October's Smartsiez

Oh hi, full blown autumn! 

You caught me by surprise, I actually didn't expect you to be so beautiful 💗 

OK, cheesy things aside, as much as I loved the past days' weather, I think I'm ready for the rainy, chilly, stay-inside days. 

I have so many pending me-time projects that reaaaally require bad weather for me to avoid the, you know... FOMO 😕. 

Speaking of FOMO, FOND, and other (modern) fears, this month on Smartsiez, I have a pretty awesome and (for me) life-changing podcast + episode to recommend. Along with...

• a beautiful love-themed TV Show (a long awaited one 💗), 
• some much needed advice for women in particular, 
• the life story of an unconventional empress (Empress Elisabeth of Austria), 
• a heartbreaking but empowering documentary about a troubled, unlucky teenager and her super-heroines (women power ftw ✌), 
• an insta account to follow for fun & geeky facts, 
• the neverending mistery around black holes,
• two pumpkin goodies 
• aaaand the skincare hall of fame of 2019 :) 

Sooo. Let me begin with... the brilliant, funny and kind Alie Ward and her Ologies podcast. They are such a wonderful companion for when I’m on the way, I just have to always keep reminding myself that laughing out loudly on the subway miiight trigger some weird looks around me, so I’m trying hard to keep it low 😁. 
The episode that blew me away (and probably changed my life) the most from the Ologies-series is “Fearology”, with Mary Poffenroth, expert in the biological and sociological effects of fear. And also, a fellow nerd, cute and funny. By the way, Fearology is a real world, what? 😄 And if you're about to say... meh, I'm not 5 anymore, I don't do fear, what if I told you fear, stress and anxiety are the same thing, as far as the body is concerned? 
We're not taught in school how to deal with fear, although it's one of the 4 basic human emotions (happiness, sadness, fear/surprise, anger/disgust). We all face fear in one way or another regularly, be it factual or fictional (the latter being more likely). It puts our body into a constant "fight or flight" mode, as if you were right now facing a bear (even if you're just anxious about an upcoming presentation, how messed up is that?). The body shuts down non-essential functions (think cellular regeneration, digestion) and all the resources go towards the current situation in order to get you out of it. 
But what if you actually almost never get out, and you are always in this state of alert? Hello, digestive problems, skin issues, insomnia, heart irregularities, and a whole lot of other fun stuff. That's why you need a plan of attack, and for me that starts with understanding the repercussions on the body and then some mind tricks on how to actually hijack this messy situation the modern human is in. I particularly liked the categorization part ("humans love putting shit into boxes 😄"), trying to figure out if your fear stems from 1. you not being good enough, 2. you not being in control, and then acting on it.
Before I summarize the whole talk here (which will be nowhere as effective as hearing it would be), I truly recommend anyone to listen to this 2-parts episode, which comes with some really good input on stress/anxiety solutions (along with some mindblowing facts and equally serious giggles).
Also, Mary's Instagram is full of daily relatables and reminders, such as this one. (you're welcome 😉)

This one is a triple recommendation, as I've been a long-time fan of Modern Love, a beautiful, inspiring column in the New York Times, going back 15 years already. They are essays of love or redemption (mostly true stories). 5 years ago it was turned into a podcast, where actresses or actors would read the essays with their own interpretation. Some of my favorites include: A Heart Of Gold (with Minnie, the pet tortoise), Maternal Wisdom (5 Pounds' Worth) (read by Gillian Anderson, a wonderful story about maternity) and A Heart Outrun (read by Colin Farrell 💗 always giving me In Bruges flashbacks).

The TV-Show (on Amazon Prime) exceeded my expectations. 8 beautifully made episodes, adapted from the column's essays. The cast is exceptional and the stories are all emotional and heart-filling (I bawled my eyes out at the first one...)

Sure, mindless scrolling and browsing through stories is fine. Mildly entertaining, sometimes inspirational (especially the nom-noms and the travel tips 😀). But getting also smart facts between them, some sciencey news, some personal growth tips? Gimme! Curiositydotcom the insta account and their website have an already cool collection of those. Never. Stop. Learning. 😊

Ugh, this one is heavy. Unbelievable, a crime/drama mini-series split into 8 parts, on Netflix. I did not really want to watch it, especially because it's based on a true story. The first episode is difficult to watch, incredibly frustrating and heart-wrenching... But it ended up being one of the best series I've ever watched.

The series tackles the neverending "victim had her fault" issue and the very different angles upon it. The ending is a good, hopeful one (something useful to know ahead) and also gives so many lessons in empathy, trust and girlpower (hell yeah 🙂), along with an exquisite writing and acting. Serious Sharp Objects and True Detective vibes.

