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Today on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re sharing an off the cuff conversation that we had about productivity, happiness, and gratitude.

Over the last year, we’ve done a wide range of topics — from writing about disabilities to writing with empathy —that took a lot of energy and preparation. We’ve also been doing this podcast for almost 5 years and as we near our 250th episode we felt it would be good to do a series of episodes getting back to our roots of how this first began — through unplanned conversations about life, books, and the writing craft. So, for the next few episodes we’re seeing where our conversations take us, without planning in advance what we’ll talk about.

In this conversation, we review the last month during our summer break. The practices we tried, lessons that revealed themselves to us, and some ideas we’re grppling with and thinking about. Things like:

• Doing a postmortem at the end of a month to recognize all the things you did with your time and re-spark the little moments of joy you experienced.

• Fable’s low effort method of tracking reads as screen shots on her phone.

• The gift of positive psychology that the Verbivore rediscovered while reading Katherine Center’s Happiness for Beginners.

• Normalizing liking most or part of something. Identifying and paying attention to what isn’t yours, but also allowing yourself to enjoy the parts that are.

• Recognizing that we may never feel that we’re producing enough, and accepting that maybe that’s not where satisfaction will come from.

• Paying attention to little things you want in the moment (like a hot tea or piece of chocolate or ten minutes of music) and consciously choosing to gift yourself with them several times a week without always making yourself earn them.

• Using the practice of reminding yourself of 3 good/nice (however small) things that happened during the day just before bed to calm and settle your mind and body.

We hope you enjoy this episode and the more improvisational format of this series! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Books and Films Mentioned:

• Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center

• Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection by Haemin Sunim

Music from:https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)