me to start my year of ‘reactive blogging’. On Father’s Day of all moments. Daily, I am triggered to memory lane. It happens with the news, my own mind, social media posts, and random sights and sounds. Finally, I begin to write about any and all triggers that assail me without warning.
Really, I’ve nothing to lose by starting ‘messy.’ There is no strategy for the content of the post I share today. No template for the blog itself. Super out of line for a professional writer who blogs for her corporate and health & fitness clients.
Iran, Jews and deadly decrees are commemorated in an upbeat way this week. Coming early at us in this Jewish Year of 5782, Purim arrives the night of March 16 and lasts with laughter and celebration well into March 17.
Even as tensions continue in the Middle East and are heightened now with what is war in Europe and renewed nuclear concerns, we dip into, for the sake of my story for you today, into the once awesome Persian empire of the 4th century BCE. It extended over 127 lands and is the site on which the Purim story unfolds. Purim is undeniably the most joyous holiday tradition on the Jewish calendar. And, it’s HERE again!! Here’s your Purim primer according to Kaufman…..
On behalf of contact lens wearers, I had one final question for my Vancouver-based optometrist, Dr. Janey Yee. I do not wear contacts myself. I’ve given birth, considered the challenge of walking on coals, and did successfully certify as a scuba diver. Putting a little disc into my eye area, myself? Can’t. Here’s what I found out for you though.
Dr. Yee, are there special precautions for contact lens wearers in these COVID care times? Any advice for all of us with prescriptive eyewear?
Finally, we can see light at the end of the tunnel out of our COVID-created caves. Restrictions are being lifted in British Columbia. Vaccines are en route. We can look forward – that is if we can see past the blue light emanating from our ubiquitous screens. After months in front of my work, my social, my edutainment screens, my eyes needed ‘re-hab.’ So, I turned for advice on how we can protect our eyes and improve our overall performance to my personal optometrist in Vancouver, Dr. Janey Yee.
As a writer and content creator tied to my screens, my eyes are engaged, a lot. Those work hours can send a message of fatigue to the brain at the entry point, the eyes. It can also filter a false sense of overall fatigue to the rest of the body when I most need to feel focused and energized. To top it off, like most of us, I was Zoomed-Skyped-Google Hang’d –Out!
Care of our eyes and preservation of our sight is essential if we wish to live and work well in our current tech-connected world. Plus, our year in the safety of our COVID caves, called on our eyes to perform to the max as we all huddled around any number of blue light-emitting screens. Combined, they kept us sane, social, and solvent, hopefully. Now, how to care for this precious resource?
You might start, as I did, with a comprehensive, eye exam at your optometrist. In this post, Dr. Janey Yee @180 Optometry and Eye Wear answered questions I wanted to share with you about issues and eye care that we must know, given the intensity of screen use we are committed to since COVID accelerated our dependency on them.
A colleague laughs at my COVID-inspired code for too much time spent creating content for clients, sitting in on video meetings, and researching online. I call it frying my eyeballs. I’m not proud of it. I do my best to keep the cookery to a minimum. But what can we do?
No matter your choice of device or the technology we use to work, to socialize, to learn, or to seek escapist entertainment – we can’t stop. Can we?
Happy Holidays. Happy Hanukkah, however you spell it. Merry Christmas although my older British friends prefer Happy Christmas. How do I best greet a Kwanzaa celebrant?? I think I got the season’s first festival of lights right, Diwali, or is it Deepavali? Solstice anyone?? Oy vey. Perhaps this repost of my 2014 “Communication Culture” column in The Afro News MIGHT shed light???
Original post below… Please share YOUR greeting suggestions!