A Place Like This......

Write Off

Welcome to Friday,it's Joy Diet time. This week was about making connections. Throughout the course of this book Martha oftentimes catches me off guard with her innocent chapter titles. I know her premise is that by chapter nine, we are hip happening people so why not share the wealth. Maybe she is getting us ready for the feasting part and didn't want us to be alone. The truth of the matter is that many of the dieters are still trying to wrap their brains around skill number 1, and that is to master doing nothing.

Honestly this chapter felt like it came out of nowhere. Maybe she was trying to catch us off balance after the chapter on laughing but the truth of the matter is that I don't feel fit for humanity just yet. Connecting with people is really easy for me. The harder connection has been with myself. What I've greatly appreciated about this book is that I've had some new insights along the way, even using my own pick and choose style.

So continuing on is the light of choosing what I want off of the joy diet smorgasbord, I've decided to take the weekend for myself and have a writer's retreat. I want to connect with the memories of my family and write them down for my children. I want to start all of those books that are constantly running in my head. The Joy Diet has taught me how to create a safe haven to do this. So dear dieter friends I'm off to the Smoky Mountains to write for the weekend. I'll tell more about it on Monday.Next week is the last week of the Joy Diet and I can hardly wait for our feast call. Have a great week and a happy Thanksgiving next week.

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Today's photos are from Pen to Paper online. I first ran into them when I was in Brighton and now they have this sweet little online store with all of the favorite journals,ink pens, and ink. Just a perfect gift for the writer in your life.

The Blue Plate Special

It's Friday and you know what that means......The Joy Diet. This week Martha had us laughing up to 30 times a day. "It's like a mental Drano" she says. It releases and purges our mental function. Did you know that children laugh 300 times a day?  Yep, I can believe that. I have a bunch of laughing kids.

So my fellow dieters I thought I would leave you laughing today. For my entire high school career my father packed my lunch and in it he would always leave a little written message called the Blue Plate Special. Each day was either a funny fact or a very cornball joke. No matter what though, my friends and foes would gather round in the cafeteria to hear the Blue Plate Special. I saved every single last one of them.

In this box that my sister made for me when I was 10, lies 4 years worth of humor. Don't worry, I will only share a few of them with you but I hope you laugh to meet today's quota of 30 laughs. I think its probably alright to laugh more than 30 times. So here's to your ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing)  moments.

The Blue Plate Special

Old Sayings:

She is only a junk dealers daughter, but boy could she scrap.

She is only a bootleggers daughter, but I love her still.

Jokes:

Q: Do you know what one shoe said to the other shoe? A: Let's get going we're being followed by a couple of heals.

Q:What goes wiggle,wiggle burrrrrr,wiggle,wiggle burrrr? Give Up? A: a catepillar crawling over an ice cream cone.

Q: What do you get if Batman and Robin get smashed by a steam roller? A: Flatman and ribbon.

Q: When is a car not a car? A: When it turns into a garage.

Q: Why did the scientist install a knocker on his door? A: He wanted to win the No-bell prize.

Q: Why did the atoms cross the road? A: It was time to split!

Ok, are you laughing? Here's one last old fact to send you into the weekend.

If you took all the aspirin taken in 2008 and put them end to end, you would get a headache picking them up.

Happy Weekend and keep laughing. :)

You are what you play......

Welcome to week 7 of The Joy Diet. This week aside from all the others has brought the most clarity. After reading the chapter and discovering what I play at best was an unveiling for me. After Martha walked us through our darkest moments and using 9/11 as an example, I've been able to see what I've embraced as important, that being my family and our love of books in all of it's capacities. 

It was so surprising for me this week to have these very vivid memories coming back. For what reason I do not know other than, perhaps I've cleared out enough space to let them surface. In doing so I've had a realization that is so strong,fun, and inspiring that I just have to come out and play.

As I hold my family in my mind, my whole family in my mind, I remember long lost childhood days when I would play library, be a writer, and publish my own and my friends written treasures.  Both of my grandmothers would not come to visit without bringing me a book. I immediately would catalog it into my personal library .....in a 7 year old sort of way. When I wasn't playing librarian I was writing and then I loved to make pretty little books and put them in our family library. My children have done that too and it's just so great to have these little memories of who they were at that moment. It's so fun to go back and look through them.

(Books from my grandmothers)

(the above photos are of my sons books when he was 4 years old.)
 

Where did this week's road take me? You really can't imagine. 

