My friend Christopher made himself an acronym to live by (PAASH: P.E., Art, Admin, Study, Help) and I liked the idea so much I had to make my own. The general idea, as far as he described it, was to capture the things he does in any given day or week that make him feel like a whole person. If something feels off, he can take a look at the acronym and see what’s missing.
After a lot of messy note taking and backronymification I landed on CLEAR: Create, Learn, Embody, Act Up, Rest.
Create: make something with your hands, has to be tangible, no computer shit
Learn: engage the conspiracy string brain, read a book with a pencil in hand, take a class, listen to a podcast
Embody: move in any capacity, whether concerted exercise or rolling around on the floor like a pill bug
Act Up: engage in some form of activism, ideally connected to community, that pushes you outside your comfort zone
Rest: the hard one, zero input time, staring into space, lying on the ground, generally after lunch
They’re not so different, really, but I think it does add something to have to come up with your own. I’d be very curious to see other people’s down the line. Maybe we all, deep down, want the same five things out of a day. (There’s a thought: should it be limited to five letters? That’s just how these two examples shook out, but I see no reason to limit the parameters.)