Category Archives: Kat McNally

Something Good

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1. Feast, the latest and best from the amazing Rachel Cole. I can’t wait.

2. Anne Lamott on Grief, Grace, and Gratitude on Brain Pickings.

3. Growing out my grey hair. This is not brave.

4. A million invisible threads from Andrea Scher.

5. Office Hours with Austin Kleon, and writing advice from Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose

6. Fun stuff I’m doing on the blog in December: December Reflections with Susannah Conway and Reverb14 with Kat McNally.

7. Wisdom from Virginia Woolf (by way of Positively Present Picks),

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

8. Overwhelmed & Rushed? Do a Stress Assess from Zen Habits, (also by way of Positively Present Picks).

9. Good stuff from MindBodyGreen: How Highly Sensitive People Can Learn To Be Vulnerable, and Roasted Cabbage & Cauliflower Salad With Peanut Dressing, and Why You Can Be A Feminist & Still Struggle With An Eating Disorder.

10. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook: Are you allowed to exist?, and Be careful of your families!, and Why aim so small?

11. Hands, Soul, and the Crack in Everything from Guinevere Gets Sober.

12. Men And Women Were Asked Why They Really Divorced. Here’s What They Said from Huffington Post.

13. South American Stray Follows Extreme Racing Team and Wins Forever Home in Sweden.

14. Infographic: This Is More Or Less How Every Kind Of TV Show Plays Out.

15. My American Han.

16. Good stuff from Elephant Journal: Self-Care for the Highly Sensitive Person, and Why I want to Delete Half of my Facebook Friends during a National Crisis.

17. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,

Emotional eating is an attempt to avoid the absence (of love, comfort, knowing what to do) when we find ourselves in the desert of a particular moment, feeling, situation. In the process of resisting the emptiness, in the act of turning away from our feelings, of trying and trying again to lose the same twenty, fifty, eighty pounds, we ignore what could utterly transform us. But when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we evoke that in us that is not a story, not caught in the past, not some old image of ourselves. We evoke divinity itself. And in doing so, we can hold emptiness, old hurts, fear in our cupped hands and behold our missing hearts.

18. How to be Ultra Spiritual (funny) – with JP Sears.

19. This Housekeeper Is In For A Surprise Once She Finds Out Whose House She Is Cleaning. This is why I would want to be super rich, so I could do this for people.

20. Wisdom from Jessica Patterson,

In yoga, we often study the obstacle vs. seeking a goal. So, if we want to understand gratitude and generosity, we must also be willing to look at what prevents us from being either.

21. Box Of Love Letters Reveals Grandfather Didn’t Escape WWII With ‘Everyone’ from NPR.

22. How to improve your gut health from Kris Carr.

23. Wisdom from Prince Ea,

People waiting on God to come back and fix the world. Truth is, God’s not coming back. God never left; he exists inside of every cell in your body. Only thing stopping you from realizing this … is the person you think you are.

24. On The Subject Of Cultivating Empathy on Terrible Minds.

25. Two new blog posts from Christina Rosalie, Patience is the destination and Say yes to life and embrace it wherever it is found.

26. nowhere to hide from Sas Petherick.

27. Wisdom from Jack Gilbert, “It is no surprise that danger and suffering surround us. What astonishes is the singing.”

28. The Holy Yes from Meghan Genge.

29. free your shooting star from Marc Johns.

30. Wisdom from Seth Godin: Stumbling your way to greatness, and The problem with problems, and The fear of freedom.

31. Truthbomb #677 from Danielle LaPorte, “Do you need to work that hard?” And Truthbomb #678, “Your freedom is good for all of us.”

32. Five ways to be more lucky in life from Life is Limitless.

33. Note from the Universe,

If you had chosen an easier path and been born knowing how beautiful, deserving, and important you truly are, Jill, by this time you’d probably be worth billions of dollars, have millions of friends, and own businesses around the world. But then… you wouldn’t be exactly who you now are. All in favor of keeping the Jill we know and love? It’s unanimous. Try it.

34. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel,

For years I was tethered there, believing my own voice when it repeated the refrain… be good be good be good.

That goodness meant being silent. It meant shaming my body. It meant ridicule, perfectionism, and strict guidelines. It meant softening myself, caging myself, making myself palatable. It meant rereading the status update seventeen thousand times, to make sure that it was as in offensive as possible. That goodness meant carefully curating my outward presentation to please others instead of curating the way that I want live when I am alone.

35. Good stuff from Be More With Less, Gratitude for 7 Things that are not on Sale and Tis the Season for More Joy & Less Clutter.

36. This Artist Spent 10 Years Carving A Giant Cave – Alone With His Dog on Bored Panda.

37. On Medium, 5 Things About Writing I Wish I’d Known 20 Years Ago and 5 Things About Writing I Wish I’d Known 20 Years Ago (Part 2).

38. Wisdom from Jamie Ridler, “I emptied a drawer thinking I was clearing out old clothes and realized I was coming face-to-face with my life and how it’s changed.”

