Last weekend, Luc and I took a trip to Kingston so that I could exchange something I had bought online from Lululemon (you can say whatever you want – I love them. Love them so much, in fact, that I didn’t care about driving 45 minutes to another town just to visit the store. Whatever, it’s easier that online exchange. DON’T JUDGE ME). I whiled away the trip by reading the reusable shopping bag I had gotten with my purchase, making a game of trying to take in all of the motivational quotes that cover its surface.

Those quotes (and the image itself) are Lululemon’s manifesto, and I love everything about it:

A manifesto, according to our good friends at Wikipedia, is:

a public declaration of principles and intentions.

Goodness knows I love me a well-crafted manifesto, especially when it’s put together in such an esthetically pleasing fashion. This love blossomed a couple of years back when I first discovered the HOLSTEE manifesto – a piece that I love so much that I hounded them about making a print for so long that, when they finally did, they tweeted me directly to let me know it was available (I think they pretty relieved to finally have me off their backs).

With the end of the semester just a week away, and with it the end of some significant extra time commitments on the part of lesson planning, grading and so forth, I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about what I’m going to do with all of that extra time now that it’ll be unspoken for.

I’ve caught myself saying a lot of, “once the semester is over I’ll have more time to *insert something I’ve been putting off for months here*” lately. At this point, it almost feels like New Years all over again. Summer feels like a great time to make some changes and get started on projects, so I want to go into it right.

At first I considered making an inspiration board to help keep me motivated once things change at the end of the month. Fellow blogger and all-around good gal, Tracy from Commit to Fit is a big fan of inspiration boards. She makes one every year and it has always seemed to me like a good and fun way to help get focused.

Still, the more I think about it, the more I think it might be cool to write my own manifesto – maybe a “Gumption Manifesto”. After all – in the words of Enzo from my favourite book, The Art of Racing in the Rain: “That which you manifest is before you.”

What do you think? Have you ever written a personal manifesto? Whether you have or you haven’t what are/would be some of the “declarations” on yours?