🥖 Breadcrumbs from March 🥖

On what I love, learned, was inspired by, & mundane moments captured (Letter 204)

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Aloha fellow learn-it-all 👋

Greetings from Hawaii!

How beautiful is life?!

Above is a favorite shot taken in March. It's a reminder to be a little goofy today because life’s more fun that way.

I’m feeling especially grateful to wake up and notice life’s internal and external landscapes around me and all the people I get the opportunity to connect to.

I strolled down memory lane through old journal entries, notes, and pictures. Much to share this week with you all, and many rich photos that I love <3

Now, let’s dive into letter 204 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!

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❓Question to think about

What happened in March?

This week’s 🖊️ Writing is on

🥖 Bread Crumbs from my life

🫶 What I loved

1. I published four pieces of work that I’m proud of!

   1. 🖋️ 200 Weeks Later: Reflecting on My Writing Journey: Discover how a weekly newsletter can transform your world like it did mine

   2. 🫂 Friendship means to Forgive: To have you, my friend, feels vital to live.

   3. 🌱 Essence Over Excess: Too many things limit how I can be. I don't need these things. (Letter 202)

   4. 🌱 Growing into my Identity as a Writer: Four years of writing later… (Letter 203)

2. I got a PR in my 2-mile run after joining a running club! … I then decided to no longer run for 19 days out of fear that my foot would be injured.

3. Buying my standing desk!

4. Playing in my first grass volleyball league on St. Patrick’s Day. I got all my spikes over from playing nine games and most of my serves!

5. I heard my roommate read my Birthday Bloom poem aloud. It was the first time I’d heard someone recite my work.

6. I actually fell asleep to take a nap at the pool. This is a huge win since I can never sleep in public places.

7. I meditated on a golden gecko at the pool and lost track of time. He does not put pressure on himself to be ambitious or self-actualize and seems to be living a simple and content life.

8. I created and gifted friends poems, bracelets, and chokers.

9. I started learning about the polyvagal system in week one of taking Jonny Miller’s Nervous System Mastery course. I’m really enjoying the async and sync pairing of this course!

10. I connected with a lot of new people, including Josh, Amanda, and Dandan at a volleyball tournament, eating bell peppers with hummus and cracking jokes with Kip, at a mixer with a pilot and volleyball player, biking in a new group with Emma and Nikos, writing with Sujatha, and Casey from the Zen center.

11. I facilitating a reading party on my friend Roger’s lanai for the first time

12. Taxes are done!

🤓 What I learned:

1. Shame for missing a day of zazen meditation doesn’t make me want to show up the following day. Grace does.

2. How to use a metronome and read my poem 🌺 Birthday Bloom at 84 bpm (beats per minute). My friend then recorded music and mixed it together. This was the first time I’d ever heard my spoken words put into a song. I started a new project by listening to full albums of music and studying their lyrics.

3. Banana bread still tastes okay if you bake it with half as many eggs as needed, though it will taste drier.

4. Thanks to my brother, I made my first ever graphic on ChatGPT and made my own personal GPT. This also prompted me to successfully code for the first time, merging all 203 files from downloading my newsletters as HTML files. It was magic to see the file pop up on my desktop once the code finally worked.

5. I got the Tabs app and learned to play a song with eight chords on my ukulele. Four of them are new, including the E minor, D minor, D minor 7, and F major 7.

6. I’ve been straining my voice to sing higher than I need to. I want to stop doing that.

7. Life is better when I don’t allow myself to watch movies on school nights.

8. If Easter were held year-round, I could quickly become addicted to Reese’s PB Eggs, indulging in sweets like I was.

9. I prefer listening to audiobooks and reading the text portions as a physical book that resonates most with me.

10. I need to request books much further in advance from the library

11. I want to stop looking at screens past 9 pm. Ideally, 8 pm. My sleep is so much better when I don’t rebel against this self-imposed boundary.

12. Habit trackers are helpful for staying accountable. Of my newer daily habits of morning zazen, movement, and evening stretching, the movement was more consistent than my stretching. Reading has some significant needs for improvement. My habit tracker is such a hodgepodge, but it works and feels satisfying!

🧭 Things I started exploring

1. What it would be like to meditate daily for just 5 minutes

2. What are the differences in the philosophies of epicureanism, hedonism, and stoicism? Here’s a summary I created from a few rabbit holes I enjoyed going down:

   

3. What a healthy relationship looks like on Twitter. I’m back on since March 1 after eight months away. So far, having a sense of being plugged in feels refreshing but I also recognize I escape boredom way more.

4. What a DateMe Doc would look like for purposes of learning about my self, rather than sharing too much with strangers.

5. What life would look like it I read obituaries more often. My Dutch grandma Omi was and is such an inspiration for how I want to live. I particularly love this part of her obituary:

“Nolly loved gardening, bike riding, being out in nature, feeding birds and squirrels, observing freighters and watching geese and swans on Lake St. Clair. She loved all animals, especially dogs, cats and birds. She carried dog biscuits in her car to pass out to friendly pooches. Nolly loved to sit at Windmill Pointe Park and watch the sailboat races.”

📸 Mundane Moments of the Month

❓ Questions I’ve been pondering:

1. How can I be more assertive in sharing my truth?

2. How can I best balance grace and discipline in my life?

3. How can I be more generous and kind without spending money?

4. What does ambition look like in my life?

5. How can I create enough space to contemplate life?

For the month of April, how can I shift more towards my intention of Devotion rather than purely zest?

🌟Eight Quotes to Inspire

1. From reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle:

"Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”

2. Mary Oliver from reading Upstream:

“There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the strive, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it to neither power nor time.”

3. Litany Against Fear quote from watching the movie Dune written by Frank Herbert:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

4. From reading How to Be a Friend by Marcus Tullius Cicero:

“With the exception of wisdom, I’m inclined to believe that the immortal gods have given nothing better to humanity than friendship.”

5. From reading curated Words the Matter from Ram Dass on self-judgment

“I think that part of it is observing oneself more impersonally. I often use this image, which I think I have used already, but let me say it again. That when you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.”

6. From Carina piece On Nora Ephron, perfectionism, and blogs:

“And one of the most delicious things about the profoundly parasitical world of blogs is that you don’t have to have anything much to say. Or you just have to have a little tiny thing to say. You just might want to say hello. I’m here. And by the way. On the other hand. Nevertheless. Did you see this? Whatever. A blog is sort of like an exhale. What you hope is that whatever you’re saying is true for about as long as you’re saying it. Even if it’s not much.” — Nora Ephron

7. & 8. From my morning tea bags:

“Without gratitude, there is no prosperity.” — Yogi Tea Wisdom

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu

📸 Photos of People this Month

🙏Shoutouts

• To everyone in the photos above and who’s been along for part of this 4-year journey of mine. I’m grateful to be writing to you today!

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I appreciate you reading this!

If ideas resonated, I’d love you to press the heart button, leave a comment, reply to this email, or reach me at vermetjl@gmail.com. If you forgot who I am, I welcome you to my online home.

Keep on learning 😁

Mahalo 🌺

Jen

PS - in case you missed last week’s letter, I shared about 🌱 Growing into my Identity as a Writer

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