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Reverb10 – The Sixth Prompt – The Hubris of Marking Time for Making

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Greetings!

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? (Author: Gretchen Rubin)

(ETA on 01-12-12) Oh,, the mix of joy & pain as I look back on the simplicity of it all as I copy/paste from one site to another. It seemed so easy, so ‘throw it up there & all will be well’.

It’s proving to not quite be that simple. :> -B! :>)

Making. It’s a thing that I love to do. I live & breathe to create. I literally get antsy when I’ve gone too long without creating.

The last thing I made? Well, besides meals & loads of laundry & the occasional spot of cleanliness in the living space, the last thing I made were the Popping Epiphanies pieces.

Fun, useful, quick & easy, yet most amusing. They are simple jewelry & crafts pieces done with yarn in crochet. Popcorn stitch for fun & expansion.

The original piece was created to celebrate some major Epiphanies I’d had popping earlier in the year. I did a pouch first, then tossed off some quick cuffs, the pattern for which can be found in this post from “An Encouraging Bird”.

Is there something I want to make but I need to clear time for it? You bet!

Unfortunately, I would also need to clear space for it, and with this in-between space of housing limbo, that’s just not going to happen at the moment.

And then there’s always the other thing that I am needing & wanting to make, which is our online business. It is awesome & wonderful and I am really looking forward to getting all the ‘i’s’ dotted & ‘t’s’ crossed to that we can go out & play, but at the same time, it is rather putting a strain on my crafting time.

Every now & again, I make something quick-quick, to get it out of my system so that I can go back to doing all the set-up things that I need to do so that we can go play later.

I’d mind more, but that I know that ‘later’, unlike many times that it is said, really is coming most soon from now! :-)

With the New Year comes LAUNCH!!!

And then my creativity gets to go into high gear indeed! :-)

Chirp, chirp!
-Birdy  :>

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Reverb10 – The Fifth Prompt – Letting Go of the Wrong People

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Greetings!

December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

Letting go.
Releasing.
Freeing.

So many ways to describe a thing both simple & complex.

And when people come into the mix, it becomes even more so.

Names are not important here.

What is important is that the concept of Wrong People has come into my life & working vocabulary this year.

And that I am learning to let those people go.

Wrong People, whyever they are your Wrong People, are poison to your life.

Quick or slow poison depends on their natures.

  • They suck your energy & batter your soul (and sometimes your body).
  • They pull you down & keep you small.
  • They need to go, soonest!

One of the many things I have released this year is the concept that everybody has to like me. For a Connection-based person this is beyond hard, but I realize that it’s necessary.

Do the math.

Seven billion (living) humans on this planet, plus all the other life forms out there – there is no way to be in contact with all of them, even if you were willing to release sanity & plausibility, which I am not.

So, with a finite amount of personal resources, why on Earth would you spend time on those who are not simpatico with you & your chosen goals, Dreams & way of life?

When put that way, it becomes SO much easier to see the logic & the beauty of it.

So, I’ll pass along the Question:

Who are YOU releasing this year?

Happy Muse-ings! :>
Birdy Diamond,
Wordsmith

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Reverb10 – The Fourth Prompt – Winter Wonderland :>

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Edomura Wonderland in Nikko, Japan - photo by Daniel T. Yara

Edomura Wonderland in Nikko, Japan - photo by Daniel T. Yara

Greetings!

December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? (Author: Jeffrey Davis) #reverb10

I kept learning.

I kept learning even when I didn’t want to, whether it was because I was so sick of learning, or what I was learning made me sick.

I persevered.
And I got better.
Things got better too.

So, now, here I am in December, on a WP MU thanks to the patience & skill of Eugen Oprea, having some vague clue of what I’m doing thanks to many people, among them Catherine Caine, Sonia Simone & the rest of the gang from the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint, Mike Korner, Mike Diamond, and a host of others I am probably spacing at the mo’.

And while it’s a bit of a wonder to me how I got here, I’m also both in wonder & joy for my being here.

