5 Quick Things #235 🚶‍♀️

walking, talking, decluttering, and going slow

Apr 22, 2022

Hey there,

I’m coming to you from my bed, a place from which I don’t often like to write because it tells my body that it can still be half-asleep and that my bed can be a place of work as well as rest — both messages I don’t want it to believe. But nonetheless, I’m sipping coffee and listening to the birds outside, slowly coming to consciousness because I was up very, very late last night to see Broadway’s The Lion King in downtown Austin, and I can no longer sleep in after late nights up like the teenagers who sleep under my roof can with aplomb. The show was magical and glorious and all the things good art is, and I’m going to have Circle of Life in my head for days, I can tell.

I was also under the weather earlier this week, as well as nursing a child with his own cold back to health, and later this afternoon my in-laws arrive at the airport for a short visit from Oregon. It’s a dizzying week, and so — I’ve given myself permission to both come to consciousness and get some work done at the same time, both from bed.

Good morning!

A linnet sits in a flowering field in Dungeness, England. #

5 Quick Things ☕️

1. 👉 Listen to A Drink With a Friend! 👈 Because of my doozy of a week (see above), Seth & I weren’t able to chat. BUT — we thought it’d still be good to re-share an earlier episode, in case you missed it or you need another listen. In this one from spring 2021, we talk about slowness: about being slow to reply, slow to respond, slow to assume, and how we all need to do more of it.
2. Here’s a good pairing with the conversation above: “Walking is human locomotion at its most primary level; its purpose is to reach a destination faster than one might crawl there. …It’s something that we learn naturally in the first year or so of life and, if we’re lucky, don’t relinquish until life passes away.” In praise of walking — yes, yes, yes.
3. I like this straightforward, simple way method of decluttering your closet and creating a capsule wardrobe.
4. What a darling essay about a converstion between a mother and daughter. I love (and miss) that age of innocence and awareness, and it all goes just too fast...
5. And finally, this couple has been married for 91 years. 91! And what a legacy of family they seem to have, full of stories of ordinary-extraordinary life.

Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📻

This lovely Spring at Home playlist

Quotable 💬

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke #

Quick Links 🔗

ICYMI… ⏳

For over a decade, I wrote and ran a shared space about living well. Sometimes I go back and dust it off with a re-read, mostly for nostalgia’s sake... Just for fun, I think I’ll occasionally share one with you:

Around 2016 I wrote this simple piece about embracing the idea of partial solutions when making friends, and it became one of my most widely-read essays.

Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What would you tell your 5-year-old self about what matters most to you?

Have a great weekend,

Tsh

p.s. Last night I overheard the lady behind us talk about this video, so I looked it up this morning. Sure enough, it’s delightful.