Retiring The Blog Dare. Introducing my editorial calendar.

purchase this gorgeous calendar on etsy

UPDATE: My editorial calendar is currently under revision. I recent posted about the exciting opportunities coming my way, so stay tuned for all that! For now, I can at least say that this is the direction I'm headed. Come back soon. It's gonna be awesome.

* * * * *

I started The Blog Dare at the beginning of June fully intending to use the daily prompts for an entire year. Well, guess what? It served its purpose. Already. And I'm thrilled that it ran its course. I'm shifting the energy that that exercise created into an editorial calendar. This experiment, like the dare, will no doubt be a work in progress. Here's my first crack at it, with excessive allieration:

{ Monday Meditations & Declarations }

I want to kick it off right and set intentions to carry me throughout each week. When The Declaration of You book tour is officially over at the end of July, and now that the book is released, I plan to go through the activities in the book and continue (re)working the declarations I posted initially. This may also be a day to share thoughts surface in my new mediation practice. The creative collaboration I'm launching with Alexander also fits snuggly into this Monday theme. 

Declaration posts are pinned to my Happiness Project board on Pinterest. The collaboration with Alexander, and other artsy projects, are pinned to my Creative Feats board on Pinterest.

{ Travel Tuesday }

This day could go in a number of different directions. I'd like to share more of my travel photography and globetrotting memories. I want to work on creating AFAR wanderlists and this will hold me accountable to that. I could also end up sharing travel plans, resources, anything in the vein of wanderlust.

Travel posts are pinned to my Wanderlust board on Pinterest with the hashtag #traveltuesday (the same hashtag used for these travel-related posts on Twitter). 

{ Whatever Wednesday }

Exactly what it sounds like: A free day to be random about whatever is on my mind. This would be a great time to share my random creative projects, updates on My Happiness Project, the research I'm doing about my Danish family history, assorted goodies on YouTube, you know, whatever. 

Random creative projects are pinned to my Creative Feats board on Pinterest. You'll find happy posts pinned to my Happiness Project board on Pinterest. Denmark research posts are pinned to my #FindYourJoy Denmark Pinterest board. All other randomness is pinned here. 

{ Throwback Thursday }

Flashbacks to some of my favorite and/or most popular posts. For example, to get this out of the way, of the more than six years I've been blogging at this URL, this stupid post about naked Mormon missionaries gets more hits than anything - a.ny.thing. - I've ever written. Ever. I should just embed the code to that link in every future post. Take that, SEO.

{ Link Love Friday }

Let's be honest, Fridays can be a lame day in the office. I'm going to make the assumption your productivity is shot and send you a love letter full of links and insights into my wanderings around the internet. Follow along if you'd like, add awesome stuff I missed in the comment section. 

Awesome goodies found on all the links posted here are pinned to my Link Love board on Pinterest. 

{ Saturday is my day off }

Peace out. Let's all recharge. And likely play on Pinterest. 

{ Sunday: The Week in Photos }

Primarily intended to be a round-up of my Instagram adventures over the past week, this may also end up becoming a forum for more intentional photo walks and curated series. Remember Candela, the online photography course I've been in and that you should sign up for right away? Well, it has blown my photographic world right open. There is good stuff coming your way. Stay tuned!

My photos, and related inspiration curated from all over the web, are pinned to my Photography board on Pinterest.

If you're an RSS person, click this feed link to subscribe and you won't miss a thing. If you're an email organizer, use the box in the left sidebar to receive posts in your inbox as they go live. Or if you still enjoy the interaction of an actual website, I'll see you right back here. 

Love and intentions, 

me

A Day in the Life of a Children's Book Author | The Blog Dare Day 28

I find this utterly delightful. It's also more a little inspiring. Enjoy!



May your life be full of whimsy,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

I'm going to second base with my blog | The Blog Dare Day 27

I think my relationship with The Blog Dare has evolved already. It's been just about one month since I accepted the challenge to blog every day. Some days were more meaningful than others, but the cumulative effect is that of a new habit. Not only a new habit, actually, but a commitment that reaches  beyond simply going through the motions.


