Butterfly Effect, paper collage, 2021 This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 5/22/21 I buried a dead butterfly yesterday. I’d picked her up along the side of the road when I was out walking the night before. She could no longer fly, and I knew death was probably imminent. So I scooped [...]
Category: personal growth and spirituality
So, you think you can fly.
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 3/16/21 Went for a walk last night and found a hawk feather. (A little gift from nature. If I’ve identified it correctly, from a Cooper's hawk.) I love walking. Of the many kinds of exercise I enjoy, walking is tied, perhaps most intimately, to my [...]
The Miraculous in Everyday Life
Over the Hills, paper collage, 2020 I dedicated my last post to defining what it means to perceive the world as miraculous. It is a style of experiencing, or way of seeing, that is central to my belief that life is a miracle (as opposed to, say, “life is love,” “the world is dangerous,” or [...]
Life As Miracle
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein The notion that life is a miracle is both an attitude and a style of experiencing. More precisely, it is an attitude that's rooted in a particular [...]
Beyond Suffering
I felt compelled to write this post because of a conversation I had yesterday with fellow blogger, Gabriela. In responding to issues I raised in a recent post on religion and personality, she asked me how I felt about the notion that “life is suffering,” especially as it relates to the central meaning I ascribe [...]
On Religion and Personality
If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know my self-study in psychology has taken me some very interesting places. Self-actualization. Creativity, perception, mysticism. Various topics in humanistic and existential psychotherapy. Religion, too, has been a part of these discussions; although, I admit, I’ve never been particularly interested in religion as a course of [...]
On Low Living
It occurred to me about two or three weeks ago that I was, perhaps, in need of a change in habits. Spurred by feelings of stress, overstimulation, and an overwhelming desire to tune out— to reclaim a firmer sense of autonomy and personal well-being during such chaotic times, a yearning for a simpler, quieter, lower [...]
On Being a Master of None
Can you believe The Used Life celebrated her third anniversary on April 27? Neither can I.... When I started this blog three years ago, I felt instinctively (and immediately, as I recall) that the tagline, Experiments in the Art of Mastering None, captured the essence of my project. Indeed, I first conceived of The Used [...]
Superhero
This post has been formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 3/13/20 Been reflecting lately on the importance of knowing what to ignore. Placing appropriate limits on technology use, media consumption, etc. An interesting thought: I imagine highly sensitive people have less of a problem with this. For me: I want to turn it all [...]
Afternoon Tea
This post is formatted to reflect an original journal entry. 1/31/20 An afternoon with a lazy, cool attitude. Listening to Steely Dan and sipping herbal tea. Been reflecting on my journey through various stages of The Used Life and coming to view them more and more as a series of returns. That is, I began [...]
The Used Life 