Rob McCall

Just as we store up fuel and food during the warm months to sustain us through the cold, we can store up plans, dreams and visions during the cold months to inspire and guide us when the leaves again return to the trees. It is a time to look back and pack up the past, then look forward to form the future.

Plot out your next garden or book or painting or wedding. Sketch the new boat or the new out-building or the new world. Dream up new schemes to save money or energy or time or the planet. Envision a trip beyond the far corners of your town, or beyond the far corners of your mind. In a warm window, start seeds of broccoli and beauty, cilantro and silence, hollyhocks and hope, cabbage and compassion, peas and peace, to enrich the dreams of a bleak midwinter.

Some Glad Morning: Holding Hope in Apocalyptic Times. Wainscott, New York: Pushcart Press, 2020, p. 108, "She Sleeps." 

John Gray

“If you can do anything,” he told me, “then the solution to time scarcity is only to do the things that you really think are worth doing, and nothing else.”

Nikki Giovanni

Her staying power over half a century comes from a stream of acclaimed work, her proclivity for a punishing schedule of tours and readings, and a fearlessness born of not caring what foolish people think.

"The best thing you can do for yourself is to not pay attention," Giovanni said during a video interview from her home in Christiansburg, Va.

"People who pay attention all end up on drugs or alcohol, or crazy, or mean," she added. "You can't let people you don't know decide who you are."  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/books/nikki-giovanni-make-me-rain.html

Ellen Furlong

 Dogs attach to their owners in much the same way human infants attach to their parents. Like babies, dogs show distress when left with a stranger and rush to reunite upon their person’s return.

A recent study found that dogs that have been deprived of food and owners choose to greet their owners before eating. Further, their brain’s reward centers “light up” upon smelling their owners. And, when your eyes meet your dog’s, both your brains release oxytocin, also know as the “cuddle hormone.”

All of this research shows that you can make your dog happier with just one ingredient: you. Make more eye contact to release that cuddle hormone. Touch it more — dogs like pats better than treats. Go ahead and “baby talk” to your dog — it draws the dog’s attention to you more and may strengthen your bond.

Understanding your dog’s mind cannot only sate your curiosity about your companion, but can also help you ensure your pup lives a good, happy life. The more you know about your furry friends the more you can do to meet their needs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/dog-love-working-home/2020/10/30/75adc50e-1895-11eb-befb-8864259bd2d8_story.html

Timothy Pychyl

 “When we all of a sudden have more time, we sort of wrongly assume that it will solve the problem of fulfilling our desires. But it really isn’t an issue of time at all,” Mr. Pychyl said. “We never had firm intentions before. They are just desires, like to fix up the basement or lose some weight. Had they been intentions, we would have been doing them a long time ago.”

-Timothy Pychyl, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa who has written books dealing with procrastination

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/realestate/coronavirus-lockdown-self-improvement.html

Joseph Parent and Nancy Parent

An overactive thinking mind is a common obstacle to mindfulness. 

Rather than struggling, make the cascade of thoughts the object of your attention, watching the twists and turns they take. 

Gradually, they will seem more m and manageable, like white-water rapid slowing and merging into a gently flowing river. 

—A Walk in the Wood: Meditations on Mindfulness with a Bear Named Pooh

Kathleen Smith

Don’t worry about feeling hopeful. When we’re feeling anxious about the future, we tend to think we need to muster a sense of hope before we shift into problem-solving mode. In other words, we focus on fixing the emotions first.

But that’s the wrong order of operations. Problem-solving isn’t a result of hope. It’s what calms us down and instills hope in us. Engaging our frontal lobe, the part of the brain that defines goals and breaks them into manageable steps, can shift us out of anxiety and into a more thoughtful state of being. What once seemed like certain doom can start to look like a complex but manageable challenge.

So when you feel like the world is crumbling around you, don’t worry about turning yourself into a calm optimist. Instead, try picking up a small piece of the problem and learning more about it. When you begin to think about the facts, without shutting or attacking others, you begin to find a way to manage the fear and face the challenge. And paradoxically, when you begin to think about yourself instead of everyone else, you become a little less selfish and more of a resource to those around you.

https://forge.medium.com/you-dont-have-to-feel-hopeful-96f04a924f5b

-Kathleen Smith is a licensed therapist and the author of Everything Isn't Terrible (December 2019)

Brené Brown

What I've learned to do is reserve seats for them [the critics]...And simply say, when I'm trying to do something new and hard and original and creative, "I see you, I hear you, but I'm going to show up and do this anyway. I've got a seat for you and you're welcome to come, but I'm not interested in your feedback." 

Brené Brown

Speaking about the Theodore Roosevelt  "Man in the Arena" quote: 

It's not about winning, it's not about losing, it's about showing up and being seen. 

