august favourites | hedoletter #6
👋 Hello, dear reader!
Yet another month is coming to an end, for me, it’s been a month of sending you my newsletter out and I’m super happy about this small milestone. Receiving the first feedback, knowing that the letters resonate with you and you find them useful means the world to me! From my side, I’ll do everything to deliver you the most quality content and the most useful information. Cheers to that! 🥂
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As you probably know, at the end of each month I’ll be sharing with you my month favourites - from the content to the products to playlists and other small things that cheered me up this month. Without further adieu, let’s see what made me evolve and feel better this month…
🎧 Music
The longer I live, the less I imagine my existence without a musical background. I’m sure many of you can relate to it: you probably know that feeling of having the need to keep your eye phones with you and/or out that specific playlist on when you do a particular activity, say, cleaning or studying, or walking alone in the evening? me too, and sometimes, the fact that I have zero understanding of how the music works make me feel a little bit ignorant yet, with time, I feel more driven to learn it. Also, what we call a song, has huge work by a team of people. The deeper I get into music, the more I realise how nothing is casual in it. And how much work there is behind.
Another thing that helps me to get deeper into just a music listening experience - and therefore be more mindful about it - is to read the author’s biography, and real lyrics, and try to understand deeper meanings. Suddenly, the music is no anymore about just the music, it’s about the story the author wants to tell me. It makes all the processes a hundred times more beautiful. One year ago, I published this post on Medium on how to listen to music more mindfully. I believe, these tips are still valid and if you’re looking to level up your musical game, check them out.
I haven’t created my own playlist this month (yet, I’m adding constantly new music to my 🎶 summer playlist that you can listen to), but I’d like to share with you two lists of other people - the first one, called healing, is an amazing list to meditate to, stretch, do yoga or just stay on the floor, looking at the ceiling, thinking about life. the second one, is Alizee Gamberini’s playlist, firstlove. I love that woman’s dark, moody music taste with a few electronic tunes. ah, and her visual on Instagram is a huge source of inspiration for me too. check it out! also, if you’re looking for some new playlists for specific moments of your life, I highly suggest the account of Orion Carloto, an American poet and influencer. she’s an inspiration too and her music taste is flawless!
🧠 Reading
Oliver Burkeman’s last letter about combining systems and life. In this newsletter, he shared his thoughts about combining a well-organised-productive life and the life itself, with its being spontaneous, bright and all but organized and predictable. Here are some quotes from the letter:
“If we're lucky to have absorbing work in the first place – then draw a conceptual box around it labelled "project", break it down into actions, slot it into a system of goals… and all of a sudden, it's no fun at all.“
“Many of us yearn to find a system or set of rules or life philosophy that could somehow live life for us, on our behalf, so that once we'd pledged allegiance to the rulebook, we wouldn't have to face the messiness and discomfort of actually showing up, moment after moment.“
“No set of concepts can completely capture the fullness of whatever part of life it refers to.“
“Attempting to live precisely in accordance with any set of concepts is bound to become a lifeless endeavour in the end. Eventually, you'll find you're trying to force reality into a container that's too small and the wrong shape for it.“
“No such set of concepts could ever relieve you of the responsibility of being in the driver's seat of your life.“
“The lesson here isn't that systems and techniques are worthless. […] the answer has been to keep using them, but to relate to them differently: to demote them, I suppose, from things I try to use to live life for me, to things I use to help me live my life.“
“Stop expecting any one approach to serving you forever – to realise that your productivity system, like your creative practice and your parenting philosophy and everything else, is necessarily and always work in progress. It will keep evolving and adapting.“
“You could pursue only those systems that seem to heighten the feeling of aliveness and pursue them only so long as they continue to do so. You could call off the search for the perfect system, and get to grips with the reality in front of you instead.“
Sounds familiar, right? Who isn’t guilty of trying to fit all their life in a perfect system that lasts for a week or so and then giving up with the thought “nothing works for me anyway“?
📖 Joseph Brodsky’s essay “Watermark“ about his experience in Venice. The short book yet s beautifully written that makes you fall in love with the winter Venice, making you imagine every single detail and walk with the writer along its foggy December streets. I’m a huge fan of non-fiction, but sometimes, these wonderful stories, that make you dive into the narration with its elaborate language and figures of speech, it’s exactly what my soul needs.
🌐 Digital
BeReal app. This application changed my social media game. It’s true when they say it’s a powerful trend and innovative way of communicating with friends
(hopefully, some Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t steal this idea to implement randomly on some Instagram thus commercialising it)If you’re using this app, feel free to become friends there! → @hedonastyaPatrick Bienert’s pictures of beautiful Mary Fall for Document Journal. Amazing photography, beautiful Rome in the background, inspirational visual for the photography freaks.
The article, (in Russian), contains rare videos of important writers. You can see Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Agatha Christie and many others in rare recordings.
Finally, wonderful video on mistakes to avoid by an 83-year-old Sandra. I deeply love the videos and the articles by older people who share their life’s advice and wisdom with the public. Oddly enough (or no?), they seldom differ one from another. Have a look!
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That’s all, folks. Hope you loved this links compilation and have an amazing last day of August 💜
P.S. If you loved this letter and think someone you know could like it too, please share it with them!