impatiently awaiting 2011

gorgeous jewel-toned snowflake by lisa from pursuing art
part of the ornament exchange sponsored by elizabeth

i have grown weary and vaguely irritated with the reverb10 prompts. 

nothing against the fine and well-intentioned people who have written them, 

but i think i have to abandon the project here, 

so close to the end, 

because i feel like i'll just be repeating myself

if i talk about one more defining moment or gift that the past year has given me.

reflecting is a good thing - therapeutic, even.

but i want to look forward now. 

i feel butterflies in my stomach contemplating the new year ahead. 

i can't wait to get to it. 

it feels
like a new beginning,
tho' it's just a new page on the calendar -
there's something so unwritten about it -
a blank page on which to put my mark.
or my many marks.

so much i want to do in 2011:
words to write,
photos to take,
things to sew,
projects on which to embark,
paint to paint,
gardens to plant,
eggs to gather from chickens not yet acquired,
places to see,
people to meet,
magic to be felt,
sparkle to be sparkled.

i want it all.
now.
now.
now.

making lists

december 28 - achieve: what’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? how do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? free? happy? complete? blissful? write that feeling down. then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.

independent/free is the word that comes to mind. or rather words. but they're related, aren't they? because when we feel independent, we feel free. or at least i hope that's the case.

to do:

1. make lists
2. discuss them with husband
3. discuss them with jude
4. visit godaddy
5. order MOO cards
6. website
7. creative thinking
8. read the newspaper
9. send some letters - real, old-fashioned letters
10. action not procrastination

doing all of these things might not make my goal of feeling independent and free today, but they will be moving me in the right direction. best part of all, i've already done several of the items on this list. (by the way, that's the best kind of list: one that includes something you've already done, so you can cross something off immediately.)

* * *

this is part of reverb10, a month-long exercise in reflecting on 2010 and manifesting 2011.

new names, moments of bliss and food

once again playing catch-up on the reverb10. i got a bit stumped on the dec. 23 prompt and then christmas came and well, you get the idea.

december 23 – new name: let’s meet again, for the first time. if you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?

this question stumped me. mostly because i feel like a julie (i use julochka because there are a lot of julies out there and all forms of julie are always taken online), so nothing else comes readily to mind. i've always disliked my middle name - kay - because i don't think it goes very well with julie and it just never felt like it fit me.

but when i asked my sister, she immediately rattled off "penelope, gwendolyn and chloe." which i frantically scribbled down. i said out loud, how do you spell penelope and husband answered - "it's like pineapple with more l's." which was very amusing, if not entirely true.

i also asked husband, because let's face it, jens-peter isn't really the coolest name ever. and he gave the odd response of "heinrich." i think hope he was kidding.

i guess if i had to choose something for me, it would be something with a russian flavor - natasha or sofia or anastasia.

december 24 - everything's ok: what was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? and how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead?

i have to say that it's fortuitous that i fell behind on this, because this moment came yesterday. we (and by we i mean husband and his eldest) cleared a skating rink out on our lake. they built a little fire beside the lake, where we could warm ourselves and some spiced apple cider. i made a batch of little bite-sized mushroom tarts and we ate them together with full mugs of spiced apple cider. we took along a bag of those lovely orange peel-able clementines and they got gorgeously cold waiting for us to eat them in the basket - their bright wedges springing cold and sweet in our mouths as we gobbled them up. we were out there for most of the afternoon - racing one another and then skating through the snow (new skates are sharp and the snow covering the lake was light) to the other end of the lake in the purplish-pink light of sunset. again and again, all afternoon, i was aware that this was exactly what we were here for. and that everything would be ok.

me, taking pictures. taken by my sister.

december 25 - photo: sift through all the photos of you from the past year. choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

photography was a big part of 2010 for me - my 365 project helped me notice my surroundings and live more in the moment that i think i ever have. it may be that a great deal of what 2011 is about for me is taking pictures, so i have chosen this photo, where i'm doing exactly that. taken last summer by my sister, during a 4th of july fishing derby at a lake near our hometown.

from the garden

december 26 - soul food: what did you eat this year that you will never forget? what went into your mouth and touched your soul?

