2012 Retro

2012 taught me many things. It taught me even more than I already knew that life is not really linear. That happiness and sadness, reason and questions, are floating around with us all the time for us to embrace or wrestle. I am thankful for the growth I have experienced in 2012, and the countless named and unnamed blessings that have touched my life and the lives of those closest to me this year.

 

As the last photo montage of 2012, the following pictures mark times throughout the year when I felt most deeply the educating presence of creation in my life. If I could post 365 pictures, I would, but this should give you a sense of things. With love.



In love

From the moment I saw it, the Fort Hill Area has held my heart.

I have daydreams of photographing it in every season, every weather, every time of day.

You've seen it before on this blog, and you'll see it again for sure.

Thanks to my lovely friend S, I got out to Fort Hill on a terrible weather day - cold, rainy, about to blizzard. S was having a potluck for her brother, the occasion for which I was so lucky as to get in one last Cape Cod trip of 2012.

Enjoy the landscape of the day that I was able to capture, and if you're feeling more adventurous, this song about the new year, by one of the local musicians S had at her shindig.

Some days

...my cat is my favorite person in the whole world.

Random things I found to be cute 2012 edition

 

You're welcome.

Snowy salutations

One more day of vacation with the family. Lots of time for love and hugs.

Then lots of time for survey reports. All good things.

And...break!

The family and I had a wonderful Christmas, as you should be able to tell from our pleasant picture, and my general state of shortness within it.

I'd felt rather slumped these past few days, as I tried to tell myself to relax and unwind and enjoy the break. The problem with me as, in so much that I really enjoy having "down" times of the day everyday, and balance, I am not too sure that I really like extended breaks, and I am quite sure that this is okay, if my personality tends this way.

So instead of waiting until 2013 to start, I've decided.

Marathon training here I come!

This picture above is somewhat facetious, it being taken during a snowball battle to the death, and not an actual marathon training session (however, I was quite out of breath upon the completion of snowball battling).

But, I am excited to have registered, on this 26th day of December, for the Baltimore Running Festival Marathon on October, 12, 2013. I am even more excited that this is another race to be run with my beautiful friend K, as a sequel to our amazing race journey of October 2011.

I am going to be running for charity: water, because I live in a world where I can get clean water more easily than others, and that is not okay with me. But I am also running for me. Because running makes me stronger, happier, less worried, less stressed, and better able to take on the world. Because running reminds me that I can, even when I think I can't.

I know I run when some others may be cannot, and I do not take that for granted. But primarily, from the joy and purpose I get from it, running is a selfish act for me, and I want to make it an act of as much love as possible this 2013.

So tomorrow, and next week, and the week after that, I'll be running. And then maybe after October 2013, I'll never run again. But this is an important adventure for me, and I am willing to be open to all it will teach me, starting...right...now.

Merry merry!

I am taking a blog break to spend time with my lovely family, my beloved friends, and the reason they exist, a wondrous and awesome God who gives us a beautiful, chaotic, fascinating creation of which to be a part.

Please be well and know you are so loved!

Consuming Kids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2XSaaQjuuK0

This is on my "to watch" list for over the holiday break.

I really believe that we are desensitizing ourselves to what really matters in life by overuse of technology, commercialism, decreased face-to-face expression and communication, and overemphasis on production as opposed to creation.

Involving our kids in this is something I don't really want to be a part of, and I am looking forward to what others say about how we can prevent that to instead raise whole children.

Thankful because

...I came head to head with this today.

At first I was sad, scared, reactive.

Then I was accepting.

Then I was thankful for the reminder that I cannot be all things to all people, and I should never have to be.

I can't even be all things to myself.

I can only do what I can and be thankful for community and powers greater than myself that help me to be just a small little piece of the world turning and the galaxies swirling.

We are all, all, ALL, God's beloved children

Children in Pakistan lighting candles to remember the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting in America.

Beauty, strength, truth

Anita Sarkeesian is a feminist pop culture media critic who produces an ongoing web series of video commentaries from a feminist/fangirl perspective.

She creates out of http://www.feministfrequency.com/ and has been an inspiration to me for a couple of years now, after I watched her videos on women's portrayal in popular movies, and particularly those films that are critically acclaimed/Academy Award winners.

When she was harassed for her project on women's portrayal in popular video games, I knew one thing for certain - she was going to hold her own and rise above. I am so proud of Anita and so thankful this Christmas season that there are so many ways to speak out in truth for what is right.

