Saturday, May 28, 2011

"Hot House Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire"

Since I've been done with classes, I've been able to read fiction books! I've read two so far, the second of which is called "Hot House Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire" by Margot Berwin. It's a weird title, and a weird book, but it was also really good and I really enjoyed it. It centers around one woman's post-divorce life-revelations through plants. It's a little hippy/new agey in that some of the characters in the book believe in "plant magic" and other things like that, but the protagonist does question it, which I liked. The book had some parts which really resonated with me, and in some ways it was "preaching" acceptance of the world around us, looking for the good in the world and practicing mindfulness (which are things I'm working on).

Alison at Life in a Pink Fibro has something each week called "Rewind" where people post links to their old posts (it's awesome, you should all do it!). Anyway, through that I found this post (Finding the Mindfulness in the Meaningful) which I really enjoyed. It also talks about mindfulness. Anyway, this post pretty much doesn't make sense, but the summary is that the book and the post have encouraged me to re-start trying to achieve a greater state of mindfulness in my life (mindfulness is also part of ACT). I'll let you know how it goes!

EDIT: I've been looking for resources on the internet, and I've found two sites that I like...http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=4595 and http://blogs.psychcentral.com/mindfulness/2011/05/9-ways-to-a-more-mindful-workday/. In addition to these particular articles, they both have many more articles on mindfulness. I think I'm also going to get a book called Excuse Me, College Is Now: How to be a Success in School and Life, which, as the title suggests, is a book for college students about the challenges and difficulties they face. Even though I have been doing much better with college stress etc recently, I'm always interested in reading more about self-improvement type things!

2 comments:

  1. Congrats on being done with classes! It feels brilliant, doesn't it? :D

    "Rewind" sounds like an interesting concept.

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  2. Yes! It's so nice!! What are you up to over the summer? Anything interesting?

    (I get to go work in my lab for 10 weeks or something, fun fun!)

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