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This is a good question! Thank you for asking.
A little over 13 years ago my mom, after doing something hilarious, asked me, “are you going to write that down and put it on your little space book?” She confused Myspace (where my original blog was housed) with Facebook.
I responded, “Yes. Yes, I am,” and promptly created the mylittlespacebook blog. So, that’s how I got here – through mom and her funny business.
As I stated in my first post:
“I’m not entirely sure what will come next, but within the virtual walls of my little e-space you may find humorous anecdotes, half-intelligible thoughts hastily written in a chai-induced frenzy, a piece of blue glass, sobering reports from the Society of Knitters and Nutters (SoKaN), reviews of books that strike my fancy, a dead rat you can swing on a string, questionable questions, transcriptions of conversations recorded for posterity, ideas for inventions the world needs to make me happy, lists of things, a few polls, a kitten’s whisker, travel logs, observations from the natural world, philosophical contemplation, notes to self, and maybe even a pearl of wisdom if we get lucky.”
The “why do you blog” question has mystified me for years. I’ve attempted to write on this topic before, but I wasn’t able to explain it to myself. Today, as I was reviewing my posts and putting the links together that fit my original musings, I realized I am here as a random person on my own little heroine’s journey. I am doing my best to get to know myself and share some of the things I see, experience, think, make, and learn along the way. The blog is a multi-media scrapbook. It’s a way to keep track of my life and to share it with the people I love. I appreciate being able to look back at a certain month or year to see what I was doing and thinking. It’s interesting to be able to easily search certain topics to track how my thinking has evolved. It’s a nifty tool for expression and discovery.
…a great deal of real art is made under the radar. We barely know we are working. We just suit up and show up and grab what moments we can, and it is only in cozy retrospect that we can see the level of skill we were able to muster. It is humbling, the degree to which we are like automatons. Our art moves through us despite us.
–Julia Cameron, Finding Water
The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is quit.
–Kevin Ashton, How to Fly a Horse
Today’s retrospective analysis of the last 10 years of My Little Spacebook revealed an overarching theme running through many posts. Since the beginning, that theme is showing creative work – my own work and other people’s work that I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with or to witness.
In the last decade there has been a lot of work shared and a lot of shared work!
There’s been knitted work, decoupage work…,
…messy work in progress,
…incredibly weird work,
Herman the Hypertufa Planter
outside work…
messy inside work…,
mosaic work….,
…and exhaustion from the work.
In honor of My Little Spacebook’s 10th anniversary, for the next thirty-days I plan to be around here a bit more digging in to old posts, sifting through the dirt, studying the worms, planting seeds, and waiting to see what, if anything, sprouts.
Today’s dig turned over a quote I shared last fall in October Magic: Dream. Create. Inspire. Share:
“It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers, and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.”
–Amy Poehler, Smart Girls: Ask Amy
These words continue to inspire me to be more mindful about what I am creating on a daily basis and to be more open to putting myself out there. On that note, today I’m sharing a bit of whimsy I added to my life this year. It combines the idea of giving yourself gold stars (from Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance) with the idea of tracking progress on your goals daily (from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project). Add a bullet journal and some washi tape to the mix and Voila!
I might have gotten a little carried away with the washi tape.
My pages are presently star-studded, memory-filled, and happy-making.
Greetings Dear Searchers, Lurkers, Crawlers, and Readers.
I offer a warm welcome to my fellow Americans and guests who’ve made an appearance this week from Canada, Germany, Brazil, the UK, the Netherlands, Slovakia, India, and Australia! I’m baffled, astounded, and honored in equal measure by your presence, however brief, accidental, or intentional it might have been.
Tonight marks the first State of the Spacebook Address in this blog’s history. As the sixth year anniversary of mylittlespacebook’s existence rapidly approaches, may we all pause to consider for a moment just how we came to be here.
Perhaps you were you were searching for a happy morning yoga playlist, which judging by the fact it’s one of the most frequently viewed posts, a lot of people are. Maybe you lit on the site in hopes of resolving some gender identity issues that had nothing at all to do with chickens. You might be a beloved family member or friend who reads semi-faithfully out of duty, for gossip fodder, or some other strange compulsion. Are you the mysterious, consistent reader who voyeuristically lurks in the shadows, but never comments?
Perhaps, like me, you were just wandering around when the landscape changed drastically and you can’t exactly remember how you got here or what this trip was supposed to be all about in the first place. Lucky for me, I left a trail of electronic breadcrumbs to follow.
From my first post on June 9, 2010:
My vision here is just beginning to unfold, so please overlook the banality of this first post.
