What IS "calm"?

Calm is calm. Not frantic, not excited, not frightened or frightening. Calm, like water that is neither frozen nor choppy.

Calm is possessing the ability to think, to consider a situation without panic.

Calm is not perpetually on the edge of flipping out.

That and some discussion of how to be calmer
photo by Amy Milstein

Life is lumpy; let it be.

Life is lumpy. Let it be. I'm going to type it again (for my own therapy...skip over it, if you think you've already got it!). "Life is lumpy; let it be." Not every day is perfect. Not every moment is memorable. Perfection is never perfect. And you know what? That's okay! Fighting it only makes you miserable. You can choose to be miserable, of course. But that's your choice. Hard to feel victimised if you refuse to be the victim... —Faolmar

From a post at the blog Faolmar's Den: "Life is Lumpy"
(backup in case that disappears)
photo by

Happier, healthier

If small changes of attitude can make more happy moments than before, that benefits everyone involved.

No one can have perfect happiness, but *more* happiness is easy to come by. It doesn't cost any more than less happiness, but it's much healthier and better for the whole family and the neighbors and relatives.

SandraDodd.com/happy
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Lisbon, 2013
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Simply seeing

Look at things others might not see. See their shapes, their backgrounds. Light changes. Wind comes. Things were once younger, smaller, newer. They will be older, different, gone.

See what's around you.

SandraDodd.com/being
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Clearly and maturely

Rippy D. wrote:

[The Always Learning discussion] has helped me think more clearly and maturely. It has helped me change unhelpful patterns and most of all helped me step into the *JOY* of life, connection, partnership with my children and husband. I know how scary it is to feel examined, and I think some other readers interpret examination as meanness, like I once did. I think to do unschooling well, it is a fundamental element to have an examined life. To be mindful of our choices and understand our thought processes.

—Rippy Dusseldorp

Healing Presence
photo by Ester Siroky
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Impermanence AGAIN!?

It's true; the subscription provider has changed. Feedburner is closing at the end of June, and another company offered to import five blogs for me, so if you want to add any of the others to your feed, they are Unschooling Site News, SandraDodd.com Sandra Dodd (personal blog) Homeschool News and Muse mainstream articles, but I might start using that for other things Wheelbarrows (Wheelbarrows interest me, and they are also a portal into people's history, lives, and gardens.) If you clicked through to the subscription service and saw "Publisher: aelflaed" that's me. When google mail came along, someone snagged my name (probably because it was her name), so I used my SCA/medieval-studies name. "Ælflæd" was like lots of names 1000 years ago, but now it's like Alfred and Elsie (surviving cousins). ANYway.... that's me, on google-owned sites. There are TWO ways to get to the blog from e-mail now—clicking the post's title, or "read more" at the bottom. A new option is to get a push notification on your phone, so for those who didn't like the e-mail's appearance on a phone, I hope this is way better. Changes do not thrill me, and I'm getting old. But Vlad Gurdiga is still young and enthusiastic. He helped with this move as he has helped with many other things involving my collections— moving thousands of photos from photobucket (which kept on changing and losing things and charging more money) to SandraDodd.com (which he moved from yahoo to another host company). Thank you Vlad, again.

photo by Holly Dodd

The long life of good ideas

There are some people who haven’t been born yet who will, someday, read things Jo Isaac wrote, and other people here. It might be hard for them to find it, or it might not be. But good ideas, written well, can outlive the writers.

SandraDodd.com/realwriting
Some of my collections, including Jo Isaac: Other Voices
photo by Karen James