"But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse
Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest
Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week. A random grab bag of delights!
It's a four day work week. Two days of work, a day off, two days of work, two days off. It's... a little weird having a day off in the middle, but... I could get used to it. It feels somehow more balanced. At least the way today went, it feels balanced. Tomorrow we'll see how it goes & if I still agree with myself. I might not...
The 40 hour work week was hard won by unions. There were a lot of studies done in the earlier part of the 1900s on people doing physical labor that showed an 8 hour day, 5 days a week was about as efficient as you could make a person. Theroots of this movementwere even earlier, dating back to the 1840's-1850's and the industrialization of work.
In more recent years, as labor laws are weakened, as (at least American) society starts seeing long hours as 'heroic' there arenew studiesshowing the results for people are better when they work shorter days. Less sick time used, happier, more efficient employees... Definitely more humane. I wonder how long it will take before the pendulum swings?
Medusa's Garden
When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.
Boundaries. It always seems to come back to boundaries. Sometimes I spread myself too thin. I meet people and in the process of sharing with new people I like, I find that there is so much new interesting stuff, I lose myself a bit. New music, new perspectives, new things to think about, new, new, new.
In my projects, sometimes I spread myself too thin. I tend to 'get in a groove' and time passes when I'm working on things. And by time passes, I mean, if I'm working on something and manage to get some uninterrupted time, it can go from being 5pm to 9pm (cough-or 8pm to 2am-cough) and it's as if a half hour passed.
When I catch myself spreading me too thin across things, it's time to regroup and recenter. I make sure to prioritize the things that make me uniquely me for a while. I'll let my music play on random and mix all the different things back to back to back, jazz and punk and bluegrass/traditional and classical and rock. I'll make sure I'm taking time to spin a bunch. Basically taking time to do *me* things.
It's taken a long time to learn to call all the pieces of me that I've sent out into the world home, integrating the new and make sure I'm keeping "me" intact. I'm not always very good at it, but I'm getting better at it... What sorts of things do you do to regroup yourself & call yourself 'home'?
Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads
What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.
Spinning! All the spinning! Still waiting for my wool to show up. It looks like it arrived in Seattle today (!) so should be here tomorrow! I can hardly wait! I have a way to dry it now and everything... And I still have at least eight ounces of the blue-faced Leicester to spin. :)
My happy place - plenty of fiber to spin! And new things to play with! Fiber-y fiber fiber! <3
Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life
Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.
So coming off four weeks of sanctioned overtime, I learned some stuff. I learned that my tolerance for consistent long hours has dropped significantly. Or I'm more aware and sensitive to when I've pushed myself too far, too hard. Probably a combo of both, honestly.
Towards the end of that time, I had lunch with a long-time friend. She's just out of the business of career coaching on the side and she said, in our conversation about other things going on, that pretty much the question to always be asking and working towards is "How do I want to live?"
How do I want to live. It seems like such an obvious question, but... is it? How do I want to live? I want to pay my mortgage, I want to get my girls through college, I want to have health insurance and the privilege to be able to pay for all the parts of health care that insurance doesn't cover (universal healthcare now!). BUT. Those things aren't *really* about how I want to live my life. Those are separate components of parts of things that I want to do, but not actually how I want to live. So, I'm trying to make space and doing some of the things that answer that question... and I'm trying to learn the answer to that question at the same time.
Worthwhile explorations. How do you want to live?