Tag Archives: Jen Lee

Something Good

So great to be partnering with Wanderlust to share this list with a larger audience.

1. Good stuff from Seth Godin, The two-review technique and Are you interesting? Both of these are helping me to reframe the way I think about and approach my work.

2. Screw Finding Your Passion from Mark Manson. This post is really great, and yet I can’t offer it to you without also giving you another perspective, equally great (or maybe even slightly better), from Laura Simms: Why You Don’t Need to Find Your Passion to Do What You Love and Instead of Finding Your Passion, Find *THIS*

3. Mom, I’m Not A Girl: Raising a Transgender Child. I’m so glad there are parents willing to move beyond their own fear and confusion to parent with love.

4. Just F*cking Journal Class, an awesome four week course. The next session starts TODAY.

5. Big Magic: Resources Week 1 on Allowing Myself. Are you reading with us?

6. The Power of Maybe…A Story About Accepting What Is from Meg Casey, a powerful post about how we might shift our perspective. “If we are able to drop the story of ‘good or bad’ and just greet our life exactly as it is without judgement we create the maximum conditions for healing in our life. We also by the way, free up resources to help us through whatever life is throwing at us.”

7. Humorous Street Signs and Other Contextual Street Art Interventions by Michael Pederson, an artist in Sydney, Australia, who clearly has a partner in crime in Jeff Wysaski, a comedy writer in Los Angeles, because There’s a Man Scattering Very Funny Fake Books, Signs and Pamphlets Around L.A. It makes me stupid happy that there are people who are willing to make this sort of effort just to make other people smile.

8. 50+ Of The Cutest Baby Animals Of All Time on Bored Panda. As I put this post together, there are 149 submissions so far to this list. I’ve tried to figure out which is my favorite, but how is a person supposed to choose?! And if you were able to survive that, check this out, 15+ Animals Enjoying Autumn Magic (as I post this, the list is at 49). Baby lion playing in a pile of leaves?!

9. The Essence of Hayao Miyazaki Films: A Short Documentary About the Humanity at the Heart of His Animation. “His aim was to make films that would help us all further understand the human condition.” If you haven’t seen any of his films, I highly recommend them…all of them.

10. What I Wished I’d Known Before Setting Out to Become a Writer a guest post from Nicole Baute on Sarah Selecky’s blog.

11. My Lonely Robots Experiencing The Quiet Wonder Of The World, a collection from artist Matt Dixon on Bored Panda. These little guys are so sweet.

12. Did you hear that Oprah bought 10% of Weight Watchers? Here’s some good stuff that got written about it that says what I feel better than I could articulate it: Dear Oprah from Julie Dillon, and Oprah and Weight Watchers, a Match Made In… on Dances with Fat, and Dear Virgie: Oprah Buying 10% of Weight Watchers–WTF? I especially love what Virgie says, “you cannot be actively investing in the diet industry and actively investing in the improvement of women’s lives.” Word.

13. A Soulful Exploration of Inner Wisdom with Susan Piver, an episode of The Unmistakable Creative podcast. I could listen to Susan tell her story all day. What she says right at the beginning is friggin’ brilliant.

14. 17 Beautiful Rooms For The Book-Loving Soul. And yes, I want to go to there, BuzzFeed.

15. Wisdom from Virginia Woolf, “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

16. Why I Focus on Simplicity (and How You Can Simplify Your Life in 2016) from Blonde on a Budget.

17. Qwerkywriter. I don’t know how comfortable this would be to type on, but I love the way it looks.

18. This Is How The Pro-Gun Crowd Sounds To … Well, Normal People. *gigglesnort*

19. Beyond Happy by Omid Safi on On Being, in which he suggests, “What if we strive for something beyond happiness? What if we aim for a life that is about being whole?” I love the poem at the end of this so much.

Here is to a life, everyday and spiritual,
Both individual and communal,
Meditative and ritual,
Embracing all the emotions that make us human,
Leading us to happiness,
And beyond happiness

To being
and becoming
whole.