When I asked myself what I wanted to leave behind in this life the answer came out.....published books. Not as in my own published books but other peoples. Could this be right? I've never thought of myself in this light but when I allowed the thinking to unfold, it became very clear that this had been underlying for a very long time. The universe gave some very clear affirmations as well when I went to a used book sale and there were two books on how to publish books. I also called a couple of independent publisher friends and ran these ideas past them and they both said "Totally. It's so you, it's so totally you."  With this said, they also departed much advice in the way of what to watch out for. There is much to learn and the joy of new adventures.

This led me to my next memory of my mother. When she was dying of cancer 10 years ago and had entered hospice, I was going to take her books back to the library.  She told me that she felt sad about that because she wouldn't know how the book would end. So I sat down and read her the rest of the book. She fell asleep afterwords and when she woke up she told me that she was leaving me a little bit of a nest egg, nothing much....."just invest it and save it for the day when you know what you want to be when you grow up. Don't spend it on anything practical." So I believe this day has arrived. It's a beginning of a journey that has been waiting to unfold. The first step has been taken..........Where is "play" taking you?

A woman ahead of her time.......

 

That woman would be me. It seems I started the self-love treat giving a week before everyone else in the Joy Diet.The idea this week is to treat yourself twice a day whether you completed anything or not to inspire good behavior and a rememberance that you can do it so get into action. The week began with the treat of Martha Beck ,the author, leaving a message for us.  I discovered this week that there are so many other types of rewards. I enjoyed some guilt free moments in the garden. I wound yarn for all of the upcoming projects. I spent a day with my daughter looking at colleges and having great conversations while listening to favorite music. I put everything else aside for a writing day and enjoyed creating on the blank page. There were moments of great clarity on the two projects I've been working on during the Joy Diet. One piece of clarification was that I need to get rid of the shoulds. It happens at least once a day that I think I'm behind, or I should have accomplished more. By giving myself some kind rewards during the day it brings me to a place of living in the moment. What I'm doing in that moment is a perfect place. I consciously started thinking about this idea during non reward moments and the relief it gave me is a gift in a new perspective.

Since I was filling so happy and fulfilled, I decide to share the wealth of treating pleasure and that would be in the way of spooking. The following poem was placed on a piece of halloween fun scrapbooking paper and cut to fit inside a white paperbag. On the outside of the paperbag we drew a ghost, smiling of course because we are happy spookie people, and then we filled the bags with little bundles of our halloween favorites. For me I can't resist those cute little pumpkins or......the chocolate. Once it is dark outside we put on our warm clothes, grab our flashlights, and quietly sneak up to our friend's front doors ,leave the sacks of goodies,ring the doorbell, and runaway. Happy Halloween and hope you had a great week of Treats.

   

 
 

The phantom Ghost has come to town,

To leave you some goodies, I see you have found.

If you do not wish a curse to fall,

Continue this greeting, this Phantom’s call.

First, post this Phantom where it can be seen,

And leave it there until Halloween.

This will scare other Phantoms who may visit.

Be sure to participate, you don’t want to miss it!

Second, make two treats & two copies of this Ghost with a grin

 Deliver them to two neighbors where this Phantom hasn’t been

Don’t let them see you, be sneaky, no doubt….

And make sure they put their Phantom Ghost out!

Next, you have only one day to act, so be quick!

Leave it at doors where the Phantom hasn’t hit.

Deliver at dark when there isn’t much light..

Ring the doorbell and run, and stay out of sight!!!

And last, but not least, come join in the season.

Don’t worry, be happy, you need no good reason.

This is all in good fun and we are just trying to say…

HAPPY HALLOWEEN AND HAVE A GREAT DAY

 

The Magic of doing so I can eat chocolate........

I would just like to say that Martha uses really big scary words like fear, scary, and risk in her chapter called "Risk". It's Friday and time for The Joy Diet. It is so hard to move forward with words like these. Which brings me to my next point which is.....we have choices. Martha is just trying to get us moving forward. If these words aren't doing it for me then I have the choice to select different words.

First I re-defined what we were suppose to do this week. I called it how to avoid risk. How does one avoid risk?

I replaced all of those scary words with words I could relate to such as action,goals,and magic. I looked at my list of desires and made an outline of everything that would need to happen to reach my desire. I then asked the question what things on my list can I set a date with to get them checked off the list ? I opened my agenda and put them on the calendar. These dates are also on my google calendar which sends my updates on my email and phone. I've also made a dreamboard with these goals on it .When I've scratched something off my list, I eat a piece of chocolate and glue the little wrapper on the dream board. It's just a little reward. You will be able to tell if I'm getting closer to my dreams and desires because I will have gained a bit of weight, eventhough I'm on the joy diet, as I've scratched off the little details of my life. :) but I would have enjoyed every moment of this because I just really love chocolate.