It is indeed being a Winter Wonderland. :-D

I can’t wait to see what happens next. :-D

And if you can’t wait to see what happens next either, feel free to sign up to your right in the attractive little boxes there. One will get you blog updates hot off the presses, the other will get you on to our newsletter, which will be primarily a conveyance for discounts as well as the occasional random bit of stuff-we-find-amusing.

If you find yourself looking for ways to help yourself get to your own place of wonder & accomplishment, you might want to consider signing up for our “Butt in the Chair” sessions here on this blog and/or our “Getting It Done” chats over on our sister site, “An Encouraging Bird”.

(And did I mention those newsletters contain discounts? :-D )

Happy Muse-ings!
Birdy Diamond,
Wordsmith

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Reverb10 – The Third Prompt – Moment

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Greetings!

December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (Author: Ali Edwards) #reverb10

Hmmm… not alive. It’s been too long as I write here in a New Year a year gone. (01-11-12)

But a Moment.

A Moment that, in hindsight, proved memorable, as so many Moments do.

It was December, the time we are writing about, in fact, in a bizarre turn of Fate’s Wheel.

Borders was not doing well.

And it showed.

Far from being a happy Christmas season, it was being full of stress & rumors that the store would be closing.

December is not an easy month for me anyway. Beyond the normal stresses & reminders of those in the United States, I have the additional moment of my mother passing on Christmas Day, 2005.

So, it was a time within a time. Things were hard. Things felt hard. The one became the other and it seemed like there was nothing much to be done about either.

And then, in the midst of it all, I received a gift.

Well, actually, I received this gift later, but it has to do with Christmas and a moment I had in December.

One day, in the midst of all this hard, I had occasion to call my husband at work.

I was put on hold, as happened.

And I stayed on hold.

But it was okay.

Because I was given the gift of music.

As many do, I love the Peanuts Christmas special, and that was the music that was playing.

I stayed and listened for several songs, until at last the music changed and I hung up and called back.

But I felt better.

And then, later, when the world, my world, fell in once again, and the box was opened to find a cat no longer there, Mike brought me home a gift that left me with tears of joy amongst the tears of change.

He brought me home that CD.

Not just a copy of that CD, mind, but that exact physical one, the one that I’d listened to those months before.

A small thing, but huge at the same time.

It reassured me that everything would be all right, that we would make it, that our world would reform in an even better way.

And it’s still some fine music! :-)

Let’s hear it for the joys of music and it’s ability to bring you safely home from here to there.

Chirp, Chirp!
-Birdy :>

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Reverb10 – The Second Prompt – The Dragon of Censorship, The Monsters of Fear, & the Swamp of Solitude

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the tools of the writing trade - photo by Jane M Sawyer

the tools of the writing trade - photo by Jane M Sawyer

Greetings!

December 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? (Author: Leo Babauta) #reverb10

At first, this prompt took me back a bit – what on earth could I say?

Yes, I have things that keep me from my writing, but many of them are not things that I ‘should’ do a whole lot about. Things like the Day Job. Things like laundry, dishes, housecleaning, things that while they can be considered escapes & procrastination tools are also valid, necessary self-care things.

Although, if you look at these things from that infamous ‘other point of view’ they don’t really count.

If you’ve ever had the dishes pile up, everything you own in the laundry basket, and the house in such a wreck that YOU can’t stand to look at it, never MIND anybody else, you know as well as I do that these mundane tasks are still vitally necessary to your writing peace of mind.

An orderly environment frees you to look at things from the unhinged (in the good way! :-D ) point of view that really lets your fingers fly.

And whether you write longhand or on the computer, money is still required. Pens, pencils, your computing medium of choice, Internet access, they all cost money (or at least time) to acquire. Not to mention little things like food, clothing, shelter, etc.

Day Job’s gotta stay. (At least for now. Later… that’s another show. :-D )

So, no, those things need to stay in there.

Then what?

I thought for a few, and did indeed come up with some things that do NOT need to remain in my writing repertoire, nor my writing day.

  • The Dragon of Censorship
  • The Monsters of Fear
  • The Swamp of Slimy Solitude

The Dragon of Censorship

Oh, what a fearsome beast this is! Blowing flame over your pages, burning away all that might cause contention, failing to understand that he is also burning away all that is uniquely you.

