Happy Friday, friends! For many of us, this is a long weekend and I couldn’t be more excited about that. I don’t have too many plans, so I’m going to take the time to rest, read, and write. I’m very much looking forward to a slow, quiet holiday weekend!
For today’s Five For Friday post, I wanted to share some links I’ve been collecting over the past few weeks. I don’t really do link round-up posts, but sometimes, I read something that really speaks to me and I want to share it with everyone I know. Enjoy!
1) Where the Five-Day Workweek Came From by The Atlantic
What I loved most about this article was that it began by talking about how we began to separate our time into weeks and weekends. (The earliest recorded mention of weekend was in 1879!) It delves into the formation of workweeks (because it wasn’t always five days long) and even some predictions about future workweeks, like when a Senate subcommittee anticipated that we’d be working 14-hour workweeks by the year 2000. It finishes up by talking about our workweeks presently and how far we have to go to change our workweek structure. It was truly an interesting read!
There’s reason to believe that a seven-day week with a two-day weekend is an inefficient technology: A growing body of research and corporate case studies suggests that a transition to a shorter workweek would lead to increased productivity, improved health, and higher employee-retention rates.
2) When You Feel Worthy of Being Seen, It Shows by The Middle Finger Project
I have a massive crush on Ash Ambirge. She’s freaking badass and the way she writes draws me in immediately, even if the topic isn’t something that applies to my life at that moment. So, I adore her and I adore this recent blog post a lot. Mostly because I sometimes have trouble believing that I deserve to take up space as much as, say, someone like Ash. But I do. And you do. Read this post if you need the reminder.
They don’t withdraw—they own the space they’re in. They believe they deserve that space. They believe that they’re worth the gaze of another person’s eyes; worth being heard by another person’s ear; worth being admired by another person’s ego. They believe they’re worth being seen.
3) 102 Ways to Not Let Irrational Fears Ruin Your F**king Life by Brianna Wiest for Thought Catalog
I’ll admit I’m still not through all of the lessons in this article because I’m taking my time to slowly read through them. I shared the post after reading the first 15 lessons because they spoke to me so much and I found so much truth in Brianna Wiest’s words. If you struggle with anxiety, worry, and fear, this article will help ease some of that.
Practice radical acceptance. Learn to tell the parts of your story you’d rather shove under the rug. You’re allowed to say: “I don’t love my body. I feel a little stuck right now. I am not happy in my relationship. I am in debt” without it being a condemning statement.
4) Should I Marry Him? by Allison Fallon
Allison Fallon is a new addition to my feed and I can’t even remember how I found out about her blog. Maybe a share on Twitter? Well, however I ended up finding her, I am so glad I did because her blog is a gem. Her writing style soothes me and I always come away with some new perspective after reading a post from her. This post is about dating and more than once, I found myself stopping on a sentence or a phrase to reflect on her words. Read this if you’re single, or pass it on if you know someone who is single. Her words speak so much truth.
If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this: spend less time trying to figure out how to dress, how to act, how not to act, when to text, when not to text, who should pay, etc. and more time asking one question: How do I feel about myself when I am in this person’s presence?
5) The “Other Side” is Not Dumb by Sean Blanda on Medium
This was a super interesting article that made the rounds on Facebook yesterday. In it, Blanda makes the case for how social media can seriously warp our idea of “sides.” There’s the sane side (you know, the side that is in favor of stricter gun control laws, that thinks Donald Trump as president would be terrifying, etc.) and then there’s the… other side. The side that is clearly less intelligent than us, less sane. I’m not sure if I agree with all of the points he made, but after reading this article, I want to take more time to listen to everyone’s thoughts and opinions, even when it makes me uncomfortable.
Over time, this morphs into a subconscious belief that we and our friends are the sane ones and that there’s a crazy “Other Side” that must be laughed at — an Other Side that just doesn’t “get it,” and is clearly not as intelligent as “us.” But this holier-than-thou social media behavior is counterproductive, it’s self-aggrandizement at the cost of actual nuanced discourse and if we want to consider online discourse productive, we need to move past this.
