A Mom’s Blogging Map for the Year

One of my favorite annual activities involves glue sticks, old magazines, poster board and my girlfriends. While it might sound like a kindergarten craft project it is actually an opportunity to put the past away and create a path into the future. Every year we gather at a home with our buckets, bags and boxes of craft supplies to spend several hours creating “Treasure Maps” for our coming year. Using words and photos from the magazines we hoard all year long for this very day, we create poster boards covered in examples of achievements, dreams, hopes and wants that we have for ourselves. Last year when I created my poster board I was almost through my first trimester of pregnancy with Lily and my Treasure Map was covered with phrases like “healthy pregnancy”, “find better sleep”, “live a more creative life” and “family matters”. When it was time to gather together my supplies (and I have a lot of them) for this year’s Treasure Mapping extravaganza I stopped to take a critical look at my 2009 poster. Every single thing on my poster had come true. Okay, maybe “get more organized” hadn’t exactly come to fruition… but everything else had! Last year I had hung my Treasure Map in my closet and every day I had looked at it… and it had come true. It was an incredible realization that the power of positive suggestion really can make a difference. So when I sat down this year to create my 2010 Treasure Map I was anxious to fill it with hopes and goals that I really wanted for myself… and even a few things that might seem a little out-of-reach.

2010 Treasure Map This year I hung my Treasure Map on the wall by my desk in my home office. Then just the other day it hit me like a ton of bricks! I have been struggling to write on my blog on a daily basis… as you may have seen, I’ve found the true reality of motherhood to be messy and all consuming. Which is probably why I was still sitting at my computer at 1 a.m. this morning working. So the realization that hit me as I sat and reflected on my Treasure Mapping masterpiece was that my map could help me write my blog this year. Every little phrase provides the jumping off point for a great post topic. Of course I won’t only write about what’s on my Treasure Map… but maybe when I’m stuck and need to get those creative juices flowing (in between cleaning up the apple juice that is flowing down my desk thanks to curious little hands) I can use my Treasure Map to prompt ideas.

There are 46 weeks left in 2010 and 74 topics on my list… so if I can manage to do one and a half posts every week from here on it I will make it through my list. I don’t plan to write them in order… but I plan to write at least something about every single one.

So here are the phrases from my 2010 Treasure Map… I hope it inspires you to create a map of your own!