finding passion, part 5: heroes

I'm working through the '27 Questions to Find Your Passion' worksheet from Live Your Legend, a fabulous site devoted to encouraging people to discover their passions and pursue them.  Join me!

Question #5: Who do you look up to?  Who are your mentors?  Who inspires you?  Why?

Aaaaaand we're back.  I've been a bad blogger about updating for a while now, and it's time to pick up this thread again.  

In no particular order, these are the people who I feel admiration for today.  The list might change tomorrow.  These are the people who make my heart catch in my throat if I imagine that I have the opportunity to sit down to lunch with them.  

• Robert, the best tango instructor in the universe.  Maybe in other universes, too. 
• Don, my kick-ass math tutor and friend from my undergrad years.  He was in the military, and then decided to study math.  'Cuz it's fun.  He helped me to truly grok a lot of the higher-level coursework, and we had so many great discussions.

• Melissa, my feminist blogger hero.  She has so much strength, the ability to beautifully articulate so many important sentiments that can be so darn hard to express, and has put so much work into making her blog into a safe space for everyone.  I admire her from the very depths of my being.  

• Leo, of course.  All bloggers everywhere admire Leo, as far as I can tell.  For his success, for his eloquently simple and peaceful perspective on life, and for his ability to cut out all the noise and focus on what's really important. 
• My grandfather.  He's incredibly strong, kind, and perseverant.  With a snide sense of humor so subtle that it can take days to even realize he'd made a joke.  But it was a damn good one.

• Gala, for being unabashedly fabulous, glittery, and in love with herself. 
• And of course, Nikola Tesla.  For being an amazingly radical scientist whom history seems to have largely overlooked.  Also Barbara McClintock.  Same reason.

Who inspires you?


Previous questions: part 1:happiness , part 2: invincibility, part 3: gratitude, part 4: skills.

today I love...

...this wardrobe grid.  The author took sixteen pieces --- four each of tops, bottoms, shoes, and accessories, and arranged them in a cute little four-by-four matrix.  Then outfits are made by choosing arbitrary rows, columns, or diagonals.

I adore this.  This concept just might wind up being incorporated into my obsessive planning stages before travel from now on.  I always work hard to mix and match pieces such that I can take as little stuff as possible, and this provides yet another tool to assist in that.

Simple and brilliant!



Every Wednesday, I write about something I love that day.  It doesn't necessarily have to be remotely related to anything; it just has to be fabulous!

shinies

I like shiny things, and I like pretty jewelry.  My stuff is mostly of the gaudy costume variety, but it's lots of fun.

However, I had a problem.  All that prettiness was jammed into a too-small jewelry box, and the process of finding, extracting, and detangling a given piece was nigh unto impossible.  It consequently never got worn; such a waste!  I simply (I thought) had too much of it.  Then the Great Jewelry Purge of 2011 commenced.  I took over the dining table for a day, went through every piece, and only kept the ones that

1. were in good shape,
2. fit my current style,
3. actually went with at least something I owned, and
4. I absolutely loved. 

The theory was that if I could actually find and access the stuff, it might actually get worn for a change. 

I even took the better pieces to my jeweler to get them a sonicator bath to clean 'em up.  The purged rejects, still comprised of fun and funky bling, went to a friend's party where all the people there had a grand time going through 'em and picking out new favorites.  It's fun seeing my old jewelry proudly displayed on my friends. 

The remaining jewelry (about a fifth of the original quantity.  I'm down to five pairs of earrings.  Five!) was lovingly placed back in the jewelry box, where it promptly tangled into a hideous mess again.  

Well, damn.  Apparently I missed something.  

Then I found all kinds of nifty inspiration on the trusty interwebs.  People were conquering their disorganized jewelry realities with corkboard and picture frames, ribbons and drawer handles, cake stands and deer antlers.  Antique display cabinets.  Burlap.  Driftwood.  Old printer's cases.  Surely I could come up with something. 

I didn't need a lot of ring/bracelet/earring storage, because most of my collection is of the necklace variety.  And I wanted something to hang on the wall instead of taking up surface space on furniture. 

Poking around the garage, I found a little knick-knack display shelf that we'd bought and never gotten around to putting up.  Its white surface was a little marred, but I also scrounged up some black spray paint, and that took care of it.  Digging through a tub of hardware turned up a box of cup hooks.  My very small antique teacup collection perched on top of the shelf, for rings and such.  And then... voila!  A nifty jewelry storage solution, effectively for free. 

Incidentally, it turns out that cup hooks don't like being driven into wood without pilot holes being drilled.  Frustrating.  But on the plus side, I got to play with power tools!

