Jennerosity

This is part of annual Blogging series called Reverb. The intention is to reflect on the past and manifest your best intentions for the future. To read my intro post (updated with links as I publish them & time allows) see my post on The Prompts.

Create – What did you create in 2011?

• a child
• art journal pages
• a bracelet using some ribbon & hexnuts
• a money club
• 30 bottles of wine
• a vest out of a silk scarf
• rubber stamps
• a custom Old English bottle cap coaster

As you can see, my creativity was flowing towards more tangible areas than writing. I didn’t write nor edit a word last year. And I even felt held back last year since for 9 months I had to stay away from anything that might have created any fumes. And much of what I’m planning to make in 2012 is following the same vein. And I’m really quite happy with that.

What did you create last year? Let me know by email or in the comments!

This is part of annual Blogging series called Reverb. The intention is to reflect on the past and manifest your best intentions for the future. To read my intro post (updated with links as I publish them & time allows) see my post on The Prompts.

Who? – Who inspired you in 2011? How did they influence you and the way the year turned out?

I can’t really pin my inspiration down to a single person. But the people who inspired me most as a group last year are all those people who walk outside of society’s expectations, especially the mamas.

I looked to them and was inspired by their courage and creativity. I liked how they expressed a lot of the same frustration that I feel. Many of them have the strength to show their differences on the outside as well, and have to deal with the resulting censure from complete strangers.

Because I sought out ongoing examples from these people, I gave myself permission to maintain more of my authentic self as I journeyed through pregnancy and into mamahood. I decided to keep my navel piercing throughout. I took charge and ran my baby shower my way. I prefer to wear my baby instead of pushing him around in a buggy. And I’ve even been known to breastfeed at the gaming table.

Which is not to imply that my life hasn’t changed in becoming a mother, because it has. I’m just not letting myself be pushed into the cookie cutter image of what society expects mothers to be like.

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I’m keeping these posts brief on purpose. If you have questions or want me to go deeper into any of these thoughts, please leave a comment below.

Begin – How do you begin each day? How does it set the stage for what follows? Is there anything about this beginning that you’d like to change?

My day presently begins with feeding Locutus. I generally manage 10-20 minutes to pump breastmilk. Depending in his tolerance level and the time of day that happens to be, I might get breakfast and get dressed shortly thereafter. And other than that it might also involve starting the cycle of diapers. During the feeding, I’m usually online via my iPod, checking email, twitter, RSS feeds, etc.

Right now, this often leads me into what I feel is a lazy day pattern. And it’s something I’m trying to change, starting with my iPod habits.

The problem as I see it, is that my morning is almost entirely reactive. I’m depending on outside events to trigger my own actions. Unfortunately, until Locutus settles into a bit more of a predictable schedule, any attempt by me to alter it would largely be frustrating and cause me to lose additional sleep.

But I can make my iPod/online time begin more intentionally. My goal for beginning is that it start with some act of creation. Before mindlessly consuming the thoughts and words of others I have to first work on creating some of my own.

I’ve been in a serious financial mood lately. In a few days I’m meeting with my money club for the first time since Locutus was born. Since it will probably be our last meeting of the year, I plan on giving us all some money homework assignments.

• First assignment is to come up with a one-word theme to represent their financial direction for 2012.
• Second assignment is to come up with some smart goals for the year that we’re going to track.
• Last, for a fun twist, is to write a financial bucket list.

I’ve already got some ideas for what my answers to the assignment are going to be. I’ll extend the challenge to my readers too! Post your assignment answers in the comments below or blog about it and share a link to your post.

One Word – Pick one word that encapsulates 2011.

REBIRTH

When a baby is born, so too is a mother. I find myself in a state of perpetual beginner’s mind. Every day has been a new and delightful challenge and I look forward to each new step along the path.

Last year I took part in a daily blogging exercise during December called Reverb 10. The intention of it was to reflect on the year that had passed and manifest our intentions for the future. The organizers sent out an email yesterday letting participants know that they would not be hosting it again this year and providing instructions to roll our own. At first I was a little sad, but then I realized that this was simply an opportunity for me to do my own prompts for reflection instead of using someone else’s (I didn’t blog daily last year in part because I didn’t like all the prompts). If you do a search on twitter for Reverb 11 you can see that a lot of people are following suit and there are several places you can sign up to still get prompts delivered to you. (Please note that the only reason I’m not linking is because most of these posts are written on my iPod touch while I feed my 3-month old son).

