Experience sharing. No Images? Click here In a serendipitous philosophical overlap, we watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo during the same few days we were reading Letters from a Stoic, a collection of Seneca's letters. What does a cheerfully disciplined de-cluttering guru have in common with an ancient proponent of sturdy virtue? They are the same side of two coins. A big part of stoicism is giving the heave-ho to frivolous pleasures in order to focus on the work of making our lives as diligently well-spent as possible. The Konmari method of tidying, while cheerfully presented by Ms. Kondo, is similarly a thorough (grueling) examination of what meaning (joy) our lives may gain by getting rid of frivolous stuff. Just in case you haven't made any resolutions yet, the garage is waiting. As is the sweet Magpie to the Morning. Happy New Year! Good bad news: Why Exercise Alone Won't Save Us: Is it too late to cancel that gym membership? Odds are that you won't go, and even if you do, it won't make much difference. Bad news if you love the gym, but good news if you love walking to work, biking, hiking, using treadle-powered sewing machines, and such. That's where the magic is--daily, medium-intensity, part-of-your-life moving around. ListeningThe Practical Stoic Podcast. Motivation from Epictetus for the year ahead. Short, inspiring, remonstrating, unconditionally demanding, and less than five minutes long. The stoics weren't big on ambiguity or compromise. You are you and now is now so put the two together and make them go where you believe they should. This is a perfect tonic for that worn-out, everything-is-going-to-hell feeling that seems prevalent around town. ReadingLetters from a Stoic. This edition of Seneca's Epistles unites all 124 of the letters in a single volume. A dense, scholarly volume that you really have to want to get through. Not that it isn't crammed with wisdom--it is--but the translator seemed to think it would sound smarter if it were as formal as tea with the queen. It is good for opening up and reading randomly, so maybe as a bathroom book. So, uh, you won't want to borrow ours. Better for getting the swing of the stoic thing is the Daily Stoic. Lots of resources and information all in one place. Be good, be who you are, and be OK with bad stuff. WatchingTidying Up with Marie Kondo. It's fun to watch the faces of her tidy-ees as they realize that: A. She's not going to do it for them, and B. It's going to be a huge amount of doing stuff that sucks. After watching a few, it does begin to make sense, even though it's much more fun to watch other people empty their drawers and closets and lug out trash bag after trash bag. Insidiously, every time you move a pile of shoes to find your gloves, the urge gets stronger to "Spark Joy" with a roll of big Glad bags. OversharingBrian May's New Horizons Song. Yes, he's the guitarist for Queen, yes he's got a PhD in astrophysics, yes he was at NASA for the 2014MU69 flyby, and yes this is really like a genuine new Queen song.Myriad is a design consultancy with creative, technical and marketing brilliance; genuinely friendly, smart people; and never-ending enthusiasm for planning, designing, building, launching hosting, marketing and maintaining brands and digital products. We do NOT share any of your information with anyone, ever. This is a safe place. Why not give the gift of thoughtful design and cultural curation to the ones you care about?
In case you've missed any of our previous Friday Care Packages, here they are in gold mine form (soon to be a blog!): Friday Care Package 47, 11/30/2018
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