Your weirdness is your superpower.
– Felicia Day, If I Could Tell You Supernatural 2018 calendar
Your weirdness is your superpower. Felicia Day photographed by Travis Hodges. His copyright (c)2018
[No money made on Ms. Day and Mr. Hodges work, and no copyright infringement intended.]
Pencil sketch of bare tree branches and a night owl. Art by me. (c)2018
(c)2018
They start getting birthday presents that are perfect for you!
Let me listen to me and not to them.
– Gertrude Stein
Let us have faith in each other. Let us not grow weary and lose heart, for there are more seasons to come and there is more work to do.
– Hillary Clinton [11/11/16]
Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in good season we shall reap.
– also from that speech by H. Clinton, drawn from Galatians 6:9
What small thing can you do when you wake up in the morning to tap into that sense of marvel before you start your day? [365 Health and Happiness Boosters by M.J. Ryan]
I really want to be a morning person.
I also really want to be a nite-owl.
I’m naturally more of the latter, although I can stay up until 2am, and still get up at 7 if I need to. If I don’t need to, I tend to stay in bed, whether it’s sleeping or reading or writing. I actually get a lot done in my pajamas. I think that works for wintertime. It’s cold and it’s grey, and I don’t want to go anywhere, including out of my cocoon.
At the moment, the sun is shining, and it’s deceiving me into thinking it’s not quite so cold out, and enticing me to leave the house, which I will almost certainly regret.
Spring mornings just have that sense of marvel. It’s the same sun, the same window, the same temperature on the inside, but what is it about spring mornings that feel differently? Perhaps it’s the angle of the sun, the way it peers in the window, the glow from behind the bare trees. The glow begins a little earlier each day, and it can be not only inspirational, but motivational.
It urges me to rise, to grasp everything.
I read two books every morning before I check facebookagram and my email. The first is the one where that initial question/prompt came from. MJ Ryan’s book of health and happiness boosters. Some i ignore – they don’t quite work for me, and that is what I like about the book; take it or leave it. Take what works, and leave the rest. So far, there are questions to ponder, breathing techniques, quotations, and we’ll see what else as the year progresses. One page, or half a page really each day.
The second book is a year long devotional study dedicated to the women of the Bible. Each week, I’m introduced to a new Biblical woman, and each day a different thought about her to read and meditate on. It’s a Monday through Friday, which leaves Saturday and Sunday for regular worship or reviewing what I’ve read. So far, Sarah and Hagar. Up next: Lot’s Wife and then Rebekkah, and so on.
Those are the two that get me started and my mind moving, getting ready for whatever the day brings: reading, errands, writing, phone calls.
I know it’s not quite enough; there is something missing from my morning ritual, and I’m still not sure what it is, but I continue looking for it. However, those two books are small ways to start my day when I wake up in the morning. It takes little time, and so I can fit it in almost every morning before anything else no matter how structured the rest of the day is, and it carries through the weekend to give me the stability that often falls apart once school and work are over for the week and everyone wants to control the day.
I’ll keep you updated.
What small thing can you change or add to your morning?
Last year, or maybe it was the year before, I gave up the word resolutions. The connotation of New Year’s Resolutions is the assumption that they won’t be kept. We go in thinking pessimistically and so our resolutions tend to be grandiose and next to impossible to accomplish. Then, as predicted, like clockwork or a calendar page turning, we give them up and go back to our bad habits.
I settled on goals for awhile, which was a little more proactive, and a little more doable, but for me, goals set a finite destination to what I want to acocmplish and goals wasn’t quite the word I was looking for.
My new word (third if you’re counting) for 2018 is Intention [s], either singular or plural, whichever one fits at the moment. I can wholeheartedly thank Gen Padalecki for the inspiration and the introduction to that word in this context. I must confess that I did not watch her entire vlog or read her blog for that day. As soon as I heard the word intention, I was off to the races. It hit me, inside and out, mentally and physically. That was my word, the word I’d been searching for.
So, now that we are here between the end of the third week and the end of the fourth week, not only of January, but of our new year, what are the intentions you’ve been keeping? Have you added any more since your initial goal-making or resolution claiming or habit-making or -breaking in the last three weeks?
Where do you stand? And where are you venturing? Give your intentions a thought or two, and get back to me. As this morning’s quote reminds us, writing down our goals makes them a little more tangible, and if they’re tangible, they’re doable.
As I mentioned yesterday, my daughter and I started reading a new book together. We have just finished chapter four and we have completed all of the activites up until that point.
I’m not sure that this book would have reached my radar if not for my social media relationships. I follow the author’s sister on Instagram, and she mentioned the book and its Instagram page. When I investigated further, I easily saw that this was a perfect book for my daughter. I decided that it would make a great Christmas gift, and it was well worth the extra investment of having my own copy for my Kindle. My daughter and I often cuddle in bed, watching television, writing together, coloring, and reading.
When we began the book, I hadn’t realized that it included activities, which we obviously couldn’t do while lying in bed right before sleeping. We continued the reading until the Sunday after New Year’s when we spent the entire day developing and decorating our soul-soothing tool kits, the first activity in the book. It is also the activity that ties all the others together. That first day, we also put together our galaxies-on-the-go. In the evening, we sat together on the sofa with some old magazines and a pair of scissors and gluesticks and made our self-portraits.
We journaled about all of the S.O.A. [School of Awake] Moments, filled in the blanks, and answered the questions from the first three chapters.
School of Awake: A Girl’s Guide to the Universe is just that: a guide. There’s advice, there’s self-reflection, introspection, affirmations, positive reminders of what’s important, a look at the bigger picture, spirituality that works for girls who either have religion or don’t. There are moral examples and choices, but it isn’t preachy. It isn’t scolding or condascending. It sets the perfect tone of talking to girls that is old enough, but not too adult, but at the same time it doesn’t talk down to the reader.
It lets us explore our creativity together and apart through our various styles.
There is space in the hard copy book to write the answers and take notes. My suggestion to my daughter and what we’ve elected to do is to keep our writing in our journals. I think at 12, my daughter’s answers may change over time. I know that at 51, my answers also will.
Visit School of Awake’s Instagram to see pictures of other girls enjoying the book and expressing their creativity and how they’re enjoying their universes. I will continue to share our progress here as we discover more things about ourselves, both as individuals and as a mom and daughter.
This is actually both an art and a photo. For Christmas, we bought my daughter the book, The School of Awake by Kidada Jones. It is a wonderful guide to the universe for girls. My intention was always to buy myself the digital version for my Kindle so I could follow along with my daughter. More on this tomorrow in my review of the book.
One of the ongoing projects in the book is creating a Soul-Soothing Tool Kit. I love the idea of tool kits for a variety of life experiences.
This is a photo of our tool kits up to chapter four.
Seen in the photo: Digital and hard copy of the book, The School of Awake by Kidada Jones, my soul-soothing tool kit box on the right (I’ve repurposed a mail order box and decorated it) with my S.O.A. moments journal and pen. In the foreground is our self-portraits or vision boards of our selves, what makes us us. On the back, unseen is a love letter to myself. The bottle and jar are our galaxy-on-the-go(TM) containers. Soul-Soothing Tool Kit and Galaxy-on-the-go are copyrights of Kidada Jones. Photo and designs are mine. (c)2018
Georgia Representative John Lewis, a civil rights icon calls the Martin Luther King holiday “a day on, not a day off.” Join community celebrations but also join community service.
I would share this beautiful artwork and sentiment from my friend, Brother Mickey McGrath. This wasn’t done specifically for Martin Luther King Day, but I think it fits in so well, and any excuse that I have to share his art makes me happy. Continue reading
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 