slow living. well-being. grad school.
I turn 30 this month. I went back and forth about writing lots of different things for this post. A couple ideas included, "30 Pieces of Unsolicited Advice on my 30th Birthday" and, "A Sappy Ode to my Parents and Mentors." While I may write some variation on these pieces one day, I didn't end … Continue reading some birthday reflections about my favorite band
(1) Learning how to read on my own, rather than for a class. I'm in the part of my PhD program where I've met my course requirements, and I need to start preparing for designing my dissertation study. What this translates to is reading more on my own, rather than reading with the external motivation … Continue reading september: what’s bringing me calm
(1) Being more aware of the "work addiction" mindset I easily slip into, especially with a new school year coming. My ADHD puts me at risk of addiction. My addictions haven't really manifested themselves as what I considered to be the well-known ones: drugs and alcohol. Instead, an addiction I trend towards--one that is pretty … Continue reading august: what’s bringing me calm
"There's a line by the Italian writer Carlo Levi that I think is apt here: 'The future has an ancient heart.' I love it because it expresses with such grace and economy what is certainly true--that who we become is born of who we most primitively are; that we both know and cannot possibly know … Continue reading A kind of “back to school” post
1. Allowing myself a break from making a monthly post. I've started to accept when I need to take breaks from doing things, even things I love, like writing two posts a month for this website. Instead, I spent time traveling, with friends and family I hadn't seen in 18 months, and letting ideas incubate … Continue reading july: what’s bringing me calm
1. Having a chosen daily uniform It started with wearing scrubs when I had an internship at a hospital in grad school. Wearing scrubs made me realize how grateful I was not to use mental effort on figuring out what to wear each morning. While I no longer wear scrubs every day, I've found that … Continue reading june: what’s bringing me calm
I got back from a road trip with my boyfriend a couple of weeks ago, and perhaps that's made me want to write about travel. I love travel, but I also realized it wasn't something I wanted to do all of the time. This is a bit about how I got to that conclusion. At … Continue reading How I decided full-time travel wasn’t for me
1. Remembering the kind of meditation I like I wrote in March about trying to get back to my sitting meditation. What I think has perhaps helped me with making it stick was remembering that I don't really like guided meditation--which tends to be the default in many of the popular apps. Instead, I really … Continue reading april: what’s bringing me calm
"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attentions from serious things." Henry David Thoreau, Walden Earlier this year, I wrote about one of the ways I’ve tried to solve the problem of starting at my laptop screen too much. I decided to buck the high-tech trend of reading on a screen … Continue reading An Ode to the 2-D Printer
1. Coming back to sitting mediation I know, I know, people can't be "bad" at mediation. But I've tried sitting mediation on many occasions, and--trust me--I am not great at it. I've made daily walks in some kind of nature a much more consistent habit, and the movement combined with the nature helps calm my … Continue reading march: what’s bringing me calm
The Lazy PhD 