This is it! Badge of Awesome is now live.

Phew. Well, after a lot of hard work and a lot of screaming obscenities at my computer screen when I couldn’t figure out why some images were loading while others weren’t, I’m thrilled to announce that the Badge of Awesome website is now up and running!

Occasional spikes in blood pressure aside, I’m really happy with how it’s come together.

As a repository of ideas for cool things to do close to home and around the world, BoA’s goal is to celebrate and inspire acts of awesomeness. Each week I’ll be adding new stuff in three main categories:

• The Blue Marble Badge: Showcasing cool, weird and fun activities from all corners of the globe.
• The Backyard Badge: Celebrating imaginative activities and recognizing adventure close to home.
• The Buddha Belly Badge: Recognizing creative and inspiring ways to help others.

I’ll also be running contests throughout the year like the Bucket List Contest. So be sure to check that out and enter your own bucket list items. Most importantly though, I want Badge of Awesome to be a place where people share their cool experiences.

Thanks for your support and encouragement as I got this baby off the ground! The success of this project hinges on you guys helping me spread the word and I really appreciate it.

Here are a few ways you can help:

1. Subscribe to Badge of Awesome to receive an email notification whenever I add a new post.
2. Join the Badge of Awesome Facebook page and invite your friends to join as well.
3. Follow me on Twitter.
4. Share the link to Badge of Awesome (www.badgeofawesome.com) with your family, friends, neighbours, Twitter followers, coworkers, pets, the dude who delivers your pizza and even that weird-looking guy on the bus.
5. Share you own awesome experiences. Check out the site for details.

Thanks again, friends! You’re awesome.

Oh, the things we do: A call for submissions

The world is full of great things to do, both close to home and in far-flung places. I want to hear about them! I’m looking for submissions of photos, videos and stories of awesome things you’ve done.

As I mentioned last week, in July I’ll be launching my new site, “Badge of Awesome”. The main goal behind BoA is to celebrate the cool things we do close to home and around the world. I want the site to be full of content provided by its users and that’s where you come in!

The content of the website is going to fall under 3 main activity categories:

The Blue Marble Badge

Cool, weird and fun activities from all corners of the globe (things like adventurous activities, cool festivals, unique traditions, etc.). For example:

• A photo of you white water rafting in New Zealand
• A video of you joining the Sour Toe Cocktail club in Dawson City
• A story of something cool you got to do during Mardi Gras in New Orleans

The Backyard Badge

Celebrating creativity and imagination and recognizing cool things to do close to home (things like cool twists on a dinner party, fun backyard games, something awesome you’ve built, etc.). For example:

• Photos of a giant slingshot you made with your buddies
• Rules to a bizarre drinking game you invented or enjoy to play
• A video of an impromptu jam session you had in your community

The Buddha Belly Badge

Creative and inspiring activities done in support of a cause or to help others (things like unique fundraising ideas, cool awareness-raising events, making a difference through art, etc.). For example:

• A video of a flash mob you did at your school
• A list of out-of-the-box ideas for fundraising activities
• A photo of some sidewalk chalk art you created to raise awareness about a cause

Those are just a few ideas! I know so many of you have had some wicked cool experiences overseas and do some off-the-wall stuff close to home too. I’m excited to hear about them and would love to share them on Badge of Awesome.

Email me your stories, photos and videos

So send them my way! You can email me your stuff at joshmartinink@gmail.com. If it’s a photo or a link to a video, it’d be great if you could include a description of what the activity was and a brief reflection by you about it.

Also, if you have seen a cool video or story online that you think fits the BoA criteria, feel free to flip those my way too.

Thanks everybody! You’re awesome.

Josh

Badge of Awesome

As my online serial novel comes to its thrilling conclusion this month over at Plot Hinge, I’m excited to let you know about my next project. In July I’ll be launching Badge of Awesome: an online magazine celebrating the many cool things we do at home and around the world.

Badge of Awesome is all about sucking the marrow, squeezing lemons and carpe-ing diems. It’s about making the most out of life and valuing experiential riches over material wealth. It’s about plowing through bucket lists and adding more items to them. It’s about inspiring people to try new things and find adventure in their everyday.

In addition to sharing my own posts and articles, I’ll also act as an “aggregator of awesome”: gathering and sharing great stories, videos and photos that will hopefully get you fired up to get off the couch.

More than anything, I want BoA to be about you guys. I’m looking to you to share the awesome experiences you’ve had through photos, stories and videos. Just like a cookbook is full of recipes for great meals, I want Badge of Awesome to be full of recipes for great memories.

So if you have an awesome story, idea, photo or video of things you’ve done, please email them my way! I’d love to share them on the site. Also, let me know in the comment section what you think of this idea and what kind of stuff you’d like to see.

I’ll be working hard in the coming weeks to get BoA up and running. So stay tuned for more details. And in the meantime, put on your awesome pants and don’t be afraid to give ‘er.