After several hours of brainstorming, here’s what I’ve come up with for my own personal Reverb 11 project. I wanted to keep it ultra simple, so each prompt is just a single word to jump off of (with one notable exception). Only four posts will follow a schedule and they will form bookends for the month. I’m probably going to recycle the prompts each year because they are so simple & open. I’d love to mix it up in future years by doing the entire project as a photography challenge or art journalling challenge or whatever else I can think of.

If you want to play along, here are the prompts. Blog about them in whatever way they move you. Then if you want to share, come back and link to your post in the comments.

1. One word
2. Begin
* 12 things
* Body
* Community
* Confess
* Create
* Discomfort
* Effort
* Media
* Nourish
* Numbers
* Play
* Private
* Project
* Question
* Release
* Rest
* Ritual
* Sacred
* Space
* Story
* Style
* Wealth
* What
* When
* Where
* Who
* Work
30. End
31. Celebrate

This is my favourite XKCD comic. As soon as I saw it I literally laughed out loud. It just strikes a particular funny bone in me, probably because I do very similar things in my own head.

The reference to the Kill Bill soundtrack reminded me just how much I love those movies. It’s what made me a Tarantino fan. It’s one of the first films that made me want to watch the commentary & behind the scenes info. It really broadened my appreciation of the art of making a movie. It really is so much more than just the stars in front of the camera!

Even though I rarely purchase music (musical selection is more Benevolance’s forte) I decided that I really should have this soundtrack in my collection. Especially as the albums on iTunes are only $9.99 each. I want ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ on my iPod too but something tells me that we already own a copy of that song somewhere in our classical music collection.¹

So now that I own the albums and have the comic saved on my iPod, in case of emergency, I guess that’s another star gone.

1. On a total side note, there’s nothing like having a baby around to make you realize how few song lyrics you actually have memorized. [↩]

Happy to announce that we are finally ready to begin paying out the baby betting pool winners. We wanted to wait a couple months before paying out just in case Locutus turned out to be Japanese after all. But if he hasn’t changed yet then I guess we’re stuck with him as is.

We had a winner for length, but none for weight nor due date (no one picked 9/11, go figure).

I love google reader. Since I discovered it years ago I’ve used it to track countless blogs, read hundreds of posts. And to confess, I’ve allowed it to become a source of clutter. I’m pretty sure that I have saved over 600 articles in the starred folder. Many of the things in there fall into the category of “Someday” things or projects.

So I’ve decided to start cleaning it out and making today someday. The first and oldest star I’m tackling is this post on making a recipe cheat sheet from 2007.¹

My cheat sheet is more about cooking than baking. I started uber-simple with basic meat marinades so that I’ve always got a protein that I can cook up. Now I can remove that star and actually put the sheet on the side of my fridge.

Do you have a “Someday” project file too? What’s the oldest thing in it?

1. Let me know if the link doesn’t work. I’m blogging by iPod and had to manually type the link in. [↩]

The end of the year is fast approaching. I’m feeling pretty good about it this year too. While it’s always stressful to be running around trying to get together with all our family and friends,¹ it’s that part that is also the most rewarding in the end as well. We’ve given up most of the gift-exchange aspects of the holiday. And we don’t send out cards anymore either². We don’t really decorate much and I try to focus on the holiday of yule more than anything else. Despite all that I still feel the ghosts of stress and guilt at this time of year.

The funny twist is that New Year’s Eve is right behind it and that is my favourite holiday. I’m not sure what it is, but I adore the ritual surrounding the observation of passing through the threshold from one year to the next. Even if it is a little arbitrary,

One of my favourite New Year’s traditions is the practice of reflection and intention setting. I try to focus my energy on that as much as possible. Last year I blogged my experience with Reverb 10 and this year I’ll likely participate again.³

This year is going to be majorly different from all my other experiences though. I’m going to be reflecting even more thoughtfully about what my intentions are going forward and how I want to construct my future.

1. and this year everyone will want a piece of Locutus too [↩]
2. though I might start doing a year-end newsletter for some of our relatives who live further away [↩]
3. So consider this the official navel gazing warning. [↩]