Fresh produce

If all fruits and veggies tasted as good as the ones from the Alemany farmer's market, it wouldn't actually take much work to convince kids to eat them.  For whatever reason, very few supermarkets, even the "we're organic and buy local" kind, have produce of this quality level.

I was spoiled by the weekly CSA farm boxes that my ex-girlfriend used to get.  These weekly bundles of fruits and vegetables helped me learn that I *do* like apples, pears, beets, and peaches if they're fresh enough.  I also had fresh figs for the first time.  Fresh figs are not even in the same universe as fig newtons.  Not even close.

So now it's fall, and I'm excited, because fall means figs, persimmons, and pomegranates!

[personal dev] Simple mindfulness trick

Since leaving full-time employment, I've found myself with much less structured time.  This has been a bit of a challenge.  I find I take twice as long to get anything done now that I have more time to get it done in.  Normally there's enough "tension" in my calendar from all my various projects, social engagements, work tasks, chores, and other things that my time allocation becomes easy because there's always so much to do.  However, I now find myself with actual chunks of free time that I seem to be making not-so-good use of.  Now one thing I could do is start a bunch of projects I've been meaning to do for a while so as to artificially create the task management problem I used to have.  I could also schedule specific time to work on specific projects.  However, the first method seems sloppy while the second seems needlessly rigid.

I came up with another technique that seems to work better.  I've set an alarm on my phone that goes off every half hour.  Whenever that alarm goes off, I step back from whatever I'm doing and think about whether I'm enjoying myself, what I want to do in the next half-hour, and my goals for the day.  I've found this works well... it's like a pacemaker for my mind.  I have found that it makes me more aware of the passage of time, and that helps me refocus if I'm vegging.  I generally turn it off if other people are around.  This has generally made me more mindful moment-to-moment, as I don't want to be caught (by myself) doing something that I'm not really passionate about. 

Everyone's brain is different, and I imagine that what I've just described here makes no sense to some people.  Why would I do something I'm only marginally interested in?  It's hard to describe why I do it, but it's a silly habit and I'm making it go away.