Finding Peace in Laundry

Doing laundry from start to finish can quiet a troubled mind if you set your mind to it.
I'm talking about being mindful here—completely in the task—and it works with any simple task. The methodical nature of doing laundry, washing dishes, or sweeping the floor can help quiet mental gremlins and find focus again. Change the way you think about these tasks; convert them from mindless to mindful.
Laundry provides several different ways to relax and focus completely on the task.

  • Sorting laundry: darks, whites, lights, and other stuff
  • The drone of the washer and dryer
  • The smell of clean laundry
  • Folding warm clothes

Focused folding is a ritual. When I studied aikido as a young man, my sensei taught me to fold my hakama in our dojo after practice. He referred to the careful folding process as the "Japanese press" because it would look perfect when unfolded to wear next time.
One of life's simplest pleasures is outfitting your bed with clean sheets. That luxurious feeling surprises me every time, a great way to end a day after meditating with eight loads of laundry.

Looking up and down while spinning left and right

I have had this “Trippy spinning optical illusion” (found at the always interesting kottke.org open in a browser window since I found it on Feb. 1, 2016.
Spinning optical illusion
From kottke.org:

Somehow, this woman seems to be spinning both clockwise and counter-clockwise simultaneously. This is worse than the spinning ballerina. Anyone know who did this? Randomly found it on Facebook and couldn’t trace the source back…

The most mind-blowing of this type of animation I have seen to date. Kudos to the designer!

Trading Places

My wife and I swapped iPads.
She had an iPad 2. I had an iPad mini. Same hardware, different sizes. I didn’t use the mini much because it was too small to enjoy some of the work (and play) I enjoy. She used the larger iPad constantly, but found it hard to tote around. Now, she has the portability that helps her and I have the larger size that I craved.
We should have done it a long time ago.

iCloud backup and restore

Swapping was a cinch.
We both manually initiated a backup to iCloud before we erased and deleted the contents of each iPad. This reset them to act as if they were brand new. “Hello. Welcome to iPad.” All that remained was logging into our respective iCloud accounts, plugging in the devices, and waiting for everything to download.
The exchange took about two hours to complete, though they were only rendered unusable for about 15 minutes during the delete and reset. The experience was nearly flawless. Now, she can easily carry the iPad mini in her purse and I can happily write in Ulysses for iPad.

Optimism Never Dies

Last month I made some bold claims about my output on this site. Oh well! Life goes on. I remain optimistic that both of my readers will have soon have more to read here than extended apologies for nothing being here to read.

Head in the Clouds

  
In a world where we are able to look up or around us and be completely awestruck by the surrounding beauty, I wonder why we stare at screens so much or sometimes dwell on petty matters. Just let go and live!