I sent out emails to my closest friends explaining to them that I'm working on some goals. On this email I set specific goals with specific dates on completing them. I asked them to perpetually ask me about these goals and how they are coming. I also promised to send them a quick email each time I scratched something off the list.

There are somethings on my list of goals, dreams, and desires that will need a little magic touch.I don't really know how to reach some of my goals but I truly believe that as I do what I can towards my intentions of these desires coming true, then providence will provide the rest. For me this is truly the joy of the journey. Next week we are onto Treats, I hope this involves chocolate but knowing Martha she's just teasing us again. Have a Great Week.

It's in the "and"

It's Friday, and that means it's time for another "Joy Diet" moment.

This week we were working with creativity. Not in "how to be creative", but how to be creative in creating your desires. Remember last week when we were talking about desires?

Part of this week's exercises was to take polar opposites and remove the "or" and replace it with "and". Good or bad became good and bad, smart or stupid became smart and stupid. I think you get the point. This little "and" word with it's three letters is the most important part. Without the "and" you only have opposing opposites,almost impossible to reconcile. You are being torn in one direction or the other. With the "and" you have an infinite amount of gray zone. I believe it is the "and" which signifies the journey. For example, published author or non published author becomes published author and non published author. This little word holds the compassion and courage it takes to show up and write every day on the way to becoming published. I will never look at "and" as just a conjunction again because it is truly the word of allowing one's own journey to unfold. "And" has now become a word of courage, compassion,and the road traveled.

While on the "and" road I started some of the other exercises to discover this week's creativity which pertained to last weeks desires. The first one is to show up every day and ask yourself a different "How" question and as many of it's possible solutions. There comes a point where you are to ask three very different people their thoughts and solutions on your "How" question. Coming from my desires list of last week ,I asked, "How to share with more children who want to read and love books?"  I asked a neighbor, the lovely old man at the dry cleaners, and a little voice with a lot of ideas, my son little "O". I'm so glad I asked him. "Mom", he said. "Use Jump Into A Book". Instead of posting the books we are currently reading and jumping into, you could put all of the notebooks of adventures we have taken so that kids can jump into books just like we do. Out of the mouth of babes. With this, our creative juices started rolling. An evening was spent in front of the fire, notebooks out and writing,modifications on laptop, tea and cookies shared and a sleeping cat between us, I believe a dream is born with many to journey on it.

  
 

We already have the Jump Into A Book sight, which chronicles are book reading endeavors etc. We haven't been as active as we had hoped due to living but with a clear and inspired plan, I think "things are a changin." To discover what is Jump into a Book have a look here, for all other book moments have a look here.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend. 

 

Desires

Here we are week three of The Joy Diet. Wow a lot to think about in this chapter and many layers to unveil.

While continuing to go through all of the exercises in this chapter the one desire that kept coming up over and over again was that of service and usefulness. Humbly and gratefully I can tell you that I've experienced much and have been afforded many opportunities. From all of these experiences, I would like to make the last half of my life one of servitude. I just want to leave this planet and the people who live on it a little better off because I was here.

Martha talks about quickening. It's the moment a desire becomes an intention. It's something that captures the truth from deep within us. It's as if our desires have their own agendas. All we can do is wait and wonder and cherish the "joy ride."

There are a couple of instances this happens to me. The first is with books. Oh how I love books. I can't remember a time in my life without books. Books are a shared and cherished commodity in this house. They are meant to be savored and experienced. Some time ago I realized that not every child has adults in their lives who love reading. So I'm a huge advocate of children's literacy. Doing interventions with at risk readers as well as just sitting and reading to someone makes my day. My desire is to contribute somehow, in a really big way, to literacy. So this idea is spawning itself and as it does so I will just continue doing what I'm doing.

The second situation where I get a joy buzz is helping women and children. I sponsor several women with Women for Women as well as sponsor female business owners at Kiva. Just knowing that my little bit of contribution is making a huge difference in someones life makes me extremely happy. Each woman I sponsor is able to write to me. There is a human connection and so many areas I can relate to such as being a mother.

I've been reading this book called,"Half the Sky". These women have lived hellish lives and rise up like a phoenix to be role models for their families and communities. After each heart rendering story I feel inspired that whatever I have to give will make a difference. I'm convinced that I have a responsibility to my global community to be a part of it and interact with it.

