The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll give you my main take-aways from the horror of middle school.   Both of my kids will be in high school next year, which means that I can safely say that we survived middle school.  It was honestly touch and go there for a while.  My son's experience was easy and uncomplicated.  He had a good group of friends going into middle school, he wasn't too high up in the status hierarchy, nor was he too far down, and he was a boy.  He had some friends who floated up in status, but the majority of his elementary school friends actually stayed together and there wasn't much drama.  My daughter was a totally different story.  I'm not authorized to give too much info -- and it's not my story to tell, but it was a tough two years.  Like something you'd see on an after-school special.  She came out the other end with more solid friendships and with he...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I set up regular reminder emails using Google Calendar.  If you’ve seen some of my other videos, you’ll know that I use Gmail as the main single-stream communication funnel for the electronic information in my life. That means I check my email frequently.  I am also super forgetful and basically run my life on reminders.  I have lots of systems — see my plethora of videos — but many times, I would like a reminder delivered to my email inbox.  I've tried a bunch of solutions to this issue including Memo To Me and Boomerang -- some of which cost money, but I prefer to use Google Calendar since it is already a tool that I use frequently. There are two types of email reminders. The first is an Email Reminder with Appointment So, sometimes I KNOW that I’m going to forget an appointment or to do something at a specific time.  Here are a couple of e...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll tell you all of the reasons that I use Google Calendar and iOS Calendar together.  I did a video a little while ago encouraging you to ditch iOS’s innate Calendar app and use Google Calendar. I still totally stand behind that decision, but I have a confession to make — I didn’t entirely delete iOS Calendar. Instead, I use both apps together working in parallel  Google Calendar is my front man, iOS Calendar does some work behind the scenes. Let me show you how.   Search Searching your Google Calendar using a desktop browser is amazing, but on mobile devices the search function leaves much to be desired.  For example, if I’m searching for the last time I had dinner with my friend Debbie, the browser produces all of these results, while the mobile app only produces these.  It seems like it might be a problem with the amount of historic data that the a...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll give my tips on engaging in healthy and positive conflict in your important relationships. Okay -- in previous videos, I talked about maintaining boundaries to prevent relationships from blowing up and how to determine whether your relationship is even worth the energy that conflict requires.  In this one, let’s talk about how to ensure that you are engaging in conflict in the most positive, constructive way.  First of all,  Check Your Motivations Presumably the reason that you are engaging in conflict at all is because you care about the relationship and something happened that bothers you, offends you, or otherwise makes you uncomfortable.  It’s very possible that you are pretty angry over this incident.  Remember, the main reason you are doing this to help heal your relationship.  So, if, when you check in with yourself, you find that your primary mo...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share some of my summary and takeaways from the paradigm shifting book The Righteous Mind by moral psychologist, Jonathan Haidt.  Very occasionally, I read a book that changes the way I view the world.  I read quite a bit and am highly influenceable, but there are only a handful of books that have changed the filter through which I see things — these are some of those books (Egoscue, Attachment, Paradox of Choice).  Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind is one of those paradigm shifting books for me.  It helps that I read it at a time when I was puzzling over the polarization our political discourse.  I’m a dyed in the wool liberal, but I enjoy talking to people with different views. And not just to yell at them that they are wrong — I like to hear WHY people think what they think.  I grew up in a very conservative town and have lots of friends of ver...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I turn photos into usable text using Google Keep and the Plain Text Paste App.  *Okay — I’ve done quite a few videos recently about exporting text from PDFs, Kindles and the like. Since I’m in graduate school now, this is relevant to my life, but to be fair, I have always been a note taker.  My memory is not great and I read a lot of nonfiction.  It’s really the only way for me to retain more than the most superficial information from the books I read.  I’ve gotten so that I really prefer to read books on a Kindle.  My primary reason is that i like the ability to easily make highlights and quick notes while I’m reading. Then I can export those highlights to an Evernote note.   When I’m reading a physical book and I want to highlight something or make a note, I have to put down the book, go get my phone and then type in the quote.  Wel...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll walk you through my mental Decision Tree on whether its worth engaging in healthy conflict in order to heal a relationship.   Within the last 2 weeks, I’ve had 3 relationship conflicts to deal with.  It’s uncomfortable and stressful even for someone like me who is more at home with conflict than most. I come from a family that believes that conflict generally ends well. Now that doesn’t always mean we fight fairly or are on our best behavior during conflicts, but we honor the role of conflict as essential to good relationships. I married into a family where conflict generally does NOT end well. My mother in law once told me that there were never any fights in her marriage.  I think she believed that was a sign of supreme relationship health -- I take the opposing view on that.      So, my view is that our most important relationships are worth fighting fo...