When I kicked off this whole adventure on 03 June, I wrote:

I'm practicing and practicing because even the things we love to do take some doing and it's not going to do it itself. I will stop telling you how much I love blogging only to contradict my passion with a once every not so often post sandwiched between business trips and deadlines and commitments and look at that, Passion, it's been months.

The doing, as it were, has built up to a physical shift in my energy. I'm feeling it morph into something even better than responding to the daily prompts that catalyzed it. The analytics on this site are exciting and my fledgling Facebook page gained about 20 followers since I started. That's rad. When I attended Alt for Everyone at the end of May, I was struck by four primary conclusions. One of those conclusions was to create an editorial calendar for this site. Through The Blog Dare, even just one month of it, I proved to myself that writing does matter to me and the creative outlet of this blog is something I want to prioritize. With that settled, we will now evolve into an even more substantial relationship, my blog and I. Like at least second base or something.

Initial ideas for an editorial schedule: Instagram roundup of my favorite photos I've posted that week/month, Link-laden posts sharing all the random bits of internet I'm consuming, more scheduled posts about the goals and activities of My Happiness Project, updates on creative collaborations (such as The Declaration of You book tour and the forthcoming awesomeness with Alexander), globetrotting updates and/or memorable travel flashbacks, and perhaps interviews and/or guest posts. We'll see what happens when I sit down to really hash it out.

courtesy of the uber talented Jessica Swift

Stay tuned! It's going to get progressively more awesome around here.

Love you lots,
me



This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

No worries | The Blog Dare Day 26

{PROMPT} It is nothing to worry about.

One of the meditations I practiced this week went a little something like this:

If it will ultimately work out, then there's nothing to worry about. If it's not going to work out the way you would like, and you can't do anything to change that, then there's no point in worrying about it anyway. 

That is a far less graceful articulation than Deepak, but you get the idea.

Love,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

The Blog Dare Day 25

Twenty-five. Twenty-five days. In a row. In. A. Row.

I'm ignoring the prompt, I just want to take a moment and celebrate this nice round number. I started The Blog Dare as an act of discipline and creativity. So far so good. Some days are better than others, of course, but all days have included some sort of interaction with this site. That's intention, folks.

Love it.

Love,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

The Creative Collaboration Begins | The Blog Dare Day 24

{PROMPT} Let's get going!

I promise I'm happy, I've just never used FaceTime.
Getting it sorted took concentration, apparently.
This photographer prefers to be behind the camera.
And yes, I'm wearing a black lace camisole. Deal.

Today marks the start of something exciting. I'm launching an artistic collaboration with my friend Alexander. You can find his work and inspiring Bless Your Virus story on his website and on the Viral Mindfulness blog.

We're kindred creative souls in many ways. I cannot say enough about his light and warmth, it vibrates. We've decided to manifest all of our creative kindredness into a highly collaborative art project. It will involve meditation and writing and painting and sketching and growing and swapping of projects and all sorts of goodies yet to be revealed. I've painted once in my life. Once. So...this will be a whole new world of awesome. This is exactly the right outlet for me at exactly the right time.

The starting point for our work will be our respective power words. My 2013 power word is abundance. I regret I haven't done as much reflection and writing around that word as I'd hoped to do, so this is perfect. I first mused on abundance at the very beginning of the year...

I'm wearing pink lace panties, was the title of the post. It went something like this: "My power word is abundance. This focus on abundance led me to wear pink lace panties today. What? Yes. Because they've been in my dresser drawer, tags on, since I purchased them. Turns out, that's not a very abundant thing to do." I went on to admit: "Something I've understood intellectually for years, but I'm still trying to actually manifest in my life, is the trust it takes to do that, to let things go. I haven't fully figured out why I hold on to things that make no logical sense to hold on to, but I'm slowly practicing abundance..." {keep reading}

It's nearly July. I've thought about abundance, a lot. I've manifested it, sort of. I haven't directly written about it since that first post (though all these posts are the kissing cousins of abundance). Our collaboration is the perfect opportunity, medium, and space for me to finally start to get my mind, and my creative juices, around this massive concept.

Stay tuned, y'all. It's going to be epic.

