Posts Tagged "campaign"

Paying it Forward

Posted by Coleen Patrick on Sep 15, 2011 in Inspiration, Writing | 6 comments

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.  ~Nelson Henderson

My blog was awarded the Liebster Award this week.  So exciting!  A big thank you to Ruth at Out on a Limb.

The Liebster Blog Award is meant to showcase bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers. This is all done in the spirit of pay-it-forward.

So let’s plant some trees, er, pass the award to five awesome blogs.  Here are my choices:

1.  Born Bookish Amanda has a fun site about books and words.  Abibliophobia anyone? Click on her link to learn the definition.

2.  Sofia Day’s Pen I came across Sofia’s site on Twitter when I clicked on a link to her post about the necessity of blogging.  Check it out!

3.  Adventure Writes  Mel is in my campaign group and she announced this week she reached 100 followers for her blog.  Awesome.  Plus she’s a ninja.

4. Brenda Sills  Brenda is another campaigner and she has a beautiful blog with amazing illustrations by her daughter.

5  WB Terrien   Wendy is also in my campaign group and I first hopped over to her site when she posted about freestyle or focused blogging.  Great stuff, but since then I’ve learned Wendy is tall and music makes her happy.

So the rules of the award are:

1. Thank the person who gave you this award and link back to them.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And best of all – have fun!

Since this post is about sharing the love, I wanted to end with a special shout out to Kristen Lamb.  Her books, blog and #MyWANA community have been so important on my social media journey (note: all mistakes are my own!).  I highly recommend her books We Are Not Alone-The Writer’s Guide To Social Media and Are You There Blog? It’s Me Writer.

Thanks so much!

Coleen

Hope Will Find You

Posted by Coleen Patrick on Sep 13, 2011 in Books, Inspiration | 12 comments

All week I’ve been reading great flash fiction written by my fellow campaigners, most of which start with The door swung open and end with The door swung shut. So, it was interesting when I also read an inspiring memoir, Hope Will Find You, by Naomi Levy that offered a new take on the following saying:

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.–Alexander Graham Bell

It’s optimistic, but it also seems to require a faith or hope that we might be struggling for, depending on what is behind our closed door. If we’ve lost our faith or sense of hope, then we focus on the failure, the disappointment or the sadness.

Sometimes we stay there simply because we are waiting for improvement, good news, or The Hope.

In her book, Naomi suggests that we don’t wait. Instead, she says to turn around, face that new place and live. No matter what, keep moving forward, because that’s the space where hope will find you.

Like Dorrie from Finding Nemo said, “Just keep swimming.”

We might not have had any control over that door slamming, but we are in control of our attitude and focus. How we view our life is a matter of perception.

“Hope is about stepping inside life instead of waiting on the sidelines. It’s about welcoming what’s there. Because when you open yourself to it, hope is everywhere.”

What are you focusing on? Will you be ready when hope tracks you down?

*              *             *

In other news, thanks so much to Ruth Schiffman for giving me the Liebster Blog award. I will be posting my five nominations soon!

Also, I am hoping to track down all the blogs I started following with Google Friend Connect. I clicked it many, many times this past week and only one, lovely, blog is listed in my account (even after I click “manage blogs” as the help site suggested). Where did they all go? I don’t know, but now I am adding blogs manually to Google reader. I know I am missing a bunch, but I am sure I will come across them again as the campaign continues.

And thanks to everyone for the blog love, and to Deniz for letting me know my poem made the short list for stage two.   Have a great week!