Spring Splashings

Notes from my reading, writing, and living lately

I’m not sure I’ve ever said this before, or at least with this depth of truth in it: I am in a season of joy. As spring blooms around me, my mind and heart feel like they’re blooming, too.

One major factor is that I’ve made a big life change: I’m now mostly staying home, rather than working my job. But that change, along with many other, smaller changes, was the result of a long focus on learning to heed my own feelings. Mostly, that learning-work felt tedious and hard, though right…I definitely did not expect it to bring this much joy!

I’ve got some deeper-level essays and other things to share on the way, but for now, here are some miscellaneous “splashings” from my life’s river lately.

---

What I’ve Been Reading Lately

• No Nonsense Spirituality by Brittney Hartley — I’m absolutely loving this book about building a toolkit of secular spirituality. Even for those who don’t believe in God or adhere to a religion, spiritual experiences such as awe, wonder, community, and self-connection are still essential aspects of a fulfilling life.

• The Biased Brain by Bo Bennett — This book is a sort of dictionary of cognitive biases, from well-known ones like confirmation bias to many lesser-known ones. I want to post about this book and these concepts in more detail sometime—I’m very interested in learning to hack my brain’s autopilot software to live more rationally and effectively!

• Thinking Physics by Lewis Carroll Epstein — I’m working through the exercises of this book together with my best friend, and it’s feeling like the science education I never had (and perhaps wouldn’t have gotten even in traditional schools!).

• Raising Securely Attached Kids by Eli Harwood — I’m still loving this book, and it’s helping me think more clearly about my parenting and how I want to change.

• Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche — This classic has been on my to-read list and my bookshelf for years, untouched until now. I’m not sure whether I’ll manage to hang in there past all the egoism, but I aim to keep trying for now, in order to hear its main ideas firsthand.

• Small Talk: 10 ADHD Lies and How to Stop Believing Them by Richard and Roxanne Pink — I listened to this as an audiobook (through the Libby app via my library), and I loved it. While the content is unique and important, what struck me most deeply about this book was the sheer kindness, compassion, and hope the authors convey.

• Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create Like an Inventor by Temple Grandin — I’m currently listening to this one (also through Libby), not very far along yet, but I’m definitely interested—and hoping to get my kids interested in it too (maybe when they’re a little older and can pay attention a little longer). It also goes well with Thinking Physics!

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky — I’m close to the end of listening to this book (via the podcast audio version) for the fourth time. It’s just…unparalleled. (I’ve written about it before here.)

---

What I’ve Been Writing Lately

• I’m pretty close to finishing the first draft of book one of my middle-grade fantasy trilogy, and I’m very excited about it! The story reflects a lot of my major life themes, most of all the theme of growing up inside a rigid religion and then breaking out of it.

• Similarly, I’ve started writing poems about the dark days of my past life…I think I’ve finally gotten enough distance from all that to start really processing it through art, in as many forms/genres as I can.

• I’ve also been thinking a lot about this Substack blog and how I might want to start doing things differently here—possibly posting more often and doing less of following blogging conventions. But for now, stay tuned!

---

Music I’ve Been Listening to Lately

Still Restoration by RORY (as I mentioned in my “Winter Splashings” post), along with—of course—The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift and other older favorites.

---

Kid Moments Lately

• I asked my three-year-old if I could take her baby doll out of my sink, where it was soaking in its “bath.” She held up ten fingers and said firmly, “She has to stay in there for three weeks.”

• This morning the twins ran around our house gathering quarters from random places to take to their school’s Book Fair. On the first day of Book Fair I’d given them money, on the second day they took their own money, and today I told them that was enough. But they disagreed; hence the quarter-finding frenzy. (I thought it was sweet and hilarious, so I let them do it. I’m sure their teachers appreciated the baggies of quarters they brought in…)

---

Random Learnings Lately

• I’ve suddenly taken up flower gardening! My partner is usually the outdoors guy; he grew up farming vegetables and all sorts of things, but he has no interest in flowers. I have whatever the opposite of a green thumb is, but I’m giving it a good try, with his help. Among other flowers, we planted sunflowers (from seeds), which are my favorites. Look, they’re growing (so far)!

Cinna had to get in the photo too.

• I recently discovered a cool new field of study called stoichiometry. (My friend told me about it, during our Thinking Physics discussions; she heard about it from a chemistry teacher once.) It’s essentially about balancing equations in chemistry. I’m quite interested in learning more. (First step: make it all the way through the Wikipedia article.)

---

One Struggle Lately

The main thing that comes to mind as a struggle right now is feeling sorrow, anger, and helplessness whenever I look at the news. Some days I only just peek at the headlines.

I don’t yet see any clear action point of something to do about my feelings (join a protest? write to senators? where to even start?); it all feels overwhelming. So for now, I’m practicing just staying on my path and walking it as best I can, while keeping my eyes and heart open, ready for wherever my path leads. This seems like the way towards finding how I can best help—by closely following my facts and feelings, rather than by egoistically forcing my path to be what it’s not.

I rely on these lines from my song “What Is Just Is”:

I look at the world
and see so much pain
that I cannot stop,
just like the rain.

What help I can give
will come as I live
in tune with my soul,
not by fake control.

---

One Encouraging Quote

This line from Thus Spake Zarathustra startled me, like a tiny crystal hidden in a box of heavy (and pretentious) rocks:

One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.

✨

---