Love,
me (+ Alexander)


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

We the People | The Blog Dare Day 23

{PROMPT} What do I wish I would have heard today?

I was uninspired by the prompt put out by the folks at Blog Dare, so I'm using the prompt posted by Brave Girls Club.

What I wish I would have heard today is that my LGBTQ friends can marry the people they love. I wish I would have heard that we've evolved as a culture to finally and fully honor commitment and love. I wish I would have heard that the tides have changed and we're entering a brave new world, one in which everyone is celebrated exactly as they are.

“The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice...” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We'll just have to wait until 10:00am EST tomorrow to hear it.

I love you,

me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series. 

Dancing around the perimeter | The Blog Dare Day 22

{PROMPT} I hope she was kidding. 

The part of me that's still scared, the part of me that's pretending I can be content as is, the part of me who busies herself with a busy life, she wishes this was a joke. But she knows it's not.

The moment I opened this email from my friend Cristina, before the video even played, I knew she wasn't kidding.

Love,
me (+ Guru Cristina)


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

The moment | The Blog Dare Day 20 + 21

{PROMPT} The moment we've been waiting for.

I just realized I missed yesterday. It wasn't intentional, the past few days have been a blur. A good blur, full of creativity and friends and road trips and super moons and arts festivals and brunches and book groups and dance performances and on and on. So...oops.

The prompt today is perfect for the Happiness Project discussion we had at brunch. The topic of the June chapter was friendship, but we also celebrated our accomplishments and ah-ha moments that happened throughout the first six months of the year. We hit a milestone today and it felt great. I have a lot to say about it, but I took a spontaneous road trip at 3:00am this morning to see the super moon from the salt flats (before attempting croque monsieur for the first time and hosting 10 friends for brunch), so I'm going to bed. Stay tuned. In the meantime, my morning looked like this:

hazy, grainy, iPhone in low light, otherworldly...this is exactly what it was like. surreal.

The closer the super moon got to the horizon, the more purple the sky became. The stunning moment was when the sun broke the horizon at the exact moment the moon dropped away. They connected for a split second and shot light across the salt flats at each other. Wow.

Follow my adventures on Instagram @fourthirtyam.

Love,
a sleepy me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series. 

Commitment | The Blog Dare Day 19

{PROMPT} I kept it anyway. 

It's the end of a long day at the end of a longer week. The easiest thing for me to do right now is sleep, but I made a commitment to posting daily and so here I am. Some nights I post something worth reading, some nights I post because I told myself I would. Tonight is the later. But this whole series is an exercise in discipline. It's not (necessarily) about posting earth shattering content every day. It's about the every day itself.

Done.

Love,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series. 

Rule Number One | The Blog Dare Day 18

{PROMPT} We had a fight...

...but rule number one says I do not talk about it.

Love,
Tyler me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

Upgrade | The Blog Dare Day 16

{PROMPT} I upgraded...

up·grade
v. up·grad·ed, up·grad·ing, up·grades 
v.tr. 1. To raise to a higher grade or standard.
v.tr. 2. To raise in value, importance, esteem, etc.

I've recently been coming to terms with a lot of imbalance in my life. I've been unpacking what pieces of the imbalance I can control and what pieces are just my OCD DNA and what pieces I created and what pieces are institutional realities of my current workplace and on and on. I'm doing my best to flip the ratios of time spent working and time spent on everything else. Even beyond that, I'm trying to flip the ratios of energy expended for work and energy expended for everything else, which is a far more nuanced game than simply counting hours at the office. We're talking about resetting over a decade of work habits and dismantling paradigms that have governed my unrealistically high standards for my entire life, really. 

The paradox is that all my old paradigms are constantly screaming at me about all the ways I'm downgrading by taking on this shift. I'm downgrading my work ethic. I'm downgrading my commitment. I'm downgrading my professional standards. I'm downgrading the true impact I can have at my organization. It's all bullshit though. None of that is true. The truth is that as a more balanced and joyful person, I will be upgrading the experiences I have/create at work, in life, with friends, and so forth. I know that intellectually, but the muscle memory of these entrenched archetypes is brutal to overcome. I know I talked about my creative cocoon recently, but I also feel a bit like an onion right now...peeling back layers and layers and layers of stuff that just doesn't work for me anymore. 

