142: A Look Down the 2017 Staircase

Here’s wishing you a playful, creative, prosperous, joy-filled 2018!

In the universal scheme of things, the New Year is just another day. But because we humans mark time, this moment offers an opportunity to look up from the individual steps we’ve been walking and notice the staircase.

As you look back down your 2017 staircase, what steps stand out as highlights?

Here are some of mine.

Personal

• Proudly took part in the Women’s March on Washington last January, with my husband, my mom, and approximately a million other friends. (Wearing pink pussycat hats knitted by my friend Kimberly!)

• Took delivery of his & hers folding bicycles from Bike Friday, and discovered a bike path a mere two blocks from our house that goes under a major road, over the freeway, through the Google campus, and straight into a park by the San Francisco Bay in 20 minutes! Who knew?

• Had our kitchen gutted and completely renovated, plus new bamboo floors installed throughout our townhome, all while still living here, and being the General Contractor for the entire project. The whole process took eight months and nearly killed me, but the end result is worth it. (When I recover from the First World PTSD enough, I’ll hire a painter to do the final part and have a housewarming party. Maybe by next Halloween. Ha.)

• Performed in several fun and memorable improv shows.

• Raised over $1,000 for Animals Asia, and made a doodle on a postcard for every single one of the donors. I’ve enjoyed doodling on postcards so much that I’ve continued doing postcard doodles almost daily ever since!

Business

• Gave my first professional keynotes within four days of each other last Spring, one on each coast!

• Discovered LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® at a conference, and was so blown away that I went on to get advanced training and certification in this amazing methodology. (I now own more LEGO than a nursery school!)

• Was featured in Real Artists Don’t Starve, a Wall Street Journal best-selling book by Jeff Goins.

• Was interviewed by Jeff for his podcast, The Portfolio Life (the interview hasn’t come out yet — stay tuned!)

• Convened with 200 applied improvisers at the Applied Improvisation Network World Conference in Irvine, California, in August.

• Led my 5th Annual Create & Incubate Retreat (only 4 spots left for 2018!)

• Got to be in the studio audience for four CreativeLive classes — always great fun! (The Power of Negotiation with Vanessa Van Edwards; The Art of Networking; and two with Tara Gentile: Create a Marketing Plan & Grow Your Standout Business, and Create a Hiring Plan & Grow Your Standout Business. All affiliate links, btw!)

• Officially started a new business, Creative Sandbox Solutions, and built a new website to go with it.

• Finally started using a CRM (actually, I’m still testing out a few different ones, and may write a post reviewing them… we’ll see!) Don’t know what a CRM is? Be glad. Be very, very glad!

• Designed a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Dream-Mapping workshop!

What’s on the Horizon?

• I’ll be running a pilot of my 3D Dream-Mapping with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® workshop for a small group in my living room — email me if you’re interested.

• Meanwhile, team building workshops are starting to book up for Spring and beyond! (Visit creativesandbox.solutions or contact me directly to tell me about your team and see how we can help.)

• I’m heading back to Whistler in February for training in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and Conflict Management, plus LSP and Graphic Facilitation — can’t wait!

• Paris in June for the Applied Improvisation Network World Conference!

• Create & Incubate Retreat #6 in September (come join us!)

• Speaking at Tribe Conference in October.

• Doodling, singing, music, walking, biking, yoga, family, friends, PLAY, and doing what I can to make the world a better place.

What are your 2017 highlights, and what’s on your horizon?

Something Cool

I became a paper towel evangelist after watching this 4 1/2 minute TEDx talk several years ago.

Shake. Fold. That’s all you need to know.

And honestly, if all you do is the FOLD, it will dry your hands. Try it. It works.

You do NOT need four towels to dry your hands. You don’t. You just need one.

Look in the trash next time you’re in a public restroom. 80% of the paper towels are DRY. Why are they dry, when they’ve just been used to dry people’s hands? They should be wet, if they had actually absorbed water off of people’s hands!

If people had folded a single paper towel, instead of grabbing four towels, it would have dried their hands more effectively, reduced waste, and saved trees!

Yep, they cut down trees to make paper towels. And even if they’re made from recycled paper, it’s still a huge waste of resources when you use multiple towels!

13 billion paper towels are used every year. By using just one paper towel, instead of four, we can save 571,230,000 pounds of paper every year.

Enjoy!

 

Hear ye, hear ye! This is to serve as official notice that all links to anything for sale, be it books or courses, are likely to be affiliate links. What this means is that if you click through said links and make a purchase, although it won’t affect the price that you pay, a few coins will jangle into my coffers, enabling me to buy a packet of hard gluten-free biscuits to feed myself and my husband for another day, or perhaps a pen with which to create some artwork. Or perhaps they will contribute toward paying a fraction of my web hosting bill, so that this blog and podcast can continue to exist. Thank you kindly for your attention.

Thanks for Listening!

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