20. 10 Fast Ways to Become a Better Writer from Sarah Kathleen Peck.

21. Good stuff from Zen Habits, The Underrated, Essential Art of Coping and Why You Should Write Daily.

22. Finding Your Creative Flow: 17 Writer’s Tricks to Get Un-stuck and Start Creating.

23. Beautiful Peace Mantra sung by Tina Turner.

24. Today I Rise: This Beautiful Short Film Is Like a Love Poem For Your Heart and Soul.

25. Truthbomb from Danielle LaPorte, “Love is your calling.”

26. Purification. Pain. Passion. And marrying your soul. Or…How to tap your deep creativity. from Danielle LaPorte.

27. 8 Amazing Things Will Happen To Your Brain When You Keep Writing Every Day.

28. 5 Mantras for When You Hate Your Job from Laura Simms.

29. “How I dearly wish I was not here,” a beautiful, heartbreaking story of what it’s like to lose your dog, to let them go. I read it a few days ago and I still can’t even read the title without crying. I don’t want to do this again, e v e r, and yet I keep getting more dogs knowing that this is exactly what will happen with every one of them — it’s a particular flavor of crazy.

30. Just Between You & Me, an unedited and unreviewed weekly conversation between Jen Lee and author/illustrator Tim Manley.

31. Why I opt out of the holidays: A Simple & Meaningful Christmas from Paul Jarvis. This is really, really tempting…

32. It’s Not You, it’s the Clothes from Sally McGraw. It’s so important to remember this.

33. 3 Ways to Say Goodbye to Busyness on Be More With Less.

34. Meditation teacher, medical expert Jamie Zimmerman dies in drowning accident. Yet another reminder to not wait, to not give up, to love what/who you love now.

35. Good stuff from Chookooloonks this was a good week list: “National Geographic is currently accepting entries for its 2015 photo contest, and you can scroll through the best ones so far here“, and “my friend Justin had an adventure in Peru, and since he’s a gifted photographer, he shows us how gorgeous it was.”

36. Bill Murray Talks The ‘Kasbah’ — And The Merits Of A Life Lived Phoneless.

37. After 59 years, Mattel gets it right: the new Barbie ad is awesome.

38. Behind the Scenes With Dani Shapiro, “Memoirist and best-selling author Dani Shapiro shares what she’s learned about herself from her daily practice of writing and completing her books.”

39. Starting a podcast for people who don’t want their lives taken over by podcasting from Paul Jarvis. SUCH good advice.

40. Raise Your Hand Say Yes with Paul Jarvis. Tiffany has interviewed so many great people. You should check out her archive.

41. 7 things I did to reboot my life from Wil Wheaton. “I deserve to be happy. I deserve to feel good about myself. I can do the work that I need to do to accomplish these things.”

Something Good

10 Replies

Kind and gentle reader, this will be my last Something Good post until Monday, July 21st, and that first one back might be a little light. We are going on vacation, and while I love curating these lists for you, they are a lot of work, and I’d like to make this trip without my computer, so I’m going to take a bit of a sabbatical. In fact, I don’t know if I’ll be posting at all while I’m away, but Eric will have his computer with him, and I love it here so much that I can’t promise I’ll be able to stay away entirely. I’ll miss it, but I also haven’t taken a real break since I started (my very first post was Beginning, posted on September 16, 2011), and for long stretches, I’ve posted something every day — it might be time to rest a little.

1. 100 Day Promise, a new offering from Sandi Amorim. Would you like to make an important promise to yourself and have the support and guidance to follow it through? Sandi is launching a new project that offers just that. I’ve taken part in her communities before, and I am telling you the truth: there is no better guide than Sandi. Her programs have helped me make significant transformations, and, a disclaimer: I adore her. Here’s a post she wrote about the process of the launch of her new project and new site, Lessons from the Birth Canal. P.S. if you sign up before June 13 you’ll also receive a bonus 1-1 session with Sandi!