That saying “Try to please everybody & you end up pleasing nobody?”

So true.

This isn’t about shock-jock writing.

  • This is about saying the things that you have to say.
  • This is about opening your heart and letting what’s in there flow freely out onto the page.
  • This is about being brave and being you.

This is about telling the Dragon that he isn’t welcome here anymore.

The Monsters of Fear

But Dragons, no matter how fearsome they may be are usually too lazy to roam about the countryside looking for trouble.

No, they must be Called.

And who is foolish (or desperate) enough to do such a thing?

Your Monsters are.

Specifically the Monsters of Fear.

You know who they are, or at least some of them:

  • They Might Laugh!
  • You’re Not Good Enough!
  • Who Do You Think You Are?
  • What Will They Think?

They are emphatic about keeping you safe – as they see it.

Which, unfortunately for you, means shouting at you very loudly their messages of Doom, Gloom, and Don’t Do It!, and when that doesn’t work, calling in the Dragon.

Now Monsters of Fear need to be handled more delicately than the Dragon.

Monsters, by definition, are already afraid. So scaring them worse is SO not going to help! In fact, it frequently only encourages them to entrench deeper & shout louder.

Gentle, firm, loving touches are what is needed here.

(For more information on Monster Whispering, I suggest that you check out Havi’s blog, Willie & Alexia’s site, and my posts on Monsters on An Encouraging Bird.)

The Swamp of Slimy Solitude

Notice I say ‘slimy’ solitude here. Solitude can be a wondrous place to recoup, reconnoiter, and generally relax.

It can also be a suffocating pit of despair.

I’ve been known to wander into both from time to time, and I can tell you that I FAR prefer the former to the latter.

So I’m being very careful of where I walk these days. If my Savannah of Solitude turns into a Slimy Swamp, I do something to break away: I go to the ‘net, I turn on the television, I get out and walk the dog. Whatever it takes to reconnect with the world around me.

Turns out I did have a few things to ditch from my writing day.

What about you?

Happy Muse-ings!
Birdy Diamond,Wordsmith

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Reverb10 – The First Prompt – One Word, One World :>

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firework burst - photo by Matthew Hull

EXPANSION - firework burst - photo by Matthew Hull

Greetings!

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) #reverb10

You have asked me for one word to sum up 2010.

That is not an easy task, tho’ at first it might seem as if it should be so.

We haven’t gone much of anywhere, or, as seen from the outside, done much of anything.

But that would not be true, if you could see on the inside of things.

On the inside of things, we have been growing and changing and expanding, oh my!

We have been plunging headlong into a new way of life, Web 2.0, the Third Tribe, and going forth!

So, if pressed to choose just one word to describe the year just past, I would say:

Expansion.

We have expanded so many things:

  • our notions of what is possible
  • our understanding of the current tech
  • our understanding of how to run a Third-Tribe-based business
  • our worldview
  • our hopes, Dreams, and aspirations
  • our confidence
  • our belief
  • our network
  • our possibilities
  • our world

We are humbled & blessed by all the ways the Universe has chosen to help us out as we step into our larger mission: that of helping people fly beyond their fear, whether it is of putting pixels on the page, of spreading one’s wings to fly, of the unknown lying beyond the everyday.

So with that, I would say that our word for 2011 would be:

welcome sign - photo by Mary R. Vogt

WELCOME - photo by Mary R. Vogt

Welcome

I wasn’t sure, until I was setting down our ‘Love Letters to our Wrong & Right Peeps’ so that I could post here tonight.

As I chose the pics for our Right Peeps, I realized that, yes, ‘Welcome’ is our word.

Some things we want to be welcoming in next year:

  • prosperity
  • a new & happy home
  • a stable of wondrous, help-full products
  • our Tribe of wonderful friends, clients, customers
  • an easy & stress-free move
  • our new packmembers for Bailey (our Basset Hound) and Mage (our tuxie cat)
  • the Avian Empire in all its kooky glory :>
  • that or better! :-D

The world is a wondrous place, and truly one’s oyster.

Pluck forth the pearl of a great life & fly free, friends! :-D

Happy Muse-ings!
Birdy Diamond,
Wordsmith

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