If you're going to show up and be seen, there is only one guarantee: you will get your ass kicked. If courage is a value that you hold, this is a consequence. You can't avoid it. 

If you're not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I'm not interested in your feedback. If you have constructive information to give me, let's do it. But if you're in the cheap seats not putting yourself on the line, just talking about how I can do it better, I'm in no way interested in your feedback. 

Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.  

p. 7 of 35, commonly known as the "Man in the Arena" section of his "Citizenship in a Republic" speech given at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910.

Spencer Tweedy

The idea that there are creative people and non-creative people is exclusionary and bonkers. What seems truer is that there are varying levels of access to resources, varying starting abilities, and varying experiences of encouragement that affect whether or not someone puts time into art. 

https://pitchfork.com/features/family-matters/lots-of-people-wish-jeff-tweedy-were-their-dad-for-spencer-tweedy-its-a-reality/

Jeff Tweedy

I think generation gaps are a bill of goods that is sold as marketing. It's a little bit of a divide and conquer method from corporate America to separate the demographics and target people with that notion. It gives people my age permission to dismiss younger people, which is awful, and it gives younger people some sort of concept that the world has changed in a way that makes someone like me invalid. 

But in more cases than not, there is a lot of common ground—everybody that's my age was once Spencer's age. And the internet has made time much more circular. When I was a kid, it really was unheard of to like your parents. If you were into punk rock and stuff like that, your parents were the closest target you had to combat the powers that be. 

https://pitchfork.com/features/family-matters/lots-of-people-wish-jeff-tweedy-were-their-dad-for-spencer-tweedy-its-a-reality/

Jeff Tweedy

A lot of really tragic humans have made incredible, beautiful art, and the art has always been much more difficult to talk about than the personalities behind it. As a culture, we started to mix up terrible personality traits with artistic worth. That always bothered me. Even though I became a drug addict, I hated that drugs were associated with rock music. It made me uncomfortable, to be honest. I'm not going to tell anybody what to do, but I had an intuitive sense that there are a lot of people that can't handle drugs, like myself. 

But because it's so hard for writers to make any sense of art in a way that the art isn't already making sense of itself, we focused on artists for a long time. Then it became a lifestyle and a culture that was promoted out of lack of imagination and built on this idea that the personality is the art, but it's not. It shouldn't be revolutionary that the art should be its own incredibly freeing thing. And if you're going to focus on the artist, there's nothing wrong with them sharing their insights into how to live in a way that's fulfilling and not just promoting some sort of thoughtless, broken personality trait. I sound like a total square and I don't give a fuck, because I think it's revolutionary to be honest about that.

I like the idea that art and creativity is accessible to everybody—it doesn't have a criteria for how broken or addicted or depraved you are, it's the best part of you. And as you can indulge it and have it enhance your life in a positive way, isn't that preferred? It might be harder to talk about, but wouldn't that be the preferred outcome—that you have more people who are less broken and who are able to guide some other people through their brokenness to something more whole. I feel like that's a great way to live. 

https://pitchfork.com/features/family-matters/lots-of-people-wish-jeff-tweedy-were-their-dad-for-spencer-tweedy-its-a-reality

Debra Harding

I had learned enough in therapy to know the antidote to anxiety is not logic; the antidote to anxiety is noting and letting it pass. 

Philip Chard

COVID fatigue is not the same as denial. It is most likely to occur in folks who care, but then find caring too great a burden. Deniers don’t care because they don’t believe the pandemic is real or serious, or it’s simply not in their nature to be empathic or concerned with the collective good.  

What to do? Quit poisoning the spiritual and mental well, which means reduce and modulate your news exposure, particularly on TV and social media. Reading a newspaper, print or online, allows us to titrate our exposure to bad news. We can decide what to read, whereas broadcast news dictates what we see and hear. Taking control of one’s news consumption is essential, not to the point of ignoring what is unfolding with the pandemic, but sufficiently to turn a flood of information into a controlled and selective flow. It’s also important to replace some of that news time with positive and fulfilling activities—nature immersion, creative pursuits, family games, exercise, listening to music, reaching out to others, and the like.

Of equal or greater importance is to remember that COVID fatigue, while no fun, helps some of us move toward acceptance—accepting what is rather than pining for what is not. Arriving at “It is what it is” lets us move past mental paralysis and meet the long-term challenges ahead.

--From "Don't be desensitized by COVID fatigue," https://shepherdexpress.com/advice/out-of-my-mind/dont-be-desensitized-by-covid-fatigue

Marti Michalis

"What's great about a bloodhound is they make you laugh every day. These dogs are the funniest dogs ever."

