Inspiration Lately: Cinnamon Girl of Maine

I just recently stumbled upon this blog, Cinnamon Girl of Maine, via a blog via another blog, I think.  I am really mesmerized by it!  I want to sit down and read all of it right away.

Photo from Cinnamon Girl of Maine

The blog is written by a woman named Julie, who from what I've gathered so far, has moved to Maine to start farm and live a home-grown, authentic life.

I find her posts very inspiring--- and not just because a huge part of me wants to decamp to the countryside and build a life in nature.  She reflects on her life, questions her attitudes, and recognizes the beauty in her life when she finds it.  I mull over some of her sentences and find they both resonate with me and challenge me.

In her latest post she writes: "Proof that I'm not stagnant fills me with possibility."  She writes about dealing with change, and her sentences reminds me that change can be a source of hope, and not just of fear, ambition, or conquest!  I really enjoy that her writing gets me to look at things with a slightly different perspective than I'm used to.  Her writing is also generally beautiful, reflective, and poetic and is a peaceful joy to read just for those reasons.

She also takes beautiful photos that you can look at for hours, often of her baby son.  This was the first post I saw, and the beauty of the portrait got me hooked immediately.

Photo from Cinnamon Girl of Maine

Please please check it out, especially if you love nature, farming/home crafts, poetry, and introspection.

Inspiration Lately: Entrepreneurial Spirit and Jennifer Gilbert

"We all have defining moments in our life in our life that can keep us stuck where we are, or can help us move forward and create something."



I'm definitely curious to check out her book!

Inspiration Lately: Ben Affleck, Oscars 2013

I found Ben Affleck's Oscars speech on Sunday incredibly inspiring (and in a way I might add, that transcends the fact that I inexplicably and frustratingly got a major crush on him after watching Argo).  I can't even count the number of times nearly every day that I convince myself not to try and think: why bother?  I'm just going to fail/suck/get made fun of/be told I can't/ fill in whatever discouragement we often tell ourselves.

It's really hard to try.  And it is hard to remember that those talented people that we admire and aspire to be like also had/have the same feelings of constant doubt and discouragement, and times when the only people who believed in them were themselves and maybe a few other loved ones.  It's hard to remember that most of the time, the most remarkable thing about these people is that they just kept working really hard and they kept believing in themselves and their work and they don't experience failure as just failure and evidence that they don't deserve to do great things in life.

I'm going to make Affleck's words into an inspirational mantra.



(At about 4:00): "You have to work harder than you think you possibly can.  You can't hold grudges.  It's hard but you can't hold grudges.  And it doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life, because it's going to happen.  All that matters is you got to get up."

P.S.  Sorry the only full video I could find (in the 5 min I was willing to spend searching) was this one where everything is sideways.