Free Download: 52 Lists Project
A few years ago, Oprah.com featured my very first book, The 52 Lists Project, on their website and it was a dream come true for me. I respect Oprah’s influence on the world profoundly. When I was younger and more idealistic, I had a dream of becoming like her; someone who uses their influencer for good. Ok, that is still my goal. I’m dorky and wholesome. I just don’t crave being famous, being a face as well known as Oprah’s. The superficial parts are fun sure, everyone deserves some ding dang fluffy nonsense in their life to balance out the heavy and hard. But OOF. Fame and notoriety like that requires isolation, being aloof, being removed from the average human experience. It requires heavy heavy heavy boundaries, barriers, protection, and distance. It leads to existing in small communities of people in elite circles. And I’m not into it. I got a taste of that at different peaks along my weird public facing creative careers. The completely detached from reality world is not a great place for a neurodivergent brain like mine and many. The pressure, the responsibility, the expectations and pedestals that strangers and people I thought were friends built/build around and under me, in what I view as my publicly facing career heydays, it was not healthy. No thanks. I can’t imagine the sort of expectations and pressures that people as well known as Oprah must live in under. The stress sounds soul crushing! I’ve had a tiny droplet in the sea of overwhelming FAME that Oprah holds, and it’s not for me. I just want to make things, share things, and live.
Tell ya what, 2020 was a beautiful breaking of the glass tower I allowed to and participated in being built underneath me and around me. Do you relate?
I bet there are many things you could list as crumbling and falling apart within your own world because of or just during the Covid 19 pandemic.
For me at least, it was a gift and a blessing to fall, to tumble down, to hit the ground and center myself again. It was uncomfortable and painful and necessary to reassess and decide, wait, what is the foundation I stand upon? What is the purpose in who I am and what I do? What do I want to share and what will I keep private? In what ways does sharing create freedom and joy vs sharing that creates cages and rigid expectations?
I love to share. I love to give. I love to care. But damn, I love my private world and boundaries too. So here in this space, yes you can expect plenty of vulnerability and sharing, and also firm declaration of ‘here are my boundaries, do not go past.’
What I LOVE to share so freely are resources. And that’s what I love most about Oprah. She experienced extreme trauma, pain, and loss at a young age and her adulthood has been so clearly about building safety around herself and offering resources for others. That I love, that I want to encourage for myself and for you. And today, in the spirit of one of my heroes, Oprah, I want to share some free downloads of pages of the 52 Lists Project journal with you!