Car talk

Best place .09  |  the front seat of my car, 6:45 a.m. to 7:15 a.m. weekdays

It's not that we don't love each other.  Or that I don't get what it's like to be a 16-year-old girl or the oldest daughter in the family.  But sometimes Lauren and I clash, caught in a pattern of misunderstanding and frustration. Sometimes I lecture for so long, even I get tired of the sound of my voice.  And, yep, sometimes she gets a look in her eye and set to her jaw that tells me she's just not listening.

Every morning I drive her from her before-school religious education class (seminary) to her school, a drive that takes about 35 minutes.  As we watch the sun rise and the morning mist lift, we talk.  I hear about who likes who, fire drills, friendship dynamics, styles, rumors, her dreams, her crushes, her fears. We share music and opinions.  Car rides have become our DeMilitarized Zone.

The best place of 2009 is the front seat of my car, every morning of the school week.  Before long she'll have her license and be self propelled but for now I'm milking those morning moments for all they've got.

. . .

Day 11 of the Best of 09 challenge.  What was your best place in 09?

Music to my ears

Best album .09 |   Little Joy   |  Swell Season |  Adele

It's funny, I don't really have whole albums very often anymore.  Like most of the world, I mostly pick and choose individual songs from iTunes and skip the package deal.  It certainly is more efficient and cheap(usually) and it lets me explore a lot of different music but I do miss discovering a lesser known song (ah, the demise of the B sides...) from the days of buying a whole artists' album.

I did opt for the album a few times, though:

Little Joy was a new find this year and I loved listening to it, especially this summer.

I loved Swell Season's Strict Joy (and NPR picked it as one of the top albums this year)

But if I had to choose an album of the year, one that when I hear it in the future it will zip me right back to 2009, it would have to be Adele.  Soulful, playful, gorgeous, and heartfelt.  I caught her concert at the Orpheum earlier this year and it only increased my faithfulness to this album.  So there you go, album of the year 09.

Plus, Pandora is my best friend. (Do you pandora? What's your favorite station?)

Enjoy:

Little Joy's Brand New Start

Swell Season's Feeling the Pull

Adele's Feel My Love

Adele's Crazy for You

. . .

Best of .09: Best album. What's rocking your world?

Keeping on

Best of .09    |   Best challenge of the year

I'm a serial starter, an enthusiastic idea person. You want to brainstorm? Pull up a chair, I'll heartily join you with verve.  I run headlong into new projects with good intentions and start-up energy swirling in my wake.

But there's a flip side.

My weakness shows up as I try to trudge on in that middle place where the doubts creep in.  Why am I even doing this? I'll ask. Maybe this isn't such a great idea.   Sometimes the lull is brought on by other people's opinions, sometimes it's just the loss of momentum.  Case in point: Look! Here I am in the 9th or 11th day of the year-in-review posts (depending on how you count them) and I'm starting to be late. Sigh. Typical, I scold to myself.  But I'm not really a quitter, just a fizzler.

This year my biggest challenge has been to learn how to harness the energy of that initial spark and plan for the time when the lulls come and I just don't really want to [fill in the blank] anymore and I'll need something to carry me through.

Through it, I've learned the sweetness and integrity of following through to the end, even if it means limping along for while until the spark returns.  And it does return!

I've learned that I don't have to do everything that comes across my mind, that it's okay to have idea orphans for a while.

I've realized that just because I can do something, don't mean I should do it.  I'm getting better at using my judgment to filter which ideas/projects/requests are worthwhile.

And, probably most importantly, I've learned to be kinder to my weaknesses.  They respond not to heartless, ruthless stomping but to compassion and a nice margin with plenty of room for failure.

. . .

Best of 09 year in review, Gwen Bell style. 

What was *your* best or biggest challenge this year?

Pieces of peace

1. Every Sunday, around 2:30.  Sunday nap. Weekly dose of peace and contented breathing, right there. *Sigh.* I feel peace just thinking about it. 

. . .

2. In August we took a short hike in the Adirondacks.  After a bit, we came to a clearing and the happy sound of water.  There had been some bickering as we climbed but now the kids scrambled out across the shallow falls, exploring and delighting in our find.  G and I sat at the edge, in the sun, quiet.  It's the spot I first think of when I think of a moment of peace from the year.  For that moment, we were together, the water was cool on my feet, and there was peace there in the pause between climbing up and hiking out. (And the entire upstate NY trip was a pause before the chaos of the fall schedule began, too.) 

. . .

Best of .09: Day 8: Moment of Peace. An hour or a day or a week of solitude. What was the quality of your breath? The state of your mind? How did you get there?  Join in the Best of 09 challenge here.

Best new blog discoveries .09

Every once in a while I find myself in the middle of a conversation and I want to bring up something I have gleaned from a blogfriend.  And I hesitate.  What do I say? How to introduce the strange, distant-but-connected network of colleagues and friends that has emerged from my forays into the blogworld?

I read blogs to be inspired.

I read blogs to laugh.

I read blogs to find answers. 

(I still do not care for the word "blog.")

I read blogs for the same reason I read anything: to transport myself, if not into someone else's shoes than at least to a little window on another world, another way of thinking or living.  To understand. Sometimes it's to find solace that there are others just like me.  Other times I want to know what it's like to live a completely different life.

One of my favorite new-to-me blogs this year fills all of those roles.  Have you visited 22-year-old Maggie Doyne's blog, written from her home for children she founded in Nepal's Kopila Valley?  You're in for a treat.  After graduating from high school, Maggie went on a trip that changed her life:

Four countries and 20,000 miles later, I was trekking through the Himalayas in war-torn Nepal, where I began to meet hundreds of orphan children. I fell in love with their bright eyes and beautiful smiles, but was shocked to see them barely surviving without the most basic things that I had grown up with as a child.

Playing inside the chicken coop!As I shared my dream to build a safe home for these children, with my hometown in Mendham, NJ, I was astounded by the outpouring of support. This past year, I officially opened the frontdoor of Kopila Valley Children's Home, built brick-by-brick, by me and the local community in Nepal. There are now 26 children living in our home. We have been able to enroll eighty children into school, facilitate life-changing operations for children in need, and create a village outreach program to improve schools in remote areas. I truly believe that if every child in the world is provided with their most basic needs and rights—a safe home, medical care, an education, and love, they will grow to be leaders and end cycles of poverty and violence in our world.

I'm inspired. Maggie's passion for what she does fuels some of my own dreams.  I can't go start a school in Nepal but I can think of something I *can* do, here and now.  Go check it out and cheer her on (plus she's had a difficult day today).

Other great finds this year: Dare to Dream, You Can't Be Serious, The Moth podcasts, and Jorge (Lost's Hurley)'s quirky blog Dispatches from the Island.  Happy surfing/reading!

. . .

Year in review, Gwen Bell-style, day 7.