A lush, Japanese-inspired garden. In the rushed world we lived in, with family and home and friends and work and traffic and civilian commitments, it is all too easy to get swept up in the activity and miss out on the actual ‘living’ part of living. 8 hours a day rush past, and soon 12 hours rush too, and then 24 hours, and before you know it you may feel like all you do is work-sleep-rinse-repeat and you can’t remember the last time you had a thought that wasn’t stimulated by a screen or a page. For reasons like this – humans need gardens. They may not know they need it, but they do. Especially if they think they don’t need it, they do. Find an outside space… every now and then… it doesn’t have to be elaborate or fancy. Just a patch of grass, or some flowers in a bed, or a tree. But do get outside and connect with the REAL world, away from abstractions and apparitions. Zen a bit. You can get back to the rush. You should. But life is a marathon, not a sprint, and you’ve gotta let the soul come up for a breath from time to time – or your legs won’t make it. This advice may be especially important to writers – as so much of our time and effort is spent wholly inside our own skulls. Get out enough, or that space won’t be healthy.