Today I am an artist

Saturday, December 26, 2009 at 2:04 pm (fun, thoughts)
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I love this time of year because it fills me with a feeling that anything is possible.

For the past few days, I have been off work and I won’t be returning until after the New Year. I spent those first few days cooking and doing some last minute shopping in preparation for Christmas.

Today begins a week without work or holidays to prepare for. I’ve already begun to let loose and do whatever strikes my fancy, no matter how silly. This morning, that meant dusting off my vision journal and ripping up magazines for a little collage work.

I started by cutting out pictures that resonated with me to create a vision board. I’m still deciphering the message, but I see lots of soft rounded shapes and rich earth tones.

Then I morphed an idea from Keri Smith’s Living Out Loud. She talks about creating a finder by cutting a one-inch square out of a small piece of paper. By looking through the hole, you notice textures and details in the world around you, rather than only seeing the whole.

Since I was drawn to rounded shapes in my vision board, I chose to use a circular paper punch to cut through multiple pages in my magazines. I spread out the dots, chose my favorites, and glued them in my journal.

Today I am an artist. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

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Slow Down – Why So Rushed?

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 7:08 am (life, thoughts)
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I am a fast walker. In fact I rush a lot of the time.

I think it started when I was a little girl trying to keep pace with my dad. I practically had to run to keep up with his fast walking. It didn’t help that he was 6′ 4″ tall and took long strides.

In high school I remember my friends asking me more than once why I was walking so fast as I zipped in and out of the mob to make it to my next class.

Recently it has been my husband and stepson that ask. My husband asked once, “why did you leave me? Can we walk together?”

On days when I work in New York I have to walk about 15 minutes from the train station to my office. I always speed walk there too, passing everyone in front of me.

Ditto for restroom breaks and going to pick up lunch. Why?

It’s not just walking either. It’s also eating fast, rushing through my mornings, anxiously shaking my leg while sitting still, ripping through my RSS reader.

Yesterday morning a song popped in to my head. It’s an old Alabama song that says:

I’m in a hurry to get things done
I rush and rush until life’s no fun
All I really gotta do is live and die,
but I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.

So yesterday in the many (many, many) times I found myself rushing, I made a conscious effort to slow down.

When I realized I rushed through the first block of my walk, I let up a bit for the last three. Rather than devouring my lunch, I took time to taste the flavors that made up my salad. When I left my desk, I walked at a more “normal” pace.

Midday a bunch of emails came in to my inbox while I was still replying to one. Rather than rushing through them all at once, I took care of a few then switched to another task before returning to take care of a few more.

This fast pace must be deeply ingrained in me because I had to remind myself to act more consciously a lot throughout the day.

I feel that if I can make this shift in behavior I may feel calmer all around.

Does anyone else have this problem? Feel free to share in the comments. I’m curious how you remind yourself to slow down.

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Happy Joy Rebel Day!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 at 9:38 am (fun, thoughts)
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Today is the very first Joy Rebel Day. Joy Rebel Day is being started by Ms. Joy Rebel herself, the lovely Brandi Reynolds. (Read her early announcement post to see what it’s all about.)

A message of joy for passersby

A message of joy for passersby

I adore Brandi. She embodies true joy, finding it in places others might overlook.

One of the simple joys Brandi reminded me about is sidewalk chalk. So a few nights ago, when I spotted the bucket of sidewalk chalk sitting dusty in the garage, I knew my family was about to partake in a mini-adventure of sorts.

To start things off, I wrote a birthday greeting for my stepson who turned 12 on Monday.

A birthday wish in sidewalk chalk

A birthday wish in sidewalk chalk

Then I called him out to the driveway and things went crazy.

Happiness is... sidewalk chalk

Happiness is... sidewalk chalk

We drew pictures and played hopscotch. We wrote messages by the sidewalk for people who pass by. It was a blast.

Where can you find simple joys? Let that inner child out to play.

Happy Joy Rebel Day!

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Reclaiming My Space (the space that is mine, not the social networking site)

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 8:24 am (life, thoughts)
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My bulletin board after the clean-up

My bulletin board after the clean-up

My recent efforts to reclaim my time have also become activities in reclaiming my space.

Over the past two weeks I have reclaimed my deck, a path through the garage, and my bulletin board. Little things really. Each one, however, gave my soul a little boost.

