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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A gelati place near us has the most brilliant marketing plan. Every day, they declare two names as the “names of the day.” People with those names can get a free small gelati or X% off a larger size.

Of course, most people do not go for gelati alone, so everyone who accompanies them pays full price, and the store gets one or more people who may not have bought dessert that day. We end up buying 3 extra gelatis any time one of our names gets chosen.

Maybe Mikes or Jennifers wouldn’t fall for this trick, but they don’t usually choose Mikes or Jennifers. Sometimes those names pop up, but they more often choose names that are unusual but popular in our area, so people who never get to see their name on a pencil or other souvenir flock to the store to get their picture under the name sign. Everyone in our family has been called up at least once, and a few of us have gotten to be the name twice since they started it years ago.

Well played.

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

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

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Along with the goose in the bottle, another mind-shifting thought is to take a step back whenever you’re upset and ask yourself, “Does this really matter?”

Some things matter. But we’re conditioned to react as if everything matters. And when you can take a step back and say, “Wait, does it really matter if I do X or get Y or feel Z?” you sometimes find that the answer is actually no. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change your world in any way beyond a tiny, temporary blip.

It was an interesting thought exercise when I felt myself panicking last week to ask myself: “Does this really matter?”

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

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

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A news article I was reading linked out to this map that shows the amount of money you need to earn to live comfortably in your state. The number is based on a single working adult, so the number is different if your situation is different (working couple, couple with one working partner, children at home, children out of the house, etc.). Still, it’s an interesting starting point to see how your state lines up with other states regarding the cost of living. And they do have a second graphic for households.

Massachusetts ranks first as the most expensive, and West Virginia is the least expensive. Maryland is in the top ten most expensive states with an average salary of $102,918 to live comfortably. It’s the 15th most expensive state for household income, needing a salary of $239,450 to live comfortably.

The numbers seem high considering the average distribution of household income in the United States, but what do I know?

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

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

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It started with one suggested calligraphy video in my Instagram feed. A disembodied hand was showing how to create illuminated letters. I watched it, and the next day, three calligraphy videos were in my feed. And for days after, a third of my feed was disembodied hands creating gorgeous letters.

And then came the embroidery videos. One was mixed in with the calligraphy videos, and within a day, the calligraphy videos were replaced with embroidery videos. There were embroidered flowers on jeans, embroidered designs on collars, and nimble disembodied hands showing me how to create seven different kinds of knots in thread.

I’m not sure what they’ll deliver next or if I’ll be stuck with embroidery videos for a long time because I bookmarked them, intending to return to them when I purchased some thread and could try out the knots myself.

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

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

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I spent longer than I want to admit trying to figure out the answer without looking ahead at the answer that Oliver Burkeman put in his newsletter:

Here’s a riddle, adapted from a Zen koan: imagine you’ve come into possession of a live goose, trapped in a large glass bottle … The neck of the bottle is much too narrow for the goose to pass through. Your job is to remove the goose from the bottle without harming it, and without breaking any glass.

How do you get the goose out?

It’s an excellent exercise for not overthinking things.

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.