Category Archives: Vivienne McMaster

Something Good

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1. If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out: Poetry for Visionary Thinking. I have brilliant friends. This is the sort of thing they do when they follow their dreams, when they heed the call of their longing.

2. 3-year-old recites poem, “Litany” by Billy Collins. This kind of thing is an argument for reincarnation, divine nature, or something just as as brilliant and mysterious. Here’s a follow up story on NPR, Love Of Words Brings Child, Poet Together.

3. 17 Essays by Female Writers That Everyone Should Read on Flavorwire. I am working on it.

4. The question underneath every other question, another powerful post by Andrea Scher on Superhero Life.

5. More on what self-care, self-compassion looks like: Looking with Love by Alana Sheeren and Unraveling by Anne-Sophie Reinhardt.

6. Zen Pencils: Timothy Leary, “You aren’t like them.”

7. This quote, “Little by little, one travels far,” J.R.R. Tolkien. And similarly, “Our way to practice is one step at a time, one breath at a time,” Shunryu Suzuki.

8. One of my favorite quotes from William Gibson, “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

9. And this one, “If you subdue the hatred within, you will discover that there is not a single enemy left outside,” Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

10. C the G TV. Catherine Just only started the project last week, but already so many good interviews.

11. This is always a good reminder, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it,” ~Rumi. This too, “I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.” ~Rumi.

12. 14 Days of Self-Love post by Rachel Cole. This project, hosted by Vivienne McMaster is all kinds of good stuff, good people.

13. Open, Generous, and Connected by Seth Godin. Yes, please.

14. The Willard Asylum Suitcases on Lisa Congdon’s blog. Heartbreaking, fascinating, and slightly creepy.

15. Free ebook: Living from the Heart: Volume 1 from Louise Gale, and many other brilliant souls.

16. A Leap of Faith from Sas Petherick. “I feel like I have gone from playing ping-pong with my bare hands, to using a smart red paddle.”

17. Want More Love In Your Life? by Thomas Dunleavy on Your Heart Makes a Difference.

18. Swap True for Original from Jennifer Louden.

19. More than one thing from the brilliant Alexandra Franzen, 5 ways to write a blow-your-mind manifesto and Want folks to act / click / share / buy now? Screw the sales pitch. Write a Love Letter.

20. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others…(BE Your OWN Love Valentine) from Kute Blackson. “To succeed at being somebody that you are not (but think you need to be) is still a failure.  But to love who you are and courageously be that fully is a life well lived.”

21. 5 Reasons to Simplify Your Life from The Spacious Life.

22. “Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.” ~Buddha

23. “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” ~Carl Sagan

24. Oana Befort’s beautiful blog.

25. Safe & Sound Taylor Swift (ft.The Civil Wars) – Brittni Paiva ukulele cover. Beautiful music, beautiful instrument.

26. My beautiful, brilliant friend Jessica Patterson said this week, “whatever reminds you that you are whole, perfect, and holy…start there,” (to which I responded “stay there”).

27. “Our ‘originality’ is nothing more than our unique response to everyone we ever wanted to imitate or seduce.” ~Susie Bright

28. “Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” ~Herman Hesse

29. your daily rock : live mindfully, on 37 Days which begins with this brilliant quote, “Mindfulness meditation doesn’t change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart’s capacity to accept life as it is.” ~Sylvia Boorstein

30. 15 Easy Ways to Beat Anxiety Now on Greatist, (originally shared by Positively Present Picks). I wish I would have more successfully applied some of this the past few days.

31. A Pebble for Your Pocket on A Design So Vast. Such a beautiful post, which Lindsey ends with the question “what is there to do but to keep my eyes open, to take a deep breath, to love this life of mine, in all its flawed, real, glittering beauty?”

Something Good

4 Replies


1. From Justine Musk, The Question You Need to Ask Yourself.

2. This quote from Geneen Roth:

Sometimes we use food and our weight as a way to be left alone. Since many of us believe that, regardless of what we get paid to do, our real job is to on call for people who need us, we leave ourselves with a way to get what we need and want: food. But when you say yes when you mean no, you abandon yourself. And when you say no when you mean no, you signal to yourself that it is safe here, inside your body. Safe here, where you live and are and breathe. You don’t have to run away. You don’t have to lie.

