What does this simple action do? By using the sun as a marker for my day, I form a stronger connection with my own time. I wake up for the sun rise, then later I take a walk to watch the sun set. This is as reliable and constant as the earth’s orbit around the sun.
watching the giant star do a 180 into and out of your life will become the immovable image from which you base the nuisances of life as truly what they are, insignificant.
“Sunrise” and “Sundown” are markers for the start and end of a day, and it’s remarkable to observe this phenomena in person. It’s taken for granted, but this life giving orb is the basis for our entire calendar system, it’s material presence both astronomical and structural. So why not bracket our lives with its observation?
From atop a modest hill, I can see the faint light hugging the east mountains. What banality awaits me today? The thought evaporates as I see the brightening sky. Then I spend a chunk of time attending obligations. I go for my walk towards the west approximately sixty minutes before sunset.
No music. I observe sounds, my body moving footstep by footstep. The crunchy loamy sand, dusty dirt. Is my left shoulder sore? I stretch it out. Try to lose. Loosen and lose attention and stuffiness of structured living.
This activity can be considered a walking meditation or a debriefing of the day. It’s a time for reflection, but because this is not a brainstorming session, I let thoughts dissipate into mist. It’s also not exercise since this is non-goal oriented.
After months of doing this daily practice, managing the stress of life is less complicated. The practice of walking and observing the sun’s relationship in the setting of your life rescales things. If it’s cloudy, rainy, or the weather does not permit this activity, see “what to do in the event you cannot see the sun.” (coming soon) But when it’s possible, watching the giant star do a 180 into and out of your life will become the immovable image from which you base the nuisances of life as truly what they are, insignificant.
Crunchy and refreshing with a mild sweetness. Juicy but not sticky.
Bell peppers are fruits that can be eaten like an apple, whole or slices, and contain vitamin C and other good stuff. It always surprises me how easy they are to eat. They’re an excellent lifestyle fruit for their user friendliness.
It’s suspicious how easy they are to eat. Throw them in a backpack and they’ll be okay. Even if they are crushed, there’s only water residue- no sticky juices like those other fruits.
Maybe you prefer a dip in keeping with the settler’s summer tradition. It would be uncouth to consume a dip alone, unless it’s a light Tzatziki/ cacık dip with crushed coriander. Composed of yogurt, cucumber, lemon juice, garlic, and any herbs- parsley, mint, dill– it’s wow. Munching on my bell peppers and tzaitziki dips, I have been thinking.
Despite my invisible achievements well into my third decade, I’ve navigated uncharted waters and strange crossroads. I suppose if you survive a catastrophe, that could be considered an accomplishment. Survival is not easy, yet little do we celebrate it.
Survival is not easy, yet little do we celebrate it.
TIP 2: Celebrate decisions >accomplishments > achievements
Achievements get trophies 🏆; accomplishments get checkmarks ✅; decisions get silence 🤫. Powerful decisions disappear into daily life like vegetables in vegetable chowder. You forget about them, but they’re doing all the work keeping you alive.
Decisions are harder to celebrate because they’re internal, sometimes messy and painful, and even transformative (quitting a job, leaving a relationship, starting something new).
The word “decision” comes from the latin “caedere” meaning “cutting the links.” It’s a cutting of ourselves from a “wholeness.” In the case of life, its a cutting into the wholeness of our identity and stability. Whether that’s getting out of a comfortable stagnation or an awful place, we have to slice, dice, and dip out of there ASAP. A life altering decision can suck because of the risk factor. But while there might not be reward, we need these decisions for prevention and immunity.
These “good” decisions that cut the deepest should be actively remembered in order to keep up the positive spirits; they are the silent architects of resilience, sometimes outweighing the glitter of achievements.
a beautiful user friendly decision
NUTRITIONAL BENEFITS OF DECISIONS
Vitamin C: One medium-sized red bell pepper provides 169% of the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) for vitamin C, making it one of the richest dietary sources of this essential nutrient.
Vitamin B6: Pyridoxine is the most common type of vitamin B6, a family of nutrients important for forming red blood cells.
Vitamin K1: A form of vitamin K, also known as phylloquinone, K1 is important for blood clotting and bone health.
Folate, also known as vitamin B9, has a variety of functions in the body. Adequate folate intake is very importantTrusted Source during pregnancy.
Vitamin E: A powerful antioxidant, vitamin E is essential for healthy nerves and muscles. The best dietary sources of this fat-soluble vitamin include oils, nuts, seeds, and vegetables.
Vitamin A: Red bell peppers are high inTrusted Source pro-vitamin A (beta carotene), which your body converts into vitamin A.
Welcome to another episode of “Can’t sleep?” with your host, “I Forgot to Do Something”. It’s another great night for not sleeping.
Sleeplessness shares good company with hiccups and the appendix: leftover primal functions and medical mysteries.
