Go on over to www.maggiehollinbeck.com to see what’s brewing. All Maggie’s Nest content is housed there, as well as newer posts and information about my coaching and teaching. Did you know that I’m currently wrapping up 45 Days in Italy? Come on over and read about it, and more.
Thanks so much for reading and sharing during the time that Maggie’s Nest was alive and kicking. Now, onward and upward!
Posted in Remnants
I broke this rule big time, didn’t I? Gone for a month with narry a word to let you all know what was happening. My apologies! And now I have to break the rule again, because I need to take an indefinite break from blogging for the meantime.
Since college I’ve been nursing pain in my hands, wrists, and forearms from too much computer use – yes folks, ye olde carpal tunnel syndrome. Right about the time I started back up on my daily blog posts, I also dipped my hand into the world of professional freelance writing. Great ideas, both, but they couldn’t have come at a worse time as my carpal tunnel kicked into painfully high gear over the last six weeks. I’m putting my hope in acupuncture treatments and avoidance of all unnecessary computer activity. I contemplated handwriting this blog post and scanning the papers in for your reading pleasure, but let’s just get through this as best we can, shall we?
Other factors contributed to my long absence: two musical concerts which took up a lot of time; a new job and a long commute, with not much access to the internet; and a whole lot of soul-searching as I sit with some big questions about my personal and professional future. Ah, just when I thought I had it figured out! What a silly notion.
I really appreciate all of you who have enjoyed this blog over time, and I hope I can come back to it on a fairly regular basis, but for now please expect posts to be sporadic at best. There’s a ton of past content to click through, and you are welcome to continue leaving your thoughtful and thought-provoking comments – I love the conversations! And thanks, everyone, for understanding.
Bloggers: have you ever had to step back from your blogging commitments? What worked for you?
Posted in Odds & Ends, Remnants
This is great news! It means, among other things, that when I forget to pack a lunch I don’t have to starve. This afternoon, halfway through a long rehearsal, I found myself really hungry and without any pre-packed food. After a quick trip to the deli counter at my co-op, I returned with a poached chicken breast and a golden beet & kale salad – featuring raw vegetables, ladies and gentlemen, all of which went down just fine, thank you very much.
The kale was a big step, and the fact that I seem to have digested it without incident means that less-fibrous raw lettuce (a Stage 5 food that I haven’t officially introduced yet) won’t be a problem. This is a very good thing, and just in time for summer; I don’t have to slave over hot soup during the dog days of August – I’ll be able to enjoy cool salads and smoothies again. Ah, smoothies! I’d almost forgotten about you!
And maybe in the next week or two I’ll work up to these absolutely luscious, completely GAPS-legal brownies from Cheeseslave – holla!
So, as I near the end of the introduction phase of GAPS, I can absolutely say that it has been worth it. It has not been easy; that I’ll admit. Although I haven’t blogged much about this side of it, the introduction phase dredged up some significant healing crises for me over the last six weeks: I endured some of the worst depression and anxiety I’ve ever experienced, plus a crazy case of hives across my back and chest that burned and itched for days and days. Even though these were painful experiences, I knew their origins and knew that some powerful healing was taking place through the diet, so there was no question that I would stick with it. As a pleasant side effect, I’ve lost almost 15 pounds and feel more energetic. I recommend the diet highly to anyone who thinks they might benefit from it, and would be glad to provide support for those who are ready to take the plunge themselves. Feel free to comment here, or contact me privately (see the About page).
Full GAPS (and Cheeseslave brownies), here I come!
Friends, it’s time for some recalibration here at the nest. I realize that my post-a-day ambitions have flown out the window of late, in the midst of some serious soul-searching and “personal earthquakes” as I called them in a recent post. And as I’ve watched myself unable to keep that commitment, it’s given me a lot of time to think (and since I was in Texas with nothing to do during my off-time except think, it really was a lot of time) about why I write this blog and what I’m really here to share with you.
