Today is the last day of Daylight Saving Time for 2018, and at 2:00 tomorrow morning, our clocks will reset to 1:00. Unless, that is, you live in one of the jurisdictions that has shunned the outdated practice. The modern wisdom of Daylight Saving Time is debatable. It can have negative health consequences and is of questionable economic benefit. But for most of us in the United States, changing our clocks twice a year is unavoidable, so we might as well try to use it to our advantage.
“You can learn to follow the inner self, the inner physician that tells you where to go. Healing is simply attempting to do more of those things that bring joy and fewer of those things that bring pain.”
—O. Carl Simonton
I just returned from a lovely beach vacation in the Florida panhandle, so this seems like an opportune time to talk about the value of vacations. A recent survey found that just over half of U.S. professionals don’t use all their vacation days, and the number is even higher among Millennials (especially Millennial women). That’s despite the fact that Americans already have fewer paid vacation days than Europeans. But taking a vacation isn’t a luxury. There are very good reasons to take some time off and get away (aside from the fact that not taking your paid vacation days means you’re leaving money on the table and essentially volunteering). Read more
A few days ago, I came across a word I hadn’t heard before: healthism. I was curious, so I looked it up. The word describes a kind of philosophy I’ve noticed in recent years. It’s ubiquitous on social media, and it most often rears its head in the form of fat shaming. Healthism refers to several related ideas:
I’ve been making intermittent efforts to eat locally produced food since I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle some years ago, although I’ve never had the dedication of Kingsolver’s family to eat exclusively local. I try to grow some veggies at home, but my success with gardening varies. Foreseeing that weekly Saturday morning visits to the farmer’s market would likely be a challenge this year, I recently signed up for a CSA share.