Something Good

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Dadd's Gulch, image by Eric

Dadd’s Gulch, image by Eric

1. On Running a Web-based Business by Tammy Strobel.

2. Please ask yourself this question before you choose the “format” for your next product, service, art project, or heart project and How I met the love of my life. {A true story…about what happens when you say what is true} from Alexandra Franzen.

3. Wisdom from Jessica Patterson,

And real healing — of the body, the heart, the mind, and the soul — happens only when we are in the state of rest and digest. That is, when we show up and come into direct relationship with what is, we have a chance to heal into what and who we are really.

4. Good stuff from Bored Panda: 20+ Of The Best Packaging Designs Ever, and Japanese Flip Books Reveal Magical Stories With Negative Space and Secret Chambers, and Russian Miner Spends His Breaks Taking Photos Of Foxes In The Arctic Circle, and Goldfish Tea Bags Will Turn Your Teacup Into A Fishbowl.

5. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook: Time to Write, and Onward, and It Doesn’t Have to Be Easy.

6. Gross national happiness in Bhutan: the big idea from a tiny state that could change the world.

7. It is okay to need a lot of help, wisdom From Anne Lamott on Facebook.

8. The 8-hour rule is bunk: Why conventional wisdom about sleep is stressing us out on Salon.

9. On Doing the Work from Lisa Congdon.

10. sometimes happiness can only emerge from periods of unhappiness, wisdom from Justine Musk.

11. Mom lets her son pick his own outfit, and the results are awesome, especially this:

“For now we will just let him experiment and let him decide when he’s older what he wants,” says Dawn. “I feel like a great deal of the depression and hate in this world comes from children being raised to think who they are and how they feel is wrong, then they grow into broken, confused adults.” Dawn admits that when Kaige first expressed an interest in dressing like a girl, she was terrified — not because it bothered her, but because she feared the way the world would treat her child.

12. A Brief History Of Old Navy’s Troubled Relationship With Fat Women from xojane.

13. The Truth About Marriage, Monogamy & Long-Term Partnership on Elephant Journal.

14. 4 Surefire Ways To Make Your Partner Feel Loved on MindBodyGreen.

15. amy palko: talking about a revolution, an interview with Sas Petherick.

16. The Science Of Simplicity: Why Successful People Wear The Same Thing Every Day.

17. A farewell to Dr. Sophia Yin.

18. Oh, the irony from Kat McNally.

19. devotion (all the ways life gives fire) from lists and letters.

20. trusteeship & coffee art on Chookooloonks.

21. An open letter to Oprah, whose ‘The Life You Want’ tour asked me to work for free.

22. Creative Giant Podcast Episode Four: Become More Mindful with Susan Piver.

23. Burrs, rough edges & tangled mats of hair by Laurie Wagner.

24. Could female self-hatred be the real cause of autoimmune disease? from Sarah Wilson. This made so much sense to me, but many readers misunderstood, so she followed it up with “Female illness is not all in the mind” and 19 other things I’d like you to know about unreasoned e-blowouts.

25. One Hilarious Video Perfectly Sums Up a Big Problem With Western Humanitarianism.

26. 9 strategies for surviving the holidays with an open heart from Gemma Stone.

27. Defining the Well-fed Woman from Rachel Cole.

28. Being Small is the Greatest Escape by Stacy Morrison.

29. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts. Embracing the totality of your experience is one definition of having loving-kindness for yourself. Loving-kindness for yourself does not mean making sure you’re feeling good all the time—trying to set up your life so that you’re comfortable every moment. Rather, it means setting up your life so that you have time for meditation and self-reflection, for kindhearted, compassionate self-honesty. In this way you become more attuned to seeing when you’re biting the hook, when you’re getting caught in the undertow of emotions, when you’re grasping and when you’re letting go. This is the way you become a true friend to yourself just as you are, with both your laziness and your bravery. There is no step more important than this.

30. Wisdom from Gertrude Stein,

Everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.

31. We are All This Golden Retriever Spectacularly Bombing an Agility Test.

32. Interesting stuff about Amanda Palmer, There’s More To Asking Than Just Art (a book review), and The Art of Asking Why We Hate Amanda Palmer.

33. Ursula K. Le Guin’s fiery speech, and the overwhelming reaction to it.

34. Short animation describes what drug addiction is like. *sigh*

35. ‘If We Left, They Wouldn’t Have Nobody’ from Story Corps.

36. More wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance.

37. Less expensive options for a convertible desk: A Standing/Sitting Desk You Can Afford and Ikea’s New Desk Goes From Sitting To Standing With The Push Of A Button. Obviously I’m not the only one interested in this — look at how much this Kickstarter campaign earned!

38. Do great work. Live great lives. on Medium.

39. What Normal Looks Like on Huffington Post.

40. Groomer Shaves Homeless Dog. What She Found Underneath All That Hair Made My Eyes Tear Up.

41. 10 Great Privileges We Forget to Be Thankful For from Marc and Angel Hack Life. #5 isn’t true for me, but the rest certainly are, and I’m grateful.