This year
I promised to make time
to connect with others,
an intentional step
towards ensuring that
physical distancing
did not eradicate
emotional closeness.

but what I learned
is that the other side of this coin
is also the importance
of making time
to be genuinely be alone,
to spend quality time with yourself
to think, to create, to be
without the influence of others.

Tagging Evan Wildstein | Alan Henley | Erivaldo Ricardo | Tej | @treelangdon | Sruthi Korlakunta | Tom Fenske | Alexandra Forsyth if you’re up to it and anyone else interested in today’s prompt: quality…

For those of you whose biggest barrier to completing a 3-page morning journaling session (“morning pages” way) is getting distracted and never finishing this writing session, I have the life hack for you.

Journalling sessions are perfect for generating new ideas and remembering to do the things you may have forgotten. The downfall comes when you feel this urgency to do those things immediately, shifting away from ever finishing a complete journal session.

My tip: Use a “distraction list”.

At the bottom of your journal page, add a space for sudden ideas that pop up as you write. That way…

Of the silly questions I get
about my graduate degree
here are the top few:
Can you read my mind?
Will you agree with me that
we are all a little bit “crazy”?
Did you start studying psychology
to psychoanalyze yourself and your past?

To that last one,
I constantly have to say no.

I have to explain
that psychology as a field
encompasses more than Freud,
branching deep and wide
into the social realm
looking at interactions between humans
at a larger scale,

to investigating human cognition
by comparing it to animal cognition
in comparative cognition and psychology

to…

What your opinions on those who write about how much they earn — in general, or on Medium? As someone who has been “new” to Medium, I’ve certainly fallen into that trap. Even then, I knew it was frowned upon, yet found it intriguing enough a topic to try.

However, I wanted it to have a little twist — instead of an article, I wrote it in poetry format. I joked about how the conversion rate between the $1.70 USD I earned actually translated to $2.31CAD, enough for a chocolate bar.

I don’t regret writing this piece, even amidst newer…

What is Calendar Blocking?

If you’ve dabbled in self-improvement books, YouTube or podcasts you’ve probably heard of Calendar Blocking. It’s a popular technique touted by many as a way of visually planning out time, particularly when you’re juggling many duties.

In essence, it involves having a weekly schedule with hourly slots where you visually colour in the times where you have tasks. This way, instead of having some disembodied task list that feels like it will get done quickly, you have a concrete dedication of time.

Half of the battle of time management is this weird optimism our brains have for how long something…

Monday: Fresh rain brings hope

Away

Fresh rain
brings hope
a soft drip drop
into growing puddles
ripple effect
obscuring our reflections
washing away
the stains of
the previous night,
the previous season.

Author’s note: As I write “stains” I think of one particular friend, M., who is deep into the rabbit hole of listening to True Crime podcasts and certainly would interpret this poem a certain way. In this piece though, I’m thinking of rain as a fresh beginning, washing away the dirt and grime that accumulates on sidewalks. Particularly in Canada, snowbanks are pretty for about one day but then progress slowly into a…

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The recycling bin was glowing.

Sure, you’d been chucking all sorts of weird drafts in there but none of them were radioactive, were they? Wow, how even in moments of panic you try to crack dumb dad jokes.

Your stomach growls. Cheese hasn’t sat well in your stomach since you turned a “tiny bit lactose intolerant” a few years ago, but this was more than that.

Inside the recycling bin, that fancy envelope you’d thought was a fancy version of spam mail was glowing bright green.

You rubbed…