The Sunday Spark ⚡ [February 6, 2022]

The Sunday Spark!

Hi friends,

Are you loving winter, or ready to move on?

I'm still not ready for spring but I love that days are getting longer and I'm seeing more sunsets in February.

The highlight of last week was getting the kids back to school and getting back to writing regularly on my blog. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that, after writing an average of 6 posts a year since starting the blog in 2015, I upped the ante in my 2021 endeavor to reach 117 published posts. That made me feel proud and determined to make the habit more flexible this time around. I decided I would write four days a week, not daily, which succeeded last year with a handful of days missed from Feb to June. Then Q3, perfectionism, and other things happened.

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Exciting News: I have an interview at Roya TV tomorrow at 9:15 am Amman time; the topic is: Why most people quit their new year’s resolutions in February. You already know the answer being a listener to my podcast and a friend on my social media, right? But I love it if you would still support me and tune in on TV or their live stream.

Hey, just for fun, take a screenshot and share it with me; that will be so cool :)

This month, I look forward to more walks and more structure in kids’ routines while realizing that I will have less time to spend on decluttering. That’s where I’ve been mostly hiding lately, away from social media, at home, between trash bags and donation bags, in case you were wondering.

I used my first magical Saturday of the semester to indulge in January’s review.

It was delicious.

Here is your weekly dose of The Sunday Spark ⚡️ a newsletter listing 5 inspiring things I thought were worth starting your week with:

From my desk: A question that shines a spotlight on the ripple effect of a yes, a no, or an outburst.
You can get 10% discount on my favorite gratitude journal and daily planner using the code BARDEES10; enjoy.
I just finished listening to Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and I highly recommend it. Four thousand is the average number of weeks humans live, almost 80 years. Did this number surprise you? Oliver Burkeman's accent made listening enjoyable, and his writing is eloquent. You can learn more about this book by listening to the podcast interview with Ryan Holiday.
Listening to this book made me miss my conversations with my pal Osama Zaidieh about the Power of Now; I hope you give these talks a listen.
A quote from Four Thousand Weeks to encourage us to embrace our limited time on earth:

"The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible—the quest to become the optimized, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead."

― Oliver Burkeman

(resurfaced through Readwise. If you use Kindle to read you will love Readwise so much. Download this awesome app to remember books/articles you read)