My deck felt ugly and cramped. In a roughly 6×8′ space, there were four chairs, an animal hideout, and a flower pot half-filled with soil growing weeds. It was cramped and made me think “ugh” every time I walked by the sliding glass door.

In one evening, I pushed all the chairs into an orderly fashion against the deck rails (cornering in the animal house to conceal it a bit) planted flowers in the pot, and added 5 more flower pots.

Now I walk by and think “pretty.” It’s on it’s way to becoming a deck I love. It’s still too small for both a table AND chairs which I would love to have. Instead I think I may one day replace the stiff chairs with a small outdoor loveseat. What a great space that would be!

The garage is filled with various boxes of things, construction supplies, tools, and other odds and ends.

Tackling the garage is a big project, though. Every time I thought about cleaning it, I decided I didn’t have the time or the energy. So I started by just breaking down the empty boxes and taking them out for recycling. There were a lot. (Let’s just say the boxes at the top of the stack were from Christmas.)

Now there is a path through the garage. Room to move without twisting and tip-toeing. It’s a good start.

My desk in my home office was feeling cluttered and I couldn’t figure out why. I had recently organized it, but I still felt stressed whenever I sat there.

Then I realized how overburdened my magnetic bulletin board was. There were various schedules, phone numbers, and a collection of things that individually made me happy (magnetic poetry, cards, pictures, etc.). As a group it was overwhelming.

I took everything off and put back only the things I wanted to look at right now. Everything else went somewhere else. The whole desk area is now more appealing because of the small bulletin board clean-up.

In 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there I am reclaiming my space, one little nook at a time. It’s amazing what a big effect such small tasks can have on my serenity.

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Finding My Creativity

Monday, June 22, 2009 at 9:03 am (life, thoughts)
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I’m taking part in Deb Owen’s Creative Pathways course. We just started a week ago and will be going for a total of 12 weeks to work on unleashing our creativity for whatever that means to each of us on this journey.

For me it means letting my creativity come out and play, to see what transpires. It’s something that I have stifled over the years since working in web where I’m “supposed” to be a technical person.

It’s a scary thing to call myself creative. Yes I graduated with an English degree. Yes I liked writing stories when I was younger. Yes I admire artists. But I tend not to think of myself as creative. I think of other people as creative. I think, “sure I do little semi-creative things here and there, but she’s a real artist/writer/photographer/(fill in the blank).”

I have no problem looking at others as the real deal. Me, however, I’m just me. I guess it’s true what they say about you being your own worst critic.

In Deb’s course, we are working through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. One of the basic tools she presents is writing three pages every morning. Simple stream of consciousness- what’s on your mind, what you have to do that day, how tired you are, whatever. I have been writing my morning pages for a week now after a month long hiatus.

I’m finding the process leaves me feeling more calm throughout my day. By writing in a safe space whatever is in my head no matter how wild, stupid, trivial, or boring it may seem, I am setting my intention for the day. The simple act of writing in the morning encourages more writing later in the day. It helps me see the stories in my daily life. It helps me understand what I may not be clear enough about.

I don’t know yet where all of this will lead. I don’t have any grand goal for the process. I simply want to foster creativity and let the path unfold before me.

This begins week two.

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Morning Pages (still reclaiming my time)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 5:57 pm (life, thoughts)
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I am not a morning person. I don’t like to get up before the sun. I don’t even like to get up before 8:00 a.m. regardless of the sun. In fact, 9:00 a.m. would be perfect. (Rarely happens- this is why they call it wishful thinking.)

But this morning, in a continued effort to reclaim my time, I fought (so desperately fought) my non-morningness. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. Today being a commute to New York day (which happens twice a week), I had to get up early anyway. When the alarm went off, instead of hitting snooze again and again or resetting the alarm for 7:00 a.m. (which was soooo tempting), I sat up.

My body argued and complained, weighing itself down in an effort to sink back into the sheets. It beckoned to me presenting me with wonderful temptations of pillows, blankets, dreamland, and warmth. It’s all right here! All you have to do is lay back down. Gravity will do most of the work.

Yet I sat up. You see, today is the day I am starting my morning pages again. About a month ago I was on a roll writing three pages in my journal every morning (thanks to a suggestion from Deb Owen about Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way).

