I'm recovering from a long weekend of hosting friends from out-of-country and a short trip to Åland, a group of Swedish-speaking Finnish islands (an archipelago!) that lie between Sweden and Finland. I'm also battling a cold while desperately trying to catch up with office work. I find it so much harder to recover and to catch...
Happiness
Happiness Project: Month 1 Check-in
So I'm approximately a week into my happiness project, and I'll be honest: it's not going so well. As you can see from the picture above, I'm doing so-so at keeping my resolutions. Some things, like lying with my legs up the wall and writing a to-do list, have been easy to do; while other...
Happiness Project: Month 1 Resolutions
For the first month of my new happiness project, I'm focusing on my general health and wellness. I think it's important to boost this project with an infusion of energy and vitality--something I don't always feel as the mother of two young children with a third on the way. So my resolutions this month will be focused...
Why September is Great for Projects
While I'm preparing tomorrow's post about making resolutions for my happiness project, I wanted to share this wonderful, timely piece with you. It comes from The Pool, a smart web publication from Britain that my friend Sophia turned me on to. (It's definitely worth subscribing to their email list!).
Happiness Project: Focus Areas
A few weeks ago I wrote about starting a happiness project. I'm putting together a mini-project to begin next week (I would have preferred September 1, but after our recent transatlantic trip I'm a bit behind). For reasons I'll share later, a six-month project fits my life better than a year-long one, so I'm going to start by...
Why You Shouldn't Follow Your Passion
Follow your passion. We've all heard it a million times, right? Follow your bliss. Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. The admonitions to find exciting, deeply fulfilling work--with the implied or else. I don't know where I first heard this, but I do know it was somehow embedded in me from early on. Because of...
Edwin Morgan's Strawberries
Here's a lovely poem by the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan to wish you a luscious weekend. Strawberries There were never strawberries like the ones we had that sultry afternoon sitting on the step of the open french window facing each other your knees held in mine the blue plates in our laps the strawberries glistening in the...
On Having Imperfect Pictures of Myself on the Blog
One of the most common critiques of the social media world--a world most of us find ourselves entrenched in--is that it presents us with edited and often idealized images of other people's lives. We see more of others' aspirational lives than we do of their real, everyday lives. While we might lament this, we often tend...
Summer in Sweden: the Basics
Let's talk about summer in Sweden. The days are endless, the nights almost nonexistent, and everyone is on vacation. After a dark and grueling winter that seems to last nine months, suddenly the world is bright and warm(ish) and lush again. Swedes use this time to get out of the office and back into nature. For us,...
An Intentional Summer
The New York Times has challenged its readers to an intentional summer. Every week, they're offering a suggestion to set this summer apart from the rest of the year. The first challenge is to walk or bike somewhere that you'd normally drive, to make an ordinary trip a little more extraordinary.