La pausa, or "the pause" in Spanish, is a concept used in football to control the game's pace by stopping the ball. In the fast-paced world of professional football, having the ability to hold back and wait for the ideal moment to pass the ball, almost as if you were taking a breath, is rare but extremely effective. You can slow down the game by pausing it before making your next choice. It requires courage to play with pausa because the game around you never stops, tempting you to keep pace.

However, this subtle yet gutsy ability to stay alert in hectic game settings sets good or great teams apart from the greatest. Life is generally chaotic — from our career responsibilities and personal relationships to complex politics and climate change. If there were a way to control or slow down processing these facets of life, we'd all be sipping that juice. This juice is known as la pausa, but unlike in football, when only a select few players possess it, I think we are more than capable of developing our pausa in life.

Each person will have a different manifestation of what pausa looks like in reality. For me, it means reflecting on my experiences on a daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis; saying no when I am overburdened with my other commitments in other situations. In high school, college, and graduate school, I struggled to practice my pausa; nevertheless, like the adage "progress, not perfection," each attempt has given me more insight and appreciation for my experiences.

What aspects of pausa do you already incorporate into your life? What are your thoughts on this concept if you don't?

Book Talk📚

This week I finished reading Attached by Amir Levine. Because I don't believe anyone fully fits into any box, I found it difficult to accept the authors' repeated classification of people into major personality types (secure, anxious, and avoidant). Although Levine acknowledges this, he organizes the book based on those boxes! It would be better, in my opinion, if those boxes were just qualities and the language that enabled our discourse had the following structure: "those who mostly display secure traits" instead of "secure individuals." I hope my people-with-qualities distinction makes sense. Besides the boxing, I found it really cool to reflect on my relationships with people and myself. 7/10, I advise reading it and taking the quizzes because they give you a chance to reflect.

Blooper Reel 🎞️

• I registered for my LA County library card this week, which comes with the following perks! Do you have or use your local library card?
• Arsenal is ending Matchweek 3 in 1st place, being the last team with a perfect start to the season. I'm really hoping we can keep it going.

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Best,
Awoe ✌🏾