Looking back on the other evening when I had hoped to do some writing, discovered my blogs were all trashed, spent an hour feeling sick to my stomach about it and wringing my hands, then buckled down, found the fix and managed to still post to both blogs, I realized I had created a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Poor Rich was dragged along for the ride as I lamented to him about my blog being broken and by the time he was starting to have sympathy pains and came over to my office to share some "yeah, screw those guys" over the bastards that hacked my sites, I had fixed it and was all giddy. He had some sympathy whiplash from it all. As angsty as I was about my blogs being brokenBrokenBROKEN, in the end, I was pretty pleased with myself.

That planted a seed of thought for what kinds of things give us a sense of accomplishment or make us happy. And it reminded me of the "ice-breaker" I'd heard of that asked everyone in the room to name something they were proud of.

So let's try this for our next Living Out Loud. Tell us something that you're proud of. Ideally, it would be something about yourself that you're proud of and not that you're proud of Alberto Contador's performance in the Tour de France. It could be a specific accomplishment or a particular character trait of yours. It could be one thing for a combination of events/factors that make up the magic of you. I recently read an article about someone saying he wasn't brave for writing about one of his shortcomings on the Internet because he got plenty of the expected sympathy and hugs but that it took more courage for him to brag about himself online. (Ironically, he took the bragging post down or I'd link to it.)

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each prompt above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org. Remember, if you don't email me, I'm likely to forget to include you in the recap!

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, August 1st (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

So let's hear it. Pat yourself on the back. Toot your own horn and tell it like it is.