For people who are done letting outside voices — technology, experts, cultural noise — drown out their own. Every issue explores how to reclaim your discernment, your body awareness, and your creative authority across the parts of life that matter most: technology, relationships, wellness, work, and creativity.
I mopped while Claude worked
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Some of my most productive moments happen when I'm so focused that time disappears. I love when that happens. What I'm noticing lately is that working with Claude creates its own rhythm. I'll set it on a task that takes a few minutes to process. While it works, I could open two more tasks and start bouncing between them. Sometimes that works. Sometimes I end up scattered, getting less done than if I'd just waited. What's been working better: I step away from the computer entirely. Yesterday I swept the house while Claude worked. Today I mopped. Every day I try to remind myself to move: maybe some stretches, squats, back exercises. I grew up sedentary and I'm still learning that my body is designed to move. That's an ongoing journey. Bread is a good one too. I can knead the dough, set it to rise, and go back to whatever I was doing. Something physical balanced with something digital. That feels right to me. I also have a rule for myself: go outside three times a day. Morning, midday, late afternoon. It sounds simple. It's changed a lot for me. Stepping outside gives my nervous system a break from screens and the mental buzzing that comes with focused work. My mind relaxes. It wanders. My best ideas usually come on those walks. There's something about sunlight and fresh air and actually looking at things — trees, sky, whatever's in front of me — that resets something. Modern life conditions us to be inside. I'm learning, slowly, what it means to live in a body that wants to be outside. That learning keeps surprising me. If you want to get a sense of where you are across different areas of wellness, I built this little app. It's free, takes a few minutes, and might surprise you: Wellness Mirror Outside twice today, one more to go, |
Renaissance Rachel
For people who are done letting outside voices — technology, experts, cultural noise — drown out their own. Every issue explores how to reclaim your discernment, your body awareness, and your creative authority across the parts of life that matter most: technology, relationships, wellness, work, and creativity.
A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law handed me a stack of pillows she wasn't using anymore. I took them home without thinking much of it. The following Sunday, she saw them sitting out at my place and told me, in Serbian, where they'd come from. One of them, her own mother had embroidered. I understood every word. I'm still learning the language, and that day, it landed. That pillow moment turned into something bigger: the same question I've been sitting with for years, long before "human...
Last evening, my husband and I went for a walk. Along the way, an elderly neighbor asked for help picking cherries from his tree. Long story short, we ended up with over a gallon of cherries and I had the opportunity to figure out what to do with them. It gave me a taste of what seasonal living is really like. I grew up having everything available year round at supermarkets. I often wonder about what life was like before modern conveniences. What did people do? Well, when your neighbor's...
I finished a book last night that made me mad. And I mean that in the best possible way. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke had a premise I couldn't resist: a tradwife influencer forced to actually live in 1855. As someone who believes the past holds real wisdom worth recovering, I was curious. I wanted to see an author take that question seriously. She didn't. And I've been sitting with why that bothers me so much. I also wasn't expecting to end up disappointed in Anne Hathaway. You don't need...