How to Hold Your Own Joy Treasure Hunt

On February 17, I posted about the first two aesthetics of joy (energy, i.e. color and light, and abundance) from Ingrid Fetell Lee’s book, Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things To Create Extraordinary Happiness. When I broke my wrist, I found it difficult to identify joy. At times I could barely keep up, doing …

How to Mentally Prepare for Summit Day

When getting ready for some sort of physical adventure, most people increase their targeted exercise. But don’t forget about mental preparation! Below we review a typical multi-day trip on Mt. Rainier (including photos from our climb in July, 2017) and discuss how to mentally prepare for summit day. Mentally Prepare with Suitable Physical Conditioning Most multi-day expeditions …

Surviving a Broken Wrist in Arches’ Fiery Furnace

Blog 32 has been by far the most difficult post for me to complete. Not for lack of ideas — I came back from vacation bursting with them — but because I’ve had to dictate or hunt-and-peck it. On February 22, 2022, I broke my right wrist in Arches National Park’s famous maze hike, the …

A Hunt for Joy Inspired by Lee’s Book Joyful

This week I began listening to Ingrid Fetell Lee’s Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness. In it, she introduces ten aesthetics of joy. Yesterday I listened to her describe the first aesthetic, energy, which we get from vibrant color and light. Intrigued, I recalled my own post about joy back …

Cognitive Distortions and How to Overcome Them

This week I pondered a recent Precision Nutrition lesson about common cognitive distortions. These are inaccurate, negatively biased, habitual ways of thinking. On a birding trip to Monroe this morning, I reflected on three I used today. Herein I describe my efforts to overcome four cognitive distortions against the backdrop of the rare, beautiful Whooper …