Category — Microblog Mondays

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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At the beginning of the pandemic, I thought I’d make my way through all the unread books on my bookshelf. And I am reading them… sometimes… but, more often, I’m reading my way through new books borrowed digitally from the library.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I thought I could turn it into a project: read everything unread on the shelves. I tossed it out mentally in the same way that I tossed out things such as re-organizing the basement or finishing a major photo project. Things that I wanted to get done, and I now had time at home to get done.

But I haven’t done any of these things.

Instead, I’ve purchased books along the way, adding to the unread pile instead of subtracting.

Maybe I just need to admit that I’m not going to check anything off the list, project-wise.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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There have been a lot of articles recently about passport privilege, which is the power your passport holds to get you into other countries without needing to apply for a visa. The US is tied for 7th with Switzerland, the UK, Norway, and Belgium. We can get into 185 places without a prior visa, and there are 41 places where a prior visa is required.

In 2015, the US had the most powerful passport in the world, but we dropped 7 slots as relationships changed. And this ranking doesn’t include all of the borders currently closed to us due to COVID-19.

So it’s not that we can’t go to those 41 countries; it’s that we have to ask permission first. The country can choose to deny us access, just as the US does sometimes to visitors.

We talk a lot about citizenship privilege—about the ease in which a person can live because they’re residing in the country where they were born—but we don’t talk a lot about passport privilege—the ability to travel where you want to go.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Immediately after writing that last post about the staycation, I was moping on the sofa, playing solitaire, when I decided that I would officially lose it if I had to spend one more day staring at the stacks of paper on top of the file cabinet.

I dumped everything in the center of the floor and spent four hours sorting and shredding old papers dating back to when the twins were in elementary school. It felt so damn good. I mean, it didn’t feel good while I was doing it, but it felt good after the space was empty. I cleaned off the top of my desk for good measure.

And I still had time to sit outside and read in the afternoon. And pull together lunch and breakfast for the first three days of the week. Feeling productive turned the whole day around. I accomplished one big thing on the staycation, AND I read a bunch of books, too. So all is well that ends well.

I think I need to tackle a tiny space in the house every two weeks or so. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with the whole basement at once, but I can do a single corner of a room every few weeks and have the whole thing finished by winter. It’s hard to live with clutter when you can’t get breaks from your home.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I love local news. I forgot how much I like local news until I read an ode to why local journalism is important in a newsletter. I’m not talking about the town listserv or a Facebook group—I’m talking about the weekly newspaper that you can pick up in the front lobby of the library or have mailed to your home.

It is rarely depressing in the way that the national news is depressing. And it’s exciting when someone I know is featured in the paper; they become a mini local celebrity. When we go to Chincoteague, I always pick up their local newspaper and read it to catch up on things because we know so many of the names and places in those pages, too.

Do you have a local newspaper? And do you read it?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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CNN had a piece on a couple who built their own island over the last 29 years. The pandemic hasn’t really changed much for them because they’ve set up their lives to be completely sustainable on their floating compound.

It’s not that it’s easy—they have an exhausting number of tasks per day in order to be self-sufficient. But they also don’t have to worry about losing their home because they couldn’t pay the mortgage.

The pandemic has made me take a hard look at what it means to live a sustainable life. What do we actually need vs. what do we want? And then taking a hard look at those wants: how many of them should stay on the list?

I’m always fascinated by people who figure out how to be self-sufficient; in big or small ways.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.