Hi everybody … 😊

Well, I found the Simple Happy Zen Channel on YouTube by a Dutch lady named Vera. Really pleasant to listen to and good information on minimalism and healthy life habits. She is so calm and has a restful voice. She even has some excellent meditation videos. Really beautiful images and videography. 😊 I can strongly recommend her. She espouses many of the things I believe and have written about but I’m pretty sure it sounds better coming from her.

https://youtu.be/oCEtaJNUZoM is one of her videos.

https://youtu.be/WWG4AnEOtYs is another I particularly liked.

https://youtu.be/pU3b7e7tNGY - Around minute 9 explains exactly why I stopped watching the news

She had a suggestion in one of her videos on a yoga pose to try. The Viparita Karani or Legs-Up-The-Wall Pose. Given my 6 weeks of pain with my lower back, I thought I would try it. I noticed almost a 30 – 40% reduction in the amount of pain I was experiencing … immediately. I do this daily now.

https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/legs-up-the-wall-pose

Anything that reduces my pain gets a thumbs up from me 😊.

I’m on day 10 of driving to a nearby park and hobbling around … well I’ve progressed past hobbling but still going slow. But a great way to start the day. This is a place called Cornerstone Park in Henderson, Nevada. Large lake, geese and other waterfowl … a very pleasant place to walk.

I have to admit that the constant pain is starting to get to me a little. It has been 6 weeks (although it seems longer). Ah well … I am certainly better than 10 days ago. 10 days ago I could only hobble slowly about 200 meters. Yesterday, even though in a little pain, was able to accomplish almost 4 kilometers.

So, an apology to my friends and family that I haven’t reached out to very much recently. The last 6 weeks have been really difficult for me to do anything productive.

A very wise saying that I gleaned from The Simple Happy Zen channel (from Arthur Ashe the tennis player originally):

Start where you are

Use what you have

Do what you can

And a thought from Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic podcast.

Try to do at least one thing every day.

This is what I’m working on now. Then I’ll improve a tiny bit every day. Walk farther, or get a little bit of work done, whatever 😊 … But at least one thing every day …

A reminder about a great YouTube video channel:

Crash Course – Really good series of short videos on a wide range of subjects from history to science.

A web site I heard about Simple Happy Zen – Skill Share. An online creative skill learning forum. If you are interested in learning something creative these days, it might be worth checking out. I’m subscribed to it for a year for $50. They have one excellent course on drawing which I am doing right now. Really well done. I have taken other drawing classes but the one I found on this site is excellent.

https://www.skillshare.com

I am using an app called ProCreate on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. Amazing application. $9.99. I use paper and pencil as well, but I have rapidly discovered that the capabilities of using ProCreate have aided me a lot in practicing drawing. If you are interested, just search Procreate + Beginner on YouTube and watch a few of the videos on what it can do.