we moved in may - a bit late to plant a proper garden, so we didn't have a whole lot of garden produce this year, but we did find, to our delight, that there were 12 rhubarb plants already on the property. and so we had rhubarb crumble and cake and i made a gorgeous pink rhubarb juice that was turned into a summery rhubarb fizz with the addition of a bit of gin. food from the garden has to be the best kind of soul food.

brilliant pink rhubarb juice

rhubarb gin (or genever) fizz

december 27 - ordinary joy: our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. what was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?

is it just me, or are these starting to repeat? i think i already answered this one. here.  and possibly also here.

that said, i find that i still have something new to say about it....those moments when i most often experience joy during an ordinary moment i'm cooking. that has been curtailed a bit by my depressing old kitchen, but i have gotten it back of late. as recently as making dinner this evening...squeezing an orange over the duck we had for dinner, peeling and chopping veggies, sipping a glass of white wine, sprinkling snow of flaky salt over it before putting it all in the oven those are the moments when i most consciously feel joy in the everyday.

and now, once again, i'm caught up - only a few days left of reverb10.

traveling to my future self

december 21 – future self: imagine yourself five years from now. what advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (bonus: write a note to yourself 10 years ago. what would you tell your younger self?)

if there's one thing i've learned, it's that it's impossible to predict the future. you simply don't know where the choices you make in life will take you. and you will always be surprised. all you can do is be open and curious and on the lookout for new paths and opportunities and follow your heart. wherever it takes you. i'm certain that in five years, i'll be exactly where i'm supposed to be, but i have no idea where that might be.

if i could tell my younger self anything, it would be "be generous with the daily moisturizer."

december 22 – travel: how did you travel in 2010? how and/or where would you like to travel next year?

i've been slowly ramping down on the travel since the madness of 180 travel days in 2007 and 2010 wasn't a big travel year for me. only three long-haul flights - our family holiday to the US last summer and two trips to manila in november. i'll retain some frequent flyer status on KLM as a result and i even think sabin managed to go silver. i haven't flown SAS at all, so i'll be an ordinary member next year for the first time in nearly a decade. but i'm less upset about that than i would have imagined. travel is important to me, because the new experiences bring me an energy and inspiration that i crave, but i learned this year that i can get that same dose of energy in other ways - taking the train to berlin for the weekend, working with the horse, walking along the beach at the west coast, stomping around our own acreage. i don't need a long-haul flight to achieve it (tho' don't me wrong, one once in awhile is a welcome thing).

in 2011, i'd like to take more journeys by train. and because sabin's turning 10, she gets to pick where we will go on holiday and she has chosen new york city. she wanted somewhere that none of us have been. so i guess that means at least one long-haul flight in 2011.

* * *

check out the reverb10 site for more prompts and to see who else is playing along.

the crooked path

the crooked path

catching up once again on the reverb10 prompts. it seems like i get more out of them and they feel more connected when i do several at once, so i'm going with it. blogging's cheaper than therapy, remember?

december 18 – try: what do you want to try next year? is there something you wanted to try in 2010? what happened when you did / didn’t go for it?

i think the biggest thing i wanted to try in 2010 was to have a year of not buying things. anything i didn't need - so food would be ok, clothes and shoes not so much. and i have to say that although i became a slightly more conscious consumer, i was an utter failure at not buying things. in fact, in 2010, we bought a new house, a new (used) car and a horse, an iPad and a MacBook Air (damn you apple for your tempting, irresistible products). so it wasn't a very good year as far as keeping that promise went.

husband and i were just discussing the consumer rat race this evening over dinner. we have good salaries and admittedly probably have an above-average income. but we find sometimes that we don't really know where our money goes. and we have so much we want to do with the house that we need to be a whole lot better at that.

i lamented to husband my panicked feeling over the whole christmas gift scene and we talked about next year (always next year) doing only handmade or vintage gifts. or maybe not attaching the whole gift thing so tightly to christmas...just imagine running onto something that's perfect for someone you love, buying it and giving it to them out of the blue, rather than waiting 'til christmas, panic-buying some tat and giving it because you feel you have to. in this day and age, let's face it, if people want something, they get it, they don't wait for a holiday and hope for it, so we don't need gifts in the same way we perhaps once did. so a gift could really take on new meaning and be something really from the heart, if we made it or found just the right thing, whenever that may be. if you think about it, christmas is an arbitrary date anyway, so why should the gift giving especially be then?

