Even if I haven't been posting much here, I've been busy. I've managed to keep the resolution of posting daily at Vancouver Daily Photo. Yay for resolutions! (In fact, I've managed to keep all three of my resolutions so far - a first for me.)
And, drum roll please, today Amber Strocel (who I've mentioned before here) has been kind enough to let me guest-post for her fabulous "Crafting My Life" series on her blog at Strocel.com. If you like what you see there, she's also launching a Crafting My Life e-course about living with intention, which promises to be seventeen kinds of awesome.
Now, I'm off to find something to get rid of today.
Showing posts with label Amber Strocel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amber Strocel. Show all posts
13 January 2011
01 November 2010
Things I've Learned - October Review
So October kicked my ass. It knocked me down emotionally and physically. It was a hell of a thirty-one day stretch.
I spent more time than I would've liked doing the angry cry. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. And I crossed things out and scribbled out entire lines in my notebook. And I hit the delete button on this blog a lot. But what survived the edits is, while respectful of people who might not appreciate our interactions splashed all over my little corner of the internet here, a pretty good distillation of my insights and struggles this month.
So, October then:
I learned about the power of muscle memory. Sadly not in the service of improving my tennis backhand, but in finally recognizing the backhanded way the past can mess with the present. And I learned how the power of that insight has improved my parenting, my patience, and The Imp's reactions to my reactions immeasurably.
I had the plague aka The Cold Virus of Doom That Would Not Die Or Go Away Ever. Or maybe it was just my body's physical interpretation of what was happening emotionally. The fact that neither HWSNBN nor The Imp have gotten sick despite how ridiculously ill I've been for almost three weeks makes me lean toward the latter, frankly. But what I lost in productivity this month, I've gained in quiet introspection and a silent sense of reclaiming my confidence in my decisions.
I took my forty year old boobs in for a screening mammogram. They may be saggy, shrinking, and occasionally leaky, but they are not harbouring anything that will try and kill me. So that's good.
I missed Blissdom Canada, but I got to host the cookie-bearing Karen Humphrey on her way through Vancouver as she headed to what, by all accounts, was seventeen kinds of awesome. So I ate cookies and watched the Blissdom stream on twitter and tried not to die of envy.
I'm marginally more aware of what to do with pumpkins. We carved jack-o'-lanterns. We roasted pumpkin seeds. We trick-or-treated in our neighbourhood's shops, and The Imp made me proud by saying thank you every time someone dropped something in his bucket. He didn't really get the whole "trick or treat" thing, but he knew all about "thank you." Heart: swell.
I was bowled over by the generosity of my peers. I put out the call for donation items for a BC Cancer Inspiration Gala silent auction, and the call was answered and then some. The Gala was very successful, raising a record $2.69 million for lymphoma research at the BC Cancer Agency. And I'm told by someone who was there that the basket we contributed to the silent auction was a hot item and went for well over its value. I am prouder than I can express to be a part of this amazing community.
And I learned that maybe, just maybe, it would be okay if every now and then I gave myself a little bit more credit. It wasn't until I saw the comments on my blog post about the silent auction basket that it even occurred to me that I had made a valuable contribution too, by pulling it all together. Which correlates with a tendency I have in general to discount my own abilities and achievements. While I don't want to get carried away with how awesome I am, it's probably okay if I stop and recognize my own efforts once in a while.
This post is part of Amber Strocel's monthly review linkup.
I spent more time than I would've liked doing the angry cry. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. And I crossed things out and scribbled out entire lines in my notebook. And I hit the delete button on this blog a lot. But what survived the edits is, while respectful of people who might not appreciate our interactions splashed all over my little corner of the internet here, a pretty good distillation of my insights and struggles this month.
So, October then:
I learned about the power of muscle memory. Sadly not in the service of improving my tennis backhand, but in finally recognizing the backhanded way the past can mess with the present. And I learned how the power of that insight has improved my parenting, my patience, and The Imp's reactions to my reactions immeasurably.
I had the plague aka The Cold Virus of Doom That Would Not Die Or Go Away Ever. Or maybe it was just my body's physical interpretation of what was happening emotionally. The fact that neither HWSNBN nor The Imp have gotten sick despite how ridiculously ill I've been for almost three weeks makes me lean toward the latter, frankly. But what I lost in productivity this month, I've gained in quiet introspection and a silent sense of reclaiming my confidence in my decisions.
 |
| Photo by Gwendolyn Floyd taken at this year's Northern Voice conference back in May. You know you're at the start of a great friendship when you can ask someone you've met like twice to take a picture of your breasts and it's not weird at all. |
I took my forty year old boobs in for a screening mammogram. They may be saggy, shrinking, and occasionally leaky, but they are not harbouring anything that will try and kill me. So that's good.
I missed Blissdom Canada, but I got to host the cookie-bearing Karen Humphrey on her way through Vancouver as she headed to what, by all accounts, was seventeen kinds of awesome. So I ate cookies and watched the Blissdom stream on twitter and tried not to die of envy.
I'm marginally more aware of what to do with pumpkins. We carved jack-o'-lanterns. We roasted pumpkin seeds. We trick-or-treated in our neighbourhood's shops, and The Imp made me proud by saying thank you every time someone dropped something in his bucket. He didn't really get the whole "trick or treat" thing, but he knew all about "thank you." Heart: swell.
I was bowled over by the generosity of my peers. I put out the call for donation items for a BC Cancer Inspiration Gala silent auction, and the call was answered and then some. The Gala was very successful, raising a record $2.69 million for lymphoma research at the BC Cancer Agency. And I'm told by someone who was there that the basket we contributed to the silent auction was a hot item and went for well over its value. I am prouder than I can express to be a part of this amazing community.
And I learned that maybe, just maybe, it would be okay if every now and then I gave myself a little bit more credit. It wasn't until I saw the comments on my blog post about the silent auction basket that it even occurred to me that I had made a valuable contribution too, by pulling it all together. Which correlates with a tendency I have in general to discount my own abilities and achievements. While I don't want to get carried away with how awesome I am, it's probably okay if I stop and recognize my own efforts once in a while.
This post is part of Amber Strocel's monthly review linkup.
03 May 2010
Things I've Learned - April 2010
I am often inspired by Amber Strocel's writing at strocel.com. Every month she puts together a review of what she learned during the previous month. What a fantastic exercise in recognizing your trials and triumphs on a regular basis - a sort of personal inventory-taking. So I am unabashedly copying her with my own look back today.
Things I learned in April:
1) How important exercise is to my emotional wellbeing. After exercising almost daily in March, getting back into a routine of good self-care, the days that I missed in April really drove it home for me how much regular activity has a positive impact on my outlook. Action begets action: when I'm taking the time to exercise, I'm getting more done in all areas of my life.
2) That I'd forgotten how great riding a bicycle is. I feel like a teenager again, pedaling my way through the streets of Vancouver. And I'm ecstatic to model a healthy, active, eco-friendly lifestyle for The Imp. I actually resent having to drive my car now.
3) That connecting with other moms in person is always a good time. Also, green shoes!
4) That if I blog regularly, I'm more productive. For several months, I didn't write anything in this space. I always felt like there were more urgent things that needed doing, that time to blog was a luxury I couldn't afford. But the not-writing had me mentally stuck, so most of the other things didn't get done anyway. Now that I'm blogging more regularly, I'm more productive at work, and more patient in parenting. And apparently, others like that I'm blogging too!
5) That my love for good food isn't just about eating, but about creating and sharing.
6) I love taking photos. Love. I'm not creating art (far from it), and I have a lot to learn from a technical perspective, but following through on my commitment to myself to post a photo of Vancouver every single day has made me ridiculously happy. I've especially enjoyed being more aware of and engaged with my surroundings, and finding things I never noticed before. Researching links for the paragraph I write to accompany each photo has me discovering a ton about Vancouver that I never learned in my 17 years of living here. And getting to photo locations by bicycle kills two birds with one stone. Photos + exercise = a really good use of an hour a day.
7) That I had no idea how spoiled I was with regard to The Imp's sleep habits, which went all to hell in the last few weeks with the introduction of the big boy bed. And I am a zombified version of myself as a result. Will happily accept toddler-sleep-inducing advice. At this point I'm on the hairy edge of locking him up in a wooden crate until he's old enough to leave home.
It's so easy with the busy-ness of living to forget to stop and look at what's been accomplished with all that activity. Do you ever take a step back and really look at the aggregate of all that daily "doing"? What have you learned this month?
I've been shortlisted for vancouvermom.ca's Best Vancouver Mom Blogger. I'd be ever so grateful if you'd swing by the voting page, tick my name, and click submit. Thanks!
Things I learned in April:
1) How important exercise is to my emotional wellbeing. After exercising almost daily in March, getting back into a routine of good self-care, the days that I missed in April really drove it home for me how much regular activity has a positive impact on my outlook. Action begets action: when I'm taking the time to exercise, I'm getting more done in all areas of my life.
2) That I'd forgotten how great riding a bicycle is. I feel like a teenager again, pedaling my way through the streets of Vancouver. And I'm ecstatic to model a healthy, active, eco-friendly lifestyle for The Imp. I actually resent having to drive my car now.
3) That connecting with other moms in person is always a good time. Also, green shoes!
4) That if I blog regularly, I'm more productive. For several months, I didn't write anything in this space. I always felt like there were more urgent things that needed doing, that time to blog was a luxury I couldn't afford. But the not-writing had me mentally stuck, so most of the other things didn't get done anyway. Now that I'm blogging more regularly, I'm more productive at work, and more patient in parenting. And apparently, others like that I'm blogging too!
5) That my love for good food isn't just about eating, but about creating and sharing.
6) I love taking photos. Love. I'm not creating art (far from it), and I have a lot to learn from a technical perspective, but following through on my commitment to myself to post a photo of Vancouver every single day has made me ridiculously happy. I've especially enjoyed being more aware of and engaged with my surroundings, and finding things I never noticed before. Researching links for the paragraph I write to accompany each photo has me discovering a ton about Vancouver that I never learned in my 17 years of living here. And getting to photo locations by bicycle kills two birds with one stone. Photos + exercise = a really good use of an hour a day.
7) That I had no idea how spoiled I was with regard to The Imp's sleep habits, which went all to hell in the last few weeks with the introduction of the big boy bed. And I am a zombified version of myself as a result. Will happily accept toddler-sleep-inducing advice. At this point I'm on the hairy edge of locking him up in a wooden crate until he's old enough to leave home.
It's so easy with the busy-ness of living to forget to stop and look at what's been accomplished with all that activity. Do you ever take a step back and really look at the aggregate of all that daily "doing"? What have you learned this month?
I've been shortlisted for vancouvermom.ca's Best Vancouver Mom Blogger. I'd be ever so grateful if you'd swing by the voting page, tick my name, and click submit. Thanks!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)