Tag: My Own Personal Sabbath

My Own Personal Sabbath #2 of 2022

Almost every Sunday since mid-May 2020 with a few exceptions, I have been taking my own personal Sabbath, where I tune out of the news and social media and turn off my ringer and all notifications on my phone. Throughout the day and/or sometimes the next day, I share what I am reading, listening to, or watching during my Sabbath.

Tomorrow will be a much-needed news and social media break for both my wife Kim and me, as on Tuesday, we said goodbye to Seamus, our cat of the last 15 years. Without going into all the details, suffice to say that it was his time and it was good that we both were there with him for his last breath.

And with her being off this weekend, my wife is joining me tomorrow for my Sabbath. Tonight we’re watching No Time to Die, the last James Bond with Daniel Craig. In the morning, we plan on having a breakfast with Belgian waffles with blueberry compote and sausage (vegan) and we’ll listen to a few podcasts together. In the afternoon, we’ll meditate, journal, read, and listen to music.

I found a playlist from the NPR podcast Life Kit called “A Mental Health Reset” that we might dip into:

As for reading, my wife said she is continuing a reread of one of our favorite books, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, because that’s understandably all she can focus on and that she might look through some cookbooks for meal and recipe ideas.

Me? I’m still reading The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness by Epictetus, a new interpretation by Sharon Lebell, which I selected as my first book of the year. I also have been reading Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross.

Later in the day, while my wife sleeps as she goes to work for a midnight shift Sunday night/Monday morning, I plan on watching The French Dispatch. We started watching it, and while I was enjoying it, she wasn’t. I’ll let you know what I thought of the whole thing next week.

So, that’s what (my wife and) I have planned for tomorrow for My Own Personal Sabbath. What do you have planned for tomorrow? Reading, watching TV, listening to music, spending time with family? Let me know in the comments.

My Own Personal Sabbath #1 of 2022

Almost every Sunday since mid-May 2020 with a few exceptions, I have been taking my own personal Sabbath, where I tune out of the news and social media and turn off my ringer and all notifications on my phone. Throughout the day and/or sometimes the next day, I share what I am reading, listening to, or watching during my Sabbath.

This past week, I was reminded by a video on Headspace by Casper ter Kuile, author of The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices, about taking a tech sabbath that I haven’t done My Own Personal Sabbath in a while. Actually, according to the blog, the last time I did it, according to the blog posts, was October 3 of last year. I meditated with Eve from the meditation app Headspace, I listened to chill music in The Chill Out Tent, and I read Monday the Rabbi Took Off by Harry Kemelman as I continued the Rabbi Small mystery series.

Since then, I’ve given up on the Rabbi Small series, I listened to a little of The Chill Out Tent to start the year, and am still using Headspace (obviously, see above) along with The Shine app, both of which I recommend. Tomorrow, I think I’ll read a little of The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness by Epictetus, a new interpretation by Sharon Lebell, which I selected as my first book of the year. I also have been reading Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross, which I might continue if I can quiet and harness the voice in my head.

New this year, helping me are my wife and an app called Stay Focused, which I had her set a password so I can’t unlock Chrome or Samsung Internet to read news during the day, or scroll Instagram. To be honest, with Instagram, it’s the Stories that distract me and sometimes lead to a doomscroll. It’s not that I disagree with those I follow; it’s just that I don’t want to hear about the world burning down all around us every day. Instead, what can I do maybe on this one day of (mostly) digital rest is to build up myself to face my daily struggles, let alone the world burning down all around us every day.

I say “mostly” because I still listen to music and podcasts (no news podcasts EVER) on Spotify on news, only fictional worlds. I also have decided I will check on blogs that I read regularly, but on my laptop, where I am writing this post. I just don’t use the laptop for news or Instagram or anything else, other than the blog and Zoom with friends and my therapist.

So, that’s what I have planned for tomorrow for My Own Personal Sabbath. What do you have planned for tomorrow? Reading, watching TV, listening to music, spending time with family? Let me know in the comments, and, as always, please do not include links or if you do, just know that I will remove them.

Addendum: I was just reminded by my wife that tomorrow morning we are supposed to be getting freezing rain so a good day to be inside relaxing…and if the power does go off, so be it. I’ll still be able to read on my Kindle and listen to downloaded music on my phone.

My Own Personal Sabbath #40

Almost every Sunday since mid-May 2020 with a few exceptions, I have been taking my own personal Sabbath, where I tune out of the news and social media and turn off my ringer and all notifications on my phone. Throughout the day, sometimes the day before, and/or sometimes the next day, I share what I am reading, listening to or watching during my Sabbath.

This is one of those times, I’m posting before my Sabbath.

