Posted in Poetry

Poetry Friday Round-Up & a video about how we spend our time.

   Published Date: January 12, 2017  52 Comments on Poetry Friday Round-Up & a video about how we spend our time.

Welcome to the Poetry Friday Party!! On Friday I will be in the Mississippi Delta covering a feature story for a magazine we produce for the MSU Extension Service — Extension Matters.

So please allow this widget to collect your contributions this fine Friday.

 

If you have time to watch this video, I’d like to hear what you think. I watched it last year and it, along with my 2016 OLW (mirror), made me reflect on how I spend my time, and how those choices revealed my values and priorities.

(I’m also curious if what I see at 1:16 are the Organ Mountains near Las Cruces, New Mexico, where I grew up. 🙂 I think it is!)

This philosophical idea makes me think — 6 days of clipping my nails but only 14 minutes of pure joy? I need to find more joy in my life! And certainly more poetry.

 

Author: Keri

52 thoughts on “Poetry Friday Round-Up & a video about how we spend our time.”

  1. What a thought provoking video–I rarely watch those videos, but the Organ Mountains caused me to click. (Yes, it was definitely the Organs!). I’m glad I did.

    I hope for more joy–and I know I have more laundry!

    What is your word for this year? Mine is Faithful. Lits of facets to contemplate and act on.

    Happy New Year!

    1. I love validation from someone who knows those mountains! 🙂 LOL about the laundry — there is joy to be found in clothes straight from the dryer on a cold day. I like your OLW! Mine is align — post is scheduled for Monday. Thanks for asking!

  2. Wow! This video definitely puts everything into perspective…(That’s my word for this year!) Like you, I want to spend more time witnessing pure joy when it occurs and more poetry, yes! What we focus on, we get more of. If that holds true, I’d like to think that I’ll be welcoming a lot more joy in my life this year! Here’s to a year of living life like a child “hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand” of time.

    Safe journey, Keri. Thanks for hosting!

    1. I love your enthusiasm, Kiesha! We can’t force pure joy but we can choose to focus on the blessings we experience for sure!

  3. I watched this video as I was finishing up a journal entry on how our life experiences help us make conclusions about ourselves, God, and the world. We want more of the pure joy and less of the heartache, but I believe there’s something to be gained from the 6 days clipping your nails, too. As individuals we gain from all life experiences, right? Or am I entirely missing the point?

    1. I think everyone brings their own unique perspectives to the video, so the point can be many things. I agree that we learn from all experiences — no argument there. For me the larger take away is being more conscious of how I spend/invest/waste my time. Clipping nails is important, has to be done, but for me the greater question comes to things like social media.

  4. This video was fascinating – I certainly hope our experiences are not grouped in the afterlife! Must work on experiencing more joy! My OLW for 2017 is ‘safety’ and one place I feel safe is in writing and reading poetry.

    Thank you for hosting, Keri! Enjoy your sojourn to the Delta. =)

  5. aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh! I was just scrolling through twitter. The US Dept. of Interior photos of the day are one of my FAVs and saw Organ Mts. I thought, I wonder where that is? Then, I”m here and I feel this click of connection.

    What a powerful four minutes that video is! Love it…..and don’t love it. It does poke at reflection doesn’t it?

    This week, I focused on incorporating my OLW into my post. I’m looking forward to a weekend of catching up with all the poetry peeps and filling up with new ideas. I copy so many ideas from you all. Poetry Friday is a GIANT prompt factory!

    Learn lots on your location assignment and have a great week. Thanks so much for hosting!

    1. Isn’t it crazy when the tiniest things pop up repeatedly and you feel that amazing serendipity?! As for the video, yes, love and don’t love. The idea of condensing all of the pain, or all of the sleep … Looking forward to reading your post!

  6. Thanks for rounding up, dear Keri, and for sharing this video. Intriguing! I’m guessing there’s a wide variance, though – I’d wager poetry lovers & writers spend a lot more time lost in thought, and hopefully appreciating moments of joy. [Of course, I might be accused of taking a 200-day shower – was it months or days? – in a much shorter amount of time than a lifetime…. But I’ve been mending my ways. ;0) ]
    Happy 2017, and enjoy your feature story in the Delta!

    1. Showers are excellent for inspiring poems and creative projects! 🙂 Some are also good for singing practice!

  7. Sadly, I think my pain would be much longer than 27 hours since I was in labor for 27 hours with only one of my three children. But surely we have more joy than that. It’s just harder to hang onto. Very deep video, and it does make it seem as if our lives are best lived the way they are. Sartre’s No Exit was darker, but I don’t know. 5 months of sitting on the toilet… that may rival Sartre, now that I think about it. We watched twice. Loved the narrator’s accent, and all the lovely cinematography. Especially the trees shifting. Thanks for hosting!

    1. Two poets with 27-hour labors! (The original author must be male!) I agree that the French Existentialists were darker (and I’m reminded at how far off the mark I was when I was reading No Exit in French . . . my teacher was appalled at my verbal summary!)

  8. Thanks for hosting, Keri! I wonder if Eric Ode has seen his family name on that gravestone in the video?? It popped right out at me when I saw it. And like Robyn, I wonder how much of our time is spent simply lost in thought, daydreaming, or wracking our brains for the ‘right’ word? Hope you have a nice weekend!

