#19: Framing What Matters

☀️ The Beauty of Introspection

Somehow, we’re already way past the halfway mark of 2025. For me, it always sparks a quiet pause: am I still building toward what matters? Or have I just been busy filling up the calendar?

Instead of rushing to set new goals or rewriting plans, I’ve been sitting with questions, not to judge myself, but to frame what deserves my time and energy for the months ahead. Maybe they’ll help you too:

1. What’s one thing I’ve been postponing that I actually care about?

2. What’s something I thought mattered in January that doesn’t feel as important now?

3. Where have I been consistent without even noticing?

4. Where have I been stuck, and why might that be?

5. Which relationships have grown this year, and which need more of me?

6. What’s a belief I’ve quietly updated or outgrown?

7. What moments have felt most like me so far this year?

8. What am I proud of that nobody else knows about?

9. If the rest of 2025 looked like my last month, how would I feel about it?

10. What small shift could make the biggest difference in the next six months?

Framing these questions isn’t about pressure or perfection. It’s about deciding what deserves your wall space, your calendar space, and your headspace for the rest of the year.

📖 3 Articles to Spark Your Curiosity

1. How to Hang Art Like a Pro
   What we put on our walls shapes how a space feels. This guide goes beyond hammer-and-nail tips, showing how height, spacing, and grouping can frame a room’s energy and meaning.
   → Read the guide on Studio McGee’s Blog ›

2. Lessons of Babel
   When communication splinters, understanding suffers. This essay reflects on the biblical Tower of Babel as a metaphor for our fractured ways of speaking, and asks what it would take to rebuild shared meaning.
   → Read the essay on The Hedgehog Review ›

3. The Golden Ratio: Myths vs. Maths
   We love to call it the formula for beauty, but does the golden ratio really deserve that reputation? This short video unpacks where truth ends and myth begins, and how we frame patterns we want to see in art and nature.
   → Read the article & Watch the video on Aeon ›

🗞️ 3 Headlines Worth Exploring

1. Late-Night TV Hits a Turning Point in the US
   Stephen Colbert’s Late-Night Show is canceled, and US networks are questioning whether the late‑night format even fits our fragmented, streaming‑first habits anymore.
   → Read on Morning Brew

2. The Untapped Power of Women’s Sports
   Brands are overlooking one of the biggest commercial and cultural opportunities today: investing in women’s sports. The audiences are growing, loyal, and ready. Why aren’t more marketers paying attention?
   → Read on Marketing Week

3. Aeneas: Google DeepMind’s Bold Step Forward
   DeepMind introduces Aeneas, a new model blending reasoning and creativity. It’s another signal of how fast AI is evolving, and how much framing matters when we decide what’s hype versus truly transformative.
   → Read on Google Blog

☀️ 3 Actions to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

1. Re‑arrange your space with intention
   Pick one corner of your home or workspace and completely rethink how it’s arranged. Switch up art, furniture, or even what’s displayed. Notice how a new frame changes how you feel in it.

2. Ask someone what they would cut or keep in your life
   A trusted friend, mentor, or colleague, invite them to look at your current projects or routines and tell you what feels essential and what feels like noise. Sit with their perspective before reacting.

3. Watch or read something you’d usually dismiss
   If you’re a sports skeptic, watch a tennis match. If you avoid late‑night TV, tune in. If you shy from math or art, watch a documentary on golden ratios. Step into a frame you’ve ignored and see what it adds.

⚡ 6 Quick Resources

💪📦 To rethink your packaging instincts:
A roundup of some really bad packaging designs, from misleading labels to baffling layouts, that’ll make you double‑check the next time you buy (or design) something.
→ See on 99designs

💪 To watch:
Dr. Joe Risser’s TEDx talk on mental toughness and the brain’s BDNF protein. Backed by decades of clinical research, his stories show how grit isn’t just mindset, but measurable, trainable, and transformative.
→ Watch on YouTube

🌍 To save for future travels:
A guide to Italy’s most beautiful small towns and villages, aka places that feel like living postcards, perfect for your next trip or just some daydream planning.
→ See the list on Lonely Planet

🥗 To check:
Which countries could feed themselves if they had to? This chart ranks 50 nations by self‑sufficiency in food production.
→ Explore on Visual Capitalist

✨ To invest (or just gawk):
The original Darth Vader lightsaber from A New Hope is up for auction. It’s a chance to own a slice of film history (if you have a galaxy‑sized budget).
→ Read on Gizmodo

🍳 To get immersed:
Chef Melissa Clark walks you through making a classic soufflé (Gruyère and Chive or Bittersweet Chocolate), step‑by‑step, with tips for that perfect, airy rise.
→ Watch on YouTube

🎲 This week’s wonderfully random corner of the internet 

🌳 Historical Tech Tree

Ever wondered what the history of human innovation would look on a map where all of them are interconnected? Well, this site maps thousands of years of inventions, discoveries, and breakthroughs as a branching timeline, from early tools to modern tech, so you can literally “scroll through” humanity’s progress.

Perfect for a late‑night rabbit hole (and for realizing how every idea builds on something before it).

📝 Word of the Week

Anastylosis (noun) – The reconstruction of a ruined monument using the original pieces.

A word born in architecture, but just as powerful in life: taking what’s left, what’s meaningful, and reframing it into something whole again — in projects, habits, even identities.

🧘‍♀️ Question of the Week for Introspection

If you had to “re‑frame” a habit, belief, or project in your life, what original pieces would you keep?

See you next Sunday! Until then, keep your eyes open, your questions big, and your sense of wonder alive.

Your curious internet friend,

Ruxandra