I think I just found my themes for this year

You need to stop being so concerned with collecting beautiful things and start being more concerned with making things beautiful. - via I Wrote This For You

and this one too:

If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never get it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place. -via this is my heart.it is a good heart.

A Statement Full of Sweeping Meaning

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." - Barack Obama

Couldn't have said it better myself

Click through and read this. It is as if he crawled into my brain and wrote my thoughts and feelings exactly. Clearly I am not alone.

History

I grew up in Birmingham Alabama. I was born in Houston Texas but we moved to Birmingham (really a suburb of it) right around 1968. Well, as history shows us this was not Birmingham's most finest times.

I went to an all white elementary, junior high and high school. We lived in an affluent (although we were not, we were most definitely middle/upper middle class but not affluent) city adjacent to Birmingham that was almost completely white. I mean my schools were so white that if people of color moved into my city they sent their kids to private school. I had no idea when I was a kid what happened "over the mountain" in the city of Birmingham.

After graduating from High School I went to a small liberal arts Methodist College. Where I was a sorority girl who attended the fraternity party called "Old South". The attendees dressed up in confederate uniforms and antebellum dresses. As I look back on it now I am mortified that I ever participated in such an event.

So on the eve of the historic inauguration of our first African American President, I am proud to say I voted for him. I am energized by the possibility of change and hope he inspires in me and millions of others. Every time I hear his voice, every time I listen to someone talk about him, every time I see pictures of him and his family, tears fill my eyes because I see for the first time in a long while the possibility of real change for our country.

My life now and how I choose to live it day in and day out is in such sharp contrast to that of my childhood and young adult life. I really have been racking my brain on how to talk about how all of this relates to my childhood, my family history, the history of where I grew up and I just haven't been able to put words to it. I am just speechless.

I hope as a nation we will be patient with this man. Give him and his people time to figure things out and get us back on course. I hope we pitch in a serve the best way each of us can. I have so much hope.

I'm not sure I agree, but maybe

"Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss." - Joan Didion

via - this is my heart.it is a good heart.

A couple of quotes

via this is my heart.it is a good heart.

"Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow." - Mary Anne Radmacher

"All human beings should try and learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." - James Thurber

Twilight

There are a few moments at the end of each and everyday where the light is magnificent. It's that space right between day and night. I love this time of day, in fact it's my favorite time of day. There is something magical about the way the light is diffused and almost gone.

While living in Alabama I saw it often. My friends and I use to go to Tennessee to a small farm where a friend's sister lived. We would camp, swim, generally laze around for the weekend. I think of all the places I have had the pleasure of seeing this time of day my favorite is there. We went mostly in the summer so you got the added bonus of hearing the crickets start their nightly opera and the fire flies their nightly ballet. The quiet peaceful beauty is staggering.

Since I have lived in California (almost 9 years) I rarely get to experience the light I am talking about. It's just not the same here. Sometimes when I am away form the urban sprawl I catch it. Maybe it's because I am not outside very much at this time of day. Maybe the light is just different here. I am not sure, but I do know that one of my goal this year is to step outside and catch this magical moment more often.

This post was inspired by the song Living In Twilight by The Weepies

My Favorite Spawn Birthday Photo So Far

The Please Don't Divorce Us Campaign