life
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11 Years!!
That’s right we are officially an 11 year old blog! January 25, 2008 was the very first Ciggy Chat post!! Back then we were on .blogspot.com however we’ve stepped up over the years…honestly a lot of it happened in this last year. After turning 10 years old we did the following: we started a 100 daily post challenge give or take a few days Day 1….Day 100 turned from ciggychat.blogspot.com to CiggyChat.com established that this blog is about “A Dreamer’s Journey” with a few pop ins of #RenainReslife started a Facebook Group for the blog and its followers connected to Pinterest, twitter, and instagram Throughout this past year you’ve read…
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16 Days to Christmas
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Happy New Year!
It’s Day 7 of the New Year and the new year brings a great time to reset and put in some new action plans for all your dreams for the year. What I call dreams you may refer to as resolutions or goals. For me I always have a dream if not several brewing in my mind and so as this year starts I don’t have any new resolutions but perhaps a new mindset as I work towards achieving the dreams of my mind. My plan is to create action plans towards all my dreams and just make the small necessary steps as I can towards making these dreams my…
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16 Days to Christmas
This past weekend I was able to give a quick pre-Christmas surprise to my family in the form of a visit. Being over 1500 miles away it felt good to be able to see my family if only for a moment. I happened to be on that side of the world due to a work-related conference hosted at my alma mater Rutgers University! Though the conference was clearly focused on student affairs, the themes of reflect, reimagine, and reach had some strong personal meaning for me. The keynote speaker Dra. Aurora Chang was great and spoke about the importance of telling your story. This idea that you should share…
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19 Days till Christmas!!
We are officially in the teens of our countdown till Christmas!! These past couple of days have been a bit nonstop (similar to this season): 21 days to Christmas I had a full day of meetings, appointments, errands to run, and a community holiday function. It was a day filled with highs and low including some great discussion, hard conversation, mild frustrations, lost packages, flat tires, positive staff bonding, and quality time with good people. 20 days to Christmas I had a work study break event, car issues to tackle, a bag to pack, and a plane to catch, and friends to catch up with once I arrived. 19 days…
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16 Days to Christmas
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26 Days to Christmas
26 Days to Christmas… And lights and trees are going up every where you turn. Christmas Carols are playings. Lifetime and Hallmark are filled with Christmas movies! It is a time to be around folks you love and care about and something about this time is just so magical! Today, I even got to ride in a horse-drawn carriage! ….it is honestly my favorite time of the year!!! Resilience & the Holiday Season Today while at work I attended a webinar where we talk about resilience and what attributes to people having a high resilience. In the webinar we learned that it is not really a trait of a person…
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16 Days to Christmas
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29 Days till Christmas!!
Hi there CiggyChat readers! I am working to get back into a consistent habit of writing and I believe what works for me is a writing challenge. So here begins my 29 Days of Christmas!! Why Christmas and why 29 days, you ask? Great questions and here are my responses: Well the Christmas and holiday season overall is one of my favorites – it is a gorgeous time of the year. A season for family and friends and a time to be thankful! Also why must one wait till the New Year’s to start forming a new habit or get into something different? 29 also happens to be how old…
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16 Days to Christmas
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4 Things that Get Me through the Journey
The dreamer’s journey and well the journey of life is not an easy one. There are many roadblocks, detours, and unpaved roads along the way that can easily throw one for a loop. I wish I could tell you that none of it bothers me or I don’t react to it but that would be a complete and utter lie. So here are a few things that I use to make it through this journey of life as I work to accomplish and tackle my many, many dreams. 1. First and foremost, God! I am a Christian and proud of it. My faith is something that truly anchors me and…
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16 Days to Christmas
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Two Weeks Later…
Hi there CiggyChat Readers! I apologize for being MIA these past 2 weeks. I went out of town to visit family that I have not seen in 2 years and in the midst of that trip I got sick. Truth be told, I am still a bit sick but definitely better than when I started. So in these past 2 weeks, I had a chance to be with family and rest “doctor’s orders”. Though I hate being sick I am grateful for this time as it kind of forced me to slow down and think about what’s important and try to get my head back into this dreamer’s journey of…
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Balance & Priorities
Personally and professionally I’ve been struggling with this topic of finding the right balance and prioritizing what when. In this day and age with social media and instant gratification everything appears to be a priority. Whatever is asked is expected to be simply answered or made top priority but how does one do that when they are pulled in several different areas. My specific work is unique where I live where I work so it’s often a fine line of balancing my business day versus my personal time. The worlds blend as I often may socialize with my colleagues and more often than not I’ll respond or work on “work…
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It’s a Pizza Party Day!
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Almost there
This is the theme of the day almost there… “Theres” that I’m thinking of… A friend so close to reaching one of her big dreams we all sense it Tomorrow being a big day at work aka new student move in Completing this post challenge of 100 posts! In this almost there moment it’s easy to get tripped up or distracted or hurt. It’s like when you’re this close sometimes life is not willing to let you easily cross the finish line. Take a look at this video here. A few weeks ago I heard a great message where this video was used. It was a powerful reminder to turn…
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It’s a Pizza Party Day!