i want to consume in a more conscious and thoughtful way in 2011. i want to recycle and upcycle and buy vintage instead of new (following this philosphy, we did that with the car and the house in 2010, so we're not entirely off track). i want the gifts i give to be meaningful and thoughtful and not driven by anxiety.

december 19 – healing:  what healed you this year? was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? how would you like to be healed in 2011? 

i don't know that i was really that broken in 2010, tho' i think i went through a mild depression brought on by a whole lot of change all at once. i think i'm uncomfortable with the notion that the pervading culture pushes on us all the time that we are broken and need some kind of medicine or book or guru or guide in order to be fixed. i think we just are as we are and that includes bumps and bruises along the way - it's part of the natural order of things. and i resist the notion that i am in constant need of healing.

december 20 – beyond avoidance: what should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (bonus: will you do it?)

a year ago at this time, i had the chance to try to strike out on my own and live from my own creativity in some fashion or another. and i didn't do it. i let fear get in the way, but i also let a whole lot of other major things get in the way...a move across the country, selling a house, buying another one, a change of lifestyle. and in that process, i didn't dare to also have the uncertainty of starting up on my own and not knowing that i'd have a monthly paycheck of a certain, predictable amount. i think it was a natural fear, but now that so many of those other changes are in place, i'm much more ready now to take those steps into trusting myself and my creativity and my abilities. i think there's no doubt that now i will, even if it is a crooked path ahead, i'm ready for it now.

losing and then finding myself: lessons learned

december 17 - lesson learned: what was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? and how will you apply that lesson going forward?

i have an odd tendency to lose myself in my job...i wholeheartedly take on the identity that's desired of me...or rather the one that i perceive is desired of me in a particular company. i give my whole self and then some. or at least i used to do that. i got a bit burned out doing that a couple of years ago and so i've held myself back from doing it again. last year, there was the misogynist dinosaur which kept me from wholly giving myself over to a job i otherwise completely loved.

and then there's the past year that i spent in completely the wrong place. and although i knew from the beginning it was the wrong place, i did it for a friend and for the sake of a major lifestyle change. and i've learned that you can't do that. and that you shouldn't do that. if you know in your heart that something is wrong, it is wrong. and nothing will ever make it right. no friend (who probably isn't really a friend when it comes down to it) and no cool product that you believe in will make it right if it's not.

so the lesson i've learned is to listen to that voice in my head. and all of the voices of those who emailed me and asked me if i was ok, because i didn't seem to be myself right here on this blog (thank you!!). i feel a little bit like i lost 2010. i know that feeling will fade and it's because i'm still too close to it. i had to go through what i've been through so i could move to the next step. it's about building your karma, isn't it? or perhaps paying it off. and maybe i went for the wrong job because i had some karma to work off. or maybe i'm storing it up for the next time. or more probably both.

but what i learned is that i have to listen to my heart of hearts, to my intuition. she doesn't steer me wrong. but for all of that, i feel that voice is stronger and steadier than ever. and i'm ready to create what's next. myself.  together with real friends this time.

~ namaste

gratitude and memories and friends, oh my!

i find the reverb10 prompts to be thought-provoking, but find them even more so when i let them accumulate for a few days (and that is not just an excuse for laziness, nuh, uh).

december 14 – appreciate: what’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? how do you express gratitude for it?

often, you only realize how grateful you were for something when you don't have it anymore. when i used to step into my blue room, i always whispered "i love you room," and so it knew i appreciated it. now, after a week of crafting and creating in little corners all over the house and leaving small piles of threads and sharp needles on the arm of a chair here and boxes of supplies there and covering most of our dining table with projects in various stages, i find that i am REALLY MISSING my old blue room. its entire purpose was to be a place where the projects could cover every surface and it didn't matter - no one complained that we couldn't sit down to eat dinner because there was fabric everywhere on the table. no one had to go digging through five different boxes to find the thread or the pretty paper, because it was all at hand, right there. so i have come to appreciate what a luxury it was to have a space devoted entirely to creativity and i am more determined than ever to have that again before 2011 is out. bigger and better than ever.

remembering 2010

december 15 – 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.

i think i'll actually let the mosaic above from my 2010 365 photo project speak for this one. each photo triggers a memory that i'd like to keep from 2010. memories of home and horses and walks on the beach and laughter and travel and moments of beauty and creativity. those stand out from 2010.

