Resound11 Prompt 5: Theme Song

If your life was a television show, what would its theme song be? What music would be cued at the start of the show or when you entered a scene?

Think about this past year. Is there a song that you've heard that has really struck a chord, one that has spoken to you? Maybe there's a song that goes along with your one word for 2011. Maybe there is a song that you've heard that instantly cheers you up or makes you think of a special moment that happened this year?

Foster the People - Color on the Walls - Don't Stop. Because nothing stops, life just keeps moving along. Plus my daughter likes to jam along to this song. This album got a lot of play in our house earlier in the year, and the lyrics to this one are a lot less serious than Pumped Up Kicks, for sure. This song also symbolizes the demands my daughter places on my life.

Resound11 Prompt 4: Superpower

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound ... we know you've got one. What's your 2011 superpower?
For those of you going what the what ... stop. Think about it for a moment: what have you learned that you can do better than anyone you know this year? What can you do that no one else can? Don't be shy!

It's juggling all of the aspects of life and doing generally a better job at it then in years prior. Work was constantly changing this year - new boss, reorganization that significantly impacted my job. On the homefront, adjusting to life with a mobile child and having a pregnant wife again. A pregnant wife that while still quite capable, needs more help with things. Keeping a much larger house running - cleaning it up, and after our extremely affordable cleaning lady left the state, deciding to go back to cleaning it ourselves. We don't do as good of a job.

I don't really remember what much of life was like before Abby was born, but I wonder what the hell I did all the time.

Resound 11 Prompt 3:Virtues

Yesterday we got down and dirty and revealed our 2011 vices; today we'll wipe the slate clean and talk about what personal virtues we discovered in 2011.

What good have you done in 2011? Where do you really shine? What have you done that makes you proud of yourself?


This is an area where I feel like I could be better. I'm not particularly good about giving money and time is something that is hard to give. Right before Thanksgiving though, I did two activities that I meant to blog about anyway, so this is probably as good of a time as any.

The first was a volunteer session at Second Harvest Heartland with about 10 members of my team at work. Second Harvest is a food bank in the Twin Cities area that provides food to various shelters, food shelves, and the like. We went to their warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis and packaged rice into individual packages for 3 hours. It was very similar work to the work I've done at Feed My Starving Children as an activity with another work team. There were other opportunities to do work with food donated from grocery stores. This is a great charity, doing an important job. They gather a lot of perfectly good food from stores around the metro area that otherwise would have to toss because of expiration dates. We ended up going through most of a huge thing of rice in our three hour shift. I was a sealer, which I feel like I was pro at by the time the shift was over.


The second volunteer activity I did was to take a day off of work (paid, thanks to my employer's generous gift of two paid days to go do volunteer work) and work at Bridging, Inc. in their warehouse. Bridging is an organization that collects furniture donations to supply to people getting back on their feet, getting their own place again, typically coming out of shelters or from living with someone else. Katie took the day off too and she worked in the front doing client visits, sorting of linens and office work. I moved furniture around.  It was very rewarding. I met a lot of great volunteers and you can directly see the impact of what you do. A great organization and I hope to volunteer there again soon.

Resound11 Prompt 2: Vices

I posted for 31 days last December using the Reverb10 prompts. While the original creators of those prompts are not doing them this year, another person has stepped up and I'm going to follow along. I really enjoyed reflecting on my year last year and hope to have a similar fun experience this year.

 Did you slip back into any old habits that you wish you hadn't? Did you gain any new habits that you wish you would have walked away from? Did you discover the evils of Nutella? 'Fess up ... we won't tell.

 

 

My addiction to checking Twitter, Google+, Facebook, etc got a little crazy at times. I blame my iPhone and iPad. They're always with me at home. I did try to get better at putting them away while Abby is awake. I also recently dialed back on the number of people I follow/friend on several of the sites which reduces the flow. I'm something of a completist as well, and I need to give up on that. Don't have to read every last tweet! Trying to do that by having a list on Twitter that I go to if I just don't have time for it, to at least see what my closest friends/acquaintances are up to and doing similar things on the other services. 

To note: I've been smoke free for nearly 3 years now and it feels great. Still get the urge every once in a while, but that's usually after too much alcohol and the fact that virtually all of my friends have also quit the habit makes it easy to not fall back into bad patterns.

Resound11 Prompt 1: One Word

I posted for 31 days last December using the Reverb10 prompts. While the original creators of those prompts are not doing them this year, another person has stepped up and I'm going to follow along. I really enjoyed reflecting on my year last year and hope to have a similar fun experience this year. Without further ado the first prompt:

What is one word to describe your 2011? Why does that word sum up your year?

A lot like last year, I'd be willing to bet a lot of these posts are going to be focused on being a dad because it's probably still the biggest thing going on in my life right now. My wife is due with our second child at the end of January so 2012 is going to be similar as well.

One word to describe 2011 for me is discovery. It was a year of discovery for my entire family, as well as a year of personal discovery for myself. While this is true every year, it felt especially true this year.

My daughter Abigail entered 2011 as a 8 month old infant, and is emerging from 2011 as a 20 month old toddler. The difference between those two points, as I'm sure those of you with children know, is HUGE. She is in full-on discovery mode right now and that has been fun to watch and experience.

Watching her discover what makes the world tick, the common language that we employ, and proper behaviors in the right context has been really interesting. Her brain is just absorbing and picking up all these new things, and doing a pretty good job of it. It's amazing how quickly they go from drooling baby to curious toddler that picks up on more things, understands conversations, and starts formulating words to express her feelings.

My personal discovery has revolved mostly around my career and job, and my wife and I have continued to explorer where we want to go with our lives. There's been a number of events that have occurred with my job and career that have caused me to pause and re-evaluate what I really want to do in the long term and that's been filled with discovery on several different fronts, a process that is ongoing and will continue into 2012.