Now I can actually see what I've got, and consequently it gets worn much more often.  It's a small thing, yes, but it makes me smile every time I look at it.  Sometimes small but brilliant solutions are plenty significant.  And hey, I got a whole five bucks for that unneeded jewelry box at my yard sale. 

today I love...

...this love story.   No matter how you feel about the war and the people fighting it, this is beautiful.



Every Wednesday, I write about something I love that day.  It doesn't necessarily have to be remotely related to anything; it just has to be fabulous!

today I love...

...this beautiful video* about being alone.

I've never lived alone, and generally have had issues with being alone in general.  I dislike coming home to a dark, empty house, and prefer to have people around. 

I think that finding peace in just being with myself would be a good thing to work on. 

Every Wednesday, I write about something I love that day.  It doesn't necessarily have to be remotely related to anything; it just has to be fabulous!

* via The Simple Dollar

today I love...

...this dad.   He showed his son such beautiful acceptance with a little act of fearlessness.  He stepped up and became the role model his kiddo needed.  Beautiful.

Rock on, dude.



Every Wednesday, I write about something I love that day.  It doesn't necessarily have to be remotely related to anything; it just has to be fabulous!

today I love...

...hobbit houses.

Self explanatory.  I want one retroactively to play in as a kid, and I want one now to play in as a grown-up.



Every Wednesday, I write about something I love that day.  It doesn't necessarily have to be remotely related to anything; it just has to be fabulous!

today I love...

...this narrative of the difficulty in navigating the waters of healthy eating culture.   I like to think of myself as a healthy and ethical person, and I deeply enjoy cooking with local produce.  I adore Michael Pollan's sensible way of approaching food.  I do my best to ignore silly food trends.

But sometimes it's hard.  Sometimes the research is a trap.  Sometimes I just need to step back and regain perspective.



Every Wednesday, I write about something I love that day.  It doesn't necessarily have to be remotely related to anything; it just has to be fabulous!

out of sight

I've recently observed an interesting phenomenon when it comes to my own perspective on stuff:

• Is it out where I can see it, on a shelf/hanger/pile on the floor/hook where it usually lives?  Then I'll probably pass over it when decluttering, and will come up with all sorts of rationalizations as to why it should stay. 

• Has it been moved into a go-away box or pile?  Then I cease thinking about it entirely and can easily let it go.  

Let's call it Mindless Clutter Effect.  MCE means that simply walking into a room and declaring a decluttering mission by looking around (at least for me) is probably doomed.  But if I physically touch an object, and maybe move it to a different place?  Whole new ballgame.  Let's look at an example. 

For the past few months, I've been continually pulling things out of my closet and depositing them in an ongoing 'donate' box.  Every once in a while the box got dropped off at a thrift store.  The selection process was fairly random, and just happened whenever I'd think of something that could go.  I had to work up the motivation to actually remove the thing from the closet, while leaving everything else behind.  I even tried the backwards-hanger trick, but I tended to wear everything eventually if it's there for the wearing, so that was somewhat self-defeating.  Every thing gotten rid of this way required effort to move it. 

I managed to purge maybe 20 items in several months.  

A couple of weeks ago, some friends came over to help me in my closet-cleaning mission.  We physically removed every single thing from the closet (in batches by category) and laid it all in big piles on the bed.  Then every item was held up, maybe tried on, and voted upon.  Anything with any doubts about it (poor fit, unflattering, not something I've actually worn in a while, a generic 'blah' feeling) went into the go-away pile.  The rest was looked through again briefly to see how many were left, the less-awesome pieces were revisited, and then the stuff to keep was put back into the closet.  Each thing to be kept required the effort of putting it back in the closet.

The clothing was removed from its natural habitat and backdrop (the closet), and put into a new context (on the bed).  Such a simple change, but it (along with the support of having people there to help, of course), allowed me to remove at least a third of my entire wardrobe.  The pile above is what'll go into my yard sale when I get around to having one.

What's interesting is that even though the pile has been sitting in my bedroom, totally accessible and visible, I've felt no urge to pull anything out of it.  Things in the pile that I'd previously been unable to imagine getting rid of have become irrelevant.  MCE defeated.  

The moral of the story?  Try pulling clutter out of its original context.  You might be surprised at how much easier it is to part with unnecessary stuff.  Also, have fabulous friends who think going through someone else's closet is fun!

today I love...

...this periodic table.  Yeah, I went there.



Every Wednesday, I write about something I love that day.  It doesn't necessarily have to be remotely related to anything; it just has to be fabulous!