Shake it, friends! What rhythms find you today? How will you sway those hips and sashay those steps out on the street? I wish for us all to let loose a little more, offering our inner and outer music to one another more routinely, normalizing dancing through our activities of daily living. Standing desks are the best for this–what a great invention!
Dancey You. Full of joy. Cardio in work clothes. Let’s go.
When words fail us, may music step up and connect us through rhythmic movement — We can dance rather than talk our way to our togetherness.
2. What’s the ideal rhythm for your gait? Once you find it, you can curate your street walking playlist. Every day is more fun after that!
3. May life bring you dance partners of all kinds, who will teach you new steps and broaden your world in the most musical ways!
4. What are your playlists? Who do you invite to share each? May you have dance partners stashed all over your life!
5. May songs from your formative years visit you when you least expect them, stirring you out of your torpor and moving your bottom deliciously!
6. Ever seen that lady who walks on the treadmill like it’s a fashion runway and her personal theme song plays in her ears? I wanna be her.
7. What is the next activity that you can convert happily into a dance? Who can you pull onto your makeshift dance floor?
8. Have you ever watched those dance improv contests? How can we incorporate dancing into our creative lives? Let’s mooove!
9. OH I just wish for the freest part of your spirit to fly ahead of your body and lead the latter in the funnest choreography!
10. When you feel that familiar fatigue of post-lunch workday lag, may a favorite song pop into your head and overtake your body!
11. May we all have multiple chances to dance freely, joyfully, and shamelessly to our favorite music every day!
12. This one is for Dancey Shane! Thank you for your kitchen boogy videos–they always make our days and inspire our own jams!
I like these lighthearted Love Note days. Sometimes we just need to shake it out and have fun. Happy weekend, friends– More tomorrow!
Okay friends, this is a fun post with some lighthearted existential philosophy. It also talks about sex, so consider yourself warned.
I really do wish everybody peace, love, and health (usually joy, also). People who receive emails, texts, and snail mail from me will all tell you. I also love a cheeky, irreverent expression sometimes, and this one showed up before the New Year:
From The Fuckit List page on Facebook
I shared it immediately with all my friends who would appreciate it, including a brilliant and pragmatic cardiologist. I added ‘etOH [ethanol] and weed in moderation, and the rest–yeah!’
The ensuing email thread between us:
Friend: 😂😆 no orgasms in moderation?!?!
Me: Some things you just cannot get too much of. No risk. 😉😆
Friend: i’ve never heard a physician say “no risk” – only “low” “moderate” “high” risk. so i’m happy to go with no risk!!!!
Me: Teeheehee / It just occurred to me—YOU are the cardiologist!! IS there a risk?? 😱 / I cannot lead people astray here… / I suppose MI [myocardial infarction–heart attack] during sex does occur, right? / So shit, there is a risk! 😣
Friend: i suppose as a cardiologist, it’s always a risk-benefit ratio. risk is very very low. benefit is likely there every time. plus there’s the added cardiac benefit of ischemic pre-conditioning [training the heart with exercise] in those with significant CAD [coronary artery disesae] wherein you can develop angiogenesis [growth of new blood vessels] and collateral formation [bypass blood flow around blocked arteries] in the context of regular sexual/exercise activity. so it’s a big yes to orgasms!!!!
Me: Omg YYYAAAAAAAYYYYY!!! 💃🏻🎉🥳❤️ / And ENDORPHINS, yes? 😄
Friend: ah, yes, sympathetics. you know there is a hypothesis (totally unproven) that you are born with a certain # of heartbeats and once you use them, your life is over. if that is the case, endorphins, sympathetics and (eek) orgasms are probably no good for us. but again, that hypothesis is totally unproven and the more “exercise” you do, the slower the resting heart rate and the longer (observationally) the life. so probably, all in all, better to stick with the orgasms than to avoid them!!!
Me: Ooooo, fascinating!! I bet there is some vague, partial and flexible truth to that theory? Like yes, any given heart has a finite number of future beats left at any given time.
AND, there are likely many things we can do throughout our lives that give it more or fewer remaining beats—like a bank account that we deposit to and withdraw from… 😜 OH I just LOVE this idea!!
