Engaging creatively requires hitting the reset button, which means carving space in your day for lying around, meditating, or staring off into nothing. [via: http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/creativity-and-distraction]
Go read it and absorb it. Beautiful, simple, profound. [via: The Oatmeal]
Aeon has a good short post about money and debt and the impact on our happiness or perceived levels of happiness. The summary is that it is best not to assume more debt than you can manage (obvious), but that incurring debt is not necessarily a reason to be sad. I have a hard time reconciling that as debt stresses me out whether it is manageable or not, but this may be good news for those with a stronger stomach for owing money to others....
The internet and social media have provided platforms where “everybody’s unintelligent ideas are flying in circles like mosquitoes around the digital campfire,” he wrote. “So now, in the world of online commenting, it’s all stupidity, all the time.” —John DeSanto, 65, of Warwick, N.Y. I prefer to keep my unintelligent ideas right here around my own campfire where others can choose to come read them. [via The New York Times: How to Log Off of Facebook Forever, With All Its Perks and Pitfalls]
“It is literally painful to write this sentence, but the president of the United States is a pathological liar. The president of the U.S. is a racist (it also hurts to write this). He is attempting a coup from the top; he wants to establish an illiberal democracy, or worse; he wants to undermine the balance of power. He fired an acting attorney general who held a differing opinion from his own and accused her of “betrayal....
Winter, for me, is a period of reflection and regeneration, of withdrawal, reminiscent of a time when humans were forced to be more malleable and responsive to the seasons. Each year, I long to see the landscape around my home in Germany transformed by the cold: frost-limned trees, crisp air, and snow shrouding everything, muffling every sound, as if covering over the acoustic evidence of humanity. —Bernd Brunner, Aeon