A Visionary of Voluntary Simplicity

Rumer Godden wrote this in the middle of the last century in her autobiography A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep 
"Suppose, instead of living to get money to spend, we live by not spending?  Somewhere away, where it would be so quiet and simple that a little would go a long way?"

Judgement vs. Discernment

This is from Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominiguez and Vicki Robin:

Judgment (blaming ourselves and others) is labeling things in terms of good and bad.  Judgment is what got Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden:  they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil--i.e., they started judging everything, beginning with their bodies, and made themselves ashamed....Discernment, on the other hand, is an essential skill.  Discernment is sorting out  the true from the false, separating the wheat from the chaff....Discernment has to do with that higher faculty that we all have---the one that knows the truth, that sees what is needed and wanted by life, that recognizes as real our desire to make a difference before we die.

Poser vs. (gag) Eat Pray Love

Top Ten Reasons Why I Liked Poser:  My Life in 23 Yoga Poses better than Eat Pray Love

The author of Poser, Claire Dederer:

1. had humble financial worries vs. a six figure book advance.

2. didn't need to circle the globe to have an epiphany.

3.  would not be played by Julia Roberts in the movie version.

4. unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, does not have a grating, ingratiating narrative voice.

5.  didn't hit up her friends for donations.

6.  had amusing observations about the pretentiousness of the yoga world.

7.  didn't feel the need to impart to the reader every compliment a man ever tossed at her.

8.  used the word "dyad" in a sentence.

9.  begins the book with a wry description of the obsessive, eco-rightous style of mothering that emerged at of the turn of the millennium.

10. does not begin with an account of locking herself in the bathroom and crying on the floor.   

The September Issue

After viewing The September Issue I get it---I am Grace Coddington and  the miserable bitch I work with is Anna Wintour.

First Job

My first job out of college was working at a place where bitchiness was elevated to the level of an art form. scary