Required Reading: six picks.

OK so I have this habit of emailing myself interesting articles to read when I have more time, since I’m usually busy and flicking through twitter quickly and don’t have the mental acuity or five minutes’ peace to read them properly. Then what happens is I have fifteen interesting articles in a row that I don’t have time for and I do it pretty much every day. then my inbox is terrifying and I try not to look at it. (Sorry anyone waiting for an email!)

Occasionally after the kiddies go to bed I get around to pouring a cup of tea and fighting the cat for couch space to read the bits and pieces I’ve squirrelled away. I hope you find something of value in my hodgepodge of interests.

1. Elderly Chinese man models for granddaughter’s teen fashion line

Oh ma gawsh this thing had me cheering! Grandpa is WORKING IT. I shared on Facebook recently because I thought it was the raddest thing on the internet. “Why unacceptable (for someone like me to wear women’s clothes ? Modeling for the store is helping my granddaughter and I have nothing to lose. We were very happy on the day of the shooting. I’m very old and all that I care about is to be happy,” He says. What. A. Legend. The photos will make your day.

2. The daily routines of famous writers

This was shared by the gorgeous Bianca Bigwords on her Facebook page… and it made me want to have a bourbon and a cigarette and to write, write, write. Never mind I don’t smoke and hate bourbon. It made me wish I had a cottage on an island, uninterrupted stretches of time and a long-suffering wife who left trays of food outside my door. Writing seems so romantic, but  sometimes it’s just a killer exercise in self-discipline.

3. How worrying about math hurts your brain

So it turns out math can trigger an anxiety reaction that is very similar to the way pain looks in the brain. I found this so interesting because I myself suffer from a little math anxiety – my brain pretty much goes blank when faced with a mathematical problem and the harder I try to concentrate and think about it, the more my brain blanks and stalls and the more worried I get that I’m taking too long. Calculating someone’s change in the supermarket was torturous for me, I felt so incompetent and upset. I can spell just about any word in the world, but can’t multiply anything to save myself.

4. Hillary’s next move

Hillary Clinton said many months ago that if Obama was elected for a second term, she would not continue in her post as Secretary of State. It remains to be seen if she’ll run in 2012 (although she denies it, she may just change her mind) and I found this little insight in the New York Times into what’s next for her so fascinating. I’m an American politics tragic and find Hillary to be a little bit of a hero for me. Super intelligent and kicking ass for women all over the world. She reveals her favourite TV show, and it’s pretty surprising!

5. PND – It’s not always black and white

Last week was post and antenatal depression awareness week, and lots of bloggers shared stories of their experiences. One of my favourite bloggers, Emma from Mind your Mum, wrote so eloquently about how depression and postnatal depression is viewed in Japan – that it is a community issue and that when one person is suffering, it should be the responsibility of all to come together to support them. Their definition of an individual illness such as depression is “one’s heart is ill with a cold” to help describe the importance of depression’s medical aspect.

“It was explained to me as, No war against forces unseen and without title are won alone.  If the soul of the mother next to you is not in harmony and happiness, then there is unrest among all souls around her. This is considered a community issue, as the happiness and harmony of the group is valued higher than ones individual happiness. If one is unhappy, all are unhappy.”