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Happy Friday! Here are some thoughts you might want to take with you into the weekend...

DECISIONS, DECISIONS AND INJURIES

So this happened. 

I was trying to get a shot of trees - the ones in the background - and that highly unphotogenic branch made it into every shot, at every angle, at every twist and turn. At some point, I decided to just go with it and see what happened. Well, this happened. 

Now let's talk about my arm. Because when I see this shot now, that branch makes me think of my arm. About a week ago, my bike slipped on a wet patch and I hit the ground hard. The force divided pretty much equally between my arm and my hip, injuring both. 

I can now say, with conviction, that injury proceeds in three distinct stages.

1. shock and awe* 
2. numbness, and
3. interpretation.

Let me focus in on this second stage, the numb stage. It's probably the shortest, or ostensibly the least interesting, the least emotional stage, but it's a critical stage, because this is when the mind starts to tell you a story. The mind naturally gravitates towards storytelling. It wants to find explanations, to impart significance, even when there are none to be had.

While I was waiting for feeling to come back into my arm and leg, so I could basically use them again as appendages and pedal home, my mind began trying out various explanations. Here are some of the more obvious ones: 

1. I was never meant to ride a bike, it wasn't meant to be. 
2. The universe is sending me a sign, and it involves never getting near a bike ever again, and also it prevented me from an even worse fate just around the corner.
3. This is a punishment. For what? I don't know. TBD 
4. And so on.

Most of these fall towards the dramatic end of the rationale spectrum and completely ignore the more mundane explanations: that this was just the natural consequence of the water on a metal surface causing a lack of traction, sufficient to make the wheel glide, and then for me to hit hard ground, etc. I should wet metal surfaces in future. Boring.  

In the middle of these explanations, I realized, that these were all options that I could decide to believe. Or not. The bad part is, I do gravitate towards explanations that involve universal meaning. I don't know if it's human nature or my nature, but it is more emotionally exciting to pick option 2. But that might stop me from getting on a bike ever again. 

So I decided to think of this as an accident without meaning, and to get back on the bike. I have to constantly remind myself of this decision, because again, it's not where my mind naturally goes. 

What I find intriguing is that this is a decision that you can make, while lying semi-prone waiting for feeing in your limbs to return - you can decide how to interpret trauma. 

*lying on the ground until feeling comes back into your extremities

HAPPY JULY 4TH!

Found on victorienvannes.tumblr.com

Happy July 4th! I hope you have a good one.

FUN LINKS

Some great reads for when you're bored with your phone next to the barbecue.

Health

The Ultimate Guide to Vitamins and Minerals
Finally! A comprehensive and relatively short guide about the vitamins you need, and how to get them. If only life in general could be this direct and concise.

Travel 

28 Brilliant Travel Hacks You Need to Know for Summer Vacations

Now that you've returned from your yearly spring vacation, here's some travel tips. For next year.

Health Part 2

These Popular Plastic Bottles May Be Messing With Your Hormones

It may be time to bring sexy glass bottles back. Especially glass baby bottles.

Relationships

Masters of Love: Science Says Lasting Relationships Come Down to - You Guessed It - Kindness and Generosity

The best relationship advice sometimes sounds vaguely familiar. It sounds like thoughts that have been  floating around in your subconscious, finally put into words.

Cute 

Mirai Chan - A Very Cute Japanese Little Girl
You have to see her wonderfully expressive face. You have to.

Read
Free Philip K. Dick: Download 13 Great Science Fiction Stories

Every once in a while, it's good to wander outside your reading comfort zone. Science fiction lies outside of mine, but Dick has such a strong reputation that he's pretty much a guaranteed good time.

YOUR FRIENDLY THURSDAY REMINDER

Hey, what's that over there? Maybe I should open another tab and find out...well stop. Find out tomorrow. No more tabs.

Just a friendly reminder to try practicing using only one tab today. 

Then check your focus, and check your anxiety levels. How do you feel?

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ: THE PROCESS

During an informal survey in one of my English classes, the professor moved down a line of students, asking each person the same question: What is your favorite book? 

The answers that came, with few exceptions, were identical: One Hundred Years of Solitude.

So, when I read Marquez's obituary in the Economist, detailing how that book came into being, I thought I would share:

"In July 1965 Garbriel Garcia Marquez - Gabo to all who revered him later - decided to lock himself away in a house on Calle de La Loma in Mexico City. He ordered his wife to sell the car and get credit from the butcher. For 15 months, using only his index fingers, he typed for six hours a day in a room he called "The Cave of the Mafia." He survived on a diet of good Scotch and constant cigarettes. At five in the afternoon he would emerge in to the fading light with his eyes wide, as though he had discoursed with the dead... 

