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Why are you so petrified of silence?
Here can you handle this?

Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines?
Or when you think you’re gonna die?

Or did you long for the next distraction?

Alanis Morissette – All I Really Want

So here’s my suggestion to you: find a system that works for you; don’t place yourself into someone else’s system. If you find your brain works better while you doodle with a pen in a notebook, embrace it. Write your ToDos by hand instead of using a computer or an iPad. This is the system that works best for me, and I don’t expect it to work best for you.

Only when we’re fully aware of a moment can we be truly happy. Someday I will not be able to smell the needles on the pine tree in my yard. Perhaps I’ll be incapacitated, or maybe the tree will be gone. Perhaps I’ll live elsewhere. Definitely I’ll be dead. But today — right now — I’m holding fresh pine needles and lifting them to my nose. This tree and I exist in this very same day, time, hour, minute and moment. How lucky for us both. I can see how tall it is, feel its bark, enjoy its scent. How tremendously fortunate I am to have this time.

Dave Caolo – Paying attention now because someday I’ll be dead

Fantastic post on mindfulness and the value of time (which I often, and fairly, refer to as the most valuable resource in the universe).

All I’m saying is, I don’t always have to know the answer, but I like it when the option of knowing is available.

Knowable – Neven Mrgan’s tumbl

I’ve read this piece several times now. Love this last sentence. It really speaks to me. Also, the music recommendations he makes therein are wonderful. 

Through stacks of unread books, seas of feeds, people, invitations, events, and unanswered emails, if we stand still long enough, if we listen and look, if we pause, we see that nothing is ever the same again tomorrow.

Liz Danzico – The extraordinary of doing ‘being ordinary’ – Bobulate

My new favorite sentence on the internet. Such a gracefully and humanely stated lesson on mindfulness and our ability to achieve it even in the face of today’s demands on our mental bandwidth.

For the digitally excluded, the route to the world wide web is via the heart, not the brainbox. We just need to work out what they love. Then show them how to find it

Broomeshtick — FirstPlaces. A prototype thing for digital inclusion.

  1. This is one of my favorite paragraphs on the internet right now.
  2. Alone, it could be titled “Why Curation Matters”.
  3. I love it when the commentary on a link is just as clever and insightful as the post it links to.