Deposits:
Diet: fiber, healthy fats, lean protein, moderate naturally occurring sugars (Food Rules by Michael Pollan: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants)
Relationships (I would bet anything this is proportionally the DENSEST, highest value heartbeat reserve elevator): love, meaning, connection…
Of course withdrawls are the opposites of these… I wonder whether bad sleep or toxic relationships are the greatest heartbeat extinguishers? My money’s on relationships—maybe not even toxic ones—rather the lack of them altogether. It makes total and complete sense to me that loneliness is a better predictor of mortality than smoking (I think it’s actually phrased that it’s a bigger mortality risk than smoking but I bet it’s a better predictor, too—if you look at the data a certain way?)…
OMG this totally aligns with my framework of the 5 reciprocal domains of health!! 😄 ❤️ ❤️
Ok so my mom told me that her dad told her that we are each born with a finite amount of prosperity in life. So the idea is to be frugal with spending, consumption, partying etc in your youth, so you have enough to spread out over a longer lifetime. I do like that idea. It feels akin to humility and generosity to me… So I wonder if there can be a pooling effect among one’s tribe—that we all spend/consume/share over a lifetime and extend/improve all of our lives??
OH thank you for telling me about this, I will think more (and possibly write) on it!! 😄 xo …And maybe my gong-gong’s theory is also flexible like a bank account, too.
I think we get to invent it, since it’s all made up to help us feel better about how we choose to live life anyway! 😄
THANK YOU for stimulating such fun thinking tonight! 😄
Ok more soon, big hugs!!! xo
//
All of these thoughts and ideas poured out between us from 4:44 to 7:22pm on 12/28/2022. I’m not sure more writing is required at this point? I thought about doing the math–for each episode of exercise, how many more beats, and does it even out with a resulting lower resting heart rate over a lifetime…? Nah. It was a fun and thought-provoking conversation between two friends which, for me at least, tightened connection and elevated joy. I am definitely heart-healthier for it.
Hope 2023 is off to a peaceful, loving, and healthy start for you all, my friends, if not a moderately buzzed and high, frequently orgasmic, and suddenly wealthy one. 😉
I will mix 2 cups of soft, full fat ice cream with 1.5 cups of all purpose flour and 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder. I will spread it in a greased loaf pan and bake it at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Sourdough, it is not. And I cannot wait! I have Daughter to thank for this adventure, among others.
She found B Dylan Holis online last year, and we are both big fans. He has a music degree and lives, I think, in Wyoming. He posts brief, hilarious, informative, and educational baking videos on TikTok, and cross posts on YouTube. Recipes come from vintage periodical cookbooks and community compilations, many from the early 20th Century. Sometimes he records extended versions of his most popular videos, with deeper explanations of recipe origins and historical food culture. I love BDH because he is at once respectful and irreverent, knowledgeable and curious. And he’s fun. All of his videos are experiments. Some recipes turn out as gross as we anticipate, and some surprise us. Check him out, I bet you’ll like his work.
Daughter also loves Overly Sarcastic Productions, or OSP. ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ are friends and the primary narrators and animators. “We make videos about myths, literature, and history — because learning can, in fact, actually be enjoyable, despite what prior experiences might have shown you.” Daughter plays the videos in the car, the kitchen, the living room. Once again, respectful irreverence rules, as well as sharp wit and lightning fast history and literature lessons. Their Pope Fights series especially fascinated Daughter, and provided rich context when we watched TheBorgias on Netflix this past summer.
We also admire Hank Green, who posts videos on all things biology, science, and history. He aims his YouTube content at both teachers and students, but it’s his TikToks that we love–little diatribes about random things, and almost always funny and informative. It’s just wonderful that creative, smart, and effectively communicative people now, in the 21st Century, have easy access to expansive platforms to educate and entertain. We just have to be discerning about our consumption.
Finally, check out Cinema Therapy! Alan and Jonathan, a filmmaker and licensed therapist, respectively, are also old college friends who love watching and talking about movies. Their videos parse out stereotypes, tropes, relationship dynamics, communication skills, and overall filmmaking wonderness, all with laughter and pragmatism for application in real life. They elevate our awareness of things we take for granted in entertainment, making us more thoughtful and conscious consumers of our movies.
It’s harder every year to put down our devices. Media abounds, and it’s too easy to let FoMO drive our lives, getting stuck scrolling through meaningless, valueless drivel. I think Daughter has found some worthwhile programs, though. We do our best to moderate. She has expanded my world, and I am grateful.
Healing Through Connection 