Discouragement

Posted by random olio

So I am a bit crazy. I run and read at the same time. I am a boring treadmill runner and started working out a few years ago by walking and reading and now I run and read. Today while running I was reading: “The Sound of Paper” by Julia Cameron. These past few days have been good and creative for me. I have been taking photos, painting (artistic not walls), writing, and researching and applying for jobs. All in all a good week. However, underneath it all there is a push of sorts inside me. One that has pushed me to tiny tears at moments (which is unusual to me). It is that voice that says what is all this going to look like? What will happen in 2012? Why is it that sometimes you work so hard for something, and then it does not come to fruition? Will we get what we have worked so hard for these past few years?

For some reason ideas come to me while I am running and reading and I sometimes have to pause the treadmill and write them down. At the moment I am in the middle of my run, and I came to make a note about this very post that I wanted to write, and instead my fingers would not stop typing. So I will just keep writing for now, the treadmill can wait, I will jump back on later.

Here is the quote from “The Sound of Paper” that inspired me while running. I wanted to share it with you in case maybe it would inspire you today:

“Wanting to know where we are going is often how we fail to go anywhere at all. Rather than surrender to the mystery of the creative journey, we want to know each sight we will see, each obstacle we will confront. Each ‘something’ that we will encounter if we dare begin.

The trust is that we cannot know where our creative trail is taking us. We cannot predict precisely who and what it is we will become. The only certainty is that we will change from who and what we are. We will become something larger and something more, but exactly the form that something more and larger will take is a creation that we have not yet created and cannot demand to know.” page 94

So as I go back to finish my run, I will try to let go of my discouragement, and work on trusting that all my creativity this week is leading me, inspiring me, and opening me up to be present and more aware of that “something larger and something more.” Just as our car mirrors tell us, sometimes what we are seeing is closer to us than we realize.

driving past Mount Shasta

My favorite books of 2011

Posted by random olio

A good friend, who knows that I read 125 books in 2011, asked if I would list some of my favorite books from 2011. My list below is in no particular order and could be listed for many reasons. It might be because I loved the writing, it could be because the story moved me, or it made me think of a bigger life and a more expansive world view. It might have also just been because I could not put the book down for all of the above reasons. Here is my list:

Little Bee by Chris Cleave
You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
Breaking Night by Liz Murray
The Seven Levels of Intimacy by Matthew Kelly
Incendiary by Chris Cleave
365 Thank Yous by John Kralik
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Stories I Only Tell my Friends by Rob Lowe
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
One Summer by David Baldacci
The Winter of our Disconnect by Susan Maushart
Start Something that Matters by Blake Mycuskie
The Help by Kathryn Stockett

What were your favorite books of 2011? Post a comment as I would love to hear from you and add any new ones to my 2012 list.

Enjoy!

You know when the men are gone

Posted by random olio

I am addicted to my husband. So one can understand that while I love having some “me” time while he travels for work, I still hate that he travels for work. I have always been in awe of my mother-in-law who spent much time away from my father-in-law while he served for 30+ years in the Air Force. I really do not know how she did it.

So it was an honor to read: “You know when the men are gone” by Siobhan Fallon, I was in awe for what our Armed Forces go through, not just in the line of battle, but for what their families experience while they are home and away. This book is a quick read, but shares a variety of experiences from the perspective of the soldier who is away, or the soldier who comes home and finds his wife has found someone else, to the wife from abroad that was brought back to the US and has to learn to cope. Each story was heartfelt and made me appreciate what I think I could never make it through – the trials and tribulations of the lives of our military and their families.

My father in Turkey while in the Air Force

Thank you to all the men and women in the Armed Forces for all that you do to defend our country and to keep us safe and free.

david baldacci // donate your books

Posted by random olio

My life would not be the same without books. As a young child, I remember participating in the summer reading club and hiding under the covers after my bedtime with a flashlight so I could finish whatever good book I was reading. Was it Encyclopedia Brown or the Babysitters Club? Who knows. We escape into the lives and adventures of others, learn new skills, and hear true stories through memoirs and biographies, and so much more. Life without reading would be drab.

My mother-in-law told me I would enjoy reading David Baldacci’s book: One Summer. David is known in Virginia and has a home on Smith Mountain Lake where my in-laws live. In addition to writing a multitude of books, he also started the Wish You Well Foundation. I love what they are trying to do and it made things start to spin in my head. If I start a my own business, I want to set it up so that some of my profits/proceeds go to a foundation that supports literacy. Books have been one of the most important aspects of my life. As a child, and now as an adult.

Smith Mountain Lake

I also love the trickle effect of a good idea. I told my sister about this foundation and my earnest desire to support literacy. Later I found out that David’s foundation sparked the idea for her company to do a book drive for children’s books over the Christmas holiday. Within just a few weeks, they collected over 200 books for children to donate to the Children’s Book Bank.

For more details about what you can do nationally, you can contact the Wish You Well Foundation.

You can also do an Internet search for how you can donate new or used children’s books. Donations are usually tax deductible.

Girls Like Us

Posted by random olio

I’m in the middle of reading the book: “Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself” by Rachel Lloyd. As soon I started reading the book, I knew I wanted to write about it. I’m not finished with the book, but for some reason I have an extreme urgency to write about it today. Today, the national “observed” holiday in honor of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., I sit in awe of what Dr. King stood for and did for our country.

Except today I am saddened. You see this book is not on a topic that any of us probably want to talk about over dinner, on a plane, or over the phone with a good friend. It is not a happy book. Except the thing is, you have to read it. It’s about the sexual exploitation of our children right here in America. Not some other country far, far away, but here in your backyard.

The section I was just reading was talking about how sexual exploitation often happens in poverty stricken communities, sometimes where drugs are involved and often to those in group homes or in the system. It happens when at some point in a girl’s life someone stops caring, stops loving, or someone stops being responsible for the child. The reason this is hitting me so strongly today is because the author just discussed how much this effects children of color. She discusses how a large percentage of sexual exploited children are children of color and that many in our society look the other way. The “many” being judges, jurors, law enforcement officers, lawyers, etc. The author also sites statistics of how the news media willingly shows situations nationally about white, middle class girls that have been sexually exploited, but leaves out the coverage of children of color. You can find an example that the author shares in this New York Times article. Why is this?

We can no longer look the other way.

So in honor of Dr. King’s birthday, put this book on your reading list. Please, please read this book. I am about halfway through and so far it is not at all graphic, so the part that is difficult to read has more to do with how this is happening in my city and your city. The hard part is that it is happening at all.