Immaculata

[from Latin immaculātus, from im- (not) + macula blemish]
A cleanse (of any kind) of a predetermined number of days to jump-start any or all aspects of one’s life.

It sounds kinda religious and culty but really, Immaculata is just a weird name I gave to a 30 day cleanse I did in 2010 to jump-start from a personal rock bottom into a healthier, happier lifestyle and have done several times since. I blogged and podcasted about my experiences, and as a result hundreds of people from around the world joined me, creating a great community of creative folks that strive for more tools to be happy and productive and junk like that.

I like to think of our bodies as an original Nintendo game cartridge: Sometimes we get all fucked up and pixelated and need to be taken out of the console so we can be smacked around and blown into a bit. After that, Mario and Luigi can more effectively clean our pipes so they can jump onto flag poles n’ jump over fireballs n’ shit. And sometimes we gotta keep trying new methods because the princess (happiness, clearly) seems to be in another castle.

I took the original Immaculatize.com website down, but below are some archives from the old blog, and there is still a great community on the Immaculatize Facebook Page.

The Most Read Pages:

My Absolutely Amazing Story
Immaculata #1: The First Cleanse in Full Detail
The People Project (Ultimately a failed idea, but got some great quotes from Patton Oswalt, Aubrey Plaza, Margaret Cho, and others)
The Immaculatize CAN-endar (We raised over $1,000 for The Leukemia & Lympbhoma Society with sales from this silly motivational wall calendar)
Upward Bound Adopt-An-Apartment (In less than a week, we raised $1500 which we used to fully decorate and furnish a home for a homeless family)
The Super Ultimate Turbo-Charged Jump Start Official Manual

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Some cool things that came out of the community of Immaculatizers:

Buddy Peace’s Immaculation Blend (A fantastic music mix from London based DJ/Producer Buddy Peace)
Songs In The Key of Immaculata by Rob VanMega (A fantastic music mix from Canadian DJ Rob VanMega)

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Annual Reviews
Inspired by blogger and world traveler Chris Guillebeau, I started tracking my annual goals and progress.
2012 Annual Review and My Plan for 2013
2011 Annual Review and My Plan for 2012
2010 Annual Review and My Plan for 2011

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Group Immaculatas
The Pre-Thanksgiving ENCHANT-A-THON!
The Super Ultimate Turbo Charged 30-Day Jump Start
The Motherpuppy Jumpstart to Moderation
SEP-TIMMMMMBER!
Bijonuary
Seize The May!
March Magicalness!
Facebook Group Round-Up #1: Turbo-Chargin’!
Facebook Group Round-Up #2: Post Turbo-Pre Magicalness