I’m not entirely sure what will come next, but within the virtual walls of my little e-space you may find humorous anecdotes, half-intelligible thoughts hastily written in a chai-induced frenzy, a piece of blue glass, sobering reports from the Society of Knitters and Nutters (SoKaN), reviews of books that strike my fancy, a dead rat you can swing on a string, questionable questions, transcriptions of conversations recorded for posterity, ideas for inventions the world needs to make me happy, lists of things, a few polls, a kitten’s whisker, travel logs, observations from the natural world, philosophical contemplation, notes to self, and maybe even a pearl of wisdom if we get lucky.
Enjoy!
As I sit tapping out the current post in a chai-induced frenzy (some things never change) I am struck by how much my life has changed in the last six years and how much I have changed. I’ve gone from transient-academic-carnivore with a purse cat to domiciled-matronly-entrepreneurial-yogi-vegetarian with a flower and lettuce growing obsession.
**BREAKING NEWS: I just realized my pants are on inside-out. I taught yoga tonight in inside-out pants and nobody had a word to say about it. At least they were my inside-out pants and not not-my-pants. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.**
What hasn’t changed is that I’m not entirely sure what will come next. It might be something profound or incredibly stupid. Let’s reconvene at a later date and see.
Thank you for being here and for reading.
Dear Readers,
Let me introduce you to Beth Ann. She’s a wonderful lady with a generous spirit who writes a blog called “It’s Just Life.” She writes about happy things, teapots, crafting, books, and recipes. One of the coolest things about Beth Ann is this: for every comment she gets on her blog she donates 50 cents to a cause. This month she is helping a family out with medical expenses. She wants to give even more, so she’s set up a Giveaway basket for a lucky reader to win. Do a good deed — please go visit her blog today. You will find the link below. Be sure to leave her a comment!
Giveaway with an Ulterior Motive.
Thank you!
LE
These are my bloggin’ panties and I’m not afraid to use them.
Secrets can take many forms — they can be shocking, or silly, or soulful….[They] can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism playing out silently in the lives of people all around us.
–Frank Warren
~~@~~
We interrupt the regularly scheduled programming to offer a preview of coming attractions. “Ashram Lessons” shall resume after this brief message about Life in the Luny Bin…
~~*~~
The Devil and I have had a very busy three weeks. We’ve sold a house, “bought the farm,” moved in, and have started making it home.
Pupskins (aka Nilla Bean) “helping”
Moving is such a simple word to describe the mayhem involved in dismantling a life.
We have spent countless hours critically examining the value of every possession we have collected over the last 18 years and purging what is no longer needed. We passed through the phase of organizing, labeling, and boxing, boxing, boxing stuff until we finally just started throwing things willy-nilly into boxes and bags at the last minute (oh the violence!). Then came the phase of unboxing followed by another round of purging. We wondered where all this stuff came from, then decided to purge some more. Some of our stuff was dropped and broken. Some of our stuff was crushed and broken by still other stuff. Some stuff was water damaged in “The Great Flood.” We’re still trying to figure out where some stuff goes, while some stuff just went missing.
I have spent so much time looking for ‘that thing I put in that one box’ that this has become my new theme song:
….and the craziest part? We’re still not done moving! I have a whole life in another state left to dismantle! Wash, rinse, repeat.
There are so many stories on this end to share about it all, but they will come later….Today’s post is on secrets.
In the midst of the chaos the rare opportunity arose to meet a friend I’ve had for years. This friend has lived in Japan for the duration of our acquaintance, so we’ve never met face-to-face. His was a short, but intensely fun visit. It’s strange what you learn about yourself when entertaining house guests. Things you normally find invisible about your life are brought into focus through the lens of another’s eye.
“Tofu and flax seed…” he said.
At my confused expression he added, “That’s what’s on the top shelf in your fridge.”
Who knew? I open the fridge everyday and don’t see this.
The Indentured Servant told him a secret of mine, “She burps the President’s name all the time —- ‘BAAAAARRRRAAAACCCK!'”
Disgusting, but true. Not something I was planning to share, but what can I say? I’m a proud supporter.
The whole experience got me thinking about the everyday secrets we keep in our underwear drawers, in our fridges, in our digestive expulsions. This train of thought led to Frank Warren’s collection of half a million secrets. Frank is a blogger who began his blog after handing out self-addressed postcards and soliciting secrets from people on the street in Washington. He posts them anonymously on his blog postsecret.com. His Ted Talk is worth watching!
So now that you know a few of my everyday secrets, do you have one to share? Feel free.
My Little Spacebook 
