This is my first day back in my Eddy Hall office at Colorado State University, so I need this list as much as you.

Well-Fed Woman Mini Retreatshop.

Rachel W. Cole is on tour, and you don’t want to miss this! I have instigated an event in Fort Collins on February 19th, and you should register for it if you are in Colorado.  Otherwise, check out her website for other dates and locations.

Testimonial from Retreatshop run-through attendee: “There is something really empowering about witnessing someone unravel their truth and their story to how they got to that truth. You can feel it reverberating in your body at its core – and the shifting begins to happen. The shift towards being present with yourself and your truest desires. It’s this re-learning process of being true to ourselves, being loving and kind to ourselves, and reconnecting with our intuitive selves that crochets into self-magic. I thank Rachel Cole who masterfully created a safe forum for other powerful women who had come to explore a greater understanding of their true hungers and left feeling a deeper trust for their true intuitions.”~Sanaz Ebriani

Positively Present 365 Photo Project

This looks really fun, and I’m sad that I don’t have time to do it. “The purpose of the Positively Present 365 Photo Project is to help you live a more present life by paying attention to your surroundings and capturing them with a camera.” There’s also the opportunity to share your photos.

A Year With Myself

I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth saying again: you should do this!

Go on thematic weekly quests of self-love and self-discovery. Be best friends with yourself. Hone your strengths and reshape your true mission. And gently empower yourself and your work by taking one tiny transformative step at a time. Give yourself the power to steer your life in the direction you want it to go. Follow your aspirations. Be stronger and more confident. Every Monday throughout 2012, a fresh weekly quest theme, a stimulating writing prompt and one actionable idea will be published on the blog. And we’ll have more than 70 amazing guest Instigators who will contribute to the weekly prompts, generously sharing their wisdom and experience with us!

25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing

This list, from the Terrible Minds blog, was inspired by this post “30 Things To Stop Doing To Yourself.” Author Chuck Wendig says “I read this cool article last week…and I thought, hey, heeeey, that’s interesting. Writers might could use their own version of that. So, I started to cobble one together. And, of course, as most of these writing-related posts become, it ended up that for the most part I’m sitting here in the blog yelling at myself first and foremost. That is, then, how you should read this: me, yelling at me. If you take away something from it, though? Then go forth and kick your writing year in the teeth.” It’s a really great list.

Writing Prompt from Gwen Bell

I actually heard about this prompt from Patti Digh during her website launch party. She described it this way “If you had 15 minutes left to live, set a timer for 15 minutes and tell the story that must be told.”

SF Girl by Bay “Hot Tin Roof” Post

As much as I love tiny cabins, cottages, treehouses, and restored campers, I love churches converted into living spaces. This one that SFGirl shared on her blog is absolutely dreamy.

12 stupidly easy resolutions for 2012

Written by Mark Morford, this article is a must read. Need more convincing? Here’s one of the twelve:

6) Drink the awe: It’s a brutally fast-paced, Facebooked, hypertext-drunk world, my loves, and it’s just ridiculously easy to take it all for granted, to sit there and type your message into your glorious little device and attach a video and send it halfway round the world as you sip your coffee that came from 8,000 miles away and think nothing of it all, when in fact there are roughly 1,008 astonishing miracles banging around your life right this second if you just were able to realize their wobbly gifts. What a thing.

Creativity Requires Time

AMEN!!!

“Be Brave” Commercial

Love it, *sniff*

a little bird told me: Daily Truths from the Brave Girls Club

These are so encouraging, every day you get a sweet love note in your inbox. This one from January 4th was just what I needed:

Dear Fantastic Girl,

So often there are beautiful, comforting and helpful things right in front of us…waiting for us to notice and take hold…yet for all sorts of reasons, we keep looking past those things.

Often we feel like we have to do more to “earn” help or comfort or blessings. Often we want to struggle through to prove that we can do it on our own and we run ourselves into the ground before we ask for help. Often we are so busy with our heads down, plowing through and suffering…that we simply fail to notice things that would ease our pain that are right in front of us, and often have been there all along.

Take some time, sweet friend, to look around and see what is there to make things better. Notice good books, helpful people, generous offers and random acts of grace. When something shows up, open yourself up to it…simply saying thank-you is enough…you don’t have to earn it, you don’t have to do anything to “deserve” it.

You are worthy of comfort, blessings and help.

You are so very very very loved.

xoxo

Daily Peace Quote

Another gem I get in my inbox on a regular basis. My intention for yoga class today, “I am already free,” and my resolve to tend to my body during this year of retreat was reinforced by today’s quote from Cheri Huber:

The body knows how to heal itself, but it needs support and cooperation. If we keep taking energy from the body and giving it to egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the body will weaken and egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate will get stronger. If we give attention, awareness, energy, life force to what life is offering us in each moment—pure, undivided focus on what is, here/now—our experience will be freedom.

I Was a Dancer All Along

Britt Bravo shared this video on her blog, saying “Ever since I was a little girl I’ve loved to dance, which is why I keep watching this video that my friend, Gabriela, posted on her Facebook page last month: ‘Two year old doing what she loves. Dancing.’ ” I had to pass it along, because it is one of the cutest things ever, and absolutely inspiring–you want to be this kind of joyful.