I sometimes feel anxious or upset after I spend time on social media

This was my third month taking the pills. The only rule: leave anytime you want. We don't have to say goodbye. We don't have to be sick, have an early meeting, or feel a cold coming on. What other people think about us going home is not our problem, and a big realization we had is that most people don't even notice we're gone. It might feel very strange at first, but the this is wrong sensation is a small price for doing what we want. We can bear this feeling. When the night expires, when we're ready to be alone, we just hit the pavement. We swoop out with the collar of our coat pulled up and pretend to talk to someone dramatically on our phones, traipsing through the streetlamp's light and into the darkness, channeling movie stars of yesterday, and we smile once we reach the parking lot. When Amanda had been sober for six months, Jardine stopped by with a box of handmade candy to celebrate. When a just-sober friend called Amanda to meet and talk about her desire to live another way, Amanda gave her bath bubbles and Junior Mints. In fact, many of the business success stories that grab headlines today are prime examples of the power of conversion; Consider Uber, Airbnb, Airtasker, many of the makers on Etsy, and, yes, even Tinder (it seems human beings can be under-utilised also). Conversion, reinvention and transformation are powerful tools of creativity that not only create value and utility -- they help reduce waste. What's more, as robots and AI take many existing jobs that we might consider boring or unproductively time-consuming, we may find ourselves with some of those extra minutes, hours and days that futurists and sci-fi authors have been promising us for generations. This means that conversion will also be important in terms of how we rethink and repurpose our use of time -- repurposing work time into leisure, converting work from survival to personal expression, and from the traditional work week to the gig economy. As King explained, `As robotics and AI take many existing jobs, wealth redistribution will be less of an issue than that of how we utilise our time. Ultimately, we will all need to convert the way we spend our personal energy. This will require a conversion of mindset, from one of `work to live' to some version of `work in your passion'. Conversion is a capability that has defined human advancement throughout history.

It's more than an ability to create and utilise tools; Lack of connection is a serious issue facing our world today. As we become increasingly dependent on computers and devices to do many of the things that we have done for ourselves in the past, from grocery shopping, to dating, to communicating, we live less in community and more in isolation. While the long-term effects are still in question, research already shows that our health, vitality, and resilience are greatly impacted by our diminishing everyday social connections. Humans are social creatures. We are by design meant to interact and relate with those around us. As our world continues to make these technological advancements, many of which are very useful and important, it's equally important that we not get lost from our very human need to connect to others in real time and in real life. Studies have shown for decades that babies cannot survive without contact from other humans and that we as a species cannot thrive in isolation. The remedy for isolation is connection, and the breath is such an incredible invitation to connect with our most fundamental needs and desires. When the Connection Breath is practiced with another person, it is transformative for both people. When our systems sync up with one another, we tap into a group nervous system that is both regulating and healing. It is much of a wonder that they do as well as they do. He also advised the people to obtain the teachers' side of all controversies, reported by scholars, before drawing conclusions. The quartet and invocation would be absent today, but the message retains its contemporary relevance. Among the papers, I found editions of The Perrysville Enterprise from 1901 and The Ohio Farmer from 1908. The original builders were German immigrants named Weirick, and their old steamer trunk still sits on the third floor. Descendants occupied the farm until the 1960s, and, in a century and a half, only four families have actually owned the place, three of those in the last thirty years. Several visitors have claimed to be descendants of the original owners and live now in Mansfield, Baltimore, and London. They talked about their grandparents' orchards and gardens, outbuildings that no longer stand, and games they played in the barn and fields. I do not tell them of things I have found in the house and barn--children's clothes, a milking machine, broken garden rakes, slats, window frames devoid of glass, old curtains, a plastic dish drainer, even a bathroom sink lying on its side in the attic.