  9. Yay, for the year of reading! I’ll bet for most of us P.F. people it’s more!

    Dr. Holly, my chiropractor, would love your OLW. I can see the attraction of the word from a non-spinal perspective, too!

    1. I’ll have to tell my chiropractor! I go twice a month for scoliosis, and heaven knows I need alignment in many ways!!

  10. Surely, this video is an eye-opener and of course, the short amount of finding joy caught my interest. This year, I am making an intentional point to look for joy in the most ordinary of places or in the most ordinary of tasks. Hopefully, this will open my eyes to things I miss along the way. I also found interesting the conversations you were having with the PF community members who commented. Thanks for hosting, Keri. I left a message for you at last week’s PF post that I got to read today.

  11. I am intrigued to watch a day in my own life to see what numbers I’d come up with, Keri. The video fills me up with questions, & yes, I think those are the Organ Mts., too. I’ve been there with students & with family, wonderful New Mexico! I don’t have an OLW this year, but have chosen a sweet picture book to guide my year: The Day Is Waiting. I discovered it in December and love the idea of filling my days with variety, like the book shares. Today, I’m writing about changes and the need for something steadfast too. Thanks for hosting!

    1. I will have to find this book! You always seem to find the right balance. I hope your year is full of wonderful experiences!

  12. Impressive! Only 14 minutes of pure joy… That confirms that my OLW is the one for me — rejoice. I think rejoicing gives permission to experience joy in the ordinaries of life. Thanks for hosting!

  13. Such an interesting video, Keri! Loved it. (I hate to think how many days of picking up pet poop I would have if the afterlife was run like that!) Thanks for hosting 🙂

  14. Thanks for hosting, but most of all, thanks for the postcard. It touched my heart in ways you can only imagine. So thoughtful. So beautiful. So carefully crafted. Thank you.

  15. Wait, only three weeks realizing I was wrong? I’ve already exceeded that. And only 27 hours of physical pain? That was just my first labor. 🙂 (I’m actually not kidding on that one.)

    So interesting! Dovetails with my post today, on seeking gratitude always. Thanks, Keri!

    1. After 27 hours of labor, it’s a wonder you HAD more kids! 🙂 Since I’ve not had any myself . . .

  17. Thank you for sharing the video. It is thought-provoking. Even before I got to the end I was thinking that I’m glad I don’t experience such moments (of all kinds) in one stretch. I also wondered about the moments that overlap. When done all at once, waiting in line sounds awful, but I’ve also experienced moments of joy while waiting in line when I made an unexpected connection with someone.

    1. I agree! Like the video creator, thinking about it in a linear fashion makes me glad we live life moment to moment. More fun and more bearable!

  18. This video is amazing! Thanks, Keri, for it. My numbers would be very different in some ways. But it sure makes me think about some changes I’m trying to make. I want more than 14 minutes of pure joy and less time trying to find keys or remember names:>)

    1. We should make our own Poetry Friday version of this video. We would have more of the good stuff, I think!

  20. I feel like I experience pure joy WAY more than 14 minutes worth! Joy is there even in the mundane, required snippets of life. I feel more like I travel WITH joy. If I lose track of it or can’t find it for some reason, I just have to look around for a minute or so…it’s there. I’m not blind to it for too long. I’m hoping my OLW, REACH, will keep me in touch with that joy every day!

  22. Love this video (but I think my total time spent finding lost items would be much more!) I’m guessing we spend more than 14 minutes of pure joy as children. As adults, the moments are pretty rare (at least for me.) I’m going to try to be more open to it, too.

    1. I love all of the comments like yours, that give me insight into how my online pals see themselves. Your poetry leads me to believe you find pure joy on your rambles in nature.

  24. Okay, so I watched this this morning after waking up too early after spending (not quite wasting, but nearly), a shocking FIVE HOURS last night watching almost every episode of *The Good Place.* If you know that this is a show about what happens after you die and why, and who gets to go there and what they spend their time doing, you will see the irony.

    However, I’m with Donna in traveling with joy, I think–I experienced 14 minutes of almost pure joy just yesterday morning alone, when my currently antsy 2nd graders settled to partner reading for the very first time and EVERY SINGLE KID found a partner and a spot and a book that engaged and the murmur in the room was purposeful and positive and powerful. Is that not joyful for a teacher? Perhaps for some people the threshold of joy is lower (which might make sense if one’s pain threshold is also pretty low. Ohhhh. Interesting.).

    Thanks for the video, for the reflection, for the note. I don’t know why I couldn’t see the updated link list on my phone as I spent way too long waiting in line at Costco on a Friday evening….

  25. What a powerful video. It reminds me of the Jelly Bean video I show my kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ICqTn8lMk but for grown ups. The tiny amount of joy is what I noticed…not that I’d mind the year of reading books. Thank you for the thought provoking video and hosting Poetry Friday! Thinking about joy as I read other posts today.

    1. “How much time have you spent worrying instead of doing what you love?” Thank you for sharing this powerful video, Julieanne!

  26. Appreciations, Keir.
    For hosting.
    For sharing this beautiful music, kindly narrated & mindfully put together video.
    I chucked about the magazine time as I’ve published more than my share of magazine pieces as a staff/freelance writer & we did joke about,where folks were when they read them 🙂
    Finally, more appreciation, for reminding me it’s time to align myself with the thoughtful P.F. yearly practice & think on/up my one little word.

    Mirth & Meaningfulness to you in 2017.

    Jan

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