I'll be interested to see where these little glimmers of "desire" will take me. I'm sure it will be an interesting journey.

What inspires you? What's your life's desire?

Searching for Truth

Happy Friday everyone. It's time for the Joy Diet......as I was saying last week,.... I do not think doing "nothing" means being empty. Our journey started with our daily bit of nothingness. I chose to do "nothing" differently this week by doing a walking meditation which lasted much longer than the needed 15 minutes a day. After a nice place was carved out to do a bit of introspection, we had some poignant questions to answer, to help us go deeper into ourselves and our truth. 

 
 
  
  

What am I feeling?

Here on my little blog, I intentionally make it a happy world. It is my intention to share the daily beauty I find in the world and my life in it.  I would be lying,however, if I didn't confess to having moments of great joy and recently moments of sadness. The sadness comes from living ,which sometimes means saying goodbye to those we love. Two years ago today I said goodbye to my sister who died of cancer and in July I said goodbye to my father who also lost his very brave battle with cancer.

So when the next question was posed,"Where do you hurt?" It is from a place of loss and honor that I answer this.

While on Gotland, in my lovely city of Visby, I've come to complete a journey. I am here to write the names of my father and sister in the family book. With this their lives are complete and their memories serve as our blessings. It is a time to be patient with myself in missing them and to accept the sad moments that arrive.

So in thinking of their passing and the joy diet journey of doing nothing everyday; it had me thinking about this quote from Khalil Gibran. It is a "nothing" of a different sort, a freeing moment.

"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance." Khalil Gibran

What are the painful stories I am telling? Are they true?

After two wonderful people who so much influenced my life are gone, it is so easy to say "I'm alone." While that story is true in one sense, I'm deciding to move forward as I grieve, to a different story of my choosing,an other perspective.

Can I think of another story which might work better?

A story I think might work better is one of continuing to live by the philosophy that both of them cherished, and that was service. Though they are both gone, I have a life time of memories and examples to step forward from. In doing so I keep them close.

Today I light these candles in their memories. To signify their great contributions to my life. Now we will let them dance. 

~May our memories be our blessings~

 

Nothingness

We join spokes together in a wheel,

But it is the center hole

That makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,

But it is the emptiness inside

That holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,

But it is the inner space

That makes it livable

We work with being,

But non-being is what we use.

(Lao Tzu)

   

This week in "The Joy Diet" we have been working on doing nothing for 15 minutes everyday. The doing wasn't the difficult part, it was silencing the mind.

How hard can it be to just focus on breathing? I breath every single day without thinking about it and the moment I want to concentrate on it my mind flits all over. After a couple days of this I decided to show myself compassion.

Somewhere in my chattering mind the thought came how difficult it is to go from an active mind to a still mind isn't a logical progression. Everything in the natural world happens in stages. From day three on I decided instead of silencing my mind, I would observe it in the process of quieting down. There is such a beauty in the layers of the process and unveiling.

I also chose as my focal point a flower instead of my breath. This calmed my mind so I could observe the unfolding of quieting.

 (Photo by Per Svangren)

I think,perhaps, there is also a myth that to do nothing means emptiness. I've discovered that all of the items in my mind are still there but I have created space around them. They have now taken on a different perspective, like viewing a bird from afar and seeing it up close.

As each item in my mind takes on less importance silence comes and is welcome.

What Brings You Joy?

Greetings from Astrid Lindgren's house in Sweden,.....

and welcome to my second post of the day. I'm so happy to have quick internet again....that's what brings me joy.Sorry I missed you here on Friday but I'm here today. Hi, I'm Valarie, creative entrepreneur who loves to read books and travel. Along with these I'm also a wife and mom to three wonderful children and can be found knitting in public. I'm starting our bookclub while I'm in Sweden so I will be posting from there but I will soon be back in the States. You are most welcome to look around my blog to see what I've been up to. There are widgets on the sidebar to my other blogs. I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment.

I've been looking forward to this bookclub since the moment I found out about it. I met so many great and wonderful people during "Wreck this Journal". Once I started reading martha's book I really want to take the time to experience fully each one of these special words and chapters. I especially look forward to sharing all of our thoughts and experiences with eachother.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about.......

It's the start of another wonderful bookclub with Jaime Ridler. This past summer I participated in the "Wreck This Journal" bookclub and had such a great time that I've come back for yet another few moments of "Joy".

This Fall we will be going through "The Joy Diet" by Martha Beck. I greatly enjoying it .....will share more on Friday. Until then I will enjoy visiting all of your blogs so I can get to know you better.