december 16 – friendship: how has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? was this change gradual, or a sudden burst?

i could tell a tale of a friend that wasn't really a friend at all when it came down to it, but a different, more positive and uplifting tale of a real friend comes to mind. the last blog camp in the aforementioned blue room last january was both a joyous and a bit sorrowful occasion. everyone who came had been to blog camp before, save elizabeth, who bravely made her way across denmark to join us. we were glad to gather in that magical room one last time, but we were all a bit sad it would be the last time there in that place.

being the only new person in a group of talkative women who all knew one another well could have been an intimidating situation, but elizabeth is the most calm and easy-going person that i know, so she took it all in stride. lucky for her, she's a listener and a thinker, because we scarcely let her get a word in edgewise. but she drank it all in and interjected with the most spot-on comments on whatever topic we were discussing (we did, after all, have to stop to take a breath sometimes). and she shared with us her beautiful soul food embroidery project - a symbolic journal of her innermost thoughts, hopes and dreams. and truly a thing of beauty.

her ability to see through the words and images i post on my blog to the true heart of the matter continues to astonish me. she'll email me and ask me how i'm doing because she can sense between the lines that i'm not ok. although we don't see one another that often, she is one of my best friends. she grounds me with her quiet wiseness. she makes me laugh. she inspires my creativity. and most of all, she makes me think. she's there for me, as a friend should be, offering advice and guidance and most of all, insight. she's my zen master.

and just to get back to answering the reverb10 question..i think she has gradually helped me change my perspective over this year...seeing what was going on even before i did, being all in the middle of it as i was and gently guiding me back to my creative path. thank you for that, E!

a woman of action

dec. 13 – action: when it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. it’s about making ideas happen. what’s your next step?  (from reverb10)

i have several lines of business and creativity and creative business that i'm going to pursue in 2011. last week, there was brainstorming with a friend/potential business partner. next step, writing a couple of business plans. and sending some holiday cards to potential business partners. and ordering MOO cards. and making some posters for one of the ideas, which is actually a little more local. and updating my LinkedIn. 

so, what am i doing here, i've got loads to do!!

achieving moments of perfect clarity

dec. 12 – 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? (still working on reverb10.)

i'll admit these moments for me are few and far between. my attention is too often divided - one eye on the computer, one on the phone, one on the stove, one on the stitching and one on the t.v. (how many eyes is that anyway?) suffice it to say, i spend a bit too much time in an unfocused state.

i have, a number of times this year, had an awareness that i have to appreciate the time with sabin, right in the here and now. she's such a fun age - she can do so much for herself, it's great fun watching her form opinions and beginning to be the person she will be. she's tall, graceful (except when she gets in these periods of fast growth, where she trips and stubs her toes a lot), has style and has such a lovely, fresh way of looking at the world. she sees things, really sees them, and always lives in the moment. i so admire it. and i really do try to learn from it.

on our recent trip to manila - which i wouldn't trade for anything - i had several of those golden moments of being perfectly in the moment together with sabin. whether we were out by the pool, swimming in the evening or giggling and dipping fruit in a chocolate fondue or choosing our nail polish at dashing divas or deciding which fabulous outfit to try on next in a fitting room at gingersnaps, we thoroughly enjoyed our time together. again and again, there were moments where we thought only about what we were doing and nothing else. moments of perfect clarity.

i want way more of those moments in 2011.

11 things (x3?) or riding the jagged edge...

dec. 11 - 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?

1. a job that steals my energy instead of energizing me.
2. negative thoughts.
3. fear.
4. negative people.
5. a depressing kitchen.
6. anything that stands in the way of creativity.
7. procrastination (ok, people, stop giggling, i mean this).
8. low ceilings.
9. not listening to my intuition.
10. television.
11. toddlers & tiaras

and how it will make a difference:

