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Loving Now: You Take the Yin, You Take the Yang

For 9/17, we've got cats, music, pens, yoga, and makeup, cool late summer breezes and some actual good takes on the whole work/life/whatever thing. Relax and dig in!

Leigh Hoopes

• 7 min read
Loving Now: You Take the Yin, You Take the Yang
"Vaporwave Yin Yang" by alheak on deviantart

Welcome to The Enthusiast, a newsletter thats all yum, no yuck! Every weekend, I'm sharing five things I'm loving right now. The challenge for me is keeping it to just five...

It's the middle of September and we've got cats, music, pens, yoga, and makeup, cool late summer/early falls breezes and some actually good takes from actually good writers on the whole work/life/whatever thing. Turn off all your work-related app notifications and let's try to relax for a day or two, shall we?

What I'm Loving for September 17th:

Yin Yoga

Let me tell you about a yoga practice that only requires you to get to 60% effort at the absolute most. Where you hold static poses, usually seated or reclined, for upwards of five minutes. Where the most active component is remembering to breathe deeply, and the concept of “sending your breath” to the active body areas actually makes sense. It’s called Yin Yoga, a Chinese movement practice grounded in the concept of stillness and backed up by the science of deep connective tissue therapy. It hasn’t caught on as much in the US because we love our hot yoga power flows and yin yoga doesn’t burn any calories besides those burned while breathing, but damned if it isn't probably my favorite overall yoga practice.

Much as I love a smooth flow to chill beats, I also deeply love getting down deep into my increasingly stiff joints and tight muscle—yin practice lets you really feel the stretch intensely without expending too much effort. It’s deeply nourishing, does not require much actual flexibility, and requires consciously slower movement. With yin yoga, you don't force yourself into or push past any discomfort, you recognize it, allow yourself to feel a little bit of it, and breathe into it. If you get a chance to try out a yin yoga class, I HIGHLY recommend it. If  you prefer to practice at home, Yoga with Kassandra has my favorite yin sequences on YouTube. I’m picking up a yin yoga training next month that I couldn't finish last year, so hopefully I will be able to teach it soon!

Lace curtain blowing in the wind on a Summer’s day in London. What’s inside?
Photo by Alistair MacRobert / Unsplash

Warm, Sunny Fall Days with the Windows Open

Is there anything better? Name a more perfect kind of day than one where you can leave the windows open all day and catch a light breeze while letting in that very late summer sunlight that feels more warming than adversarial (which I know is not the case in many parts of the country experiencing extreme droughts). Even though we live on a busy cross-street where it seems like there’s never a day that someone isn’t doing some kind of yard work, I love the sense of openness it brings, inviting fall in instead of hiding from humidity and keeping summer out for as long as possible.

This is maybe 2/3 of what I actually bought? I regret nothing.

Buying Only the Papermate Flairs You Need

If you’ve known me at any point in the last decade, you know I’m an interminable Papermate Flair felt tip pen stan. These are basically the only pens I use anymore, and I tend to buy them compulsively whenever they’re on sale or at Costco. The problem is that there are some packs that include that include colors like “olive green” and “mustard yellow” and regular degular schmegular “brown,” which are not among my favorite colors to write with. So when I buy a 24-pack, it’s more like an 18-20 pack. But I recently discovered the aptly named Pens & Pencils.net and was able to get $60 worth of Flair in just the colors I like/want/need. So handy! I’m should hopefully be stocked through at least the end of the year...

I promise you I did not match my nails to this compact.

Moonshot Micro CorrectFit Cushion Foundation

After not spending any money on beauty products in July, I kind of went into a fugue state in August and basically just wilded out. I’d been dying to try a cushion foundation, so I picked this one up from StyleKorean as part of a promotion and y’all… I love it. It pats on super smooth and seamless, looks AND feels just as good, and stays on for a decent while. I’ve been having an existential crisis over makeup and specifically foundation lately (Why does it settle in my pores? Why can’t I find anything that matches my skin tone anymore? Why does it slide off when I’m not doing anything and I used primer AND setting powder AND setting spray?!) but this lovely little gem helps mitigate that panic, at least for now. It’s definitely not a no-makeup foundation, which yes, is an oxymoron and a term to unpack in general, because it does look like I’m wearing makeup. It’s just looks like I’m wearing really good, flawless makeup, which is absolutely still very much a vibe.

Heads up: Their videos are just videos set to their music, not really actual "music videos."

New Music Friday: MONOWHALES, Tunnel Vision"

I’m not sure where or when I first listened to indie Canadian trio MONOWHALES but their singles have made their way into my playlists and on repeat this year. Now they’ve gathered those plus a few additional tracks into a 7-song LP (FYI albums are now short as hell or 20 tracks, no in between), Tunnel Vision. And all 22 minutes of it slaps. They’re classified as Rock, but for me, music genre labels are pretty much pointless now, which is great for those of us who love all the many million styles and mashups that are out there these days. There are plenty of big, swaggy guitar hooks on this LP, sure, but also solid, seamless synth and drum loops integrated into their songs. My favorite tracks, “New Threads” and “RICH$$$” are nestled neatly in the middle: two exuberant, upbeat tracks about feeling good about yourself and showing love and appreciation to those who make you feel, well, rich. Listen if you like: Sleigh Bells but on appropriate medication.

"Falling Cat" chronophotograph by Étienne-Jules Marey, 1984. (wikipedia)

Bonus Tracks

😸 Cats: Hot damn, science writer Katherine J. Wu at The Atlantic is fast becoming another fave of mine, mostly (but not entirely) due to her stellar cat science storytelling of late. She started with this piece on brushing cats’ teeth, a true nightmare for anyone who has ever tried (and most of us haven’t, let’s be real here), followed by an investigation into the magical mystery of purring. Most recently, she’s covered how cats seem to actually defy the laws of the universe with their proprioception while falling. All of these are fascinating and deeply satisfying to read if you’re a cat person, but you should absolutely read them even if you’re not.

👯‍ Work Friends: My content strategy queen/crush Sarah Wachter-Boettcher recently wrote this phenomenal piece about the importance of making friends at work. I've always had trouble making friends outside of work or school, so the recent research about people not caring or wanting to make friends at work really bummed me out. In the beforetimes, my work friends were sometimes the only reason I made it into work at all on some days, and now with WFH I’ve struggled not seeing my coworkers who I consider friends but don’t work with directly. I know I need find other ways to make friends that aren’t tied to employment and therefore capitalist platitudes about coworkers being “family,” but y’all already know how increasingly difficult it gets as soon as you leave college (sometimes even after high school). Bottom line: if you’re my friend at work, I consider you a friend beyond work, too.

👻 Work/Life/Other: I am so glad that amidst all the hot takes/bad discourse around quiet quitting, reporters are finally talking more to the people left behind in the Great Resignation, and as you might have guessed, we’re not exactly living our best lives. If you’ve been doing the job of two (or more) people for the last year or so, you are absolutely not alone, no matter what the job market media narrative has been. And yeah, there’s not really a light at the end of the tunnel for many of us right now that isn’t tied to employers taking a long, hard look at how they value human capital, not just their bottom line. I don't have an answer and neither does anybody else, but I'm just happy this majority is actually getting recognized.

🖖🏻 Eerily Relevant Automated Star Trek Tweet:

And that's it for the weekend of September 17th! Thank you for reading The Enthusiast--if you're not already a subscriber, you can sign up here (it's free!). Keep hydrating for those all those Oktoberfest stein raises, and burn some calories with as much chicken-dancing as you can handle, my babes.

Make it so,
LKH