#reverb10 – Page 2 – hellomelissa.net

#reverb10 – Day 15: 5 minutes

December 20, 2010December 20, 2010 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

December 15 Prompt

Author: Patti Digh
Creative is a Verb: If You’re Alive, You’re Creative
@pattidigh

Prompt: 5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010.

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I’m totally behind on #reverb10, and this prompt has been swirling around in the back of my head since it was released. That said, when I set the timer to write this list, I spent some of the five minutes thinking “what else do I not want to forget?”.

I’ve distilled my raw points into the following list:

Things I Don’t Want to Forget About 2010:

Flora’s milestones and development. Flora learned to walk late – she was about 18 months old. I wasn’t exactly worried about how long she was taking but it was a relief when she finally got the confidence to get her feet under her. She learned to talk before that and she’s been talking a blue streak ever since. It’s been a lot of fun to watch her turn from a one-year-old into a two-year-old. Her imagination is huge and it’s such a joy to watch her play and learn.

Summer. I love summer. I am a summer baby and it is definitely my preferred season. We didn’t do too much out of the ordinary, but we did get to go visit friends and go to a cottage together for the day. Watching Flora hang out with our friend’s kids was a lot of fun. Hanging out in the hot tub after the kids went to bed was awfully nice too. We also did boat trips with my parents and went to the beach near their house. Beach days with my family are always fun – lots of food, drink and sand and water toys for everyone to play with. Even hanging out at home was fun. Sean barbecuing, going to the park to go on the swings, everything is easier and more relaxed in the summer.

Our January trip down south. Sean and I went to the Dominican Republic with good friends. It was wonderful to get away from the kids (they have a son four months younger than Flora), knowing that they were safe and having a wonderful time with their grandparents. It was also nice to take an all-inclusive trip while not being pregnant!

My girl’s weekend. In November, I got together with a bunch of girls I’ve known since high school. We live here, there and everywhere and don’t see each other often, but putting us all in the same room made for a lot of talk and a lot of laughs. The subject matter may have been slightly more mature (at times anyway), but it’s amazing how little things have changed between us. Very few pictures were taken (d’oh), but I hope we can make it an annual event so we need fewer pictures to commemorate it.

Blissdom Canada. Blissdom was a big deal for me. It was my first blogging/social media conference, and was my first opportunity to meet many of the people I see on Twitter and on their blogs every day. I learned a lot from the sessions that I’m using in my day-to-day life. Seeing everyone there also made me more aware that this stuff is a big deal to more than just me. I’ve been writing online a long time and I really enjoy it. Meeting like-minded folks both in person and via Twitter has made me realize that I am not crazy and I am not alone out here.

I hope that 2011 brings more of the same and that I’m able to remember even more great, uneraseable memories next year at this time.

#reverb10 – Day 14: Appreciate

December 15, 2010 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

December 14 Prompt

Author: Victoria Klein
27 Things to Know About Yoga
@victoriaklein

Prompt: Appreciate. What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?

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This year, I started trying harder to appreciate everything in my life. I tried keeping an offline gratitude journal (link leads to a post from earlier this year where I talk about my experience with it). I found I didn’t really stick to it, but I do write the occasional moment down in the Momento app on my iPhone. I also believe that sharing happy stories about what’s going on in my life, whether it’s pictures on Flickr, a status on Facebook, a quick tweet or a longer blog post helps me to express my gratitude for the things I’m sharing.

But the most important way to express gratitude is to just express it. Say thank you. Tell someone you appreciate what they did. Tell them why you appreciate it. Not just people who went out of their way, but anyone who did something for you. Sean and I get along better when we remember to thank each other for the little things we do for each other.

I’ve heard good manners referred to as “social lubricant”*. Good manners really do grease the wheels of society. You’re more likely to go out of your way to do something for someone who will appreciate what you did. Make sure you appreciate what other people do for you. It really makes a difference, in your life and in theirs.

*I’ve also heard of booze being referred to as “social lubricant”. That certainly has its time and place. So thank your bartender for your beer.

#reverb10 – Day 13: Action

December 15, 2010 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

December 13 Prompt

Author: Scott Belsky
Making Ideas Happen
@scottbelsky

Prompt: Action. When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?

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The next step depends on the idea I’m trying to make happen.

Sometimes I write a list of things I need to do to put my idea into reality. I follow the advice many productivity gurus give and separate each large task into smaller, easily completed task. It feels good to check the tasks off that way, whether I’m using pen and paper or Remember the Milk, my favourite web-based to-do list app.

I’ve also written the occasional blog post detailing my to-do list for that timeframe. Not big-goal to-dos, but the little things that add up and need to get done, like cleaning the bathroom. Posting those to-do lists online tends to shame me into doing them. Using the <strike> tag also feels good to cross items off these lists.

Sometimes crossing the first item off the list makes the rest of the list a little easier to complete.

#reverb10 – Day 12: Body Integration

December 12, 2010 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

December 12 Prompt

Author: Patrick Reynolds
The Knowledge Workers Survival Guide
@patrickcantype

Prompt: Body integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

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Honestly, I can’t think of a moment this year that this sort of statement went through my head.

I do think that this sort of moment can happen though, and I hope that the next time this happens to me (because while I can’t peg an exact moment, there’s no way it has never happened to me before), I hope I have the presence of mind to remember it and file it away for those moments when my mind and body don’t feel so connected.

I guess this goes back to the theme in some of my earlier #reverb10 posts.

“Pay Attention”

Pay attention to what’s going on in my mind, so I can recognize patterns and make things better.

Pay attention to my body so I can catch any anomalies early and get any necessary treatment for them.

Pay attention to those around me so I can help them with these things as well.

#reverb10 – Day 11: 11 Things

December 12, 2010December 12, 2010 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

December 11 Prompt

Author: Sam Davidson
50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need
@samdavidson

Prompt: 11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

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I want to get rid of physical clutter. I’m pretty good about purging on a semi-regular basis, but I think I put more back into the Keep pile than I should.
I want to get rid of emotional clutter too. I overthink, I worry and all the constant cycling through the day’s thoughts keeps me up at night.
I want to eliminate unnecessary guilt from my life. The downside to being conscientious and sensitive to other people and their needs is that I often feel a lot of guilt. I’m sick of feeling like nothing I do is ever enough so I need to lose the guilt. It’s not helping me to do better – it only makes me feel worse.
I want to remove the stress from my family’s morning routine. When I don’t sleep well at night, I have trouble getting up in the morning (not a unique problem I know). Getting all three of us out the door in a reasonable timeframe is always a challenge. Now that winter is on its way, there’s shoveling and car-scraping to contend with. The timesuck factor in these tasks alone makes this an important issue to deal with.

This isn’t an 11-item list. These are pretty big issues though, so I think it’s better to take on these four big issues and succeed than struggle with eleven separate issues at the same time. I choose to consider this reduction in list items a stress-reducer, so maybe I can consider this list item #5: I want to stop taking on so much I end up paralyzed an unable to make decisions.