Quote of the Day - 03/13/2012

Tea, food, and routine paperwork had a normalizing effect. - Nevada Barr in A Superior Death (An Anna Pigeon Novel)

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Everyone develops their own approaches for making adjustments prompted by the changes in their life. Activities that tend to have a ‘normalizing effect’ tend to be ones that provide ‘something to do’ during the time we are mentally adjusting to whatever has changed; the objective is to help ourselves be as resilient as possible and sustain our healthy outlook on life. Nevada Barr’s list (‘tea, food, and routine paperwork’) are good examples. Do you have others - ones that are perhaps even unique to you? My list would include looking at botanical prints, sleeping and cleaning house.

What are some characteristics of these ‘normalizing effect’ activities? For me - they must 

• Be done alone
• Relatively quiet (i.e. I don’t find having television or radio in the background helpful...music without vocals is appealing)
• Secure
• Comfortable temperature…perhaps a little warm
• Not totally sedentary (this may mean that there needs to be a variety of activity instead of just one) 

Nevada Barr writes mysteries set in National Parks - in this case, Isle Royale National Park. 

Note: Botanicus provides digitized historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library....one of my favorite web places.