Reading

The only book that I know for sure that I’ll be continuing to read tomorrow is What is Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life by Mark Doty. As it is split into four parts, I am reading it over the four Sundays in July. [Correction: It’s split into five parts, but the fourth part is short so I’ll read that and the fifth part on the final Sunday in July.] I started it last Sunday. Otherwise, I have a plethora of choices of what else to read, including, but not limited to, the following and obviously am enjoying it or I wouldn’t be continuing with it.

  • Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo by Jo Koy. I’ve had it on hold for a few months at the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP) in ebook, and it finally came in this afternoon.
  • Treasure Hunt, the 16th in the Inspector Montalbano series, by Andrea Camilleri. I’ve been making my way slowly through the series this year and while this one is available at FLP, I bought it on Kindle, which had a deal on it. That way I can get to it at my own speed.
  • The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. I don’t read much science fiction, but I want to. So I asked for a friend’s recommendation and he recommended that I read any of the collections of each year’sbest science fiction edited by Dozois for 35 years from 1984 to 2018 when Dozois died. I found this collection to borrow at FLP.
  • Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I found it on the new book shelf at our library and grabbed it because I’ve heard the buzz around it is good and I enjoyed The Martian.
  • It’s All a Game: The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Cataan by Tristan Donovan. I picked up this while shelf-reading at the library. A friend and I play board games online, and I tj

For tomorrow, I’ll probably choose Mixed Plate, since I know there are six people waiting to read it after me and I might dip into the science fiction collection of short stories.

Listening to

Since my wife Kim works 12-hour shifts from early Saturday night into Sunday morning and then early Sunday night into Sunday morning, 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. each night, we often watch a sitcom or two before she goes to work. Lately, though, we have been listening to podcasts or audiobooks, well, in particular one podcast Aack Cast by Jamie Loftus about “Cathy, the iconic and much-maligned comic strip by Cathy Guisewite,” in which Jamie Loftus “weaves between reporting and fiction, putting a cruelly treated cartoon everywoman in context.” We also have been listening in particular one audiobook, Broken (In the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson. Since we are caught up with Aack Cast, we probably will continue listening to Broken.

Watching

Last Sunday, I watched all three of the original Bourne movies with Matt Damon back-to-back-to-back ending at about 2:30 a.m. Monday morning since I didn’t have to go to work the next day. This Sunday, I’m not sure what I’ll be watching. I’ve been making my way through the last couple of seasons of Criminal Minds, so I might do that (I’m in Season 14 now, with only Season 15 to go).

So, what are you reading, watching, listening to, or doing this weekend? Hope whatever it is, it’s all good.

Pandemic Poetry & Quarantine Playlists

This weekend, I’m continuing to read poetry as I mentioned last Sunday.

This past week, I read Twisted Shapes of Light by William Jolliff, one of my professors in college and who ignited my own interest in writing poetry. I plan on sharing my own experiences with contemporary poetry, including a few poems from a reading I did about 20 years ago at a small venue in suburban Philadelphia where we lived at the time.

This past week, I also read Whale Days and Other Poems by Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States from 2000 to 2003. Both books were very good, but I enjoyed Dr. Jolliff’s book more, probably because of the fond memories it brought back of having him teach me poetry. It didn’t hurt that I found a concert of his online and a short lecture from him that was part of a series on suffering and faith at the university, where he now teaches.

This weekend, I plan on reading Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic, edited by Alice Quinn. I’ll admit that I did have reservations about reading the collection edited and compiled by Alice Quinn, onetime New Yorker poetry editor and recent former director of the Poetry Society of America. Mainly, my reservations were internal in that this week has been a rough week personally with a couple of family and friend issues, and I didn’t think I wanted to read something probably depressing.

But yesterday, I decided to read a few poems from the collection and I changed my mind. The poems that I read were, and are, good. So I’ll continue to read the collection.

I’m pairing my reading with two playlists I found via an article from The New York Times.

I won’t be watching any pandemic-related TV shows or movies, although for those of you interested I saw a trailer for a new movie Songbird that might fit the bill. Or if you want to “escape” into “a world of outlandish emergencies” that “are oddly comforting in a terrifying time,” you might want to turn to these TV shows, according to Alexis Soloski in The New York Times.

For me, though, that will be a hard pass on all of that. I’ll be content just to read pandemic poetry and listen to quarantine playlists, thank you very much…

…and (adding this Saturday night) drinking wine and getting takeout. It’s sort of like last year but I went to the store to get the wine tonight instead of ordering wine by mail from the Finger Lakes of New York and, bonus, no existential dread.

Almost every Sunday since mid-May 2020 with a few exceptions, I have been taking my own personal Sabbath, where I tune out of the news and social media and turn off my ringer and all notifications on my phone. Throughout the day, sometimes the day before, and/or sometimes the next day, I share what I am reading, listening to or watching during my Sabbath. This is my 38th Sabbath and also is part of The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb of the blog Readerbuzz.