Love, 

me

This post is part of The Blog Dare series. 

Nope, I didn't. | The Blog Dare Day 15

{PROMPT} You didn't expect that.

Should you type today's prompt into YouTube, this is what you'll find. And for that, I am sorry.





Love,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series. 

OM | The Blog Dare Day 13

{PROMPT} It's your call. 

I started a meditation practice this week. I'm on day six and I'm really taking to it. The overarching theme, at least the theme that's resonating most with me, is the idea that meditation doesn't actually bring you peace.

Wait. Say what?

Nope. Meditation does not actually attract calm, shiny, nirvana love and light into your life.

When we sit still long enough to quiet our energy and finally get our mind to chill out, we feel more peaceful and calm and joyful and all that. Of course we do. But...that's not something we went out and found or even something we attracted to our life. It is our natural state. We uncovered it. All we managed to do through meditation is clear out all the crap that's cluttering our every day life, everything that's preventing us from living in our chilled out natural state. Meditation, then, is the practice of letting go of anything that disturbs your natural state.

Sure, you're saying right about now, that's obvious. How are you just now learning this, you moron, you may also be saying. Listen. Here's the deal: We tend to associate peace and calm with an achievement, with movement, with seeking and searching and finding it. Think Eat, Pray, Love. Searching. Movement. Active. Go find it. We move we go we travel we pursue peace and we pursue calm. We do this in so many different many ways. I mean, hell, I did it when I signed up for the Chopra Center program. I was moving, I was searching, and I was active in my attempt to find a peaceful calm.

Now - compare that to my realization I shared earlier:

Mediation is being still long enough to clear your mind of everything that prevents you from living in your natural state of calm. 

That is so full of hope. That puts me in such a state of optimism and rainbows. Think about it...it's already here. I already have it. Granted, I have quite a lot of proverbial crap to clear out of the way, but at least I know that at my core I'm calm. Not just on vacation and not just on lazy weekends. All the time. It's in there.

Dear Self, you can keep trucking as is, or you can finally tune in. It's your call.

Love,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

Most like myself | The Blog Dare Day 12

This post is part of The Blog Dare series...in the sense that it's part of me writing every day. However, this prompt is from The Brave Girls Club Soul Care Summer. Their rules: One sentence, one minute, one paragraph, no more, no less, no editing. Go.

{PROMPT} What made me feel most like myself today?

I saw Before Midnight. I left the movie feeling exactly the same way I did when I left the previous two; which is to say, as though I'd been punched in the gut. They are so raw and the rough edges are shockingly beautiful. All three films take my breath away. I felt most like myself in that theatre because those movies emotionally transport me to a time that I was actually most authentically myself, and most authentically loved for it. It's the happiest and the saddest I've ever been. The gut punch is a complex cocktail of feelings. God, I still miss him.

Remember to... | The Blog Dare Day 11

{PROMPT} That's what I want, too. 

by the lovely Jessica Swift

Love,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

Deal with it | The Blog Dare Day 10

{PROMPT} We'll deal with it together. 

It was profound. I know.

Love,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

My Creative Cocoon | The Blog Dare Day 9

{PROMPT} Taking steps to fix it...

I've written a lot about creativity lately. Like, a lot. Summary: I've come to the conclusion that creativity cannot be a luxury in my life. Creativity is in fact a very necessary way through which I interact with this world and I need to intentionally cultivate it every single day. Creativity is not a passive thing for me or something that will just happen without a plan. Something that happens without a plan is called hulu.

When I wrote about enthusiasm for The Declaration of You book tour, I jotted out a little laundry list of ways I'd recently invested in rebuilding my creative mojo. With the Blog Dare prompt today, it seems an appropriate time to cultivate a more thoughtful list of bits and pieces and random goodies that are helping me get my groove back. I'm a bit of a magpie right now. I'm running around like crazy collecting shiny objects...all in the name of building a new creative home for myself.

