THE LOOP
Another Reason To Love Sports
In an increasingly divided time in our country, there's still one thing that can always be a unifier: sports. The equality that sports offers is an equality that is rarely found elsewhere. If you're good enough, you belong on the court. If your fandom matches mine, we already have more in common than our misconceived differences.
Sitting in Rupp Arena watching a Kentucky game or at Golden 1 Center for a Kings game, it doesn't matter your race, your political affiliation or your religion, just that you bleed blue (or purple) as fiercely as I do. You're not a Democrat or Muslim or African American - the only label necessary for those two hours is 'Kentucky Fan'.
Playing basketball with the boys at recess or after-school pickup games, I always earned my spot as the only girl because I was good enough to be the only girl on the court. I was given equal shots and equal playing time because I was just as good (or better ;)) than the 9 other players on the court. I wasn't passed over for being a girl, I was given the same opportunities because of my abilities regardless of my gender. It was one of the few places where I knew I was equal to my male counterparts.
For those reasons (and many others I won't bore you with here), Nike's new equality ad hits home on many levels. I've watched the ad dozens of times and still get goosebumps. Maybe it's the Alicia Keys soundtrack or the cameos from numerous Nike athletes from varied backgrounds, or maybe it's the idea that there's still one sacred place where we can always meet back in the middle.
If you want to watch, or re-watch, the ad (which I highly recommend):
Friday! My Second Favorite "F" Word
HAPPY FRIDAY CRUSADERS!!! There are many good "f" words out there, and Friday is definitely my second favorite. Can you guess my first favorite ;)? Get it right and I'll give you a kudos. Might not be what you expect...
Here's a list of some of my favorite "f" words:
fascination, friends, fishing, firearms, funny, food, fancy, fabulous, faith, father, futz, fuzzy,
french fries, fuchsia, film, flex, field, facebook, fantasy, flap jack, fix, foo fighters, family.
Great work this week now go have a fun and fancy-free weekend friends!
Doodle on, Doodlers
Good news! There have been many studies that confirm that doodling is indeed, good for you. There's even an entire department of people at Google with a job title of "Doodler" who make the Google doodles you see on the Google homepage on holidays. This is important stuff we're talking about here, people.
If you walk by my desk at any given point you'll probably see a few different notebooks (I'm a serial list-maker) that are littered with doodles. I find that if I'm doing something tedious, taking a break to doodle something every once in a while helps me refocus myself. Aside from being a focusing tool, doodling has been found to help with problem-solving. It engages different parts of the brain, so you may reach your "a-ha moment" while doodling.
Something else that's interesting is the fact that we stopped drawing at all. As we grow up, drawing and doodling is engrained in us. It's something we would do for fun! At some point or another (for most of us) drawing became something that was too daunting. BUT doodling and drawing is linked to learning and effectively processing information... so let's bring it back.
Moral of the story: don't be afraid to doodle!
Because, science.