Josh

Moving Musings: Realizing I don’t need 21 coffee mugs

I moved to Waterloo last week. What a friggin’ chore. May was a marathon month filled with boxing, purging, cursing, organizing, cursing, cleaning and more cursing. Here are 15 reflections from my move this time around.

Lookin’ Good at Timmy Ho’s: A lesson in self-awareness

Damn you tequila. Damn you to hell.

This was the first thought that crossed my mind when I woke up this past Sunday morning. I laid sprawled out on my cousin Phil’s couch, whose bachelor party we had been celebrating the night before.

Sitting up, I worked some moisture into my dry mouth and took in my surroundings. My snoring cousin John lay crammed into the smaller couch in the living room.

Big Ol’ Jar of Coins: The little things add up

It takes a long friggin’ time to roll two years-worth of spare change. My decision to suck it up and roll my coins last week was motivated by a few things:

1. I don’t want to lug all my change with me when I move later this month.
2. The demise of the Canadian penny inspired me.
3. It was a great way to procrastinate from doing real work.

The Ugliest Pie in the Land: Dealing with life’s curveballs

My roommate Shane and I are typical bachelors in many ways. I’ve got a Superman poster in my bedroom. Shane’s got a bunch of Star Wars toys in his. The furniture in our place is a mishmash of used pieces, chosen for utility and convenience over what’s stylish or “in”. You’ll find a stack of comic books behind the toilet in our bathroom.

Buck naked on the kitchen floor: The dangers of standing still for too long

One of my favourite poems by Robert Service is called “The Men That Don’t Fit In.” It opens with the following:

Blind, deaf… and pretty dumb: Failing (and feeling) your way to success

Whenever my extended family gets together you can usually count on three things: a lot of boxed wine, a lot of Euchre and a lot of jackassery. Our Easter celebration this past weekend delivered on all three counts.

What running over my brother taught me about the domino effect

One thing leads to another. Ain’t that the truth. I had this lesson hammered home at an early age thanks to an unfortunate series of events in Port Albert, Ontario. It was the summer of 1988 and I was eight years old.

My stomach did cartwheels as I sat on my bicycle and stared down the hill near our house. I had only recently learned how to ride a bike and this would be my first time going down a hill like this.

Writing Notes: Multimedia Storytelling

This was a special week over at Plot Hinge with the introduction of the Memory Match game. (If you’re unfamiliar with Plot Hinge, it’s a fictional serial novel I am writing where the outcome of real world events determine how each weekly chapter unfolds.) A huge thank you goes out to Luke VanOsch and his team who put the game together. And to Jody Martin and Brandon Brackenbury who supplied the artwork.

Redefining our relationship with work

Finding a job that is rewarding and fulfilling is great. But do we expect too much from our work?

As with most things in life, it’s how we look at situations that shape our responses to them. I came across an excerpt recently that offers an interesting perspective on how much we demand from our jobs. In some ways it clashes with some of my thinking about jobs and careers but at the same time I think it makes a lot of sense. In Your Money or Your Life, authors Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin say there is often a:

Spavings: Being mindful of marketing traps

The more you spend, the more you save… Really?

Why unlikely friendships are awesome

Guest post by Bryna Jones (Toronto, Ontario)

I’ve recently made friends with a homeless woman named Valerie. Like many adult friendships, it didn’t happen on purpose, but grew out of the regular sharing of public space; that space being the sidewalk in front of the LCBO on Dupont, which I pass everyday on my walk from the subway to work.

Action Alert: Stem Cell Drive for David Geneen

Dear Friends:

As many of you know, I was the recipient of a stem cell transplant back in 2008 that saved my life from leukemia. Even though I have seven siblings, none of them were a match. So my doctors turned to the national and international registries to find me one.

Meghan and the Mud: Getting out of debt by letting go

This is a guest post I wrote for Jenny over at ExConsumer a couple weeks ago. Jenny is a super talented writer with a lot of practical and inspiring content on her site. Be sure to check it out!

***

A lot of words come to mind when thinking about debt. Stuck. Mired. Drowning. Buried. The images these words conjure up remind me of a story from my childhood.

Wandering Wagon: Putting in that extra ounce of effort

Guest post by Shawn Van Osch (Kingsbridge, Ontario)

How many times in a day do you rush through your routines? Maybe you’re in a hurry or maybe you’re just bored of doing the same old thing for the thousandth time and just can’t be bothered to care. This is a story about three brothers who just couldn’t be troubled to put in that extra ounce of effort. For the sake of anonymity let’s call them Luke, Mark, and Shawn Van Osch.

Hay Bale to the Head: A lesson in work-life balance

We’ve all heard the expression “I’m completely buried with work.” Of course, it’s usually meant figuratively. But there was this one time when I got to witness the literal application of this old adage.

