To combat procrastination — on the big things and the little things — here's what Locklin recommends:
First, identify small goals.
If you need more structure, Locklin recommends trying the Ivy Lee method. At the end of each workday, make a list of six things to work on the following day.
Next, if you're trying to figure out the best way to prioritise tasks, use natural patterns to your advantage: If you're a morning person, do important tasks in the morning. If you have midday slumps, take that time to organize and create your list for the next day. Hope this helps!
From reading about Coonoor having a replica of the jar containing the spinal cord of a rabbit infected with rabies to curing rabies in the early 19th century with viper’s venom and do liver.. I have come a long way this month in terms of reading-
I am reading Ace Of Spades for #PrideMonth #ReadwithPride- and it is giving me vibes of - I can’t read it in a go but also that I am enjoying the character’s and their vibes, dark and funny
How to Date Men When You Hate Men was my Sunday Recommendation and click on the title to see why, also this underscored will loop you into further recommendations from me
She Must Be Mad by Charly Cox- I highly recommend this book, the title says it all
They Were Her Property: White Women As Slave Owners in the American South- I am about to finish the MOST NEEDED READ of this century to understand another , previous century’s follies by women. A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy. Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market.
La-Bas (The Damned / Down There)- At the novel's center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais -- child murderer, sadist, necrophile, and practitioner of all the black arts. The book's authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed. This is heavy. Disturbing. But, WOWZAAA
Writing for writers means:
Writing better
Exposing that writing to more people
Getting more people to pay for the writing
A link which kind of stayed- https://nesslabs.com/what-gets-measured-gets-managed
It seems we have always lived in dark times; from the beginning of human history, war and turmoil —over possessions, land, religion, grievances great and trivial—have accompanied our so-called progress as a species. Today we are no more enlightened; this century has seen destruction on a greater scale than at any other time in history.
The poets in Against Forgetting are all personal witnesses, people who coped with extreme conditions such as war, imprisonment, torture. Yet one needn't be personally subjected to such conditions to feel strongly about suffering and to write about it. As poets, we need to write from our experience, but that experience may be mental, emotional, and imaginative as well as physical. Our link to the suffering of others is that we care about it, and what we care about we tend to put into our writing.
In his poem "Dedication," Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz wrote,
"What is poetry which does not save / Nations or people? / A connivance with official lies, / A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment... "
Milosz discussed his thoughts on those words and suggested that
"what those lines mean is that poetry below a certain awareness is not good poetry and cannot save people, that we move, that mankind moves in time together and then there is a certain awareness of a particular moment below which we shouldn't go, because then that poetry is no good .. . So it's a question of awareness that shapes our poetry, even if poetry doesn't deal with direct political topics or historical topics."
Besides this, there are the words of Adrienne Rich in her poem "North American Time": "Poetry never stood a chance / of standing outside history.”
THE NEW APARTMENT: MINNEAPOLIS
The floorboards creak.
The moon is on the wrong side of the building,
and burns remain on the floor. The house wants to fall down the universe when earth turns. It still holds the coughs of old men and their canes tapping on the floor.
I think of Indian people here before me and
how last spring white merchants hung an elder on a meathook and beat him and he was one of The People.
I remember this war and all the warsand relocation like putting the moon in prison with no food and
that moon already a crescent, but be warned, the moon grows full again and
the roofs of this town are all red and we are looking through the walls of houses at people suspended in air.
Some are baking, with flour on their hands, or sleeping on floor three, or getting drunk.
I see the businessmen who hit their wives and the men who are tender fathers. There are women crying or making jokes.
Children are laughing under beds. Girls in navy blue robes talk on the phone all night and some Pawnee is singing 49s, drumming the table.
Inside the walls world changes are planned, bosses overthrown.
If we had no coffee, cigarettes, or liquor, says the woman in room twelve, they'd have a revolution on their hands.
Beyond walls are lakes and plains, canyons and the universe; the stars are the key turning in the lock of night.
Turn the deadbolt and I am home.
