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

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If you have trouble with meditation but made it one of your resolutions for this year, you may have more success with a meditation anchor such as mindful eating. The idea is that instead of clearing your mind, you tune all of your thoughts to a single action: Eating a bite of food.

I thought this was a lovely piece on appreciation, and while I don’t think I’ll change my lunch-at-my-desk habit, I do like the idea of setting aside a night once a week to make the table special and feel like a guest in your own 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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

900,000 years ago, the world contained about 1,300 people. That’s it. Imagine the size of the world, and now imagine only 1,300 people walking around.

Our ancestors came within a hair’s breadth of extinction, and populations remained that low for the next 100,000 years or more, researchers argue today in Science.

No one knows what caused the population dip, if it impacted all populations, or what happened to cause the population to rise again, but I wonder if people living during that time felt lonely. If they had any concept of how small their numbers had dwindled and whether they took any active measures to rebuild their groupings.

Something to think about on a Sunday morning.

Toward the end of last year (okay, a few weeks ago), I read a book called West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman. I’ll review it with the other December books soon, but I wanted to unpack a profound thought on page 60.

“Every year, without knowing it, we pass the date of our death,” declares Jonathan Gold, eyes flitting around the table. “How would our lives be different if we knew that date? If we could observe it properly? Celebrate it?”

In other words, until we die, we don’t know what that anniversary will be. But regardless, the date is on the calendar, and we pass it without knowing it every year. Would you want to know the date, like you know your birthday, even if you don’t know the year it will happen? Would you do anything on that date if you knew it would become your death anniversary in the future?

On one hand, I would probably experience a temporary sigh of relief each year when I made it through the day. On the other, it would probably preoccupy my mind on and off throughout the year. Best not to know.

Here is an interesting question. I grew up in a mostly non-digital world. I remember the first time I saw an email, still sending paper letters or making phone calls long after my college years because it was still the most reliable way to contact people. I started texting about ten years ago, and even then, I only did it with regularity once the twins started using phones. I still buy paper books, though I love the ease of downloading an e-book, and the last time I checked out a paper book from the library was at the start of the pandemic.

I do most of my work online and heavily relied on Zoom meetings long before COVID-19 struck. I moved to remote work 17 years ago.

I use YouTube or apps to exercise, cooking blogs to find recipes, and stream most of our entertainment.

But the point is that I remember life before all of these things. I remember making plans without texting or traveling without GPS. I remember attending exercise classes, buying cookbooks, and seeing movies in the theater. I would be bummed to lose out on conveniences that I’ve gotten accustomed to over the years, but I’m sure once thrust back into the age of paper letters and phone calls that I’d function and thrive after a brief re-entry period.

Is the same true for digital natives like the twins? We moved from offline to online, but would it be just as easy to move from online to offline? Do the skills translate in the other direction? Something I’m pondering today.

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

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Yes, I clicked on some to see what places they recommended, but travel hot lists feel ridiculous. How can you recommend an entire country? Or city? It’s not a book where everyone is delivered the same story between covers. Or even a restaurant with a finite number of dishes on the menu. Or a hotel where the location and amenities remain the same, regardless of the room. In all of those situations, your mileage may vary for many reasons. But an entire city? How can two people have similar experiences in the same place unless they follow the same itinerary?

I felt vindicated by the randomness of the lists.

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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.