Kelly Rae Roberts

Brace yourself, Reader, and get your clicker finger ready for a litany of link love. I discovered much of this goodness because I gave myself permission to get lost in link after link after link. Eventually I ended up weaving a big cocoon of creativity for myself (my magpie nest is now a butterfly cocoon, try and up). I feel like I'm absorbing so much right now and I will eventually bust out with something awesome (I'm now an exploding sponge). I'm not sure what will come of all this, but that's not the point right now. For me to even say that and now break out in a panicked sweat is a big big deal.

Here are the goodies I've rounded up so far...

Kelly Rae Roberts
She's my muse. As in a Greek goddess of inspiration sort of way. Her work, blog, book, e-book, and general existence on this planet is what first cracked open the door and let a dusty sliver of creative light peek through. So much love.

Radical Self Love
No nonsense, ballsy, funny, smart, radical self love brought to you by Gala Darling. She may be wrapped up in sticky sweet girly pink bows, but this shit's for real. Her e-book/audio book is called Love & Sequins. I mean, come on. To listen to her read it in her cheeky Aussie accent is pure delight.

Mapping Desire(s)
The fabulousness of Danielle LaPorte is overwhelming, to be honest. Completely overwhelming in the most beautiful, terrifying, spiritual, profound way. Somewhere deep down inside I know that The Desire Map will change life as I know it. I haven't started that journey yet because I want to get a better footing with all this before I tackle it. It's going to be a doozy. For now, I stalk her on social media and get her Daily Truth Bombs in my inbox (sign up on her website).

Color. Color. Color. 
One of the authors of The Declaration of You, Jessica Swift is not only a full-time artiste extraordinaire but also the author of her own book, Jump Trust Repeat. I haven't read it yet, but I have purchased her colorful brainstorm/planner/inspiration guide of sorts. I love playing with it and synthesizing my Happiness Project goals. I also receive her daily color + words of inspiration in my inbox. Worth it. Do it.

Writing with Light
Along with my creative soul sister Jen who lives in Portland, I'm enrolled in an online photography course taught by Laura Valenti Jelen. I just blogged about it right here. Reconnecting with my passion for photography - in a more intentional way that simply Instagramming all day every day - has been an awesome exercise for me.

Owning My Badassness
Jen Sincero's book needs no annotation. Read it. Just trust me. Four of my girlfriends are now reading it and they told me to tell you to do it.

Getting Sensual
Sign up for Susannah Conway's monthly newsletter and, for free, you'll receive her 74-page ebook about exploring your senses...all with a creative end in mind. She also has a (free)  planner/calendar/reflection workbook (similar to Jessica's) that is an awesome way to intentionally move through the year. I want to take this e-course about blogging from the heart, this e-course about photography, this e-course about writing your dreams into reality, and this e-course about unravelling 'it all' and then putting 'it all' back together. Want want want. 

OM
One of the primary barriers to me manifesting all this creative moxie is the fact that my life moves too quickly. It's like, really fast. Every day. I'm trying to change that. I'm redefining what success means to me and I'm allowing myself to fill slower spaces. Deepak is helping me. So is Oprah...with Deepak. My friend Cristina also emailed a ginormous list of Hay House hippie resources, but I haven't had time to work my way through that message yet. Oh, irony. 

Go Mighty
Is it silliness to put "make a life list" on my bucket list, where it's waiting patiently to be crossed off? Because that's what's happening with me. The awesomeness of Mighty Life Lists is a lot to get my head around. I also want to go to Camp Mighty. For now, I just follow Maggie Mason around and dream of the day that I'll dare to do this. Seriously. Poke around this site. Be amazed. They recently posted 31 profiles of incredible people living out their life lists (the profiles are on tumblr, so you need to scroll and dig a little bit).

When I Grow Up
Michelle Ward is the other author of The Declaration of You and a creative career coach. I haven't hired her as a coach (whether I was ready for it or not is irrelevant because she's booked solid due to her awesomeness), but I do subscribe to everything she puts out there and it's awesome stuff. Sign up for her newsletter and you get access to her Dropbox site packed full of free resources! She has a bunch of books that are on my wish list. She also interviews inspiring grown-ups who have smashed the creative career glass ceiling and made it work (scroll down to the archive section toward the bottom for free access to all the videos).

There's more, but this will do for now. Welcome to my world as of late. It's pretty in here, huh?

