Warning: This may make you cry.

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Yes, it brought tears to my eyes. And, yes, I have mentioned before that I do not cry often, but sometimes the little things bring tears to my eyes. It is usually when I am moved by something unusual. I do not often think about regrets from my life, but there is one thing that I think about usually every Christmas. It is a random item, but it is something I wish I still had. Each year around Christmas we would make different Christmas cookies and treats to have leading up to Christmas Day. Some we would give to other friends and families as gifts and some were for us. Whatever was still left on Christmas Eve I would leave out for Santa with a glass of egg nog and write him a letter.

While I cannot remember how old I was, or when it happened, eventually I knew that my dad ate the cookies and drank the egg nog. See, my dad had atrocious handwriting. Which is why I did not have to be Encyclopedia Brown to figure out it was him. You are probably wondering where I am going with this story. Well, the few years after my mom passed on, my dad was going through some rough times and we were not in close touch. While going through my mom’s things and knowing we had to get rid of as much as possible or pay to store it, I got rid of those letters. Partly because of space and partly because my dad and I were not so close at the time.

Throughout high school and college, and when I was away during summers I never got letters from my dad. These letters from Santa could potentially tell me a bit about my dad and what ideals, inspiration, and thoughts he wanted to share with me through the voice of Santa. They are gone. So when I saw this video for Extra gum, the tears came to my eyes. The gum wrapper origami birds would have been my letters from Santa.

Any tears? If so, call your dad, or your mom, or whoever you thought about while watching. That very person who made you feel loved.

Serial Comma User

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Are you a serial comma user? I am. Do you know what it means to be a serial comma user? I did a bit of research to figure out whether there was a right or wrong way (or a right side and a wrong side) of the serial comma discussion. There are two camps. The one that says you should use the comma and the one that says it is not necessary, but no clear direction either way. A few months ago I finished reading the book: “How to Not Write Bad” by Ben Yagoda. This is what he says about commas:

“In a series of three or more items, do you put a comma after the penultimate one (right before the and or or)? That’s another trick question. If you are writing for the Associated Press, the answer is no. If you are writing for the New Yorker or the Oxford University Press, the answer is yes. (The OUP is so well known for this protocol that it has come to be referred to as ‘the Oxford comma.’) If you’re writing for yourself, the key thing–as in style choices generally–is consistency: choose a style you like, and stick with it.” page 51

I prefer to add the extra comma for clarity sake, but some have been trained from earlier on in school or their career to handle the serial comma a specific way. It messes with me a bit because I feel that there should be a clear rule on serial comma usage. I know you may think, seriously, Tami is this what you think about? But when thinking about business or corporate communications one wants to follow a standard, but if there is no standard…what is one to do?

Here are a few different takes on serial comma usage. Wikipedia and then an article from NPR. I agree with Yagoda, that when writing for yourself to choose consistency, but I think it really should be the same at work, regardless of if you work for the Oxford University Press, or the Oregonian. Why am I for the comma before the and/or? I feel like when you are listing it, if there is no comma where there should be one that it groups the words together. I will give you and example from “Grammar Girl:”

“Here’s a sentence that could mean different things with and without the final comma: Rebecca was proud of her new muffin recipes: blueberry, peanut butter and chocolate chip and coconut. Without a serial comma, you can’t be sure whether the last recipe is a combination of peanut butter and chocolate chip or a combination of chocolate chip and coconut.”

It is the little things, but sometimes the little things build up over time. Right? What do you think?

What drains you?

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Lately I have been thinking about what drains me in life. The bright light I keep being led to is: negativity. Now I am not going to tell you I am a perfect angel. Yes, I get negative and frustrated and the world does not always look bright and shiny. When I speak of negativity I am thinking more of the person that is consistently negative. I do not want them in my life. I do not want them in my house. I do not want them Sam I Am. Sorry I got a little Dr. Seuss on you.

We all have someone in our life that sucks us dry, takes, and complains, and we have to work hard to find our equilibrium again. Why do we continue to allow this to happen? Sometimes we do not have a choice. They could be a client, vendor, family member, friend, or co-worker. We might have tried to share our thoughts and opinions while the other person remained defensive or could not see our point of view. What do we do when that person continues to drain us?

I believe that we all have a choice in how we approach our day. We have a choice to how we are going to respond. Sometimes it is not always easy to stay positive and kind when our day might be throwing us curve balls left and right. But you know deep within if it is your tendency to lead with positive thoughts, happiness, and a smile on your face. You know if you are truly enjoying your life. If you throw out the random bad day, do you approach your life with a glass half full mentality? I hope so. It makes things so much easier.

When others have shared their struggle, I often want to find a thread in the story that shines to all the goodness, gratitude, and wonderful things they have going for them. There is usually always a silver lining. My hope is to cultivate that goodness and nip negativity in the butt. Who wants it around? Not me. What if we tried to lead with the joyous part of life, and tried to eradicate the Debby Downers? Are you with me?

Toys, Sesame Street, and Missing Match-Ups

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I cannot remember having a favorite toy growing up. I do remember being addicted to board games. I loved the challenge, I loved the strategy, and I loved the competition. Recently my sister reminded me of one of my favorite and probably earliest games. It was a Sesame Street game called: Missing Match-Ups. The best way to sum it up was that it was the Sesame Street version of memory.

I loved it. I imagine I begged my entire family to play with me. They probably did just so I would stop asking. I remember being very good, and I have a hunch they were not letting me win. I never wanted that, I always wanted to win on my own merit.

I do not know if my love of games grew out of my childhood. What I remember most was that it was a time my family was together. Often my mom did not join us, but I definitely remember the many times that she did. I wonder today how often families turn off the television, their phones, and iPads and sit around a table with food and games and connect with each other (whether your family is young or old). It was a time I always cherished as it seemed that we each gave each other the presence of now.

Do you have a favorite childhood game?

Let the crap get you to your answers…

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I just finished reading: “The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life With Language” by Natalie Goldberg. Such a great book, especially if you enjoy writing and want to be inspired and pushed to a new place in your daily writing. I love how she tells you to just write, to just put the crap down, not to analyze it, but just write.

Even though I write 5 blog posts a week, I still actually write in a journal that is just for me. Sometimes it is a recap of events from my day, or how I am feeling about something, or I cuss, and go off on people. Writing in my journal allows me to make sense of my day-to-day world. It allows me to see what comes out of me, that I may not have known was in me. This was one of my favorite quotes from her book:

“Feel free to write the worst junk in America. You have to turn over your mind a lot for the gems to pop out. And really in True Secret Retreats and in writing practice we are not looking for the gems, but a way to meet and accept our whole mind. Writing down the boring, the complaining, the violent, the agitated, obsessive, destructive, mean, shameful, timid, weak thoughts allows us to see them, make friends with those parts of ourselves. They won’t then rule us. We won’t be running from them, or battling them in meditation—or in our lives. Writing practice asks all parts of us to come forward. And when we get out of the way and stop judging, aren’t they all their own peculiar impersonal gems?” page 21

She makes you think. Write the good, the bad, and the ugly. As I said earlier, writing helps us to know what is really in our mind, the front, back, and deep parts of what we are thinking. Sometimes we have to get through all our crappy thoughts, our anguish, our pain to see the real issues that baffle us.

So whether you write regularly, sporadically, or not at all, I encourage you to follow Goldberg’s advice. Write down the crap, write it all down, and I bet, if you stick with it, the letters that form into words, into sentences, will begin to tell a story. Maybe it will be just for you, or maybe you will want to share it. Those letters and words often tell us what is inside that we often do not know how to make sense of it. Let the crap get you to your answers.