As a personal kick in the pants and to get myself writing here again, I’ve decided to take up the

December 8: Beautifully different

Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different — you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

Reflect and Manifest

I’m different in all kinds of ways, as everyone is. But the thing that lights people up is this: I smile.

I smile a lot, and at pretty much everyone I know or interact with. (Full disclosure: I’m not so much for smiling at perfect strangers on the street without some kind of reason. Hey, I’m an introvert!) And this means they smile back. And most of the time, we both feel better.

Sometimes I can fall into the emotional / mental trap of thinking, hey, this person doesn’t actually like me, they just like that I smile at them. And while it’s true that they don’t have a very deep engagement with me, smiling is me.

On the few occasions I get anxious or annoyed by my wrinkles, I tell myself that they tell the world two things: that I smile, and that I’m inquisitive. These are not bad things to be signaling to the world.

Comment Fu

What about you? How would you respond to this prompt in your own life?

As a personal kick in the pants and to get myself writing here again, I’ve decided to take up the

December 7: Community

Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

Reflect and Manifest

I was lucky enough this year to join Havi’s Kitchen Table program, and it’s been an immense joy in my life – everything from business smarts to inspiration to having my very own cadre of ass-kicking insult-generating backers to make me laugh when things go awry. And things always eventually go awry.

Part of what I discovered there was a clearer sense of what I’m missing in my in-person life: community that attends to all of me at once, without asking me to forswear my dirty mouth, or my passion for meditation, or my love of old Trixie Belden novels. The ability to show up as my whole self was incredibly healing.

In 2011, I want to deepen my connection to this community and to the people in it, and I want to think more deeply about how to translate some of these connections, whether with these same people or different people, into my non-computer life. A girl needs to go out for tea now and then, you know?

Comment Fu

What about you? How would you respond to this prompt in your own life?

As a personal kick in the pants and to get myself writing here again, I’ve decided to take up the

December 6: Make.

What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

Reflect and Manifest

Other than dairy-free, gluten-free peanut butter cookies?

The last thing I made was a Zentangle, using my watercolor paper and a nice pen. I want to make more of these as a way of clearing my head and using a different part of my brain than I normally do.

What else do I want to make? I want to do some watercolor paintings. We’ve got the materials, but I need to both make the time and work through some of my own hesitancy about experimentation. What is it about art in this culture that most of us lose the joy and ability to just make something we had as children?

Comment Fu

What about you? How would you respond to this prompt in your own life?

As a personal kick in the pants and to get myself writing here again, I’ve decided to take up the

December 5: Let Go.

What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

Reflect and Manifest

2010 was a year of letting go: of relationships that did not serve me, of excuses I made for people, of my own self-conception, of both limitations and false beliefs that held me hostage.

But the most important thing I’ve let go of this year is the belief that everyone else is physically experiencing the world the way I am – they’re just dealing with the fatigue and the achiness and the pain better.

Letting go of this has helped and is helping me be more attentive to my own needs and more able to meet them, because I’m not trying to keep up with people who aren’t experiencing the same things. It’s helped me insist on better care, set better boundaries, and make better decisions about my time and energy. And no matter what happens next, all of that is good.

Comment Fu

What about you? How would you respond to this prompt in your own life?

As a personal kick in the pants and to get myself writing here again, I’ve decided to take up the

December 4: Wonder

How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

Reflect and Manifest

I tend to cultivate wonder in two ways: hanging out with kids and looking through a camera lens – sometimes both at the same time.

Right now, in fact, I’m at my parents house with my sister and her twin toddlers. Last night, we turned on the stereo and sang while the kids “danced,” which at their age means they mostly bent their legs over and over and maybe leaned over now and again. It’s freakin’ adorable.

When I have the energy, I love to take the camera out and capture all the varieties of color the natural world has to offer. Some photographers love urban landscapes. Me, I love skies, clouds, flowers, foliage, and teensy tiny bugs. I love people, too, but I’m a crap portrait photographer at the moment, although I’m working on it. And when I can get a photograph to capture what I loved about an image? Priceless.

Comment Fu

What about you? How would you respond to this prompt in your own life?

As a personal kick in the pants and to get myself writing here again, I’ve decided to take up the

December 2: Writing

What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

Reflect and Manifest

What doesn’t contribute to my writing? The glib answer is: Everything. Going to work. Doing the dishes. Cleaning out the car. Doing the bookkeeping. Hanging out with my darling wife. Laying about. Filling my fountain pens.

But the equally glib answer is: Nothing. All of those things I do everyday, they all coalesce as part of the context that makes my writing possible. They’re where all the ideas come from, where the intuition sparks, where I have the conversations (sometimes with other people, sometimes in my own head) that water the ground that the writing grows out of.

So for me, the better question is this: What do I do that actively gets in the way of my writing? Or what don’t I do that would support it?

I don’t set aside regular time to write – it gets lumped into all of the biz-related tasks I want to do, which means it often gets trumped by research, by email, or by any number of other things that are necessary and yet aren’t writing. Writing tends to get put off until I have the “perfect time,” and since I’ve never yet encountered that perfect time, there’s a catch-as-catch-can element to it. This is not conducive to writing.

In other words, I need regular times for writing, preferably first thing in the morning, before I get online and before the to-do list takes over my brain.

Comment Fu

What about you? How would you respond to this prompt in your own life?

As a personal kick in the pants and to get myself writing here again, I’ve decided to take up the

December 1: One Word.

Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

Reflect and Manifest

The word for 2010 has to be underworld. As in, the place where Innana’s skin was nailed to the wall, the place where Persephone made her dreadful (maybe) mistake, the mythological dark night of the soul that leads to all that wisdom and growth.

Christine Kane always says that when something new is growing, the first thing you see is not that beautiful green shoot. The first thing you see is a bunch of dirt getting shifted around. That’s what 2010 has been like – two major diagnoses, two deaths, and a whole bunch of change. We keep saying we’re going to look back on 2010 as a watershed of fabulousness, but honey, it’s been a bitch to live through.

But the word for 2011? The word for 2011 will be prismatic: brilliant, faceted, sparkly light.

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What about you? How would you respond to this prompt in your own life?