profile

Move with Grace

Summer recalibration

Published over 1 year ago • 1 min read

How do you recalibrate for summer?

Is it a different pace?

Does it have a different feel?

Is it a space to re-charge or the busiest time of all?

Do you have to recalibrate to come out of summer as well?

It seems to me that the seasons all have their lessons for us. Right now, I’m in a recalibration of sorts myself, and the lesson of a summer recalibration is a helpful reminder.

I taught for many years, though not always on a traditional school calendar. The breaks between semesters could be just as busy as the semester, but each still had a different feel. There was space to choose a book and dive in. There was space to get lost in a project. There was place to rediscover activities and people I hadn’t spent as much time with during the school year.

It was a space of greater individual agency.

In our current day, when work from home can blend across boundaries and it may not feel like there is space to relax as fully as in the past - the lesson of a summer recalibration can include the reminder to choose space, to choose rediscovery.

This weekend, my choices included:

  • getting lost in a soon-to-be-released memoir, The Family Outing by Jessi Hempel. So good, I hardly got anything else done! Oh, but it did inspire the next Thinking Space - August 2nd. Click here to join us!
  • Chinese brush painting in the park.
  • seeing my podcast series get accepted in the podcast directories! I’d uploaded the trailer last week, and then had a little waiting game. (I’m not very patient, so it was nice to have the book to distract me!) Check it out and tell me what you think; subscribe to hear the episodes when they release, and perhaps create your own play portrait.

Wishing you a week of joyful discovery,

Mary

Move with Grace

Mary Hendra brings curiosity, creativity, and compassion to individuals and teams through Move with Grace. Redefining “play” for the modern, busy adult, her workshops and cohort programs foster self-reflection and build clarity so that you can take action.

Read more from Move with Grace

December 2023 Inspiration from Kintsugi With a little down time during the holidays, my husband and I went to a class on Kintsugi. It has gotten a lot of attention recently - perhaps accelerated by the need to embrace imperfection when world events caused a shutdown. The mending of pottery with gold has such a beautiful attraction. Our Kintsugi plates after class at the Japanese American Friendship Garden Kintsugi is often shared with an attention on the beauty brought by the gold, but we...

3 months ago • 1 min read

October 22, 2023 So we did this… The new bed (and friend) under my desk. There are many, many reasons why we did not need a dog right now, but here we are. Buddy is a rescue dog. He’s spent the last 4+ months at a shelter with other dogs, goats, even a few pigs. A single dirt road leading up to it with the occasional slow-moving car and a handful of people he saw on a very strict schedule. Before that, not a lot is known about his life besides shelters, streets, and a puppy injury. Now he’s...

5 months ago • 2 min read

October 7, 2023 Smile… A few weeks ago, my husband and I were walking back from the nearby park, chatting, when we encountered a neighbor. We didn’t have the dog we sometimes care for, so we didn’t have to watch for all of the things that can be potential trouble for a dog. It was just us and the neighbor. She was walking slowly towards us. She smiled as she approached, and we both naturally, genuinely responded with smiles. Of course we would, right? Smiles beget more smiles. The neighbor...

6 months ago • 2 min read
Share this post