Round-up: favorite year-end posts

credit: www.sun-gazing.comGood morning, one and all!  

I'm up a little later than my usual Fuck Yeah Early-Early Wake-up Time, but still with plenty of time for some year-end loose-end-tying and preparations to head to Tahoe for a snowy weekend with friends. YES. Much deserved!

This morning I've been reveling in the bounty of some really inspiring year-end blog posts from friends and people I read regularly.   

Perhaps this is the biggest gift of the interwebs, the way it can keep us close to the best among us, keep us clear and motivated.  Read on. Enjoy! 

Brendan Leonard, Semi-Rad

Brendan is someone I "met" this year, through a shared friend on Facebook. I am a little crazy about Semi-Rad, have rocked the sticker all year on the front of my annual Moleskine. Am also wild about the Happily Semi-Rad t-shirt (get one!).  

This piece, A Handful of Moments, really made me sit back and think. I, too, tend to get wrapped up in work -- whether it's my day job or the other work I do as a human (writing, thinking, being good, you know the drill) -- so wrapped up that I have a tendency to miss the moments as they're happening.

This is what inspires my hiking mantra, my desire to keep my mind where my body is, to actually see the trees around me instead of working on my To Do list as I pass them by, inhaling their exhalation but never taking in the full glory of their presence. 

Yes, mind and body in one place. Challenging, but so worth the effort.

Michelle Marchildon, The Yogi Muse

Michelle is another someone I met in 2012, thanks to the implosion and utter decimation of the yoga we loved.  Hers was a voice I particularly loved hearing, needed to hear -- wry, funny, real -- and I was so pleased to give away a copy of her book, Finding More on the Mat, as part of my short-lived series, Made of Awesome.

I love this year-end piece on Elephant Journal, Peace Motherf***ers, so including it here for your enjoyment, too. Sure, maybe it works best for fellow survivors of the Anusar-ocalypse of 2012, but I still think there's plenty in this piece -- about giving up affiliation, not leaning on others for validation or identity -- that speaks to all of us.

2012 was a year a lot of us learned to stand on our own two feet (or our own two hands in the middle of the room, as Michelle describes).

What are we going to do with that in 2013?

Bernadette Birney, It's About Yoga (sort of.)

Another sister from last year's Anusara debacle is Bernadette Birney, whose voice also makes me laugh, whose honesty is so needed.  Whose 2012: Another Fine Effing Growth Opportunity inspired me.

It's funny how our little yoga-verse crumbled and I came out of it with more friends, awesome friends. How our little guru-centric maybe-cult came crashing down, and all of a sudden all these amazing voices emerged, voices I hadn't heard before, voices that had kept maybe a little quieter before the so-called cataclysm.

Good shit comes from bad shit. Amazing.

Rebelle Society

Rebelle Society is a great new site that never fails to inspire me, hooking me more often than not with the great visuals that accompany the pieces.  Lots of Marilyn Monroe, which probably, statistically, equals more click-throughs.

Anyway, I loved this morning's piece Cut the Crap & Get Authentically Positive, pretty much the antidote to the Relentless Positivity that Michelle talks about in her post.

As a lifelong Pollyanna, oh, how this piece bolsters my aspiration to be more consistently positive in the coming year, first by eliminating all the crap that puts a dark cloud in front of my innate blast of sunshine, second by just cultivating my own inner Pollyanna, practicing it like the real yoga it is. 

And you can bet The Happiness Advantage is on my To Read list for the coming year, too!

This truly is my favorite time of year, with Christmas behind us, mostly the whole year behind us, assessing, evaluating, preparing, planning.  <sigh> Where have I been? Where am I going? So pleasing to look around and see others, read others, who are similarly assessing, evaluating, planning.  And making me laugh. And reminding me how much greatness there is all around us.

2013 IS gonna be awesome. Because we will make it that way. 

XX