1. i gave way too much energy to a job that my inner voice screamed to me, from the very beginning was a bad idea. but i've learned my lesson and won't ever do that again.
2. the bad job exposed me to lots of negative thoughts and i have realized only in hindsight what that did to my creativity.
3. i took the bad job because i was afraid to trust myself and my own abilities. 
4. the bad job exposed me to loads of negative people, but i learned a big lesson about how damaging that is to my entire outlook on life and i won't ever let it happen again.
5. my kitchen is still horrible and calamine pink, but that will change in 2011. i won't get my ultimate kitchen with the aga (yet), but we will do the "curry kitchen" and it will be a BIG improvement over what we have today.
6. i'm not going to lose sight of being creative in 2011 as i did for much of 2010 - i let lots of things get in the way...moving, job, negativity...i refuse to let that happen again.
7. i'm a horrible procrastinator, so perhaps it will help to put it here. writing is the new praying, after all, so now is my chance to say i'd like to stop procrastinating.
8. our house is full of uncharming low ceilings and i feel them cramping my style. i won't be able to totally get rid of them 2011, but some of them will change.
9. i turned down the voices in my head in 2010, much to my detriment. i won't be doing that again.
10. i'd love to watch less t.v. it steals your time and your brain.
11. sabin and i have a minor addiction to discovery travel & living's toddlers & tiaras. i think, for me, watching it makes me feel like a good parent. because there are seriously no people more dysfunctional than these pageant parents. unless it's jon & kate (yes, they're still together here, tho' i realize they've long ago split where most of you are).

but to end this on a positive, rather than a negative note,  i hereby list the 11 things my life needs in 2011:

1. daring.
2. positivity.
3. writing.
4. daily creativity.
5. lots of gardening.
6. knowing much more intimately where my food comes from. (we are getting pigs and chickens as soon as spring comes.)
7. more time with friends.
8. more time spent on the back of a horse.
9. listening to  my gut.
10. music.
11. time outdoors.

what 11 things do you want in 2011?

check out more lists of 11 things at reverb10.

wisdom is a tooth

dec, 10 – wisdom: wisdom. what was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

in this year of change, we made a lot of decisions (some wise and some not so wise). probably the biggest was that we decided to move to an old farmhouse that came with 17 acres of land and one end of a small lake on the other side of the country. the house is in way worse shape than we thought it was (you don't tend to start removing big expanses of plaster from someone else's house while you're deciding to buy it) and there have been moments when we've thought holy fokkin' shit, what have we done?  but then there are moments. lots of them. where i wander the property in all kinds of different weather and i feel, deep in my soul, that we made a wise decision. i feel a sense of peace here. a rightness of place. and i realize that whether something is wise or not takes time to figure out. it might take years, but it feels again and again like this is where we belong.

rockin' your socks off

dec. 10 - the party (reverbing for your reading pleasure):  Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

a spiked (with tequila) shrimp "ceviche" of sorts

i think that the party that will rock my socks off in 2010 is still yet to come, as it's our annual christmas gathering with good friends who live on a beautiful lake called buresø. the party always promises loads of good food, ample drink, a silly gift exchange and another game involving famous names passed around in a bowl and a sort of pictionary-like guessing of them that always gets rather heated and the odd person or two (read: husband) deciding to engage in a bracing jump into the nearly-frozen lake. it's a party that's the highlight of the year for going on the 6th year in a row.

part of the tradition is that every couple brings a dish. most of the others are known for bringing the same dish year after year...flæskesteg (pork roast w/the cracklings on it), tarteletter (a danish thing-a flaky light pastry filled with a creamy mixture of chicken and white asparagus), tiramisu, sushi, herring...but me, i'm known for NOT bringing the same thing again and again. my contribution to the tradition is to be untraditional...hmm, maybe that's now i'm different...above is my contribution from 2 years ago...a tequila-spiked shrimp and mango ceviche that we used as a starter. last year, i made homemade herring (yes, me, in the land of the herring, decided to tackle this and ended up doing a very traditional, old-fashioned sort - imagine that!)

any suggestions for what i should bring this year? at this moment, i've got no idea! whatever it is, had better rock their socks off.

actually taken at the buresø christmas party in 2008.

beautifully different

dec. 8 - beautifully different:  think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

a long time ago, i wrote about the freckles that are only on one side of my face, so i won't go into that again, tho' i do think it's something that makes me different. whether it's beautiful or not is open to debate, but it does seem to be quite unique.

i've wracked my brain for the other ways in which i'm different...i think we all, on the inside of ourselves, find ourselves to be unique, our view of the world different than others, but in our thinking that, we're really the same, aren't we? my quirky views of the world...that eventually you won't have to follow the no-passing markings on the road because you'll be experienced enough to just KNOW whether someone is coming, or my childhood belief that the local newscasters on television could see me...those are different. but i don't really believe those things anymore.

i think i exude a kind of energy that lights people up. some people. for others, it bothers them. greatly. and they want to shut it down or simply make it go away. and what's interesting is that i don't have any control of it - i can't turn it off or on, it's just there, beaming out of me, hitting people in a positive or a negative way, quite beyond my control. and it's something that i both get to enjoy immensely and which hurts me at times almost beyond my comprehension. it's such an ephemeral thing - it's hard to describe and control. it's just there. a kind of life force. making me a bee charmer to some and a stinging bee to others. part of what makes me beautifully different and uniquely me.