Saying no is a way of being tender with yourself and honest with the people around you. And when you say no with your voice, you will no longer need to say it with your body weight. And when you say no to what you don’t want, you have space to say yes to what you do.

And this one:

Right now, in this very second, ask yourself if what you are doing, what you are thinking and how you are acting brings you closer to yourself or farther away. Does it open your heart or does it close your heart? You have a choice. Break the trance. Come back to kindness.

And this one too:

Sometimes happiness is as difficult to accept as sadness or loneliness. Sometimes, we eat because we don’t know what to do with happiness or joy. We think we’re not allowed. We think we will get “too big for our britches.” We become superstitious. If we talk about it, people won’t like it. If we tell someone, they might be threatened and go away. We hold onto our sadness because we think that that is what connects us with other people–that if we feel terrible about ourselves, we will get help, but if we feel as if we are occupying our own lives, if we feel powerful, we will lose. In this way, we keep ourselves psychologically small. We keep ourselves wounded and afraid of our own magnificence. But it’s when you are aware of, and own, the hugeness of your heart, your being, your love that you are most connected to other people–which then allows them to connect to their own power, their own love. It begins with you.

3. A tiny riverside house in Japan. On the inside, it looks so much bigger, more spacious than you’d expect.

4. Understanding How to Frame Your Creative Expertise. And P.S. I’m a survivor.

5. How to Write Like a Mother#^@%*& by Elissa Bassist & Cheryl Strayed.

6. Not Today a beautiful poem by the beautiful poet Julia Fehrenbacher at Painted Path.

7. The Power of Showing Up from Clare Herbert.

8. “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” ~Mary Oliver

9. 5 Lessons I Learned While Running from Marianne Elliott. The final line of this isn’t about running at all, but it’s my favorite. Marianne also has a really great Resources for Writers page on her site.

10. Ben’s Friday Dance Party. I love this guy. He makes me smile. But I also watch this video and wonder if you were around him all the time, would it get annoying? Or would your face and stomach hurt from smiling so much and laughing so hard?

11. 30 Best Jokes from 30 Rock. I watched the final episode this weekend, am so sad that it’s over.

12. I commit to 28 days of meditation practice. May my practice benefit all beings.

13. 14 Days of Self Love hosted by Vivienne McMaster.

14. My Creative Life: Rachel W Cole on Susannah Conway’s blog. Two of my favorite women together.

15. 8 Ways Happy People are Different from Everyone Else by Shelley Prevost.

16. Why We Write: Mary Karr on the Magnetism and Madness of the Written Word on Brain Pickings. Equally depressing, refreshingly honest, and oddly comforting is this, “I still don’t support myself as a writer. I support myself as a college professor. I couldn’t pay my mortgage on the revenue from my books. The myth is that you make a lot of money when you publish a book. Unless you write a blockbuster, that’s pretty much untrue. Starting when I was five, I always identified as a writer. It had nothing to do with income.” I wish it weren’t true, and yet if it is, wouldn’t it just be better to surrender?

17. Brene’ Brown: The Courage to Be Vulnerable, Sounds True Podcast. Listen or download for free.

18. 13 New Year’s Resolutions for Writers from Jeff Goins, shared by Susannah on her Something for the Weekend list.

19. Glazed Beet and Carrot Salad. I want to eat this, (also from Susannah’s list).

20. My Gift to You from Erica Herbert, in which Erica reads the sweetest book, (also from Susannah’s list).

21. Seth Godin on The Art of Noticing, and Then Creating, an On Being podcast, (from Happy Links on Rowdy Kittens). Also about Seth Godin, Here’s How Seth Godin Writes on Copy Blogger. My favorite part is when he is asked: “Do you write every day?” and his answer is “Do you talk every day?”

22. Yo La Tengo – “I’ll Be Around” video, a simple but magically complex video.

23. Danny and Annie, a sweet, sad love story, with an ending like so many others.

24. 10 Things Parents Should Never, Ever Do on BlogHer. I’m never sure if these are funny to me because I don’t have kids, or if they’d be that much funnier if I did.

25. Get Out of Your Head and Into the Moment on Scoutie Girl.

26. How to Say No to Everything Ever by Alexandra Franzen.

27. Oh What To Do About Sugar? by Jennifer Louden. Oh what to do indeed.