Maira Kalman

Spalding High-Bounce Pink Ball
Working in my studio and sitting at a desk, painting or writing, I need to take breaks. And throwing the ball against the wall is one of the greatest diversions and brain reactivators around. The Pinky High-Bounce is a perfect product and the balls don’t leave marks on the wall. Whenever my nieces and nephews come over — and soon my grandchildren, who are almost old enough — we all throw the ball against the wall, not caring if something breaks. In my apartment, we throw it over the bed against the wall in my bedroom. That’s my favorite place, everybody’s very happy, and there’s a lot of screaming.

Linit Starch, Rowenta Professional Micro Steam Iron
I’m a big ironer and I could talk about ironing at great length. As I said, getting into bed is one of the great moments of life. But it has to be in a beautifully made bed with white linens that are starched and ironed. Which is something that I love, love, love to do. I use liquid starch in a spray bottle and I iron my pillowcases with it so that when I get into bed — which I do very early to read, talk on the phone, or watch British murder mysteries — it’s just one of those glorious experiences. I iron everything. That’s kind of the legacy of our family and it’s something that the women did back in Belarus. Who knows if they were washing by the river or what. But anyway, even with my son Alex Kalman, the joke is that we iron our underpants. And napkins, of course. If you don’t iron your napkins before putting them on the table, that’s a tragedy. If you can walk everywhere, iron, and mail letters, that’s a nice life.

--from "What Illustrator Maira Kalman Can't Live Without" (https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/maira-kalmans-favorite-things.html)

Rebecca Solnit

Hope isn’t confidence that everything will be fine, but it is confidence that not everything will be awful. Optimism is the belief that everything will be fine, and often it won’t. The Soviet Union broke up, but look at Russia now.

Uncertainty doesn’t mean, “trust to the future to take care of itself,” or that just because good things happened historically, good things will happen again. Good things happened because people organized, took initiative and intervened, refused, stood up, or just were generous and engaged. The good things don’t happen of themselves, but there’s evidence that we’re capable of making them happen.

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/05/solnit-crisis-pandemic-coronavirus-paradise-built-in-hell/

Eknath Easwaran

Use your sense of suffering as a powerful motivation to help relieve the suffering of others.

Bruce Daisley

Q: Almost everyone I know says they're having trouble concentrating. Any advice?

A: There was a Harvard Business Review article a couple of days ago saying that, if you're feeling constantly exhausted right now, don't be surprised. This is a common experience of grief. When people feel a low level of anxiety through the day, it does manifest in our physiognomy. It does manifest in us feeling exhausted by the emotional drain of it. So let's not drive ourselves into the ground right now. Let's at least use this opportunity to reflect on what's important, rather than trying to retain unsustainable levels of performance in such a singular and wretched time.

Bruce Daisley, author of Eat Sleep Work Repeat (2020), in a Q&A on March 31, 2020 (washingtonpost.com). Bruce Daisley is a vice president of Twitter.

Jason Headley

This is a new place in your life. Clean and clear. Free from calamity created by every last ranch hand at the f*ckup farm. 

--from F*ck That: An Honest Meditation (2016)

Ben Vanheems

Gardeners are patient and kind people. Be proud of who you are!

Jack Kerouac

The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks dont see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you're already
in heaven now.
That's the story.
That's the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they're
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s'why I'll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my woodstove
making pancakes.

Samantha Bee

We just have to keep going. In this current era, it's not just TV people who have to find the energy to keep going—it's all people. We try really hard to be purposeful, but we do a lot of dick jokes, and that's okay too.

--Speaking at the closing session of the Public Library Association conference on February 29, 2020 

NEH

D: Hi, honey! Sweetie, love muffin, sugar plum...
N: What.
D: What?
N: Just tell me what you want. You're buttering me up for something, let's just get it out of the way. Tell me.
D: I want you to stop using the TV room as a closet. No more empty laundry basket, no hangers on chairs, no pants on the couch.
N: Fine. Done.
D: And I need for you to just clear a path in the office so I can get to the plants to water them. Please note that I am not asking you to clean up the office, I just need a path to get the plants.
N: Check.

Arne Naess

Claiming that something is impossible is nothing more than a temporary working hypothesis. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Don't be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time. 

Mary Norris

Greek has been my salvation. Whenever I have been away from Greek for a while and come back to it, it revives something in me, it gives me an erotic thrill, as if every verb and noun had some visceral connection to what it stands for. I like to think that the first letters were incised into clay and that writing therefore came from the earth. And because the earliest writing to survive was epic poetry, which invokes the gods, writing connects us earthlings to eternity.

Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen (2019), p. 15

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

~From We Were Made For These Times (Awakin.org)