My best purchase of the year
Oh, hi friends!
This is going to sound absurd, but the best, most “productive” thing I did last week was to…buy a new bath mat.
The old one was…fine? Didn’t quite look right with the tile in our new apartment, but also wasn’t offensive enough to make me buy a new one last year when we moved in.
And yet, every time I saw it, which was a lot, I was a little…annoyed. It wasn’t right, wasn’t horrible, was just…blah.
But then I was at Target last week hunting for something unrelated, and I saw a gray bathroom rug and thought, “Oh, but that is better than fine! That is perfect!”
So I bought it and now I’m no longer annoyed multiple times a day.
Wait, there should be a moral to this story. Well, so, here’s three.
If something bugs you, consider changing it.
Improving the little things can make you inordinately happy.
Finally, don’t live your life with a crummy bath mat.
“What are you doing today that only you can do? What would happen if that’s all you did all day?”
From Seth Godin on outsourcing.
Maybe it’s not entirely realistic today to drop everything else except what only you can do…but aren’t these good questions to ask?
Doesn’t it make you think about how you can collaborate with someone else?
Or about how you can double down on the one thing—or many things!—that can only come from you?
Direct your energy there.
This Woman Has Been Playing the Piano for 102 Years
She’s 107! Last year Colette Maze released her sixth album. She’s been playing the piano since she was five years old. (This video is from when she was only 100.)
"I always preferred composers who gave me tenderness," she told NPR in this great interview. "Like [Robert] Schumann and [Claude] Debussy. Music is an affective language, a poetic language. In music there is everything — nature, emotion, love, revolt, dreams; it's like a spiritual food."
Here’s one more:
"Youth is inside us," she says. "If you appreciate what's beautiful around you, you will find a sense of wonder in it."
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You can also support my work by checking out my motivational journal, Do It For Yourself, designed to guide you through your creative and work projects, and my upcoming journal Do It Today, which encourages you to find time for the things that matter most to you.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara