1. In Praise of the Comfort Zone on Scoutie Girl. Something I’ve thought about every time I read something about how you should be pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone. So glad someone finally wrote this.
2. 27 Lessons I’ve Learned From (Almost) Five Years of Biz from VioletMinded Media.
3. How To Complete Your Creative Masterpiece Without Quitting Your Day Job from Fast Company.
4. Build a $300 underground greenhouse for year-round gardening from Tree Hugger. I would totally do this if we had a bigger yard.
5. your daily rock : surprise them with your presence.
6. 14 Ways to Tick off a Writer. I know this is supposed to be funny, but it actually makes me really sad.
7. I’m kind of obsessed with tiny homes. I already live in a small house (1080 square feet), so don’t want to live full time in a smaller one, but would love to have my very own writing cabin/guest cottage within walking distance of my bigger house. Something like these spaces: Micro-community of tiny homes flourishes on rehabilitated vacant lot on Tree Hugger, or 11 Tiny Homes That Will Make You Want To Live A Simpler Life, or even a design like Clever cubbies augment tiny 240 sq. ft. NYC apartment.
8. Dinh Truong Giang, an amazing origami artist.
9. Why do you want to lose weight? from Jamie Mendell.
10. Tea and Red Lipstick with Rachel Cole, an interview with Rachel on The Gift of Writing.
11. Good stuff from Zen Habits: Finding Focus and How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, & Love Letting Go.
12. Good stuff from Jonathan Fields: Black Friday, Green Planet? and Label Yourself.
13. What would Love do? from Alexandra Franzen.
14. A really interesting offer from the Voice Bureau, INFJ Business, a new digital course.
15. I want to take a nap on this couch.
16. Wisdom from Cigdem Kobu,
The end of the year is a threshold — a passageway from the past
into the future. An opportunity to stop and listen to yourself, to
hear what your heart is really yearning for, to allow yourself to
ask for what you really need, and to find your way back home —
always to yourself.
17. edible rooms: warm lima bean salad with roasted yams and wilted kale a recipe on SF Girl by Bay.
18. Gratitude on Walking on My Hands.
19. Savannah Making Headlines! on Life, Love & Laundry. Pictures of the cutest little girl who has Mitochondrial Disease and loves to dress up in the raddest costumes.
20. New (to me) music from Ruarri Joseph.
and
I love the chorus for this last one: “Well we love and we lose but we need and we choose anyway.”
21. Be Friends with Failure on Doodle Alley.
22. Good stuff from Elephant Journal: Wake Up Your Authentic Self, and 7 Yoga Teacher Disconnects, and 10 Signs you’re ready for Yoga Teacher training, and How To Find Yourself, When You’ve Lost Yourself.
23. Stray dog accompanies street musician on Dog Heirs.
24. More beauty than our eyes can bear, a beautiful quote shared by A Design So Vast.
25. Good stuff from Seth Godin: What do we get when we give to a good cause?, and It probably looks higher from up there, and Speaking in public: two errors that lead to fear.
26. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,
A few words about steadfastness: are you?
If you know what you love, if you know what you want to feel, are you steadfast about it? Do you wake up in the morning remembering it, remembering yourself, aligning yourself like a compass to your true north, regardless of whatever else is happening. Or whomever else.
If it’s the holidays, do you say oh what the hell or do you say, yes, even now. Even this. Even today. Especially today.
It’s a practice, being steadfast with what you love, but most especially, with yourself. I keep remembering this (and as I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter how often you forget, only that you remember. Again and again. Practice remembering. That’s steadfastness itself!). Hear the song you most want to sing to and for and of yourself. Let yourself come back, come back.
27. From Positively Present Picks list: Finish What You Started: 4 Tips to Effectively See Your Projects Through and Snowflakes and Snow Crystals, a Flickr set, “macro shots of natural snowflakes, snow and hoarfrost crystals.”
28. Good stuff from Becoming Minimalist: A Simple, Helpful Guide to Overcome Consumerism and Want to Find Your Life Passion? Start by Simplifying Your Life.
29. Chinese Families with All Their Stuff In A Single Photo By Huang Qingjun on Bored Panda.
30. Wisdom from Tama J. Kieves on Facebook,
Overwhelm does not come from too much to do. It comes from lack of clarity. When you’re clear—you know you don’t need to do everything. You just have to do the right thing. The right thing is always the one step you feel guided to do right now.
31. Grateful December from Meghan Genge.
32. A Simple Year, “12 months of guided simplicity.” If I were still taking ecourses, (I’m no longer allowing myself, need to move from being a student to being the teacher), I would definitely sign up for this.
32. Wisdom from Kute Blackson on Facebook,
As you embrace your quirks, flaws, idiosyncrasies. A magical freedom will be yours. The freedom to be all of yourself.
33. bentlily by Samantha Reynolds, Today’s poem: This is what poetry is,
Poetry is the parade
for the gorgeous rubble of memories
that is buried
day after day
by a fresh falling
of moments
so few cute or sad enough
to remember
like this morning
when your dad asked you
if every animal in the book
was a hippopotamus
and you laughed until
you ran out of breath
and announced
I’m having too much fun
we write them trophies
these flutters of time
we pin them up with words
we take their invisibleness
and make it immortal
this is what poetry is
not an observation of profound things
but the hooking
of what would otherwise
blow away.
34. Reverb13, three different options if you are looking for prompts: #reverb13 hosted by Kat McNally (two of the prompts in this set were written by me), Project Reverb, and Reverb 2013 hosted by Besottment.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 