Over the weekend I listened to a podcast with the powerful, dazzling Danielle LaPorte of White Hot Truth; she was talking to Jonathan Fields and a worldwide audience about entrepreneurship and the nuts and bolts of What It Takes. You know what I mean by that, don’t you? I mean What It Takes To Be Big. Bold. Brilliant. To take up space and stake your claim of the human experience, to be a beacon of something larger than yourself. To become significant, which is a searingly honest end-goal of any entrepreneur.
Maggie’s Nest started as a platform for my personal musings about my life, a place to write letters to whoever might read them. Over time I discovered that I loved to write, and to engage in the peculiar brand of conversation and community that happens in the blogosphere. Earlier this year, inspired by other blogs that are becoming Significant, I felt pulled to widen my audience and turn this blog into a platform for what I have to offer, as a human being, to the world.
The inevitable question, then, has become: what do I actually have to offer? Or, put in more spiritual (and for me, more salient) terms, How am I meant to serve? If this sounds like a compliment-fishing question, be assured that it isn’t. It’s the central question that every entrepreneur (and maybe every person) has to ask him- or herself. And the answer has to be compelling, or you’re dead in the water.
This question has been consuming me for the last month…and I still don’t have a clear answer. Ain’t that a bitch? Still, I keep asking. Because it’s a question that reaches into every part of life, and without an answer, there is no wind. No wind means no movement. Dead in the water.
I don’t know yet the answer of what Maggie’s Nest is here to do, or how it will evolve as these questions become answered. I do know that I still love writing here, and sharing and connecting with you all in the strange ways that happens. So my intention is to keep writing through the questions; to, as Rainer Maria Rilke so beautifully put it, “live the questions”. In fact, here’s the full quote that has been salve on my heart in recent weeks:
“…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” (from Letters to a Young Poet)
I intend to be here about three times a week to write through the questions, and I guess we’ll all live our way into the answers.
I just learned this word while reading a magazine article about a local foodie. A jag is apparently an obsession, or as dictionary.com put it, “a period of unrestrained indulgence in an activity; spree; binge.” This seems to describe me quite well – much to the chagrin of many of my loved ones. I get on jags, I collect them, I circulate my jags and give them time to breathe. Like shoes. If I stick with a jag too long, it loses some kind of magic for me, but coming upon a fresh jag (or better, coming back to a pleasurable old jag) keeps things lively.
So, my local-food jag isn’t necessarily gone, it’s just getting freshened. I’m proud of the local-foods movement for taking the prize as Oxford American Dictionary’sWord of the Year. I’m still keeping an eye on where my food comes from, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find that most of the food I buy is already local – as long as I shop at the co-op, the farmer’s market, and my CSA, it’s quite easy actually. Trips to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s or (eek!) Safeway throw the whole local-food thing out of whack – it’s nearly impossible to find things made locally and, even when I do, I know that it can’t truly count as local because even if the food was made by my next-door neighbor, it’s still traveled an average of 1500 miles to a distribution center in Austin or Monrovia or Salt Lake City before coming back to my neighborhood.
But back to my point about jags. Because folks, Mama’s got a brand new jag. And it’s an old one, one you might remember me blogging about this past spring. But I believe I have finally found my knitting legs, so to speak, after many attempts. I credit Debbie Stoller and her awesome book, Stitch’n Bitch, for me finally understanding how to tangle yarn artistically. And I thank Lisa and Martha for inspiring me.
Reconnecting with knitting has reconnected me with the deep feminine urge to create useful things, and to do it beautifully. And to do it for others. I can’t stop thinking of things I’d like to make for people close to me – right now I have no plans to keep any current projects for myself, and this is a really pleasurable departure from my usual narcissism. Thus, I have decided to make as many Christmas gifts as I can this year, given my schedule (in rehearsals for maybe the best play ever and preparing to go tropical for the holidays) and how quickly my fingers can work. There will be sewing, baking, slicing, dicing, and yes, knitting. None of it can be displayed here until after gifts have been given out (who wants to spoil the surprise?) but believe you me, my camera will be busy documenting the fun. Isn’t it lovely when a gift can bring pleasure to the gifterand the gifted?
What’s your latest jag?
{Top photo courtesy of EnglishPointers. What does it have to do with jags? Absolutely nothing. I was browsing Flickr for a picture, and this one was just so beautiful I had to share it!}
