Welcome to the new subscribers! I’m going to be in Chicago this week if any of my readers are around and want to get together just hit reply.
Photos of the Week
A pinecone from one of my walks with Kona earlier this week.
I’m still loving family history research (I’ve got a couple of tips this week that are related and adjacent to this in some research I’ve been doing). This photo of five generations of my cousins and my great grandmother was my most exciting find of the week.
My lava lamp and light board are now my constant in office companions. My lava lamp used to be a sign on my desk at work that I was somewhere in the building and planned to return to the office. I’m using it much the same way at home now. Turning it off symbolizes I’m done with work for the day. It still needs to go off earlier.
A last minute addition - the sunrise as I took two envelopes to the mail just a little while before I hit send on this to get it to you!
Heavy is Easy, Light is Hard - Five Things on My February Manifesto
I finished listening to The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin again this week. It has become an annual rite of passage to read or listen to the book. Since Kona and I have been trying to take longer walks, I chose to listen to it during our walks. I didn't need to listen to the book again to have the phrase "Heavy is Easy, Light is Hard" reintroduced into my memory stream - it is one that implanted itself a long time ago. Rubin reinforces it often in her podcast.
Side note: Rubin has a resolution in the book to emulate a spiritual teacher. To emulate one, you have to identify them first. On this listen of the book, I realized that Rubin is one of my spiritual teachers alongside many, many more.
I've pulled this phrase - Heavy is easy, light is hard - out at times that I needed it - reminding myself to do the the hard stuff because that is where the light comes from. And while most of my use of the phrase in the past month has been to share the phrase with other people, I also recognized this week that I need to reclaim it for myself in this current season.
Not just is being physically heavy easier - as my weight at my physical earlier this week showed - but allowing mental heaviness to take hold is easier too - like watching re-runs of a show you don't even like that much because you "don't feel like doing x" is easy while doing what you don't feel like doing - which will make you feel lighter - is so much harder. It’s easier to see the bad than to see the good. It’s easier to feel the burden rather than to recognize the value of the opportunity. It’s easier to do nothing rather than to stand for what is right.
This realization that I needed to reclaim this phrase for myself right now is also a realization that I need to reinvent one of my own practices that just didn’t feel right anymore. I've often made monthly vision boards - a process of looking over the month and seeing what was planned and getting my arms wrapped around all of that while also creating a little visual reminder of how I want to feel. I'm going to change that to my monthly manifesto. If you remember, I read You Need a Manifesto back in November (here it is again in the issue on how stupid easy it was to change a lock I'd been dreading for months - I’m pretty sure the whole heavy is easy thing applied there too somehow). I was reviewing my notes again recently and saw this from my personal summary of the You Need a Manifesto Book:
A manifesto is a personally drawn map (or guide or compass) to remind you of who you are and who you want to be. Or what you want to be. Or how you want to live. It can do just one of those things or it can do all of those things. Which way you go is entirely up to you. "A personal manifesto is a Swiss Army Knife of self-awareness."
That is what I need. I need to draw my own map right now - create my compass. So, here are the phrases that are going on my manifesto for the rest of February.
1. Heavy is easy, light is hard. Look for the light.
2. Just do it - now.
3. Clean the closets.
4. Make it fun.
5. Do the hardest thing first.
What do you need to put on your manifesto right now?
Where’s Kara?
A quick summary of where I’m going to be hanging out online and IRL over the next few weeks. Join me, and if I’m visiting near you, hit reply and let’s meet up!
In Real Life (IRL)
I’m in Chicago a good part of this week. Hit reply if you’re going to be in the area! I’d love to get together.
June or July - I am (still) waiting on all the signatures but I may get to North Carolina later in the summer
July/August - A Northern European Cruise!
Around the Virtual World
The Facts of Life LIVE Cohort - You will often find me hanging out in the course and community for my course “Facts of Life Book” that launched on January 1! I know some of you were waiting for the first ever live cohort - and that is now available. From April 7 - June 23 I’ll be running a live cohort including virtual sessions every Friday afternoon during that time period. What is the Facts of Life Book? Do you need to organize your most important stuff for life’s most important moments? If so, then the Facts of Life Book course is just for you. With loads of templates, tools, and guides I’ll help you get your most important information organized. Join now and you’ll get access to all future updates as well as any additional future live cohorts I run. Use coupon code FRIEND to get 50% off of the cost of the course.