I have walked dark earth, opened a door to nights where there are no apartments, just drumming and singing;
The Duck Song, The Snake Song, The Drunk Song.
No one here remembers the city or has ever lost the will to go on.
Hello aunt, hello brothers, hello trees
and deer walking quietly on the soft red earth.
Cezanne painting till his eyes bled, Wordsworth wandering the Lake Country hills in an impassioned daze. Blake describes it very well, and so did a colleague of Tu Fu who said to him, "It is like being alive twice."
Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implications outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have that explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.
— Robert Hass, Twentieth Century Pleasures
Poets need to keep all five senses—and possibly a few more—on continual alert, ready to translate the world through their bodies, to reinvent it in language. Images are a kind of energy, moving from outside to inside and back, over and over, a continual exchange. You take a walk outside after the first snowfall of the season, fill your eyes with the dazzling surfaces of the fields and your lungs with the sharp pure air. Your boots sink in, crunching down to the frozen earth, and when you return to the cabin the warmth feels like a pair of gloved hands placed on your cold ears. You sit down and write about the snow. Miles away and years later, someone—a reader—closes her eyes and experiences it.
10 SHOWS I RECOMMEND FROM THE 2nd LOCKDOWN DAYS OF BINGEWATCHING
I must have watched a lot of movies and shows as I do in every lockdown (there have been so many, that once they declared a lockdown extended, it feels like an infinite loop)
I got two new subscriptions of two different OTT’s and I was booked for most days at end of this harrowing May month. You can comment below or mail me to ask me more about these shows/movies and I'll happily engage you enough to make you watch it. Trigger: Rape, Assault, Murder. I am a basic crime bitch :)
WHY WOMEN KILL (BEST)
The Twilight Zone (A series of sci fi stories with a mind out their own!)
Liar (The end disappointed not because of the twist but I lost so much interest as it went on.. But what a good job with the plot)
The Comey Rule (Smart af)
Sons Of Sam (All that we know about SOS gets questioned here)
Ajeeb Dastaans (Am sorry but the only hindi movie and the only movie I really liked!)
Married to medicine (I have talked about this on my IG)
Big Little Liars (Twists and turns, lives upto the thrilling book)
Body Cam (Real af)
Mare Of Easttown (slow but second best)
Not accounting for the numerous paywalls I had to cross over to compile this list but there is a kind of satisfaction after going through the various articles and news on Hoarding, which is the word of the week.
Rushing to stock up on toilet paper before it vanished from the supermarket aisle, stashing cash under the mattress, purchasing a puppy, or perhaps planting a vegetable patch -- the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered some interesting and unusual changes in our behavior. Evolved instincts dominate in stressful situations, as a response to panic and anxiety. During times of stress and deprivation, not only people but also many animals show a propensity to hoard.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hoarding-is-an-upper-class-pastime-11588007355
https://theconversation.com/how-countries-get-away-with-hoarding-drugs-in-a-pandemic-141854
https://www.arre.co.in/pov/books-book-hoarder-hoarding-reading-books/
Are book hoarders just book lovers or procrastinators? This article made me rethink whether the publishing industry feeds off on the habit of procrastination which makes the procrastinator feel good or be a goat to the biggest phishing ever.
https://www.shakespeareanrag.com/its-not-hoarding-if-its-books-but-what-if-it-is/
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/obsessive-collection-collectors-hoarders/story?id=14319313
Last week I decided to give away my remaining books before moving back home, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. If you ever decide to donate or give away books, let me know, I'll feature you here. All pleasure mine!
I also decided to curate a list of places you can send your books to:
Schools, any. Find near by schools, DONATE. That's the best way to donate books and you know that the books will most definitely be used and read
Jain derasars, Sikh Gurudwaras, some temples/mosques (Find out near your own place of residence) ALWAYS ACCEPT donations of any kind and books always are more than welcome
Continued in next newsletter…
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Until next time, XoXo
Kelp snakes in like a shed black suit
WOW- SPEECHLESS girl!
Never thought I would tumble upon something this good through Tinder.