Tag Archives: Writing Our Way Home

Something Good

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1.This quote: I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. ~John Burroughs

2. The Conversation: Transformation episode. This is a really great show. On this episode, Amanda de Cadenet talks with Melissa McCarthy, one of my favorite actresses. She also interviews Diane von Furstenberg, Glenda Bailey, and Miley Cyrus. Here’s a short clip (go here to view the full episode, Melissa McCarthy’s interview starts at minute 10:23).

3. The day I lost everything & how you can lose everything too on Writing Our Way Home. A good reminder from Fiona Robyn.

4. I am the one, on Painted Path. Another good reminder from the always wonderful and inspiring Julia Fehrenbacher.

5. The Little Guide to Contentedness on ZenHabits. And yet another good reminder from the kind and gentle Leo Babauta. Also from Leo, but on his other site, mnmlist, Living for Everyone Else, in which he says:

When it comes to others, be helpful, compassionate, grateful. But don’t live up to their expectations. You’ll be freed of the shackles of meaningless customs, so that you can live as you want.

6. Radio Time Machine. This is fun. I first heard about it in an interview with the creator on NPR this weekend. I am listening to 1986 (the year I graduated from high school) as I write this, and Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love is playing while I have flashbacks.

7. Sense and Sensitivity on Psychology Today, an article about Highly Sensitive People. You know at least one of them, (hint: me).

8. Thing Finding Thursday with Michelle Ward from Tanya Geisler. This whole series is really great, but this one is especially good, and there’s singing!

9. Create your own writing retreat from Jennifer Louden. More and more, I’m thinking that retreat is super important, and I also know that “retreat” doesn’t mean you have to go somewhere private and/or exotic for a long period of time. Small retreats at home are perfectly workable and beneficial, and you don’t have to be a writer or a meditation practitioner to go on a retreat.

10. You: A Love Letter by Sunni on The Daily Breadcrumb.

11. Being here: starting the work of letting go by Jenn on Roots of She. I shared the link to the first part of this exploration in my Something Good list last week. This is the follow-up, which asks the important question: What is stopping you from letting your stuff go?

12. How to Listen by Bindu Wiles. I really liked this, since just this week I’ve been thinking so much about Right Speech.

13. When You Have a Bad Day on Be More with Less. I don’t need it today, but I’m going to save the link for when I do need this reminder from Courtney Carver.

14. And on the day I need the above link, this might help too: 75 Day-Brightening Stories of Generosity on Marc and Angel Hack Life.

15. Droopy, wilting, fully bloomed roses from my garden. I love them as much when they are almost dead as when they are new.

Something Good

6 Replies

1. Another day, another opportunity for a fresh start, to begin again.

2. “Where I’ve Been” blog posts. I can’t wait to try this.

3. The Pressure, a poem by Tara Sophia Mohr: Oh how I know this pressure, and want to discover what it might be like without it.

4. Gratitude Practice. Spending some time, every day, thinking about what you are grateful for, writing about it, or even saying “thank you” directly or publicly, is a path to contentment and joy. Here’s a freebie intended to help, “3 good things that happened today,” shared by way of a Scoutie Girl post, “art to inspire: the power of positivity.”

5. Slow down your writing from Kaspa at Writing Our Way Home. This is some really great advice, not just for writing Small Stones, but for writing practice in general.

6. Hannah Marcotti shared a list of some really good stuff to read, Beautiful faces. Magical Places. My favorite quote is from the post on Find Your Balance (because if you’ve been reading this blog for long, you know I struggle with finding balance):

When I say balance, I’m not saying, “Be like me.”
I’m saying, “Be more like you.”

7. I knew there was a reason I have been in love with Ray Bradbury’s work most of my life. His love of reading and writing is my own. He says:

Books are smart and brilliant and wise. Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.

8. How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love by Maria Popova. This is a really great list! And the blog where I found this post and the Ray Bradbury video, Brain Pickings, is really great too.

9. how to be original by Justine Musk. She is on fire lately. This post is all about the four qualities of a compelling creative voice.

10. 40 Days of Silence, a free ecourse from Erica Staab. I signed up for this and have been getting the daily emails. They are short but powerful, such good reminders! My favorite from this last week was a quote from an interview with John O’Donohue, (a really wonderful Irish poet, he wrote some of my favorite poems), which said “To return back into ourselves, there are three things needed”: stillness, silence, and solitude, and he explained why each was so essential.

11. A Blessing For One Who Is Exhausted, a post by Erica Staab and a poem by John O’Donohue. I couldn’t stop crying when I read this, both Erica’s words and the poem. Erica said:

Tears sprang to my eyes as I thought how often we think we have the “wrong” answer. How often we are stuck in the thought that we should be anywhere else but where we are. How often we think that we are handling our grief, our children, our jobs, our friendships in the “wrong” way. And sometimes yes, things need to change, but more often than not it is only because we haven’t given ourselves the compassion and more objective look that we give to others.

12. Brene’ Brown’s latest TED talk, “Listening to Shame.”

13. If you never saw Brene’ Brown’s first TED talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” I highly recommend it. Judy Clement Wall wrote a post today on a Human Thing, “What I know,” about that first talk’s impact on her. While her details are different, I had the same experience of that first video. It changed my life, helped save my life, in about a million different ways. Judy said:

It changed everything for me. Not that day, or that week, or that month, but over the course of the almost-year since I watched it. It was the beginning of deep down, gut-wrenching honesty, first with myself and then with my husband. It was the beginning of true fearlessness, of love like a religion, of faith.

Amen.

14. The wreck and the raw of post retreat. Dear reader, I am in the thick of this. I went to the Boulder Shambhala Center this weekend (along with about 340 others, and 1500 who joined us in a live, online broadcast) and received a new practice from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche that broke my heart wide open, which always leaves me completely exhausted, but in this really beautiful way, feeling everything that it means to be alive–the good, the bad, and the ugly. So today, I am attempting to take John O’Donohue’s advice from A Blessing For One Who Is Exhausted and be excessively gentle with myself.