Tag: living

iNaturalist

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Have you ever come across an odd spider, insect, or plant and thought, “Hmm, what is this thing?!” Enter iNaturalist.

iNaturalist is available for Android and for Apple and is completely free to download and use.

After downloading the app you can ‘Make an Observation’ by uploading a picture of the organism in question and the iNaturalist database will give you closely matched options. If the app does not automatically find a perfect match, the community of citizen scientists can suggest species information and help identify your unknown sample. Continue reading →

Looking Up

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Spending time camping with family is an perennial gift I am blessed to experience. The separation from the daily grind at home truly helps with recharging the emotional batteries. Once again this year our family has spent a week at Aloha State Park in Mullet Lake in northern Michigan.

Similar to several other state parks in Michigan Aloha offers campsites, bath houses, a nice little beach with a great lake view, access to a rail-trail, and as a nice bonus a camp store with donuts and ice cream! Much like other great camping locations the real benefit to camping here is the time spent with family and friends.

Moreso than in years past, our camp has spent some quality time around the campfire looking up at the stars. It has been a nightly goal to spot a satellite and catch a shooting star as it streaks across the sky. Continue reading →

Self Discovery

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This past school year I started posting a weekly Quote of the Week to accompany a Video of the Week. The goal being to start each week with some thought provoking material for students to ponder. Ideas which had very little to do with content and very much to do with self discovery. Most weeks I matched the quote with the content of the video, but sometimes mixed up topics for extra connections/conversation.

If this sounds interesting, I made a “40 Week Deep Thinking” document. Currently, all videos work but they are mostly YouTube links and have broken in the past.

40 Week Deep Thinking Quote and Video Continue reading →

Human Being, not Human Doing

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Warning: Hypocrite at the keyboard!

My message in this post is to find the happiness to just be. This should come naturally to us as human beings but it seems like somewhere in history we started to try and become human doings instead of human beings. Admittedly, I have not figured out how to unlock the secret to full happiness while just being. I know this level of fulfillment and happiness is possible. I just feel far from achieving this balance. 

In a fitting turn of fate, this blog post has been in the queue getting limited attention for the past few months. Whenever I would think about sitting down to type out thoughts on this topic I also started to think about all the things I “had to do”.  Continue reading →

Unique Life Feels- ULFs

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“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” -Helen Keller

I am thankful for feelings. The ability to feel happiness, sadness, frustration, relief, contentment, discomfort; all of these feelings remind me I am Alive. I believe in life there is a balance to emotions. For each high there is a low, for every ebb there is a flow. It has not always felt this way.

In high school I worked at Chuck E. Cheese and really enjoyed that job. One day at work I was in a particularly cheerful mood and I remember a team-member asking me “What are you on?” and I honestly replied, Continue reading →