You know who.

One meta comment about all of this: Like attracts like. It's true, people. It's true. Attach whatever New Age terms or ancient philosophies you want to this fact, but it's true by any name. It's a very simple and also very complex truth that as you raise your frequency and tell The Universe what you want (in my case, for now, proactive creativity), The Universe will respond. Immediately. Once you really mean it. It's like drinking from a firehouse, so be ready for whatever it is you're asking for (and be clear and specific) because it will come to you. Truth.

Love,
me

P.S. What did I miss? What do I need to know about? What links should I be clickety clacking? Post in the comment section and join the conversation.


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

The Third Metric | The Blog Dare Day 8

{PROMPT} It was never successful. 

I read an article today that hit me like a ton of bricks. So much wisdom and truth and ah-ha packed into 26 little bullet points. It's meant for women, but I suppose boys can read it, too. The Huff Post held a conference for women last week centered on: "How we can begin to measure success beyond money and power, according to a third metric: well-being." The basic thesis being that the go go go and be everything-to-everyone mindset is slowly killing us, or at least making us crazy. I could not agree more.

I'm in a space right now, a space I created and stepped into about eight months ago, where I'm consciously trying to pull out of a tailspin of stress and expectations and habits and career-is-life lifestyle. Because, for all the success I've had, was it ever really successful? I am successful by many common metrics, and I'm grateful for all that. Graduated high school at 17, BA at 20, career in higher ed right out of the gate, national consulting and speaking circuit for six years, received every grant I've ever applied for (going on 9 at this point), homeowner at 28, MA by 30, Executive Director of my organization, I'm on my third passport, on and on. But at what cost? Based on this third metric idea of well-being, am I actually successful?

If any of that, even a teeny tiny piece resonates with you, read this article. I feel like this article is more proactive than the other one that also hit me like a ton of bricks. They feel like bookends. Both are very important pieces to me. I can't tell you how many times I've read Altucher's Tech Crunch article on why 2013 is the year I'll quit my job (aka every morning in the office at my desk while I eat my Chobani and granola), but this third metric article feels different somehow. Maybe I'm not quite ready yet for Altucher's radical call to action (though I very nearly have it memorized), but I am definitely ready to redefine success in my life.

Definitely.

Love,
me


This post is part of The Blog Dare series.

Chasing light | The Blog Dare Day 7

{PROMPT} It was only interesting when...

I'm enrolled in an online photography course this summer. It's called Candela and it's taught by Laura Valenti Jelen, a professional photographer based in Portland, Oregon. The cool thing about this class is that it's not about shutter speed and choosing the right lenses, it's about reconnecting with yourself as a photographer. It's about "finding the creative spark within..." in Laura's words. She's created a really beautiful course, full of essays and videos, podcasts and discussion boards; it's all really well done. Our most recent lesson was about slowing down, seeing beauty in the mundane of every day, and chasing light in your own home as it changes throughout the day. As she set it up for us in the course: "By viewing your environment with fresh eyes, you can find creativity in the smallest things. Your assignment is to make some photographs of the things you love in your immediate vicinity." Simple enough. In other words...once the flea market and brunch and grocery shopping were behind me, this was the perfect Sunday afternoon.

In a previous lesson we discussed all the different cameras we own and committed to one for the remainder of the course (with an explanation as to why). I'm reintroducing myself to my Nikon D90. I've been shooting exclusively with my iPhone for at least a year and half at this point (and I'll still Instagram photos with my phone every day, but for this class I'll use the D90). It was very interesting to watch my muscle memory twitch as I held the heavy camera's viewfinder to my eye and didn't tap a screen or edit a single thing. That was the other piece of the exercise that I assigned tomyself: No editing. None. Not allowed. Let the light do what it wants to do and move on.

Some people would say life is only interesting when it's dramatic and rapid fire. Today was a lesson in slowing down. I sat on my kitchen table for 45 minutes watching sunlight bounce around through between inside on top of vintage canning jars. It was the most valuable lesson in photography, and life, I've had in a long time.

Love, 

me

Click here to see the full set on Flickr.

This post is part of The Blog Dare series.