On a slightly vain and certainly silly note

It's a shame that Michael Bloomberg only has daughters.

I am trying to have higher expectations, and marrying a public-health-supporting, globally-minded Bloomberg would make sense.

Told you. Silly and vain.

Soldiering on.

An everyday prayer

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I've done, everything that I wanted




And it was more than I thought it would be.

"May God bless the memory of the victims and in the words of scripture heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds."

President Barack H. Obama

Happy Secrets

When I was in college, I loved to check PostSecret once or twice each week. It is an incredible idea, which has been mimicked by many but never replaced. I always came away from PostSecret - before a final, after a fight with a friend, or just getting through a normal week - feeling like I was part of a greater humanity, and that it was all going to be okay.

The founder of PostSecret is someone I've heard speak, and who I think continues to have a lot of important nuggets of wisdom to pass on to us all.

Here's his latest, just in time for any holiday blues or New Year's worries you may be experiencing:

If you ever catch yourself feeling blue, as we all sometimes do from time to time, here are ten things that if you do three days in a row (I promise) will make you feel better.

1. In the morning write down five things you are grateful for.

2. Think about a random act of kindness you can do for someone that day.
3. Eat well (you know what that means); drink well (no coffee, soft drinks or alcohol).
4. Exercise hard for 20 minutes.
5. Write an old friend an email or better yet a letter.
6. Actively relax, meditate or pray for 10 minutes.
7. Take a walk in the sun.
8. Watch a John Hughes' movie like "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off" or "The Breakfast Club".
9. Sleep deep and long.
10. Remember that you are loved (I promise).

Sound simple? If there's one thing I've learned this year, it's that simple is as simple does. We earn the right to call something simple only after we actually live it out day-to-day in our lives. If we never try it, we never know what courage or persistence "simple" might actually take.

So thanks, PostSecret, for keeping us all a little happier, and a little more connected!

Prayers

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/13/world/europe/uk-prank-nurse-death/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

I am having a happy day today, but this is just so sad. So so sad. Prayers to her family, the royal family, and the DJs especially.

Never underestimate the power of "little things." They are all we really have the ability to control.

Continuing Advent

"Accept one another."

 

Romans 15

And a nicer post about Ke$ha

Let's be honest, if I was a member of the YouTube generation, this...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwO5_joq3Z4

 ...would so be me.

You are sweet and adorable, and I hope that in 10 years, you are still dancing with just as much fervor. One day you'll rule the world..

I would like to thank and blame Ke$ha all at once

So this weekend I was doing a little bit of work at the office, scanning in a survey from one of our client schools.

Scanning is a long, drawn out process whereby each single sheet of the 4-sheet survey that students take must be sent through a Scantron machine in order to be read and recorded.

It is a fun process, because, well, Scantron sheets are kind of 1980's and cool, but there are also "skew errors" and plenty of paper jams along the way, making it a tedious process too.

So when I scan surveys, I put on some mindless dance music, and dance...as I scan.

Usually I listen to Flo Rida, but this week, I chose Ke$ha, having enjoyed her new single on the radio and being ready for a change.

And as I was scanning, a survey about student use of alcohol and other drugs, I started thinking about pop culture trends, and trends in...well, student use of alcohol and other drugs.

Scanning, dancing, thinking, this pretty much sums up my life.

But I began to think about this concept that one of the U.S. national research studies talks about - "generational forgetting." The idea is that kids forget how dangerous the drugs their parents used can be, and parents forget to warn their kids about these kinds of drugs, and then the same types of drugs and drug problems keep re-surfacing over and over in society, in cycles.

Then I thought about how, when I was in high school, everyone was worried about ecstasy, because of our generation's rave culture, and about how we kids didn't use X, because we heard about people dying after awhile.

But then this happened:

And sure, other things happened, lots and lots of other things may have contributed to this:

The resurgence we've seen in dance music - with perhaps the Black Eyed Peas being forerunners, and folks like David Guetta, Flo Rida, Ke$ha and LMFAO taking over - is correlating to today's high schoolers rising use of ecstasy. Fascinating!

So the very music that helps me to scan the survey, to find the trends, to prevent the student use of dangerous substances, may also be contributing to the student use of dangerous substances.

Life is so very intriguing.