Hey 👋🏽

Determined not to be outdone by the millions of people learning a new language, perfecting their sourdough recipes or starting to code, me + 4.5yo have acquired many impressive skills in the last few weeks:

how to build a pillow fort ⛺️
how to laugh like an evil genius 😈
how to make a list of skills to acquire with all-of-this-downtime 😏

Ok, there hasn’t been much downtime. And the downtime we have had has felt fake, going through the non-motions of relaxation while our minds bouncy ball around.

The less our bodies move, the more our minds do: missing people, worrying about work what ifs and future problems, giving into self deprecation for all of the things we aren’t doing/succeeding at.

Luckily, I noticed the bouncing, the scattered feeling. In quarantine, the color coded lego fortress I created in Gcal has fallen apart. So, I spent the last week staring at the floor.

Throughout the week I pushed my desk chair aside and got down on my palms and toes for 60 second plank breaks to rise above the missing, worrying, self deprecating clouds. Hovering a foot off the floor for seconds that stretch on as the days do brings me back to ground, body, stillness.

Yesterday I stared down and finally saw the carpet. Rows of octagons with black blots at the center surrounded by arrows pointing north, south, east and west.

The arrows drew my attention outward as everything has lately. The last few weeks have been so noisy. The business and busyness that have overtaken our safe spaces make it harder to seek and see the signals and stillness within.

But with 10 seconds left, my eyes returned to the eye of the carpet and stayed there. The timer went off, and I stayed there, still.

We practice focus. We practice stillness. We practice strength, kindness, self awareness and love. We practice doing something not nothing and letting that be enough. These are the legos that keep what matters together. Don’t stop practicing.

🧠finite and infinite games farnam street, 2m

If you play life as a finite game, you train for the rules. If life is instead an infinite game, you focus on being educated to adapt to unknowns.

+ for 40 years, this russian family was cut off from all human contact smithsonian mag, 14m

+ fix my quarantine 5m: daily robot generated content

❤️ surprise yourself Youtube, 4m

I just discovered this music video after listening to the song on repeat for years. It features real people overcoming their fears and naturally made me smilecry.

🚶🏽‍♀️tabata with me start again today, 45m

Let’s sweat together! Tabata is HIIT, pushing you to your limits 4 minutes at a time. Signup to join live and get the workout and playlist emailed to you after class.

+ meditation in an emergency Sam Harris, 30m

Who will you be on the most stressful day of your life?
We’re all going to experience an extraordinary amount of stress in the coming months. You only have the mind that you built for yourself.

I miss you, I love you, come Tabata with me,