A troubled teenager, having lived with several foster parents in her life, goes through a harrowing ordeal and not having the means to deal with it, money-wise, support-wise, psychological-wise, is left alone to face the aftermath. Meanwhile, in another state, her heroines get their hands on a similar case and the way they handle it is just... such a powerful slap on the face of their predecessors. Also heart-warming. What follows is an inspiring road of (self-)discoveries with awaited hurdles, but moving talks and connections along the way. 

Speaking of women... A woman's greatest enemy? A lack of time to herself. The author says... 

"(...) a colleague suggested I read a book about the daily rituals of great artists. But instead of offering me the inspiration I’d hoped for, what struck me most about these creative geniuses – mostly men – was not their schedules and daily routines, but those of the women in their lives.

Their wives protected them from interruptions; their housekeepers and maids brought them breakfast and coffee at odd hours; their nannies kept their children out of their hair. Martha Freud not only laid out Sigmund’s clothes every morning, she even put the toothpaste on his toothbrush. Marcel Proust’s housekeeper, Celeste, not only brought him his daily coffee, croissants, newspapers and mail on a silver tray, but was always on hand whenever he wanted to chat, sometimes for hours. Some women are mentioned only for what they put up with, like Karl Marx’s wife – unnamed in the book – who lived in squalor with the surviving three of their six children while he spent his days writing at the British Museum."

This is what's been going on for so many years, and we are just now, slowly, getting out of it. It's even uncomfortable for women, funny enough. It was "found that many women don’t feel that they deserve long stretches of time to themselves, the way men do".

I could speak about it for days, but the important takeaway and food for thought here is...

"And it strikes me: it’s not that women haven’t had the talent to make their mark in the world of ideas and art. They’ve never had the time."

So, for all my fellow undiscovered talents out there: take. the. time. 🙂

One of the first things that sparked my fascination when I moved to Vienna was the story of Elisabeth, the Empress of Austria, and her unconventional (at times scandalous) way of being. It's not a happy story, it's a story of a woman born ahead of her time, a reminder that we're lucky to live in these times where such stories are no longer happening in the civilized world. We can now focus on making it possible also on those parts of the world, where girls and women are not yet (entirely) free to live their lives as they wish.

I was touched how Sisi (Elisabeth's cute nickname) wrote, after meeting young Franz-Josef, her soon to be husband: “I love the emperor. If only he were not the emperor”. She was not made for the royal life. She came from a liberal family, "loved nature and spent her summers in the comfortable family mansion on the banks of Lake Starnberg south of Munich.". Recent biographers have also drawn attention to her active mind and love of literature and poetry, especially for the works of poet Heinrich Heine. She was obsessed about staying fit and exercised a lot (respect), very much to the shock of every other royal (especially women 😔) in the palace.

She loved traveling and used it to as a pretext to escape the stifling atmosphere of Vienna and the suffocating court etiquette.  

She loved her kids and tried to make her life as meaningful as possible, through art, traveling, being close to the people, especially hungarians after she and Franz-Josef became Empress and Emperor of Hungary as well. 

The viennese museum I like the most and still recommend to everyone visiting Vienna, is the Hofburg Palace, with Sisi's appartments. It's beautifully made and you can still feel her soul, her mark and anguish there.

I heavily reduced the amount of newsletters and marketing crap that used to land in my mailbox (that's what you get Anca for signing up for everything! Stop the FOMO! 😁). But one newsletter I will not let go of is the Quartz newsletter. It gives me a daily summary of the day before, short and catchy (unlike Smartsiez, but hey, told you they want to be unleashed).

Anyways. One recent Quartz Obsession I liked was about black holes. The things that looked somewhat dreamy in the great Interstellar (by the way, did you know... that the pictures of the black hole they produced for the movie are actually being used now by real scientists to further investigate them?).

I can definitely add here the two-parts Ologies Cosmology episode, which was also awesome and made me fangirl hard about astrophysicist Katie Mack (she rocks).

As Albert Einstein said, Black holes are where God divided by zero. (but did he though? 😁)

OK, transitioning back to lighter stuff here, I feel like I went a bit overboard. Let's talk food!

Tis the season for some pumpkin deliciousness 😊 I love squash soups and I recently discovered how awesome it pairs with crispy sage leaves, crumbled goat cheese and pumpkin seed oil, so this is my go to fall soup (recipe here).

Other than that, I'll have a pumpkin spice latte every day of fall, thank you 😊.

Skincare has turned into a super important and complicated maze (or is it just me? 😵), so it's good to have this kind of yearly awards, to keep yourself up to date with what's worth turning your attention to/through your money at. 

That is, if you have certain skin issues to address. 

If not, you lucky bastard. 😑

Thaaat's it then. Wrapping up this month's collection of interesting stuff I stumbled upon and I want to re-read/listen/see sometime.

I'm going for a hot fresh mint tea and some warm soup now. Rainy days ordered? Rainy days are here (be always careful what you wish for 😜).