2. Light Gets In: Living Well With Mental Illness from Esme Wang.

3. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing and, The 5/5 Creative Challenge from Christina Rosalie. Make sure to keep up with her 5/5 posts. They’ve been beautiful so far. She’s an amazing writer.

4. Just the right words. Just the right time. Three stories to inspire you to SAY them. from Alexandra Franzen.

5. The Mindful Leader: The Wisdom of Mindfulness in the 21st Century Workplace with Michael Carroll, a live event at the Fort Collins Shambhala Center, July 12th. I am so sad I’m going to miss it (we’ll still be in Oregon) because I adore Michael Carroll and think he’s doing some of the most important work of our time.

6. Indie Kindred is available for rent online. Like I told Jen Lee, the filmmaker, I was more excited about this than the new season of Orange is the New Black. So good.

7. Leaf art by Lorenzo Manuel Durán. So delicate, so beautiful, so amazing.

8. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön, about having the courage to wait,

When you’re like a keg of dynamite just about to go off, patience means just slowing down at that point—just pausing—instead of immediately acting on your usual, habitual response. You refrain from acting, you stop talking to yourself, and then you connect with the soft spot. But at the same time you are completely and totally honest with yourself about what you are feeling. You’re not suppressing anything; patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. If you wait and don’t fuel the rage with your thoughts, you can be very honest about the fact that you long for revenge; nevertheless you keep interrupting the torturous story line and stay with the underlying vulnerability. That frustration, that uneasiness and vulnerability, is nothing solid. And yet it is painful to experience. Still, just wait and be patient with your anguish and with the discomfort of it. This means relaxing with that restless, hot energy—knowing that it’s the only way to find peace for ourselves or the world.

And this, (thanks for sharing, Erin).

The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.

9. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel, in the form of her latest newsletter. If you aren’t signed up yet, you really should.

10. The one simple question that keeps me focused on achieving my dreams from Life is Limitless.

11. A Little Guide to Lighten Your Life and Make Love: mini-mission on Be More With Less.

12. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

There is something wonderful and strange and difficult and painful and amazing about becoming more of who we are. When we stop squeezing our actual soul shape into the shapes of everything else around us just to fit it…and we let ourselves look and feel and BE who we actually are….we feel relieved, but sometimes we also feel profoundly lonely for a while. This is normal, dear girl…and so worth sticking through…

It becomes quite a habit to work so hard at fitting into places where we thought we were supposed to be like everyone else. We work so hard at for so long and sometimes it has been sooooo long that we forgot what we were like before we started doing it. Our soul knows, though.

There comes a day when our soul has just had enough of the squeezing and coloring and carving and polishing we keep trying to do to change it (or hide it!)….and our soul just wants to be authentic and raw and whole and FREE. Our soul wants us to hold hands with it and BE WHO WE ARE. Our soul just wants to be the light that it is…without having to wear a mask or a cape or a shiny veneer of anything at all. It just wants to shine.

Sometimes we feel a bit like a freak when we stop trying to fit in…..don’t let that stop you, dear soul. The more layers we peel off….the brighter we can shine…that stuff is just covering up our light….and the world needs more light. The world needs YOU. YOU need YOU.

You are amazing and unique and wonderful….keep peeling off anything that is covering up all of the you-ness of you. It will be worth it…

13. Someone Put A Camera On A Bird’s Nest… And I’m So Glad Because Watch What It Caught! on Viral Nova.

14. Melissa McCarthy can dress herself on Salon.

“Trying to find stuff that’s still fashion-forward in my size is damn near impossible,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in 2011. “It’s either for like a 98-year-old woman or a 14-year-old hooker, and there is nothing in the middle.”

Amen.

15. Amazing Resonance Experiment! This totally freaks me out, in the best kind of way. Thanks for sharing it, Susan Piver.