this was a good week: john malkovich, leaping for joy & a month-long sabbatical

What a glorious week! Here's why:

• It was Marcus' birthday (45 -- big boy!), I met a friend I hadn't seen for a while for breakfast, and Alex asked me to go outside and photograph her leaping into the air during the golden hour. Really, it would've been hard to make this week better.

• I love this image and these words about the arrival of fall evenings. There's just something lovely about autumn dusks, isn't there?

• Photographer Sandro Miller recreated some of the most iconic photographs in history, using John Malkovich as his model. The result is weird and awesome.

• You guys know how much I love street art -- so it should come as no surprise that I could not be charmed by this more.

• Self-compassion should be everyone's jam.

• Speaking of self-compassion, in a weird twist of fate, my friend Erin Loechner wrote these lovely and kind words about slowing down. I say "weird," because ...

• ... even before I read that post, I had made the decision to take the month of October off from updating Chookooloonks. In the 10 years that Chookooloonks has been in existence, I've never taken more than 10 or so days off of blogging, so this is admittedly a little frightening for me. But there is so much going on offline for me in October (not the least of which is -- finally! -- the Limelight Sessions will be happening!), that it makes sense for me to cut myself some slack here on the site.

That said, it's not like I'm going to be completely away from the internet: I'll still be updating Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, so you can find me in all of those locations (and of course, I'd love to hear from you over there!). I'll return here on the site in full force on Monday, November 3rd.

Until then, keep looking for the light, and keep finding good on the internet every week. And if you ever find you're having a hard time doing that, here's a bonus shot of Alex leaping in golden light. Hopefully this will do the trick until I return.