Sleeplessness is commonly the work of an overstimulated mind. When it’s time to knock out for the day, there’s just one last thing to finish, a nagging worry you want to address, a… memory from 14 years ago needing remembering. And then, you’ve dipped into half the required slumber you need to be “A” game.
Try this new Counting Sheep:
Visualize: See yourself as asleep.
Lists are known to induce drowsiness: Pretend you are telling a friend your bedtime routine, walking through it step by step.
Describe how you wind down. Describe a body check. Toes intact. As far you as can tell, organs intact, content. Saw aloud one word descriptions of how you feel physically and emotionally.
Like lists, dry and technical explanations bore yourself into a slumber: Pretend a child doesn’t know what “blank” is, so you explain it to them. Fill in ‘blank’ with any topic of your choice that’s 3 degrees from things you really like to talk about. What is the function of blank?
If you can’t zzzzzzzzzzzzzz then do the next best: yyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Divide your rest into a few long naps like the (g)olden times. Expect that your internal clock is going to be different for a while.
You can plan the following day’s naps. Here in this sleepless sanctuary, there are naps without judgement. Plus, if you have chronic insomnia, sleep hygiene isn’t important yet. Don’t look at the time– think nothing of calculations. Only use neutral to positive words like sandwich, upstream trout, or pink sky.
Does this nap take place outside in coma inducing sun and breeze? To the sound of waves? or, if you’re not by water, to the smell of lemon flowers? A section of grass is prickly and damp, so you find a more dry spot, maybe a worn rocking chair, the seat a faded a tan Maple, while the backrest a less worn Acacia brown turning Olive. Swinging in a plushy hammock. It feels like the layover between flights…brick feet drag anchor eyelids to your gate…personal luggage becomes cloud. Remember the most desperate of times you wanted to knock out…an all nighter essay, morning class in a warm lecture hall, monotone ramblings in gibberish…
Startle the birds with your laughter. Collect strange looks with HA HA HA.
Laughing, like crying, releases endorphins. We rarely express either in public — but laughter also goes missing in private. “Lol,” “kekeke,” “that’s funny,” we text, but it’s crickets in the house.
Perfectly good endorphins — wasted. So let it out: belly chortle, heart giggle, guttural laughter, wheezing.
Sedentary multitasking is what machines do, but ever since the pandemic, that’s all WE do. Are we becoming computers? Do we exist just to perform knowledge-systems labor?
We are:
1. Synchronizing activities
2. Entering and exiting schedules
3. Perfecting chocolate chip cookie recipes
⭐⭐⭐Let’s begin:
When doing all life activities in one place, such as a domestic setting, synchronizing everything into one master schedule is tough. Your perception of time stretches and contracts depending on the task… writing a project proposal versus nodding dutifully in an online meeting. Did they said three or five? What’s the topic now?
2. Our work-life reality has flattened. To transition between tasks, we must re-expand space with our bodies, not just our minds.Reset and prep for the next task by walking around the house. 5x across the room. Go down the street. Remember to come back. Take an object you will use later—a remote, pen, measuring spoon—and deposit it in the mailbox. When it’s time, retrieve it. This “commute” reboots intentionality. Can a computer do that?
Put a chocolate chip cookie in the mailbox and take a nibble out of it each circulation for dopamine. Can a computer byte? I mean bite? Can the sugar dissolve on its tongue binding to receptors T1R2/T1R3s giving that sweet sensation?
3. There’s no such thing as an imperfect chocolate chip cookie recipe 🍪 as the CCC is perfection itself.
🍪CCC = Perfection🍪
Chocolate : loved and consumed by millions of humans who are not computers.
Chip : you can add any kind of chip into your cookie: nuts, sprinkles, dried fruit, cpus, gpus, ram, or despair that is not made by computers.
Cookie : round, a great and popular shape loved by millions of humans across time but possibly also computers.
Make something, and make it with love. Or destroy something, and destroy it with relish.
Do yourself a favor and clean up later. I mean, wayyyy later. Let the sweat equity show, look at the mess and materials behind the final product…pencil shavings, paint sploshes, apple cores strewn among the date pits. Striving for the end result is great for follow through, but is it sustainable? There has to be some appreciation, dare I say, enjoyment, in the process, production, labor.
If there is no visible sweat equity in your work, do a thing that does have it (counterbalance). For people who can’t seem to restore their energy, it’s important to balance intellectual/mental labor with physical/emotional labor. Make something, and make it with love. Or destroy something, and destroy it with relish.
An aside: What’s the difference between a task and a project? While tidying up after a task is always good for workflow, don’t confuse a project as a task. Set aside the appropriate space(s) for a project to inhabit. Subsequent “messes” of work-in-progress projects might be unsightly, but necessary. The small amounts of energy spent putting away and taking out projects adds up.
Leave projects out in the pasture to live their lives.
