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