I’ve been writing on the internet for over a decade. During that time, a community who values creating space for their soul has emerged. Here are some things this community rallies around:
Tuesdays
We kind of have a thing for Tuesdays around here. It comes directly from a song by Sarah Masen called Tuesday.
Here is part of that lyric:
- Tuesday, after a reckless and used day
- I was running and running without a chance to stop and chat at the sky.
- And then finally, I stopped for a breath in the evening.
- And suddenly, suddenly, I was caught by the scenery
- painting a picture of you.
In 2009, I started a series called Tuesdays Unwrapped, a weekly practice of celebrating the lovely, the messy, and the unexpected parts of our regular lives. Every week, I would share a moment and readers would link up with their own moments as well.
But now we have instagram so that practice of celebrating Tuesday has evolved into sharing photos and moments of our regular lives using #itssimplytuesday – documenting the small moments so we’re sure not to miss them.
Here’s how you can join in:
We celebrate the regular every week and would love to have you join us.
Simply take a photo of your simple Tuesday moments and tag them with #itssimplytuesday on, you guessed it, Tuesday. We have nearly 30,000 images in this collection so far!
And I’m so excited that now, after years of celebrating Tuesdays together, I finally wrote a whole book about Tuesday – Simply Tuesday: Small-Moment Living in a Fast-Moving World
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What We’re Learning
At the end of every season I share a list of what I learned as a way to purposefully look back before moving forward.
After doing this for a few months last year, a reader suggested I make it a link up so the community could share what they are learning too. Now it’s one of my favorite posts I do.
Here’s how you can join in:
If you’d like to join in but aren’t sure where to start, here’s a post on how I keep track of what I’m learning. I always post this link up on the last day of the month. If the last day of the month falls on a weekend, we do the link up on that Friday.
Child Sponsorship
When I traveled to The Philippines and to Uganda with Compassion International and a small team of bloggers, this blog community was a lovely support.
While we wrote about our experience in order to raise awareness for the need to support children and families living in poverty around the world, the readers of Chatting at at the Sky read along, shared those posts, and hundreds of children were sponsored as a result.
Here’s how you can join in:
My family and I continue to sponsor children through Compassion as do many of my readers. Here’s where you can too.
The Monthly Letter
- “Benches are cool. Sacred by design. Benches are often a place where something special happens and important talks take place.” – Amy Poehler
Each month I send out a newsletter to subscribers, like a personal note from my bench.
This monthly newsletter has become a beloved gift to readers. It’s a gift to me too because you can reply to me via the newsletter and your response lands directly in my inbox. I consistently hear how much readers enjoy these monthly conversations.
Each edition of The Bench includes:
- a personal update I don’t post anywhere else on the internet
- books I’m reading now
- my current favorite things
- first-word news about upcoming events, family news, or other shenanigans
- links to current favorite music and podcasts
Here’s how you can join:
To sign up to receive these letters each month, enter your name and email right here and you’ll automatically receive my ebook, Seven Little Ways to Live Art in your inbox. Try it out and you can unsubscribe at anytime.