Quarterly Retreat - It’s still a great time to prepare for an awesome 2023 by signing up for the Quarterly Retreat All Access Pass or the Quarterly Retreat Workshop. Visit https://karamonroe.podia.com and download the workbook for free and check out all of the offerings.
Creative Work Hour - Every single day of the week, at 10 a.m. eastern, a group gathers online in Zoom to do a quick check in, a brief meditation, work for about 50 minutes on whatever they want to do, and then check out with one another for 5 minutes. Creative Work Hour is one of my favorite places to hang out online and I’ve been there every single day that I could be there since about March of 2022. Come as often or as little as you need to get projects done. To register for the sessions (they are free but you have to sign up to get the zoom link) and to learn more, visit https://lu.ma/CreativeWork.
AP Productivity - I’m once again joining my friend R.J. Nestor as a mentor in his exceptional course AP Productivity. Another new cohort starts soon.
Tools, Tips, & Tricks
Improve Your Memory With HippoCamera
I found the article from the proceedings of the National Academies of Science on the app “HippoCamera” fascinating. HippoCamera is a cell phone app that asks you to record a short 24 second video and 8 second audio clip with your phone. The app smooshes these together (the technical description!) and then you watch them again once a day. Watching these specially summarized memories improves your memory.
The tool isn’t commercially available yet but you can get notified of updates on the release and see a video to learn more at https://hippocamera.com.
Print a Book with Lulu.com
One of the things I was reintroduced to during this latest listen to The Happiness Project is the book printing site - https://www.lulu.com. If you want to make a book from something (say a long word document of family history research), then lulu.com offers extremely reasonable prices for even one single copy of the book (under $20). I have a few projects on my to do list that this site will make so much less expensive than any other option I was already considering.
Two free family tree sites on the web
As I keep going deeper and deeper into family history research I’ve come to realize the value of sites that do their best to maintain a single record for every individual person. In Ancestry, my grandpa exists in my family tree but a totally different record of him could exist in my sister’s family tree. We could have different dates, places, or notes for the exact same event in his life. In these other two sites - which also happen to be completely free - there is only one record for each person (or at least that’s the goal).
Family Search - https://www.familysearch.org/en/ - This tool is run and maintained by the Mormon church. Within the genealogy community that I’m starting to dig into, I’ve learned that there is deep respect for this site because of its robustness of resources and the belief that if other for profit companies (like Ancestry) fold and your records disappear, this site will still be maintained.
Wikitree - https://www.wikitree.org - It’s not as pretty as most of the other sites but I’ve found the people who are on here are some of the kindest and most helpful when you’re doing research.
What I Published This Week
I had a good publishing streak going on Hive this week and it busted. Ugh. Time to try again. Huge congratulations to my friend Andy though on publishing his 400th essay in a row on Twitter yesterday. Way to go Andy 🎉.
I got a podcast recorded this week but not published.
My Digital “Garden”
As a part of the Obsidian Vault Rebuild Series that I wrote on Medium and YouTube, I began using Obsidian Publish. This add on tool for Obsidian allows you to easily publish your “in progress” notes to the web. If you want to see what I’m thinking about, this is a great place to see inside my head. It’s always available at https://publish.obsidian.md/iwannabeme
This Week’s Featured Book Note
Each week, I’m featuring one book note from a book I’m currently reading. Click the image to view this week’s note as a PDF file.
Changing it up just a little here - I’ve been reading a 2008 book, Why Should the Boss Listen to You - The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor. It was recommended as a resource for my coaching practice. A lot of it doesn’t hold up in the post COVID world - a phenomenon I’m starting to see in a lot of this type of sub-genre of leadership books written before 2020. Nevertheless, it’s got a few lessons to teach. I’m not done with it quite yet and it just didn’t feel like a book I wanted to do visually so here are my text notes on it that I’ll keep adding to as I finish the book.
Diversion
My friend Mike has put several more videos of the puppies up this week. This one of them playing tug of war and king of the hill got the most adorable reaction from Kona. He just sat - completely mesmerized - watching it. And I played it multiple times….same reaction every time.
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