Hurricane Ida is bearing down on the coast of La. right now. My sense is this hurricane will be worse, overall, than Hurricane Katrina. Just an intuitive take on it all, but it seems like one of those situations where no one pays attention until it is almost too late.
And, paradoxically, on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
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A book that I've picked up again is CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap!: Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life, by Edward M. Hallowell, MD.
The author has written a good bit on ADHD and this book essentially fits under that category. It is easy to read and fun to read. There are lots of techniques to help slow down in our fast-paced society.
The hard part for me--and probably for most people--is trying out many of the techniques long enough to find the ones that work for you and then continuing to implement them.
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I don't think I've mentioned this book in one of my posts, but it is an excellent book: Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick. Here is a good quote from the book:
As career patterns, housing patterns, mortality patterns, and social policies follow the lead of global capitalism, much of the world seems determined to adopt a lifestyle that will compound and reinforce the chronic sense of isolation that millions of individuals already feel, even when they are surrounded by well-meaning friends and family. The contradiction is that we have radically changed our environment, and yet our physiology has remained the same. However wealthy and technologically adept our societies have become, beneath the surface we are the same vulnerable creatures who huddled together against the terrors of thunderstorms sixty thousand years ago.
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It's an interesting thing. Almost everyone is concerned about how they appear to others in the sense not only of appearance, but of personality. And a big part of one's personality is how you interact with people in conversation. Yet few people are aware of how they may appear to others in conversation. That is, do we come across as shy, arrogant, bombastic, overly talkative, rude, etc.?
A good book to help with this situation is First Impressions: What You Don't Know About How Others See You, by Ann Demarais, PhD, and Valerie White, PhD. I found the book to be an excellent mixture of good social psychology and practical information.
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I find myself going to vocabulary.com frequently. It appears there are many features to the website but the main thing I like about it is you can find interesting words in various books and short stories. I've noticed that many of the words are words you don't see commonly in most writings. I find looking at the words and their definitions have helped tone up my vocabulary. Most of the words I know, but I believe repetition, as a instructor in graduate school used to say, "is our friend."
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