How to Live More Intentionally

How to Live More Intentionally >> Life In Limbo

The theme of storytelling has been on my mind a lot lately. I’m finding it an especially interesting idea as I start to plan the next chapter in my life’s adventure. The phrase that keeps appearing in my mind, over and over as I think about the future, is:

Your life is a book. What do you want it to say? What do you want your story to be?

Since moving abroad, it’s become clear to me that it’s important to be intentional with my one wild and precious life. I’ve met people here from all over the world and their stories have inspired me to think differently. When I left Canada, I only intended to be away for one year: Korea was meant to be my one crazy adventure before settling down and starting my “real life”. But the longer I’m away, and the more people I talk to, I have realized that this is my real life, I am lucky to be living it this way, and I can do whatever I want with it in the future.

How to Live More Intentionally >> Life In Limbo

My word for the year was abundance, and one of the many important things it has taught me this year is that we have so many options. We all have more time and possibilities available to us than we’re led to believe when we graduate from university.

Contrary to what I thought before I left, since being here I’ve actually encountered more opportunities to grow my career, build my skills and make plans for the future. I’ve transitioned from an unpaid internship to a paid position, I’ve had time to work on my freelance writing, I’ve improved my photography, and I’ve begun to shift my blog in a direction I’m proud of. Through listening to my intuition and believing in abundance, I’ve encountered far more opportunity than I believe I would have, had I stayed at home.

How to Live More Intentionally >> Life In Limbo

Maybe your intuition isn’t telling you to leave your job and move to a foreign country: I don’t think that is the answer for everyone. What I do believe is that there’s always a third alternative. Life is not black-and-white. If you’re willing to explore new opportunities and possibilities, even those that don’t seem quite right at first, you may be led to things you never could have imagined. I truly believe if you do, you will encounter things you never expected to, better things than you ever could have predicted.

Life should be led with intention. If there’s one thing these nine months away have taught me so far, it’s that I’m going to need to choose. If I want to go on adventures, it’s up to me to make them happen. I recognize now that I am the writer, my life is my story and I get to decide what ends up in the book. At the end of my life, all I’ll have is whatever I chose to write on the pages. To me this means I can’t coast. I can’t expect anything to happen for me, an idea which is at once terrifying and empowering.

Perhaps that’s part of why I’m so excited to have my mom visit me here: I realize that Korea is a short but meaningful chapter in my hopefully long life. I’m so grateful that she will get to see what this part of my story was like.

So, as 2014 winds down, and you start to make plans for the new year, ask yourself:

What do you want your story to say? 

The Book Learning Podcast: #4 + 5

Hey you! Have you been listening in? If not, you’ve been missing out!

Since I last posted about podcasting, we’ve recorded 2 more episodes. Episode 4 is described and linked in great detail on Gabrielle’s blog, so head over there to learn more/download it/put it in your ears.

Episode 5 is crazy cray cray. We’re beginning to talk about the steps of the editing process. Put it this way: according to Gabrielle, there are 7 steps in editing a novel, and we only covered two of them in this podcast! I’m way in over my head and feel like running away at full speed, but luckily my podcast partner is an old pro with editing and can walk me through it (relatively) calmly. It makes me nervous just writing about it!

If you, too, need a little guidance when it comes to editing your work, I encourage you to tune in to this series. You can watch the video above, or download (and subscribe) to the audio podcast on iTunes here.

Confused by all this podcast talk? If you’re new to The Book Learning Podcast, I have a FAQ written up here.

The Book Learning Podcast: #2

Episode 2: The Beginner Writer’s Toolbox (Part 1)

It’s a juicy week for the podcast! This week, we’re tackling the major mental obstacles that most beginning writers have to deal with as they start their journey as a writer. These are big ideas – really big ones! Writing can be very discouraging and difficult at times, so (we hope that) learning what not to do when you start writing can keep you writing for longer! Make sense? Maybe you should watch the video. Or, you can listen to the podcast here.

Make sure to subscribe in iTunes and give us a quick rating while you’re at it!

Mentioned

We mentioned a few different resources this week for the beginner writer. Check them out!

We also talked up some really great books that we’re reading! These are them.

The Book Learning Podcast!

I am beyond thrilled to introduce: The Book Learning Podcast with Steph (that’s me!) and Gabrielle (my good friend from the interwebs!).

I’m so incredibly excited to finally share this project with you. It’s been simmering for months now, while we worked out the details – and there were a lot of details. My to-do list for the podcast, if I wrote it all out now, would overwhelm me beyond words. But luckily we just took it one step at a time, and are still sort of muddling through. The most important thing, though, is that it’s launched! Boom. Bam! Out into the world goes my incessant giggling and Gabrielle’s awesome work ethic, and our baby of a podcast.

Watch the video above or here + listen to/download the podcast here!

I’m anticipating some questions. Let me head them off here!

What is the podcast about? 

Gabrielle and I are both amateur writers, with 16 novels collectively under our belts (it’s a skewed distribution..one of us has 15 of those, and it ain’t me). We realized that we wanted to get to know each other better, share our writing/reading tips with each other and the world, and discuss our favourite (slightly nerdy) topics to our heart’s content. If you’re like-minded, tune in!

Can you give me some specs about the podcast?

The first episode is 40 minutes, and it was a length that felt natural. You can probably expect future episodes to be about the same length. We plan to podcast roughly once at week. We record our podcasts through the Google+ service, Hangouts on Air. That means that they’re live while we record! In future, we may even alert you to when we record, so you can stream it live if you so choose. After recording in a video format, we pull the audio directly from the video and convert it to mp3. Then it becomes a magical podcast! So you can watch or listen to the format of your choice: the video and audio versions have identical content.

Why should I listen to your podcast?

Well, because it’s awesome! And this is the first episode, so it can only improve with time. We have a lot of fun ideas for upcoming podcasts, including but not limited to:

  • How we feel about books being adapted into movies
  • Self-publishing
  • Writing schedules
  • Our favourite books
  • Where we get inspiration
  • How to successfully complete National Novel Writing Month
  • Being professionally critiqued
  • Handling rejection
  • And so many more! (Listen to the podcast for a few more)

What you can expect from the podcast is a light, fun conversation between two young writers who love to write and read, but don’t take themselves too seriously. Become friends with us!

What is the first episode about? I don’t have time to listen right now, but I want to get excited for when I can listen to it later!

The first episode introduces the podcast and the podcasters (that’s us!). We talk about how we “met”, and how we hope the podcast will make us better friends. We also tell the stories of writing our first novels! Then we discuss what we’re currently reading. That’s the short version, for the long version you’ll just have to listen to the podcast!

Share + Rate + Comment + Suggest!

As we try to get this podcast off the ground and up into the air, we need all the help we can get. We would be so appreciative for your feedback: any and all of it! Leave comments here, under the youtube video, at my email, on iTunes, wherever! Rate us on iTunes! Share the podcast with your friends using that beautiful thing called social media! Suggest topics for upcoming podcasts, or make suggestions about books we should read, or ask us questions. I can’t tell you how excited we would be to hear from you. I’m serious. I’m talking to you.

And last but not least: thank you to everyone who has already been supportive of this project, before they’d even heard it. You know who you are, and I love y’all so much. Thank you for the excitement and support. Keep it up!

xo, Steph.