Points to Live By from Patsy

The other day I was over in the education department and we were talking about press releases, interviews with reporters and websites. It was a far-ranging conversation, although not a very long one. A day or two later I popped over and on the white board in Laurie, Brad and Kate's office they had written this.

It says:
Important Points to Live By From Patsy
1. The mic is always on.
2. Own your own stuff.
3. You're always "on the record" with reporters.
4. It's not personal, it's business.

Needless to say, I was flattered. It made me smile. And they are all good points to live by I think.

Inspiration

Tonight we went to Skaets for a burger and had a chance to visit with Lisa a bit. She mentioned that she was inspired to journal again after seeing my posts about journaling.

I can't express how wonderful it is when people tell me something I've said or done has inspired them to journal. I'm pretty sure our world would be a much better place if we all took a few moments every day to jot down our thoughts. It would free our brains to work on other things, and make us all kinder.

Lisa made my whole day - maybe my whole week - by telling me she was interested in journaling after seeing my posts about it. Isn't it cool that writing about writing has inspired someone to write? Life is a circle.

Changing Who You Are

There's a concept that "who we are" can be affected by events in our lives.

I've been thinking lately about the list of events in my life that changed who I am, that affected me so profoundly that they changed the way I viewed the world and how I existed within it.

It's easy to assume that changing who you are is a negative, but that seems short-sighted to me. How can we assume that who we are at any moment is who we are meant to be?

I'm pondering this question lately. What has changed who you are?

Gratitude Journal

For almost ten years I've been making notes in a gratitude journal. Obviously, I've not written in this particular one every day. In fact, some pages may have only three or four entries over the double spread and span nearly a year's time. At other times page after page are filled with nearly consecutive days of entries.

Gratitude journaling - writing down a few things you're thankful for that day - has a profound effect on your overall happiness. It has been proven in multiple studies that gratitude journaling will make you happier six months from now than you are today.

I was leafing through this book tonight and I find names that continually pop up in my gratitude journal - Greg and Trish are ever present. I also find references to people no longer with us - Mama, Matthew, Pat, and my brother Jim. The names of others important in my life at one time or another are sprinkled on the pages. Places I visited are there, and references to simple bits of life, and continual gratitude for health.

More than my regular journals, these little snippets in the gratitude journal transport me back to a particular place and time. Maybe it's because of the emotion associated with the writing.

I urge you to give it a try. It takes just a few moments of the day and can have a profound effect on how you feel. I started being more diligent about it a few months ago and my mood has definitely improved. Try it yourself.

(My apologies for blurring the writing, but I don't share the content of my handwritten journals.)

Manfax and Other Fun Thoughts

This is a funny bit I ran across online - apps women would like to have. My favorite is the manfax. Wish I'd thought of that witty bit. But I didn't. I just saw the link on twitter. I'm sure there's a million - make that billion - dollar website idea in there somewhere. Enjoy.

http://trueslant.com/caitlinkelly/2010/02/07/memo-to-steve-jobs-the-10-apps-women-really-want/

Quote of the Day

"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire."
- Aristotle

I've run across this quote twice in the last few days. So far I've not been able to think of anything that doesn't fit into these seven categories. Needless to say, they cover a lot of territory.

It seems hard to believe our nature can be explained by seven words, and yet so far I've not been able to refute it.

I Love Fridays

Fridays are jeans day. I love jeans day. I don't understand jeans day but I don't question jeans day. I just love jeans day.



After work my jeans and I went to The W downtown and enjoyed dinner and music by Cory Angsten. It was a really nice way to kick off the weekend.

I am starting to feel the need for some relaxation. The last few weeks have been frantically busy at work. Seems there's always a new project on tap. In many ways I love that - keeps the brain working on fresh things - but there's not a lot of down time in my work days. And a person needs a little down time to think. When you can think is when you have a chance to come up with new cool ideas. But, I still love the job - even all these months later. I work for really smart people and that makes the work day go very smoothly. It's great to work in a place where there's always something interesting happening.

The days can have a wide variety in them, which is nice. Today involved a live radio interview locally, a phone conversation with a gentleman from Michigan who's visiting the museum soon, and an email correspondence with a journalist from Italy. There's always something around the corner to think about it, plan or contemplate, and I really like that. Today I also worked on more mundane things like writing press releases and organizing details for an event next week - no one's work day can be all Italian journalists I suppose.

I hope I am productive around the house this weekend. I need to be. We'll have to see how that goes as the weekend progresses I guess. So far I can't say much productive has happened, but the weekend is young yet so lets be optimistic.