In those morning pages I was writing anything that came to my brain in those first morning minutes: how sleepy I was, what I had to do that day, what I was happy/sad/upset about, what I wanted to do if only I could.

During those few weeks of continued morning pages a crazy thing happened. I felt my creativity awaken. I started writing more. I started Twittering with new fascinating people. My personal relationships became more fulfilling because I was making deeper connections with people. I had a series of little “aha!” moments where I realized things I hadn’t previously recognized in myself.

Then the May craziness hit. Travel and baseball consumed much of my non-working time. I stopped doing morning pages. I found all sorts of compelling reasons not to do them.

If you saw my post yesterday, you know I hit a wall and am now reclaiming my time in small increments during parts of my day that might otherwise be lost.

That includes morning pages. So despite my body’s grumblings, I picked up my journal and began writing again this morning. I gave myself permission (ok and Deb gave me permission too) to aim for a mere page and a half, rather than three pages. Just for now. Just on my early rise commuting days.

And you know what? I wrote two full pages. Then rather than race through a 30 minute flight-of-the-bumblebee morning routine, I gave myself permission to take my time. I had breakfast. I put the baseball uniforms in the dryer for tonight’s game. I responded to a Twitter post. I showered and got ready at a reasonable pace.

Interesting thing. I made it to work an hour. I dug right in and found myself more finishing tasks in a more focused, less scattered way.

Sure I had some lingering tiredness (though I often have that anyway). I also had a sense of calm. I felt oddly at peace with my day’s activities.

Tomorrow is not a commuting day so I will sleep a little bit later and aim for the full three pages. I’m hoping my morning pages will get me off on the right start again.

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Reclaiming Time

Monday, June 15, 2009 at 9:18 am (life, thoughts)

My flower filled cart at the garden shop

My flower filled cart at the garden shop

Recently I hit a wall. Don’t worry, I don’t mean that literally. It was the kind of wall where I realized I had been so busy working, commuting, traveling, and going to my stepson’s baseball games that there was little time for anything else.

I hadn’t planted a garden as I had intended this spring. Laundry had taken over the bedrooms and bathrooms. My journal hadn’t been opened in weeks. Ditto for the book I’m reading. I don’t even like to think about the state of the garage and the basement. You’d think we were victims of indoor tornadoes. Like a neglected lawn (oh yeah, there’s that too), my life was entering the unmanageable.

Then an interesting thing happened. After another far too short weekend and a full Monday workload, I decided it was time to begin a garden. Right then on that wet Monday night.

I drove to the garden center and spent more than an hour slowly wandering the vegetable plants, herbs, and flowers. In that giant greenhouse, I could feel my spirit settling. I selected some flowers for potting as well as some herbs and veggies, a nice trellis, two giant bags of soil, and a couple of seeds. (It should be said here that I am not a gardener. I know very little about it, in fact. But I think I’d like to.)

By the time I got home it was after 9:00 p.m., certainly dark. I unloaded everything in my garage and spent a few minutes admiring my garden to be.

Tuesday night after my usual long commute home and dinner, I went outside and potted plants. It was after 9:00 once again and I had to walk every few minutes to turn the motion-sensor light back on. But in those shadows, I potted my flowers and arranged them on my deck where I could see them in the morning.

On Thursday I was off and, though I did an hour or two’s worth of work, I used that day to tick off to do items: 3 loads of laundry, buying toothpaste, depositing the $25 birthday check my sweet grandmother sent me 6 weeks ago, purging my closet of unworn clothing, emptying the garage of the mountainous pile of old broken down boxes, and guiding my stepson in cleaning out his backpack. I even had time to write not one, but several blog posts.

I spent all day Saturday and the first half of yesterday at my stepson’s baseball tournament. Upon returning home yesterday afternoon, rather than flopping on the couch wiped out (like I really wanted to do) I cleaned out my garden bed and planted the vegetables and herbs. It was actually quite therapeutic.

In the span of one week, my life became manageable again. What suffered as a result? Not one thing. Work was still there on Friday and again today. My husband and stepson carried on with their usual routines. Everybody ate dinner, sometimes together, sometimes separate, but no one went hungry.

I, however, am quite a bit more calm. Imagine that.

What can you do this week that will make your life easier or relieve a little stress, even if it seems like an oddball time to do so?

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