Sunday, January 02, 2011

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 140

Today's Daily 5:
  1. 1 year, 140 days of making these lists
  2. Breakfast in bed (even if I did have to get out of bed to make it for myself)
  3. A text message announcing that very dear friends of mine welcomed a daughter to their family in the early hours of this morning (and later in the day, the bonus of being friends with the proud new auntie of the baby as well, meaning I got to see a picture of the new little beauty)
  4. smiling at the way a t-shirt that has had some painful memories attached to it in the past just made me grin when I wore it today, because it reflects a part of myself that I love
  5. A grande caramel apple spice and an apple fritter at starbucks today
  6. spending the afternoon hanging with a friend, doing a bit of clean-up at her place and chatting (really random tasks like having to clean up the Christmas tree because it had toppled over in the 24 hours since she'd last been home can make for some of the best times, laughing over the task that needs to be done, and chatting while accomplishing it)
  7. watching church online tonight while I did some reading and surfing
  8. one last night of retreat at mom and dad's before returning to my crazy living situation tomorrow night
  9. leftover Chinese takeout for supper
  10. reading a few new blogs as I surfed around some of the one word posts tonight

Laughing at Myself

I'm chuckling this morning.

I wrote yesterday that after vascillating for a couple of days, I'd chosen the word "Heal" to be my "one word" for 2011.

I was going through a few old blog posts this morning and realized that the very first Reverb 10 post that I wrote asked me to pick a word to describe 2010 (I chose deconstruction or duckless), and then to choose the word I'd like to define 2011.  I'd totally forgotten that I'd written that post.

The word I picked at the beginning of December?  Healing.

Which made me laugh this morning in a "oh God, you're funny in getting your theme across" kind of way.

Because the word that was on my heart at the beginning of the month, is the word that I almost didn't choose.  I'd pondered it as a word, but then picked something totally different. As I was sitting with my journal yesterday and writing out a list of hopes and goals and dreams for the coming year, shaped by my one word, I felt very strongly a conviction that the new word was one that would have to wait.  That I needed to go with my original gut instinct and choose "heal". 

And then I discovered this morning that that was the word I'd chosen earlier, too.  And I smiled at the funny little confirmation of timing and choice.  The whisper that speaks to my heart that this is a theme that God has for me for the year to come.

Most Read Posts December 2010

It would seem December was almost exclusively about the Reverb 10 posts here on my blog.  At the very least, those were the posts that attracted the most attention.

Here's a recap of the 10 most read posts of December 2010:

1. Reverb 10: Day 3 - Most Alive.  In this one I recounted the moment in which I felt most alive.  I talked about the translation of an online friendship to real life.  This post had nearly triple the number of reads of anything else on my blog in December.

2.  Reverb 10: Day 11 - 11 Things I Can Live Without.  This is perhaps one of my favorite of the reverb10 prompts that I answered over the course of the month.  As I sat down to formulate some of my goals for 2011, I looked back at what I'd written.  This post was also one of the hardest to write.  When I started writing, I was very convinced I'd never make it to 11 items.  But somehow, as I sat and stared at the screen and pondered, I came up with a list that really does reflect me, and makes me smile.




3.  Reverb 10: Day 12 - Body Integration?  I don't feel like I live separately body and mind/spirit.  Most of the time I think I'm pretty integrated.  I'm not sure if this is a novel concept, or if the keywords just caught people's attention to make this the third most read post of the month!

4.  Reverb 10: Day 5 - Let Go.  A year of deconstruction, and how I suck at being all zen.

5.  Reverb 10: Day 8 - Beautifully Different.  The one in which I felt like my answer was a cop out, but I really didn't have an answer either.

6.  Bus Reading.  Definitely one of my favorite posts from the last while.  Partly because bus reading is one of my favorite ways to rest and pray and think and be restored.  And partly because it seems like such a random idea - to ride a bus in a circuit, with no destination, but simply the goal to read and pray.  And a random idea like that definitely needs a guide -  a guide which I had great fun writing.

7.  Reverb 10: Day 26 - Soul Food.  Some of my favorite meals of 2010.  And how could a post that talks about Mizithra from Old Spaghetti Factory go wrong?

8.  Reverb 10: Day 24 - Everything's OK.  One of the shortest posts I wrote for reverb10.  Everything may not be okay, but I will be.

9.  Reverb 10: Day 19 - Healing.  A post centered around one of my favorite topics, healing.  For me, healing came in very unexpected places and forms in 2010, and I'm curious to see how that carries forward into 2011.

10.  Reverb 10: Day 23 - A New Name.  Not choosing a new name, but the realization that I've finally made peace with the name that I have.