"'One Hundred Years of Solitude,' the fruit of his self-imprisonment, sold 50m copies in more than 30 languages... 

"Writing was difficult; the words came as painfully as kidney stones. Nonetheless, there was nothing else he had wanted to do in life. He burned 'to write so I would not die.'"

TABLESS THURSDAY

Single-tasking Is the New Multitasking from The Atlantic on Vimeo.

Let's start a trend.

First, listen to the pitch: press play. I have zero resources, so here is someone else's video about single tasking, but what I got out of it was the concept of Tabless Thursday.

If you take a look at a typical week, there is clearly a gap:

Meatless Monday

Taco Tuesday

Womething Wednesday

_________ Thursday

Funning* Friday

So now, just for fun's sake,** this coming Thursday, practice tab monogamy. What is that? It's simple: only use one tab on your browser at a time. If you need something else, close the one tab, and open another. Then work on that ONE tab for the entire time until you have completed whatever it is you're doing. 

Only once a week, a small commitment of your time. Let's see what that does for you. 

* I meant to put something else here, but then thought that was too easy. 

** It helps sometimes to just think of change as fun, improvement as fun, and fun as something you want in your life. 

READING LIST: FICTION AND NON-FICTION

A little bit of fiction, a little bit non-fiction. I try to make sure I read a mix of both. 

The Orphan Master's Son. On the late train to the 2013 party bus, I finally discovered a book that had won a Pulitzer. This is probably borderline non-fiction; you have to keep moving along until the book's true heart reveals itself. While you read, moving your way down the plotline, the clean straight line you thought you were following will veer into the folds of a sophisticated design, one that you were probably not expecting. That is the beauty of this book. At the core of this design is an alien heart, because the images it evokes are so foreign it almost feels like reading about another world, except for the deep-seated human qualities that root it back into the earth. 

I don't mean to be vague, but I also don't want to ruin it for people that haven't read it, so I'm dancing around hard facts. I will say, however, that this is one of the most moving books I have read in awhile. If nothing else, it will give you a new appreciation for what you have. 

The Body Book. There are certain books that are good to have. Like which kind? Like this one. Everyone has a body, a vessel,* and it's good to know how to take care of it. This book is comprehensive. It details everything from explaining how the body functions on a cellular level, to eating and exercise. The tone is sincere and readable. What takes this a notch above the rest, is that while you're (I assume) sitting on your butt reading it, you will suddenly feel the subtle sensation of a fire being lit somewhere underneath your seat. That, apparently, is what wanting to get up and go work out feels like. 

The material has the potential to be bone dry. Cameron Diaz has, instead, managed to infuse it with energy, and that goes a long way. She has high expectations for your physical well being, and that's a good assumption to have going in.   

* Referencing Supernatural. It's always appropriate.  

SHALLOW WORDS AND DEEP THOUGHTS

I was out with my friend S. the other day, when a young couple, female and male, early 20's I'd guess, stopped us and asked if one of us could take their picture. We chitchatted a little, asked them to move into the sunlight for better lighting (we were considerate), took some pictures of them, reviewed those, thought better of it, took better shots, and then went our separate ways. 

When the couple was safely out of earshot, we turned to each other. The conversation went like this:

S:  That girl? She was so pretty! Didn't you think she was pretty?

Me: That's exactly what I was thinking! 

S: I'm so jealous! I wish I was that pretty!* 

Me: Me too!  

(Significant pause.) 

S: She was too good for him.

Me: Oh, hell yeah. 

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, there may be a few elements of that conversation that could be improved. For the record, the boyfriend looked fine. He just wasn't exceptional. Not the way she was. She caught your eye, while your gaze might just pass right on over him without stopping. That's not a crime. He could even have been a Getty. Although, based on clothing, I have my doubts. 

Back to the her: based solely on appearances, both of us immediately felt that this girl's looks entitled her to someone better. It seemed perfectly rational at the time. It made sense. Some of the most irrational thoughts always seem perfectly rational. We both had high expectations of this complete stranger. She should do better. She should dump her nice boyfriend, and get herself someone more in her league. Her looks league.   

What were the assumptions behind this line of reasoning. Do good looks naturally lead to higher expectations? Do we assume that she had all these better choices, and then chose this somewhat blah guy? Did he trick her? Is he, in fact, evil? 

In future, I will probably reflect less on other people's choices, and more on my own line of reasoning.

* For reference purposes, she looked like a younger version of actress Kelly Hu. Hu is probably best known for being really hot on the Scorpion King. Check it out. 

ON THE SOUL AND THE MIND

Interesting. Do you believe this?