As a teenager my younger brother Nicholas and I used to do a lot of farm work for our neighbours. Mostly things like picking stones or doing hay.

And occasionally we’d get called on to do other odd jobs like herding up sheep or even helping a farmer deliver a calf.

The Monster Within: Confessions of a packrat

Guest post by Kristy Woudstra
Toronto, Ontario

A monster lives inside me. She froths at the mouth when she sees something shiny. She gets all giddy at a sale and she can come up with any excuse to buy an unnecessary bauble. She comes out most often in second-hand stores and at garage sales. She’s my inner-packrat.

And it’s not even diarrhea!: Taking time off when you’re sick

Guest post by Becky Martin (Chiayi, Taiwan)

In my adult live, with the exception of diarrhea, I have never taken a day off work due to illness. I’m not saying I’ve never been sick; I just never call in sick. Well, I’m writing this on my sick day off and I don’t even have diarrhea!

Chapter 1 of “Run” is now live at Plot Hinge!

The fate of our hero rests with an albino groundhog named Willie. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

But it’s all part of my latest work of fiction, called, Run. Run is a Plot Hinge serial novel, where the outcome of real-world events decides how the weekly chapters unfold.

Too occupied to occupy

Guest post by Tara Ouchterlony (Kapuskasing and Ottawa Ontario, Canada)

When the whole Occupy Wall Street movement started back in September, I was intrigued by what I gathered was some kind of spontaneous protest against banks and big finance. Eventually, media coverage of activists with their protest signs stirred pangs of nostalgia for old school days when we’d debate globalization over beers—we questioned each other endlessly. Then, in 2001, we went to Quebec City, and questioned everything.

[Then we went back to school. We graduated. We got jobs.]

Help shape the characters in my new novel

Note: Apologies to those of you who have already seen this when I posted it on Plot Hinge earlier this week!

On February 2nd I’ll be posting Chapter 1 of my new online serial novel, Run (if you’re new to this project, check out the 2 minute video below). Both versions of the chapter are written and ready to go! All we need now is to wait to see whether or not Wiarton Willie sees his shadow. I’m telling you, I haven’t been this excited for Groundhog’s Day since Bill Murray and Punxsutawney Phil!

Mean, Mean Marge: Encouraging children to follow their dreams

Guest post by Bryna Jones (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

Growing up, I wasn’t particularly athletic. Early failure in Phys. Ed. class (yes, I was the girl who was always picked last for the team) brought on a chronic fear of team sports, and physical exertion in general. I was quite content faking sick in the Nurse’s office during gym class while the other students ran around sweating and kicking balls at each other’s faces. So it came as a surprise, when forced by my mother to take dance lessons that I could not only move in in time to the music, but that I was actually pretty darn good at it. This chubby ten year old had some moves!

Broken Beds and See-Thru Shorts: Wear it out

My back sucks. Not nearly as much as I’m sure this girl’s back now sucks, but sucks nonetheless.

Peeing in a cup at a Gambian airport: Character building

Guest post by Alex Sancton (Toronto, Ontario)

This past summer I spent four months in West Africa doing a few different side projects for World Vision. My first two months were in Sierra Leone, a great experience and real introduction to Sierra Leone culture. About two months into my stay in Sierra Leone, I was offered a consultant job in Dakar, Senegal working for our regional office, and I gladly accepted. My flight took me from Freetown, Sierra Leone to Banjul, The Gambia, where I would catch another flight to Dakar, Senegal.

Wolf in the Woods: Knowledge is power… and responsibility

My eyes snapped open as I heard the low and menacing growl nearby. Even with my eyes as wide as they were, I couldn’t see much. It was late and our campfire was out. Though engulfed in darkness I could still tell that my brother Nicholas and cousin Adam, wrapped in their sleeping bags next to me, were awake now too.

Hot tubs, High kicks and Back flips: What babies can teach us about materialism

Guest Post by Darryl Cox (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada)

This past holiday season was my first as a parent. My wife and I were very excited at the thought of seeing our 11 month old daughter, Gwenyth, on Christmas morning with her pile of presents and the massive excitement she would exude because she knew Santa had been in our house.

Announcing the launch of my new serial novel!

If you ask me how my new novel ends, I’ll tell you that it’s a bit “iffy”.

If. For such a little word it certainly packs a lot of significance. If we never met at that coffee shop all those years ago, we wouldn’t be married. If I hadn’t missed my flight I’d have gotten that job. If it keeps raining our basement is going to flood. It’s remarkable how much this tiny word shapes who we are and where we end up in life.

My latest project, Plot Hinge, is built around that two-letter word by letting chance decide the outcome of my new serial novel, Run.

Bed in a Barn: Keep your fires stoked

Each year on Boxing Day my Mom’s side of the family gets together in Port Albert, Ontario. It’s a festive celebration that tends to involve too many boxes of wine and occasionally getting shot in the back of the head with a roman candle (thankfully no fireworks this year).