Project 137 with Patti Digh

Before I took the leap from teaching middle school full-time to pursuing my art whole-heartedly and working part-time I discovered Patti Digh and her book Life is a Verb.  This was almost three years ago and at the time I decided this was my new favorite book.  I pretty much tell any 

reader I know about it.

It's hard to have just one of course, but this one really affected me.  I honestly can say it changed my life, or at least my outlook and how I now TRY to live my life.  This book (she's written others since then that I have) is full of essays written from her heart and her life's experience.  It's hard to "sum" them up here, but I found them inspiring, heart-warming, gratitude-infusing, eye-opening, humorous, at times sad, but truly life-changing.  She also fills her books with readers' artwork.  Love that so much.  I've talked about Patti Digh before in my blog, and now she's at it again.  She has launched something called Project 137 and I knew I had to be a part of it.  She is calling all of us, including herself to "love well, live fully, and let go deeply" and to "make a difference in these precious 137 days."  I'm there.  She has inspired me and so many people so far, now I get to put some of this into action through her daily prompts.

One thing that really stuck with me today and inspired me to have a great day no matter what was her saying that "living fully is embracing the laundry and the carpool as deeply beautiful."  Wow.  Profound.  She is teaching us to accept what is and to even embrace it, to celebrate it and I thank her for that.  I've always been the type of person to want to change "what is" and if I couldn't I'd wish it away until I couldn't see straight--which never works, does it?

I'm wondering if you try to "live fully" what that means to you?  Today for me, on my drive home from meeting my husband at his work for lunch with our daughter, I saw these amazing windmills (wind-power generators), and I pulled over to the side of the country road and just stood to look at them.  They were huge, powerful, yet so simple and beautiful slowly spinning in the warm summer sky.  I had to stop and just drink them in.  See, on the way there I kept tell my daughter how amazing they were and that I wanted to pull over, like I do many times when I see something breathtaking, so finally after lunch on the way home, I realized I had to-I have to stop "driving by" things that interest me, literally and figuratively speaking.