Making my dreams come true

Posted on by

6

I have a big exciting announcement to make this Friday.

This morning is the “official launch” of my dream project: an e-literary journal called Cactus Heart.

As you know, I’m a writer. As you may or may not know, I’ve been in publishing for the better half of the last decade. For a long time now I’ve toyed with the idea of beginning my own literary journal, but it’s always seemed so, well, impractical.

My personal writing practice & output has grown a lot over the last couple of years, and my commitment to literature has bloomed into something much larger than I ever imagined. It finally occurred to me that now is the time to make my literary dreams come true.  As more and more magazines, journals, and books take their content to the web (Wild Sister and Electric Literature are my two faves), I find myself inspired again and again by what is possible. I want to be elbows-deep in art and literature—impractical or not—and set out to create a way to do it.

And so Cactus Heart was born. It was a glimmer in my eye for a long time and now it has arrived. It is still a newborn—soft and tender—but it also has such potential: will there be a print edition? will I start my own small press? These questions will be answered in the future, but for right now, I’m concentrating on this fresh e-literary journal vision.

Cactus Heart will publish new and original poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art & photography, and the occasional book review, all in a full-color PDF format. In honor of its name, Cactus Heart will devoted to spiny, sharp writing & art that maintains a succulent vulnerability.

Want to know more? Visit the website: www.cactusheartpress.com or the Facebook page or the Twitter feed. You can also sign up for email updates or the RSS feed to keep abreast of Cactus Heart news.

…

I welcome your thoughts and comments! (And I’d especially love it if you share this news with your online communities, as I’m hoping to receive a wide range of submissions.)

Guest Post: Making Room for What Matters Most

Posted on by

9

Today’s Guest Post is from Josh Martin. Josh is a humourist and blogger about simple living and making the most out of life. You can find more of his work at www.joshmartinink.com.

…

It was January 2008 and I was 27 years old. An annoying blurriness in my left eye finally convinced me to see an optometrist. It turned out that the insides of my eyeballs were bleeding. That can’t be good, I thought to myself.

Turns out I was right.

A blood test at my family doctor the following week revealed some startling information. The normal amount of white blood cells in a healthy adult male ranges between 4 and 11. Mine? 584. Nope. Not good at all.

“It looks like leukemia,” Dr. Merker told me.

POOF. Complete evaporation. Suddenly, that budget meeting I had that afternoon didn’t seem to matter all that much.

I had cancer. Chronic mylogenous leukemia to be exact. The doctors gave me a 40 to 50 percent chance of surviving. Later I found out the odds were more like 20 percent. Damn.

What followed was a gruelling journey that included seven months of intense chemotherapy, radiation treatment and ultimately a bone marrow transplant. My immune system was reduced to nothing and I spent another precarious year recovering.

Throughout this journey I’ve experienced tremendous fear, anxiety, pain and a host of side-effects ranging from red urine to hallucinations of talking lobsters in my bed. But through it all emerged some profound lessons about life, its awesomeness, and how I want to live it.

I’m thrilled to say that I’ve beaten my cancer and now have a clean bill of health. My blood type before my transplant was A-Negative. It’s now O-Positive; a fact that still blows my mind. In addition to my new Positive blood type, I also have a new positive outlook on life.

Through it all there emerged some profound lessons. Lessons about what really matters in life and the importance of making room for those priorities. Balancing like a tightrope walker between life and death for as long as I did brought into sharp focus a clichéd, yet important, truth: we don’t have a lot of time, so spend it well.

I thought about the things I’d miss most should I slip off that tightrope. Family, friends and the hundred simple things we take for granted every day. Things that didn’t make my list? Money, my job, fancy clothes, a big house, fast car or big-screen TV. Experiential riches, not material wealth filled my list and opened my eyes to what matters most in life.

Lying in my hospital bed, I wasn’t kicking myself for not spending more time watching TV. Or buying more clothes. Or living in a bigger house. And I’m not psychic but I’m guessing you won’t be either when your time comes.

Our culture places a lot of emphasis on these material benchmarks of success. In pursuit of these acquisitions however, we often sacrifice time and relationships with the people and experiences that make life so enjoyable. As Henry David Thoreau said: “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”

My journey with cancer helped me identify what really matters to me in life. But identifying these priorities isn’t enough. We also need to make room for them which often requires shifts in attitude and behaviour. For me, simple living is an approach to life that allows you to make space for the things that truly matter. My latest ebook, Balancing Priorities and Prioritizing Balance, explores this idea and offers advice and practical suggestions for how to not only identify your priorities but also make room for them.

Life rarely goes as planned. And as devastating a blow as my diagnosis with cancer was, I am nonetheless grateful for the way it shaped my outlook and how I want to live my life.

…

 If you’d like to guest post on Life More Lived, check out the guidelines here.

Gift Giving & the Minimalist Lifestyle

Posted on by

4

Last week was Sasha’s birthday.

As you might imagine, not too many physical presents get exchanged in the Rauch-Starr household. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t give each other gifts. Over the last several holidays, we’ve not exchanged gifts, but instead chosen something we’d like for our home, and bought ourselves that. This year, we didn’t even bother with that. We have everything we need, and we have some travel plans for this spring, and that’s enough.

On birthdays, we generally have a party, and on the actual birthday, go out to dinner. This is our way of giving each other “experience” (i.e., time with friends; good food) instead of physical gifts that clutter the house. On my last birthday, Sasha left me a series of very thoughtful notes around the house, and that was far better than any gift I could have unwrapped.

…

It occurred to me, the morning of her birthday, while I was making the bed for a special treat, that I’d hit upon the perfect gift: I’d make the bed for her for an entire year.

If you’re an inveterate bed-maker, you might be thinking to yourself: How in the world is that a birthday gift? So, a little backstory. For the record, it doesn’t bother me in the least to have an unmade bed, and most of my adult life has been spent undoing the habit my mother so firmly tried to impress upon me. But Sasha really likes a made bed—it makes her feel happy and relaxed. Since she’s often out of the house well before I leave bed in the morning, she can’t make the bed as she usually would. For 3+ years we’ve lived together, and aside from the occasional mention of how much she likes the bed to be made,  she’s put up with the unmade bed.

As it turns out, when she discovered the note I’d pinned to her pillow, she was more excited than I’ve seen her about any other gift I’ve given her.

…

This got me thinking, about gifts and the pressure to give, and what we really want from our spouses and friends and family.

Do we really want more stuff? Do we really want to be given things we don’t need or want? Is it really an obligation to give a (physical) gift?

Those questions being asked: It is fun and pleasureful to give. Life is about giving and receiving, just not on the commercial scale to which we are accustomed.

I hopped over to Miss Minimalist’s blog, because I know she agrees with me on this point, and found this: One Less Gift Holiday Gift Card Exemption.

There are a lot of great examples there of how to give without actually running out to the mall and buying something.

We can give experience (travels, adventures); we can give time (commit to a long walk together once a week for a year, set a night to cook dinner together); we can give community (volunteer, host a potluck); we can give earthly pleasures (good wine, good coffee).

Being a minimalist has meant, and continues to mean, the unlearning of the obligation to “buy” presents. Happiness, time together, a life more lived, cannot be bought. Giving transcends purchases, and always has.

…

By the way, I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I far prefer making the bed over shopping :)

…

Keep in touch:  Email. RSS. Facebook.