The Friday Five: Encouragement.

Truth: I always have a hard time coming up with a title for these posts, other than "The Friday Five" - I want to set them apart from each other, since of course, each week is different. But of course, items/happenings within the Friday Five are different from each other, so I sometimes get frustrated trying to come up with an all-encompassing title or theme. (I could just list them all in the headline, but then you wouldn't read the post, would you?)

Anyway, if I had to choose a theme for this week's F5, it would be encouragement. Encouraging weather, encouraging books, encouraging stories, encouraging people. Saving my life this week:

1. Warm weather. I'm starting to pull out my spring wardrobe and it's (*sings in Parks & Rec Jean-Ralphio voice*) the BESSSSSSSST. Spring just makes everything about life better.

2. Social media-less Sunday. I wrote about this earlier in the week, but have to state again that it was lovely. Let's see if it can happen again this weekend.

3. Still Writing by Dani Shapiro. Dani spoke at our Goddard College MFA summer residency last year, and I so enjoyed her. At the time, I was a little too caught up in my required reading to grab Still Writing, but boy am I loving it now. If you're a writer of any kind - and I mean even if you just journal or scribble or write really long Facebook posts - you should pick it up.

4. A writer-to-writer phone call. My friend Andrew called me up the other day so we could talk about my memoir manuscript that he's just finished reading. I met Andrew and his awesome wife seven (!) years ago when I interned at a marvelous church in Virginia. It changed my life in a lot of ways, and one has been the joy of continuing relationships that I first started to build in 2009. Since then, Andrew's become the pastor of a church and has published several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Check out his blog! Anyway, it was great to catch up and to bat around ideas on how to move forward in revising my manuscript and making it as rich as possible, for future readers and myself. Thanks, Andrew, for giving your time and energy to helping me on the journey.

5. Dinner with family and friends. My dad's best friend and his wife came into town yesterday and we all gathered around the table for takeouts of Community's finest - an aptly named bbq joint for the occasion - to laugh and reconnect and hear stories about the early years of their friendship. Top it all off with homemade banana pudding, and it did not take long to fall asleep last night.

Honorable mentions: Dinners with Sean, the Downton Abbey finale (so encouraging I half-expected/longed for Sybil to walk through the door at any moment), fun and laughter with coworkers, and the Game of Thrones season six trailer (kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of encouragement, except for the fact that it's starting soon and we'll get to see what happens! April 24, get here quick please.)

What sparks of light and encouragement have stood out for you this week?

The million dollar personal writing question.

I got a question out loud the other day that I sometimes find myself asking internally:

"Do you ever feel like writing about yourself is a little... egotistical/self-absorbed/[insert your own adjective here]?"

This person wasn't asking with a tone of animosity; in fact, this is a person in a class that I teach, a person who enjoys writing and is very good at it. But I could completely understand the question that had bubbled up and out, because I have asked it of myself before. And I'm glad that it was asked, because it gave me a chance to share what I've come to believe is the truth:

No, I don't think it's egotistical or self-absorbed to write about yourself, whether it's a public memoir or a private journal entry. In fact, I think it's one of the best things we can do for ourselves and for those around us. We all need an outlet, messy or structured, to share our life experiences, to make sense of them ourselves, to recall, to move forward. Writing about ourselves and our lives gives us a way to connect with our inner consciences in a private but meaningful way, a way that can help us work through whatever we're going through, good or bad. Ever written a frustrated letter to someone and not sent it? It's the best. And you might find that it actually helps you speak to the person in a calm but self-assured way. (If you're writing publicly for revenge, not so much.)

Too often I think we feel like society tells us to make light of our lives, our struggles, our triumphs - "Eh, whatever, no big deal." Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we're encouraged to humblebrag the living daylights out of it. We don't want to make a big deal out of ourselves, or we go over the top. Yes, it's true, sometimes I think we're too self-reflective on the Internet, when we could be digging even deeper on paper to a more appreciative audience of one (ourselves!). But I also think that sharing authentic experiences can help others more than we realize.

Writing publicly about our own lives can be a symbiotic experience - it helps us connect to the souls and experiences of others, and vice versa. Arguably my favorite moments of teaching writing and leading others in sharing their work are the nods of affirmation that occur when someone is reading their writing about a real life experience. (And I'm typically talking about sharing a piece that was written in only ten minutes - it's far from perfect!) 99.9% of the time, something the writer says will spark something in the person across from them - be it time, place, experience, or emotion. In fact, the general parameters of the piece may be quite different from what someone else has lived through, yet a listener can still pull out a universal thread. And if there's absolutely nothing you can relate to - not often likely! - you have still received the gift of hearing someone else's story, which can take us a long way.

Egos be damned - I'll always be on the side of writing that helps us truly understand ourselves, and storytelling that helps us bond with others. In my humble opinion, these practices help make us better humans.

10 things I did yesterday... instead of social media.

I usually try not to get on social media until after church/noon on Sundays, but yesterday I thought, "Why not keep it going?" (Full disclosure: I took about twenty seconds and posted one photo, but didn't check back until today.) Here's what happened.

Slept til 9.

Ate peanut butter toast, scrambled eggs, and chicken sausage with Sean.

Went to church and sang hopeful hymns and listened to Pastor Alice talk about the sin of sloth - not necessarily laziness as we think of it, but indifference.

Ate my lunch at the dining room table with sunlight streaming in. Started reading A Feast for Crows (Game of Thrones #4). Ate four strawberries and four Thin Mints and three Tagalongs and drank tea.

Got an unexpected phone call from a beloved faraway friend and talked for an hour.

Stood outside for five minutes and listened to two birds calling back and forth to one another from different trees. Looked at my reflection in the glass door and decided my hair looks really nice glinting in the sun. Found the first bloom in our backyard (pictured!).

Wrapped up in my blanket and sat outside in the warmth. Journaled by hand for thirty minutes which I haven't done in God knows how long. Read Still Writing by Dani Shapiro. 

Spent time with Sean when he got home from baseball.

Went to writing group.

Sat in front of the television with my legs crossed like a little kid and watched the last Downton Abbey, beaming one minute and bawling the next. (Golly, I adore these characters.)

So, you're probably thinking, it's not like she wouldn't have done these things if she had been checking Facebook and Twitter and Instagram during the day... but normally, I would have to add something to the end of those sentences above.

Slept til 9... and checked Facebook immediately after waking up. Went to church... and skimmed Instagram when I got bored. Sat outside and... looked at email. Spent time with Sean... with my eyes sometimes on my phone. Watched the last Downton... and followed along with everyone else on Twitter.

Social media is an important part of my life - I manage it at work, and connect with friends and family on it personally. But taking a full day's break made everything feel a little crisper, a little more meaningful. And I think this means that more social media-less Sundays are in my future.

P.S. You'll probably notice that I'm playing around with blog design these days - just trying to get a feel for what's best. Bear with me!