five (really) good things

the buddha in the messy garden (playing in Swan Dive)

It's been a while since I've made a list of good things, and as things feel a bit busy as Ellie and I get ready to travel to my mom's for a while this week, I thought it might be fun to write in a list today. Might do it every day this week in fact.

1) Picnik closing this month has me pouting a bit over here. But through Viv's Swan Dive class, I discovered PicMonkey and am having a wee bit of fun. (And spending time with Viv and her kind, inspiring teaching style makes me so so happy.)

2) I attended Rachel Cole's Well-Fed Woman Retreatshop in Seattle this Saturday. Rachel is so genuine and real and open-hearted in person, and I really enjoyed her workshop and her approach. And I can't stop thinking about this question: What are you truly hungry for? It was a new lens for me to use to look inward and unpack things a bit in there. Good stuff. She has three more cities left on her tour (Chicago, Minneapolis, and LA), and if you live near those cities, you should get thee to her workshop!

3) Ali's 52 Creative Lifts newsletter is full of juicy goodness every week. Last week, she wrote about the idea of thinking about your creative army. LOVE THIS! You can read it here (and then be sure to sign up for her newsletter here so you don't miss any of these inspiring must reads).

4) The students in Poem It Out are inspiring me so much with the poems and poem notes they are writing in this course. And I am having so much fun sharing my love of poetry with them. (As in I am basically dancing over here as I share this content with them. I.love.poetry.)

5) And if you would have told me three years ago that watching a 22-month-old little girl find 12 plastic eggs each filled with two M&Ms would be just about the most fun a grown-up girl could have on a Sunday morning up much earlier than she had hoped to be...well...maybe I would have believed you but I don't think I would have ever known that it would make my heart feel so big. 

*****

Every now and then I make a list of five (really) good things. Sometimes I make this list just because I want to make a list (like today) and share some good things. But often times I do this practice because even on the days when there seems to be more crappy stuff than beauty, the beauty, well, it is still there. And finding it is how I keep my heart just a bit more open these days...