Category Archives: Project Reverb

Reverb14: Day One

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reverb14withtextThis is my third year doing Reverb. It’s a great way to reflect on the year that’s coming to a close, to contemplate what I’ve learned and experienced, and to begin to consider where I’d like to focus my time, energy, and effort in the new year. This year, I’ll be responding to prompts from Project Reverb and Reverb14, hosted by my soul sister Kat McNally.

Project Reverb Prompt: Where did you start 2014?

To respond to this prompt, I got out my journal, read the entry from 1-1-14, found myself literally where I started the year. I wrote that I felt sure a big shift was happening in my life. We were getting a new puppy and I was starting yoga teacher training, so for sure a change was coming. Sam was sick and we still didn’t know why.

I had spent the day before decluttering my office, a big project I’d committed to complete over the winter break, to start the new year with an environment that represented more accurately the practice I was doing there, to claim the space. “I couldn’t get rid of some things — letters from Chris [my brother] and mom, the sweater Grandma knit, the collection of nicknacks I’d always imagined in our mountain cabin that now could go in our beach house [the dreamed of second home], love notes from Eric, dog collars and puppy teeth, Little D [Dexter’s favorite toy], old picture prints and negatives, so many books.” Some things I still couldn’t let go of, but other things were easy to let go, “a box of my writing from graduate school, some even older writing, all bad, me trying but not knowing my own voice, spending more time selecting font for the titles.”

I had gone to my favorite yoga teacher Sarada’s New Years Eve class the night before. “We wrote on a piece of paper what we wanted to let go of and what we wanted to invite, and they would burn it later in a ceremonial fire. “I wrote I wanted to let go of anxiety, fear of suffering … I invited love and joy, ease.”

Reverb14 Prompt: What can you say right now with certainty?

I contemplated this prompt for a long time, because part of me wants to answer that there is nothing I know for sure. And yet, the more I thought about it, I could admit there were somethings I was certain about.

  • I want to be here, want to keep trying.
  • I am a writer — this is my path, who I am, who I always have been.
  • Starting is easier than I thought. I imagined all these obstacles, but all you really have to do is take one tiny step.
  • Transformation is harder than I thought. It takes a lot of time and effort, especially when you are working with habits and ways of being that are old, sticky and deep.
  • Becoming myself and being my own best friend is my most important work.
  • I am not in control. I assume I am responsible, that whatever is happening is my fault and I need to fix it, but that’s not always true.
  • Impermanence is real, change is constant. Learning to be okay with that brutal truth is crucial.
  • Numbing out doesn’t work.
  • Only I can save myself, but thankfully there’s lots of help and support available to me.
  • The more you practice being open, the more your heart breaks.
  • I generate my own suffering.
  • There’s a path that offers a way out of that suffering.
  • I can trust myself.
  • I am embodied boundlessness.
  • Living against cultural norms and expectation is difficult and at times painful.
  • You can’t save others, you can only love them.
  • I love to read almost more than I love to write.
  • You never stop missing someone you loved and lost. Never ever ever.
  • Laughter really is the best medicine.
  • I am allowed to rest, to feel what I feel.
  • I don’t need to apologize for or be afraid of who I am.

Something Good

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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.