Non-Creative Things I Do to De-Stress: Saturdays at Home

On Saturdays I like to step away from creative work.

I used to sleep late on Saturday mornings, but this left me feeling lethargic, so now I try to get up around eight or so to let the sunlight in through my balcony doors.  If it’s sunny (which it usually is this time of year) I’ll throw in a load of laundry to air-dry later in the morning and lay in bed reading until I feel like getting up.  This morning instead of a book I read this essay from The Millions about writers living a life of uncertainty, which left me feeling inspired.

After reading but before leaving my bed I pull out my phone and check messages from the night before.  I try not to overdo it, though, since it’s best not to get sucked into a social media vortex first thing in the morning.

I used to check email first thing on Saturday mornings too, but this left me feeling drained and empty regardless of what I found in my inbox, so I stopped.  I’m writing this at one p.m. on a Saturday—I haven’t checked my email today and I genuinely don’t care.  It’s midnight in America, so email can wait. Continue reading »

Non-Creative Things I Do to De-Stress: Bike Rides

I can’t drive a car in Japan and I don’t miss it at all.

When I first got to Japan I planned on walking and taking the train to get where I needed to go.  Cars are expensive, and learning to drive on the left seemed like a real pain, in addition to the difficulties involved with buying a car and dealing with foreign vehicle registrations.  Screw all that

…except that things in my suburban small town can be pretty far apart, which makes for a LOT of walking, not to mention tired feet.  So when my coworker suggested I invest a few hundred bucks in a decent road bike, I decided it might be a good idea. Continue reading »

Non-Creative Things I Do to De-Stress: Jigsaw Puzzles

In this occasional series, I’ll be looking at some non-creative, non-work things I do that both relax me and mentally prepare me to start back on creative work.  Work stuff is important, but non-work stuff matters too.


When I was a kid I did jigsaw puzzles I assembled on a sheet of plywood under my bed.  This was between late elementary school and early high school, when I got good enough to put together the 500- and 1000-piece landscapes and illustrations my family had amassed over a generation, and that I regularly got for Christmases and birthdays.  I’d assemble each puzzle over a period of weeks (or, as I got busier, months), working for stretches of an hour or two while listening to music.

Over the years I honed the steps necessary for doing puzzles quickly and efficiently: browsing through the box to find the edge pieces, trying likely matches first, putting together Continue reading »

Non-Creative Things I Do to De-Stress: The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross

I talk a LOT about work on this blog, so to switch things up I’ll be talking about some non-work stuff that impacts the work stuff in different ways.  In this ongoing series I’ll go in-depth about some distinctly non-work stuff I do to enrich my life and de-stress—things that put me in better shape for when it’s time to sit down and do the work stuff again.


Let’s get one thing straight: I love Bob Ross.

I used to watch The Joy of Painting as a kid on weekend afternoons, when I’d flip through the channels and always catch episodes at the halfway point.  (As a result, I don’t recall ever seeing Bob Ross actually paint a sky.)  I was fascinated by Bob’s soft, gentle voice, and his amazing landscapes: the sharp mountains cutting into the sky, the puffy evergreen trees, the reflective lakes, the multicolored rocks, and even his red-roofed shacks. Continue reading »