Last year, I was given the great opportunity to attend a blogging conference with the lovely ladies of Arkansas Women Bloggers. I spent 3 days learning about the art of blogging, hanging out with some amazing women, and generally having my mind blown by the possibilities. Picking which of the many awesome sessions to attend was difficult, and I wish that I could have attended them all. However, I immensely enjoyed the ones that I did choose. There is one set of sessions that stuck out to me then and still resonates with me. It was called StoryLiving for StoryTelling and it was hosted by Alison Chino.
The description of the session said that Alison would talk about “how living great stories is part of having great stories to tell on our blogs—not necessarily that we always have incredible success, but that we take risks and be vulnerable enough to share what works and what doesn’t”. At the time, I was really starting to become more aware of my blogging voice and what I wanted to share. So, naturally, this sounded like something that was worth checking out. I didn’t expect for it to completely change the way I looked at life in general.
Alison talked about how she really embraces adventures – big and small; planned and spontaneous; good and bad. She looked at life in a way that allows her to see and hear stories all around her. Even in the “mundane” day to day things, there are stories to be lived and stories to be told. That is not something that I really understood until that point. I think that we, as adults, get so bogged down in the day to day things we have to deal with that we don’t see the magic of life. We don’t take the time to appreciate the little things. To look at life the way that a child would – full of wonder, curiosity and appreciation. We don’t take the time to be silly or spontaneous. To dance in the rain or go off on a random adventure. In our minds, adventures are these grand things that require time, planning and money. However, life is the grandest adventure of all and doesn’t require anything other than for us to wake up and get out of bed.
That has stuck with me. It makes me want to explore the “micro adventures” (as my friend Sarah Shotts would say) that are out there waiting for me. So I am committing myself to doing just that. To keeping my mind, my eyes and my heart open to the adventure of life. To being more focused on living. This summer I plan on getting out and doing some really fun things – even in our own backyard. So far, I am looking forward to doing some more geocaching (or, as Christian calls it, hunting for treasure), bird-watching, nature hikes, and even digging for diamonds. I look forward to telling you more about our adventures as they happen. 🙂
What are some adventures that you plan on having with your family this summer?
