I took today and tomorrow off from work. Lately, I’ve been finding it really difficult to focus at work, so I decided to give myself a nice four day weekend to reset and relax. Today was one of the best days I’ve had in a while. I lazily woke up around 8 or 9, heated up an extra cup of chai from the fridge (not great, and just spent an hour or so on my phone, but not in a doomscrolling way.

I’m 30 minutes into this video of the Sami people herding reindeer across the Arctic. Apparently, reindeer are considered partially domesticated due to indigenous people like the Sami who continue to rely on reindeer herding for survival. I ended up doing more research on domesticated animals in general. The Wikipedia page has a “purposes” section for each animal that was domesticated through history. It’s interesting to see because as time goes, domestication goes from being something that is highly purposeful, with animals like dogs, goats and cattle, to something that’s not, like hedgehogs.

There’s a weeklong #1000wordsofsummer challenge happening. Usually, these challenges are 14 days long, which feels impossible to even attempt. But seven days seems doable, especially since I have so few other responsibilities these days. In all honesty, I’m not doing great. 23 hasn’t really been the most fun so far. I feel somewhat like the world feels: unstable and unclear. When I was younger, I associated getting older with feeling more in command, as each subsequent year was associated with new privileges to get used to.