SOL Tuesday

Tuesday February 22, 2022Tuesday February 22, 2022 Stacey Shubitz

Join us every Tuesday for our weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge!

Have you signed up for the 15th Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge yet? The sign-up form went live earlier this month. Be sure to sign up if you’re reading to commit to 31 days of writing.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR! We’ll be hosting some optional meet-ups so members of our community can connect and chat in real-time this March. The first session will be on a weekend morning (East Coast time). So as to make sure participants in all time zones feel included, future sessions will be held in the late afternoon or evening (East Coast time).

Watch for an email on March 2nd with a link to sign-up for this meetup.

If you’re gearing up for the SOLSC, which begins a week from today, then you may already be thinking about what you’ll do when you think you don’t have anything to write about. (ICYMI: Several seasoned Slicers shared strategies for generating writing in a post that Betsy shared last week.) There will be days when you’ll wondering if something you want to write about is too ordinary.

“Gathering Gold” is a podcast co-hosted by Sheryl Paul and Victoria Russell. In September 2021, they shared episode 11, which was entitled “The Goodness of Ordinary Life.” Here’s a summary of it:

What does it mean to live up to our potential, to fully experience life and to feel our lives are enough? Are we stuck choosing between constant striving for bigger and better or settling for boredom and apathy? In today’s episode, Sheryl shares memories of her grandparents that continue to inspire and inform her view of what it means to live a beautiful, simple, good life. Victoria unpacks some of her fear and shame around what it means to do and be “enough,” and asks Sheryl what has helped her to let go of the restlessness and fantasy that often color our younger years. Ultimately, we explore how approaching our daily lives with reverence and presence can lead us to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, and help us to experience greater contentment, connection and aliveness right here, right now.
Click here to listen to Episode 11 of “Gathering Gold.”

I’ve listened to episode 11 of “Gathering Gold” a couple of times. Much of it relates to the beauty in living an ordinary life, which is what the Slice of Life Story Challenge celebrates. Another interesting part of this episode that relates to the challenge comes in the final ten minutes. If you’ve wondered about the impact your writing has in the world, then this episode will serve as a reminder to you of the incredible and awesome power you have when your work touches a handful of people. I encourage you to give this episode of “Gathering Gold” a listen sometime between now and the beginning of the 15th Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge.

Published by Stacey Shubitz

I am a literacy consultant who focuses on writing workshop. I've been working with K-6 teachers and students since 2009. Prior to that, I was a fourth and fifth-grade teacher in New York City and Rhode Island. I'm the author of Craft Moves (Stenhouse Publishers, 2016) and the co-author of Jump Into Writing (Zaner-Bloser, 2021), Welcome to Writing Workshop (Stenhouse Publishers, 2019), and Day By Day (Stenhouse, 2010). I live in Central Pennsylvania with my husband and children. In my free time, I enjoy swimming, doing Pilates, cooking, baking, making ice cream, and reading novels. View all posts by Stacey Shubitz