Category Archives: Reading

Something Good.

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It’s Monday, so it’s time for me to tell you something good.

Just a cute baby owl. That is all.

Friday Birthdays.  When your birthday is on a Friday, like mine was this year, there’s a universal rule that you get to celebrate the whole weekend. On Friday, a good friend took me to lunch, gave me a sweet gift (two actually, one was wrapped and the other was her telling me the nicest thing I’d ever done for her and how much it meant), lots of birthday wishes on Facebook (one of the top five reasons to have an account), one sweet email wishing me love and thanking me for a gift I had given that was “life-changing,” a present and phone call from my mom, and more presents from my aunt and boy (Eric made me a book with a secret compartment, so cool!).

Then on Saturday, another good friend took me to lunch and gave me a handmade gift (she’s an amazing artist, so even her cards are something special), and a phone call from my brother and another good friend.  Sunday morning, we found that the mail had been delivered late in the evening, so there was a package from my brother and nieces, and another card from a good friend who always says the nicest things, Sunday morning yoga, and lunch at Mount Everest Cafe, where our favorite waiter didn’t even ask us what we wanted to start, he simply brought us out a chai and a glass of Fat Tire as soon as we sat down.  It was an awesome birthday weekend.

Picture by Philip Bragg

Shantideva Quote: “If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?”

The Open Heart Project. I have a confession to make.  I have been struggling with my meditation practice lately.  Then I read about Susan Piver’s Open Heart Project on Jennifer Louden’s blog.  Susan Piver is a student of the Shambhala tradition, which is also where my meditation practice started, so to begin, she comes from a place I understand. She’s shared a series of videos, meditation instruction and guided meditations anywhere from 5 to 40 minutes.  Using these videos to focus my own practice has been so helpful.

Wishcasting Wednesday. This is something started by creative living coach and blogger, Jamie Ridler. She explains it this way: “What would happen if every week you made a wish? What magic might start to stir? Wishcasting Wednesday is a safe haven for wishes, a fertile field in which to plant wish seeds and have them witnessed and tended lovingly. It’s a place where magic begins.”  I am going to add this feature to my Wednesday blog posts.

A New Post from Hyperbole and a Half. This is actually more than a month old now, but I somehow had missed it.  I had thought/worried about Allie on and off over the past few months.  She’d posted she was working on a book, but then disappeared, and knowing what I know about freaking out and freezing up even/especially in the face of something big and good, I wondered if she might be in trouble. Her latest post is called “Adventures in Depression,” and as always, it is heartbreaking, true, and funny.  Sometimes I wonder if she realizes how brave and wonderful she really is.

Rachel W. Cole, and her list of suggested reading. I am so excited about her coming out to Fort Collins to do a Well-Fed Woman Mini-Retreatshop, (Sunday, February 19th, 12:30-3:30 at Om Ananda Yoga Studio–more details to come soon). On her website, Rachel shares her list of “11 Books that Changed My Life,” and you can also link to her much longer, full list of recommendations.  I am starting with “Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything” by Geneen Roth.

And finally, links to a few very special, sweet videos.

*”Being Elmo” Movie Trailer

*”Lily Shreds Trailside.” I can’t decide if I like this so much because there’s a dog and she’s so cute, or because it’s just such a cool video.

*Marcel the Shell with Shoes On


  • Okay, now it’s your turn: Tell me something good.

All I got right now is “try.”

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Last night, while checking my blog stats, I realized that someone had unsubscribed from my blog.  I spent a frantic ten minutes tracking down who it was–thankfully it wasn’t someone who knows me “in real life.”  And yet, I still felt sad.  Why don’t they like me?

I told Eric, and he said “So? You don’t care do you?”  Well, kind of.  I want people to like what I’m doing.  He said “I thought you were doing this for yourself?”  I am, but if I didn’t care what anyone thought, I wouldn’t do it quite so publicly.  I want people to read it, I want an audience.  I want people to think it’s worth reading.

I want people to like me…

Ah, there it is.  The problem, the central issue, the heart of the matter.  I don’t want to be famous, I want to be adored.  I want permission, I want approval.  And it hurts so much more to get rejected for who you really are and what you really care about.  In an article in the January 2011 issue of fear.less magazine, the author Steven Pressfield says “I think we’re all terrified of that, to be what we’re meant to be. Because then all the responsibility lays on us and we can’t hide behind anything.”

And yet, once I realized who had unsubscribed, it made sense.  She was a 20 year old student from New York who loves books and reading and who’d found my blog because of a post I’d written about how much I loved reading.  She thought that this was a blog about reading, the love of the word.  And it is, in part.  But, I’m sure that my posts this weekend about death, cancer, and marriage freaked her out a little.  This wasn’t what she’d signed up for.

But it is what I’ve signed up for. I am going to show up, I am going to try. I don’t want to stop, and there is still work to do–great work if I can just figure out exactly what. So, here I am: all in. The habitual numbing out that I have practiced for so many years is sticky and I feel claustrophobic in my stinky little cocoon where I’ve spent most of my time. It isn’t working anymore. Something has to change. I have to save my own life.