Web Miscellany: Compilation #58

Hey there! How has the week been to you? Mine has been rather uneventful. Aside from work, I gardened (including stunning 3.5 gallon canna lillies at Costco for only $12!), started brewing two batches of kombucha, and made several South Indian dishes from our farmer’s market haul. I have a minor surgery scheduled for today, so will be spending my four-day weekend getting some R&R, possibly attending a baby shower, and hopefully working on our patio garden and/or my next sewing project. My cognition has been lacking lately, so I’ve found sewing to be a great creative outlet that doesn’t require quite as much thinking as writing. Progress is progress, regardless of how slow we may be moving, right?

Hope you have a lovely weekend! Here are a few links from around the web. Feel free to share anything interesting you’ve stumbled upon in the comments.

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1. “The cure for pain is in the pain.” — Rumi
2. A thought-provoking piece on social media use. “We are part of the machine, and we find our satisfactions in it, however destructive they may be. Whatever dark future we hurtle toward, we are copilots on the journey.” — A psychoanalytic reading of social media and the death drive
3. An excellent long read on the peculiar challenges of moving through a pandemic in an achievement-oriented culture: “Most of us have heard for most of our lives to expect more from ourselves in some way or another. Now we must give ourselves permission to do the opposite. “We have to expect less of ourselves, and we have to replenish more,” Masten says. “I think we’re in a period of a lot of self discovery: Where do I get my energy? What kind of down time do I need? That’s all shifted right now, and it may take some reflection and self discovery to find out what rhythms of life do I need right now?” — Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful
4. “Here’s the thing about sled dogs: They never know how far they’re going to run. As a musher — the human driver of a dog sled team — this is one of my main challenges. There are many ways in which my dogs know more than me. They know if a storm is coming, or if a moose crossed the trail days before. They know how ice shifts under their paws. They know if we’re being followed and by what kind of animal. They know their own power — that they’re stronger than me, much stronger, and if they turn or stop when I ask them to, it’s because they’re choosing to listen and trust me. Running together is a gift they give me every day. But each time my dogs hit the trail, they run hard — they give it everything they’ve got. That’s fine if we’re going 10 miles, or 30, distances they can cover easily in a few hours. We can leave after dinner and be home by midnight, silver snow on a full-moon night. But what if we’re going a hundred miles, or a thousand? Asking sled dogs to pace themselves, to slow it down, is like asking a retriever to only fetch one ball out of three: It goes against their every instinct.” — What My Sled Dogs Taught Me About Planning for the Unknown
5. The mask barons of Etsy: How a couple of mom-and-pop shops made millions selling masks. I find this fascinating. I gave away several masks to family, friends, and local vendors who were having a hard time securing masks. Even using scrap fabric and miscellaneous elastics, I can’t fathom how many masks would need to be produced to be profitable. It was interesting to see responsiveness of individuals (i.e. Etsy sellers) versus larger corporations who had to mass-produce their products.
6. Eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life. The final Guardian column from self-help skeptic Oliver Burkeman: “The future will never provide the reassurance you seek from it. As the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics understood, much of our suffering arises from attempting to control what is not in our control. And the main thing we try but fail to control – the seasoned worriers among us, anyway – is the future. We want to know, from our vantage point in the present, that things will be OK later on. But we never can. (This is why it’s wrong to say we live in especially uncertain times. The future is always uncertain; it’s just that we’re currently very aware of it.)”
7. Has your doctor ever run the PULS cardiac test test on you? The serum blood test is simple, covered by most insurance (and cheap, if not), and will provide your risk of having a heart attack in the next 5 years and lifestyle change recommendations. Anyone over 40 should have this test done annually, especially those at higher risk based on lifestyle factors or family history.
8. Lots of neat aerial photography in the 2020 Drone Photo Awards in several categories (abstract, urban, people, nature, wildlife).
9. My seven-year anniversary with my boyfriend is fast-approaching. This piece may or may not be entering our lives in the coming weeks…🤩🤐