Calmly/Joyously/Recklessly.

These days, I work semi-regularly in the company of other freelancers. We meet in coffee shops or at each other's apartments, crowding around tables or crouching on couches. This week, we met at Emily's. She made us cake and a pot of very strong coffee and we stayed all day. (She took the photos below, which can be found on her Instagram. You can also read more about her home, which I covered for a recent issue of Rue Magazine, here.)

Setting times to meet forces us to focus - and to leave the house. And while freelancing has many upsides (for example, you can order pizza for lunch, then fall into a food coma on the floor and no one bats an eye), it's also a precarious business. It can be a lonely one. For that reason, it's nice to have a community. For me, it's a godsend to have this one. 

For those familiar with the challenges of a creative career, Henry Miller's work commandments are an excellent read. My favorite is the third: Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. 

Wishing you a happy weekend - rest, wander, work (or not). Next week: grizzly bears, windswept trees, and a brand-new POV. Until then!

Inventory.

A big thank you to Megan for introducing me to Chelsea Hodson's Inventory, a blog chronicling the writer's attempt to catalog every one of her possessions. She posts photos of each item alongside a short reflection or a quote. As shown below, for example, there's a tube of illuminator, a copy of Breakfast at Tiffany's, a hairbrush, riding pants. 

Of the pants, Chelsea writes: "This path will lead us home, I say. What path? You say. This path, I say, taking your hand & pointing it to the left.There is no path but I'd like for you to believe in something right now. If I can keep you believing then I can keep neglecting my faith, I can keep dragging it on a leash, we never have to go home."

As a writer, I love this idea as a form of daily practice. "When I moved back to Brooklyn from Los Angeles earlier this year, I thought, why not make a list of every single thing I'm taking with me?" Chelsea tells The Missouri Review. "Writing about each item seemed like a good opportunity for an exercise: I put something online every day no matter what. Even if I can't write well that day, it's just about completing the list I started."

Visit Chelsea Hobson's website, here, and her Tumblr, here.

Additional inventories:
-What Did You Buy Today? 
-A self-portrait a day.
-Finishing salts and heirloom cowpeas: pantry staples of top foodies.

Stuff Being Thrown At My Head.

Editor Kaija Straumanis is the woman behind the aptly-titled portrait series Stuff Being Thrown At My Head (so far, "stuff" has included a boot, a dodgeball, Easter eggs, and a pint of strawberries). Kaija says that the photographs, in part, depict the experience of having a eureka moment. But as someone who falls regularly, and walks into poles on the sidewalk, and just today shattered a lamp at a restaurant, it's the total, unabashed awkwardness of these shots that really speaks to me. (To read more about how Kaija orchestrates her images, click here.)

See more at Kaija Straumanis's Flickr, Etsy, and Society 6 page.

Happy Wednesday!

That's a Wrap.

Norman's Printery makes wrapping papers out of mountain ranges, paint swatches, vintage maps, and the moon and stars. As someone who usually forgoes wrapping altogether (I recently gave a friend a fancy cheese bound in masking tape), I'm taking note.

Shop more at Norman's Printery, here.

More for your morning: 
-Thoughts on gift-giving. 
-Bees pay their respects.
-Sixty seconds in a toddler's day.

Mission to Marzipan.

Around this time last year, I made a decision to start over. 2013, young as it was, had been rough, and my friends and I chose a random night in February as our new New Years Eve. We crowded around a table in our favorite neighborhood bar, counted down to midnight, clinked our glasses. We made resolutions. We started again.

Molly Yeh is one of my favorite bloggers and the creator of the cake below, which she calls resolution cake.  I'm reposting it here today (with her permission) because I love it for all its chocolate-marzipan goodness, and because I think the beginning of March is as good a time as any to assess the year, revise goals, amend resolutions. Like spring cleaning for the soul.

Molly's 2014 resolutions include eating macaroni and cheese at midnight, making frequent visits to the library, and spending more time with cake (brilliant). Mine, right now, is not to fall asleep in the snow - literally, of course, and figuratively. Anais Nin, whose diaries I'm making my way through now, explains:

You live...sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterly, for instance), or you take a trip…and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure…Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken. They are like the people who go to sleep in the snow and never awaken.

As the year continues, I'd like to take care that I don't fall asleep in the snow. I'd like to continue to tend to my planet. I hope to read more. And I hope that all of this, and the rest of the year, includes many, many chocolate cakes.

Photos by Molly Yeh. Find the recipe for resolution cake, here. Thank you so much, Molly!