Weekend Roundup: Nov. 18
"The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things." Henry Ward Beecher
What I've been working on:
Beyond what the usual work weeks hold, at the start of the month RightNow had its annual RightNow Conference.
We actually host multiple conferences throughout the year; but only one in Dallas, where our organization as a whole has the chance to be directly involved, and/or even attend. It's primarily a way for us to pour back into the church leaders we partner with — a subscription is a hefty investment for churches, so this is a really tangible, generous experience to say thank you to ministries that choose to make that investment. We bring in our top speakers, facilitate break-out sessions and meet-ups around relevant issues and topics, worship together, etc. It's pretty great.
Since it was my first conference, I didn't totally know what to expect, but I ate it up. It's nice to have a break from normal routine once in a while. When most of my job is profoundly screen-based — scheduling, creating, posting, and responding to content on a computer day in and day out — it was fun for me to have a more physical work experience for a few days, running around behind the scenes and gathering real-time content myself. (Throwing some of our Instagram story photos below, since that platform turned out to be my favorite body of content for sure!) It allowed me to be creative in ways I don't necessarily get to on a daily basis, and I was constantly engaging people about a real-time, shared experience. It was still digital, but it felt analog, if that makes sense.
It also threw my normal workflow totally out of whack for a bit — filling days I normally would have spent planning for the weeks ahead. So I've spent the past couple weeks playing some catch-up — doubling down on scheduling, curating the content we gathered at the event so it could be included in that scheduling, and overall just kind of sprinting a bit to regain the margin I find so valuable to my work.
I'm pleased to say that as of Wednesday afternoon of this week, I was completely back on my usual track. I used the past couple days to circle back around to some birds-eye-view marketing strategy for social media and developing a fun idea for the Christmas season. (I'll share more about that soon! Just trying to figure out how to execute it so that it turns out as good as it seems in my brain. Ha.)
Randoms for your weekend:
I am a dedicated fan of The Chase Jarvis Live Show (the content is not only great, but I think Chase is a really skilled interviewer, so it has twofold educational value to me), and especially loved this recent episode with author and marketer Ryan Holiday...
...who then popped up again via the Creative Mornings newsletter with this article on living a full life. Ambitiously titled, but actually practical and super motivating. Lots of good takeaways. (Beware of language!)
A number of people whose work I admire on the Instagrams brought Modern Huntsman to my attention a while ago. Honestly the first Kickstarter I've ever backed, and now that the project is officially funded, I can't wait to see it come to life.
In a similar vein — based on my talk about Wild Texas Film Tour and Unbranded, a friend recommended the 500 Miles Project and 500 Miles documentary to me a few weeks ago. I've been following it since; the full-length doc released on November 10th, and I plan on watching it before the weekend is up! Pumped.
I can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not, but I've been using the Read Scripture app, which utilizes The Bible Project to read through the entire Bible. I'm embarrassed to say I've never actually done this before. I started last month, on a whim, because sometimes starting things on January 1 with a lot of determination feels like a big, pressure-filled goal; and so my theory is that if I started on a random Tuesday in October just because it crossed my mind and keep just casually doing it, one day I'll just kinda, you know — whoops, would you look at that, I read the whole Bible! Sneaky, amirite? No? Well, either way, it's working so far; and this resource has been a big part of that. Definitely recommend!