I do not mention that every spring on the site where a corn crib once stood I find the detritus of earlier times: pieces of glass and metal, cans, nails--evidence that, as the structure crumbled, its owners used it as a dump. I headed back up to Linda's. After we finished the paperwork, she handed me a list of 12 names. This is a list of leads that came from the flier you saw, that I couldn't get to. They're kind of old, but you can have them. I gave her a blank look, not understanding. I knew how she felt: I was worried that it might happen to me again. Then she said, I was molested as a child. These products saved my life. I'm so much better than I was. Back home, I checked to make sure my husband was still sleeping and took the phone to the other end of the apartment. Sobriety in the beginning can feel overwhelmingly like loss, so when we have friends trying out Sober Lush-hood for a pregnancy, a dry January, a week, or a lifetime, we love to spoil them a tiny bit. A slice of red velvet cake or a tin of French hot cocoa is appreciated, especially during the first sober days. One fancy-ass chocolate in a metallic-lavender box with a bow can make someone's endeavor feel noted. Some of us need to watch our sugar, so seaweed soap, wild-rose salts, and black-cherry lip balm are options. When Jardine told Amanda about a website where she could order itty-bitty vials of rare and exotic perfumes, Amanda found kits of note-centered scents to give to friends. Sober Lushes love a patchouli candle, or a Sri Lankan lemongrass or sweet orange diffuser. When Amanda prepared for her first sober Christmas, she opened a package from her sister, Sarah, to find an array of teas from Boulder, Colorado: white peach, four seasons jasmine oolong, Andalusia lemon rooibos. It meant a lot that her sister had thought about what a sober holiday would mean and had sent this in support. Just giving a newly sober friend a teacup engraved with yellow roses from the junk shop is a dear gesture.

We love giving short articles for reading in the bath and on the subway and while standing in line. It is a skill that will always be in demand, and one you would be wise to cultivate. Look for the big themes. Transfer, mix and macro. Be broadly interested and prodigiously curious. Generate unexpected collisions. Learn to repurpose like a child. The thing about problem solving is, sometimes it's not until we create a new solution that we realise there was a problem in the first place. Michael Smith is the owner of The Sun Theatre. It is a small cinema in Yarraville, a suburb in the west of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. When he first bought The Sun, it was a dank, mouldy ruin ready for demolition. The Connection Breath reminds us that taking a few minutes to sit and breathe with another person is a powerful antidote to many of our daily struggles and is a healing balm that supports us in times of uncertainty. We are meant to hold each other, lift each other up, and witness each other. The Connection Breath is one way to do this. Find a comfortable seat facing your partner. Breathe in and out through the nose for a minute to settle in. Set your practice intentions. When ready, turn around and sit with your backs touching. Breathe slowly in and out through your noses. Without rushing or speaking to each other, allow your breaths to begin to sync up.

Breathe in sync for eight minutes. The place would have been the kitchen midden that archaeologists come to study, but I have thwarted them and cleaned it all out. What I could not donate or recycle I burned even as I kept shovels, posthole diggers, old ladders, wooden planks, or wire, which have since been put to use. I do not tell all this to my visitors, however, for they do not want to hear about the changes I have made. They want to tell me what it used to look like so that they might fix in their minds their own pasts. I ponder the question of why these descendants, who seem to care so much, allowed the farm to be sold. One man who now lives in Mansfield told me he spent many days standing on the front hill overlooking the road perfecting his throw by pitching rocks into the ditch on the other side. Another who lives in London wanted to see the granary where he and his siblings wrote their initials on the walls, which still bear penciled calculations about how much hay was put up in certain seasons. One of our first visitors, also a resident of Mansfield, arrived on his motorcycle and was peering into the garage when I went out with Colleen--who had not yet grown used to strangers--barking and straining on her leash. I asked if I could help him. My grandparents used to own this place, he answered. Looking at the names on the list, I realized I didn't know what to say. I called Linda and she asked me, Did you go through your registration kit? Everything you need to know is in there. Not what to say! I'd gone through the whole thing, and it was a bunch of junk, with some shake powder and two other bottles of vitamins I didn't need. Just say what I said when we first talked. This infuriated me. That was a while ago. Don't you have a script or something?