Another point: don’t overlook the small things, but don’t let the small things run the show. While micromanagement is good for detailed analysis of net efficiency, once it is built into the workflow, it is appropriate to break it occasionally. In fact, it is necessary to break it.
Back to replenishing energy: Make a physical thing…with an emphasis on “make”. Get your hands involved. Since we have to eat, a classic one is cooking–either your favorite recipe or a fun new one, but it’s important that it delivers pleasure for you. Maybe cooking or baking isn’t your form of enjoyment, then make a different thing.
I will expand on this for a moment.. “Making” is a creative act, which will be different for everyone. Playing music is a creative act for some, playing a sport is a creative engagement for others. (We can argue that one “makes” the shot into the basket or “makes” a play.)
Find a making that requires a few muscle groups. It is easy to fall into an avoidant style dynamic with screens so save video games for another area of life.
Another thought: positive and productive activities that replenish are : self initiated, intentional, and helps you be “present” with yourself and your body. They are responses, not reactions. Many times I have witnessed people reacting to stressors by using the screen to “tune out”. This is not a restorative act and alienates, thereby turning off the ability to be truly present.
So go hang out with your body and make something! 💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫💫
So the thrill of rating bottled waters according to taste, alkalinity, electrolytes, distillation is gone.
💧It’s time to decide on the one true water source tasked to keep you alive.
This is a negligible task, but that skin is not going to elasticize itself. You need continual water because you sweat, pee, and cry it out.
It’s a project that can be the difference between “always” and “sometimes.”
Excellent Integrated Hydration (EIH) begins at the source might sound like hype, but it’s the holy grail. Whether the water is tap or filtered is up to the One Who Hydrates (OWH), but if you choose distilled, you still have to find an alternate source for electrolytes and minerals.
💧Drinking water that tastes good means drinking more of it.
💧Choosing your container:
There are too many reusable water bottles with impractical designs and laughable capacity. Hydration isn’t 12 ounces while you’re out driving, errand running, working, schooling. (And the bottles with narrow mouths are hard to refill >:/ $*#$&$&*# ). But if there’s one true vessel that you swear by, good.
While stuck at home, I found myself drinking less water once I switched to the Brita water pitcher…Before I was doing fridge filter —> Hydro flask. I wondered why. I like the taste of Brita. I already considered the inconvenience of pitcher refill.
Turns out, that extra step between pitcher and my cup each time was just annoying enough.
Fridge –> Hydro flask (container)–> user [2 steps]
Tap–> Brita pitcher–> cup (container) –> user [3 steps]
Solution 1. Change container to one with larger capacity
In conclusion / learning opportunity? : minute changes to how you daily activities seems negligible but aren’t. Identify issues and solutions to the banal stuff too.
💧In efficient systems, one step makes a huge difference over time.
Now the 💧 you’ve been waiting for. A look at the exhausted choices of containers to use when you’re on the move:
Bladder backpack – camelbak- true to the name, you carry a bag of water wherever you are bothered to go. A straw gives you quick access to that life giving elixir.
Original Nalgene / Nalgene inspired bottle: this one is practical and ideal for a number of reasons. It has a wide mouth easy for refilling, and it holds 1 liter (33.8 ounces) which means less frequent refills. (2 for men, ___ for women.)
Webmd
But you hate plastic? While this one has a narrow mouth, it at least has a good capacity at 1.4 liters. When using at home, I use a funnel to fill it.
We brush our teeth twice a day, shower every other day, groom ourselves, and eat with some semblance of regularity. Hygiene and health are part of life — they get done with regularity (otherwise we can get sick.)
Exercise, on the other hand? Not always so automatic. Even if we know it’s good for us, it might not come naturally. Stick to the same low-stakes, noncompetitive activities — the elliptical, a fitness video, running loops around the block, or a weekly yoga class — and it can start to feel like a chore. Motivation wanes.
Here’s a simple trick: sweat before you shower. Make the act of exercise an unskippable part of clean, refreshed skin. You’ll feel the reward immediately afterward.
If you want to make movement more habitual ritual, try these:
Rally with a friend — sanitize a tennis ball or badminton birdie and get competitive.
Swim in the ocean — snorkel, explore, wave to marine friends. If you can’t find a calm cove, swim along the wave breaks. Survival instincts kick in and heart rate rises naturally.
Hike and immerse yourself in nature — choose a trail with elevation gain (1,000–2,000 feet) or varied terrain: stream crossings, chaparral, alpine meadows, boulder fields, canyons, or desert trails. Diverse landscapes challenge differently and connects you with the environment.
Home movement — if you’re stuck indoors, dedicate ten minutes to movement before getting clean. Jumping jacks, push-ups, dancing to a few songs. Spike energy and support immune health.
(This is similar to habit stacking, for example, one can Exercise + Brush Teeth – Do a set of squats or stretches while brushing teeth.)
So next time you’re about to jump in the shower, ask yourself: did I sweat before shower?
Noon Mul 