Do all of you know that my brother Thor is a dumpster baby? Good ol’ Earl (my mom) found him goo-goo-gah-gah-ing next to some rotting meat, wiped the slime off and brought him home to the pack. My brother Shrek was mad she didn’t also bring home the rotting meat, but that’s not surprising. Shrek hungry.

That probably sounds like something only an older sister would say, but not in the Carney family. Here’s photographic proof that my mom also says it:

I don’t know if I’ve driven this point home enough, but I’m a lucky member of the world’s best family. Anyone can have a family who says things like, “I love you” and offers hugs of greeting, but you have to belong to my family to understand that twisted humor is superior to those more conventional displays of affection.

Save your sap. I’d rather sit at the Thanksgiving table taunting the dumpster baby.

I’m writing about it today because I’ve recently become infatuated with a life coach named Simone Grace Seol. She is an outspoken advocate for something called the “Garbage Post Challenge.”

In the Garbage Post Challenge (GPC), Simone challenges people with creative aspirations to:

• Post a string of English words (2 words count, as do 200 words)

• 100 times

• Over 30 days

That’s it. It can be a Substack morning musing, an Instagram story, an email to a friend talking about a project you’re working on. It just has to be a string of English words that becomes visible instead of dying an unwitnessed death on your desktop.

It is, at its essence, a visibility challenge. Simone encourages people to do it so they become comfortable with being seen, so they get over perfectionist tendencies and shift into creating from a place of relaxation and ease.

Last year, I was creating from that place of relaxation and ease, but I’ve lost touch with it. And, since I miss it almost as much as Thor misses his dumpster, I’m down to try things to get that feeling back.

Doing this now is poorly timed. I have multiple international flights over the next month and a 12-day retreat where I’ll be unplugged from the world. But I am so hungry to get back to how I feel when I create prolifically that I stopped caring. Why wait until June when I can start now? Friday, April 28 to Sunday, May 28: Garbage Post Challenge.

I hope you enjoy the garbage as much as Thor does :) 

Keely