Things of Beauty #18

New glasses, ChatGPT, cults, & the Ted Lasso trailer

Random smattering of things here this week: early spring, rediscovering an old favorite, looking forward to a new favorite, trying new things and embracing change. Which actually feels like a pretty big list of small things.

Perhaps that’s just it, when you think about it, most of life is stitching small moments together into one whole big thing.

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A few snippets of those small stitches:

🌷 The trees here are blooming and there are gorgeous patches of daffodils everywhere (quite a contrast to the first picture in my last Things of Beauty post). It is way too early for this, but I’m practicing holding space for both concern that it’s spring in February in Virginia and enjoyment of the pops of color and warmer days.

🎧 Do you ever have a podcast you listen to regularly and then take a break from it and then later “find” it again and have SO many episodes to catch up on it feels exciting and brand new? This happened with Sounds Like a Cult to me. I used to listen all the time, then took a little pause until I remembered it recently in a conversation about the The Vow on HBO Max. I love the deep dive into human behavior and language and how fine a line it can be between cults and groups who gather around a cause/activity. It’s also just really funny.

🤖 Seems like AI is the topic du jour right now. I don’t know nearly enough to fully weigh in, but I am trying to learn and form my own opinions. I’m dropping this one small, specific thing about it here but clearly it’s not all sunshine and roses and certainly not appropriate to use for all things. That being said, I was stuck on writing some learning objectives for a conference proposal this week— so I gave ChatGPT my session description and asked it to write them for me. It gave me 10 really good options to choose from. I tweaked 4 of them to fit what I needed. Which was pretty beautiful in that it saved me a lot of time.

🤓 New glasses. I know, I know, they aren’t THAT different from the old glasses. What can I say? I like what I like. But they are slightly lighter in color AND I did swallow my pride and go with the progressive lens, which means no more taking my glasses off to see things up close. I had been offered this option last time I got a new prescription (which was sometime pre-2020) but it felt too much like being offered bifocals and in that moment I just couldn’t acknowledge that my eyes needed TWO prescriptions. I think generally I have a decent attitude about aging, but we all have our moments. So anyway, here’s to embracing change and taking my glasses on and off way less!

📺 New season of Ted Lasso! I was a latecomer to the Cult of Lasso. But I’m here now and can not wait for this!

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Is it spring where you are (is it supposed to be)? Do you have a countdown to the Season 3 premiere of Ted Lasso on your calendar (14 days and counting)? Thoughts on ChatGPT? What’s bringing a spot of joy your way, this week?

Be well, find tiny joy-

Mary Chris