* * *

check reverb10 for more beautiful differences.

manifesting and reverberating

i keep reading about this reverb10 thing around the blogosphere. and while i'm not much of a groupie (oh please, who am i kidding?), i'm really enjoying the stories i've seen here and there and everywhere. and as we know (perhaps all too well), i'm a reflective sort of a person and i'm definitely up for some manifesting of 2011. after all, writing is the new praying (a concept i feel a bit like i lost sight of as 2010 progressed).

so, since's already dec. 7, i think i'll do a quick catch up all-in-one post.

dec. 1 - one word: as we well know, one word is a bit difficult for me. i'm a wordy one. and i hate choosing or committing myself to but one thing. you see, i like LOTS of words - challenge, beauty, peace, mindfulness, sophistication, travel, create, meditate. but if i think about what one word marked 2010 it would have to be change. we changed our home, our jobs, our entire lifestyle. 2010 has been all about change - changes we chose, but changes that were at times difficult nonetheless. if you'd asked me at the beginning of 2010, i would have said i wanted it to be about creativity, but i'm afraid it wasn't that. not nearly enough. and if i think towards 2011 and what i'd like to have it be about, it would have to be daring. i want to dare in 2011.

dec. 2 - writing: "what do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?" what gets in the way of my writing is that i drain my energy on things i shouldn't drain it on. but as of today (dec. 7), the main energy drain has been jettisoned, so i expect that to change already now in 2010. and i can't WAIT to see what happens in 2011 with my writing (and everything else) now that my energy is my own again.

dec. 3 - moment: "pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year." it was a perfectly gorgeous long midsummer evening. the light stayed around 'til almost midnight. the three of us - husband, sabin and i - walked down to our lake, which was as smooth as glass in the golden evening light. the reeds and iris along the edges, whispering in the occasional very slight, warm breeze. we launched our little old boat and paddled around, out to the gorgeous lilypads where i took photos to my heart's content while we laughed and talked together. tho' it was high summer and we were on water, there were no pesky mosquitos. it was just the most perfect, happy, golden evening, together with my two favorite people on the planet.

dec. 4 - wonder: i think a big contributor to my moments of wonder during 2010 has been my 365 photo project. the act of having to look around me and find something to photograph every single day often made me stop and notice my surroundings in way that i wouldn't normally have done if i weren't doing such an intentional project. i want to somehow carry that intentionality into 2011 (tho' maybe without being quite so slavish about it - and daring to take more photos in film only).

dec. 5 - let go: it was a year of much change and i sadly let go of our old house, my blue room and my red smeg. i also let go of a most beloved professor. but i think the worst thing i let go of this year was far too much of my energy and to causes that didn't deserve that essential part of me. that's going to change in 2011.

dec. 6 - make:  what is the last thing i made?  this relates to that energy above...i can't really think of what the last thing i made was and that concerns me. i sewed quite a bit for sabin in october and i made a christmasy centerpiece for the dining table with hyacinths yesterday, but i'm not sure that counts. i let that diminished energy make me less creative and that's precisely what i want to avoid in 2011. we're decorating a new bedroom for sabin for christmas and i'm going to start by making a cuddly quilt for her new room tomorrow when i get up.

dec. 7 - community:  where did i find community in 2010? i definitely found it in the BC365 project group on flickr.  and when we moved, we found community in the real world on our new road - nice and helpful neighbors with good stories to tell. i was fortunate to find community among some really wonderful people who i worked with in manila during november. and i can't forget the wonderful weekend at blog camp berlin. so community both in cyberspace and in my actual community. can't really ask more than that.

i think this reverb10 thing is going to be quite cathartic. would you like to play along too? imagine what we can all manifest in 2011 if we just write it all down? writing is the new praying. i'm not going to forget that again.