There’s a long life ahead of you and it’s going to be beautiful, as long as you keep loving and hugging each other.
– Yoko Ono
Tag Archives: blog
Create When No One is Looking
One of my favorite authors, the Kentucky born Barbara Kingsolver says:
“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.”
Creativity and Wellness message for today: Just do it! Write, create, paint, dance, just do it!
The Power of Downshifting
When I was a teenager I learned how to drive a stick shift on my father’s vintage 1950’s MGB convertible. He’d bought it from a neighbor for $1.00. Pulling a cord tucked into the inside of the car door, opened the door. I took the solid hard top off to cruise in style to high school and the plastic windows slid side-to-side. To slow the car down, without applying the brakes, I learned how to downshift. Using the clutch and gear shift I changed the manual transition to a lower gear to slow the car down.
This past spring, I metaphorically downshifted, I slowed my activities down and simplified. I had an abundance of good things but too little time. I needed to take several volunteer and professional responsibilities off my plate in order to open space for other priorities. You can read more about it in the essay I wrote for the Fairfield Writer’s Blog, A Writer’s Choice: My Seven Steps to Saying Goodbye to Something I Love. Wanting to have more time to be with my high school senior in the college looking and applying process, I felt sad letting all my volunteer work go, but I knew the benefits of a calmer Mom. The hardest activity for me to stop was one that I’d been leading for seven years. It was an on-going Writing Critique Group,
However, the previous winter, my boss asked me to lead a different kind of writing group on the Saturdays that I was already working. Agreeing to it I planned on leading both, totally different writing groups, in two different libraries. Now, as I prepare for the new group starting in September, I’m reminded that the Universe works in mysterious ways. Last spring I downshifted to ease off and allow space, in doing so I let go of something I deeply enjoyed. Yet, I gained being more available to our son. More time means I can access my humor more often. Now that I’m developing my curriculum for the new Creative Writing Workshop that I’ll be leading on the third Saturday of every month starting September 19, 2015 at Pequot Library, I’m back in my inventive flow again.
Creativity and wellness message for today: Trust that when you let something go, you might be surprised at what the Universe puts in its place.
Navigating Times of Change
Hearing dry autumn leaves crunch beneath my sneakers, I’m reminded of the seamless process of evolution. As artists, writers, parents, friends, lovers, and grownups we are expected to weather change fearlessly. However, if we watch nature closely, conversions happen slowly over a long period of time.
In this season of gratitude, of closing windows and hunkering down for the winter, I appreciate the following quote. It inspires me to allow for shifts to happen at their own pace.
“Transition is the natural process of disorientation and reorientation that marks the points of the path of growth. Throughout nature, growth involves periodic accelerations and transformations: Things go slowly for a time and nothing seems to change — until suddenly the eggshell cracks, the branch blossoms, the tadpole’s tail shrinks away, the leaf falls, the bird molts, the hibernation begins. With us it is the same although the signs are less clear than in the world of feather and leaf, the functions of transition times are the same. They are the key times in the natural process of self-renewal.”
– William Bridges
Creativity and wellness message: For this season, allow transition to be the way in which your life unfolds.
Feeling Depleted? Reach for a Quote
On this crisp Autumn morning, I yearn to take it easy. However, I’m up before dawn, not to milk the cows, but to make breakfast and lunch boxes for my family, and support them getting out the door for work and school. Then I’m upstairs to write something before my writing critique group meets in an hour. After that I’m off to work. No wonder I seem to be running on empty these days. The local coffee shop would recommend I run in and grab a cuppa Joe. Instead I reach for something deeper.
While in college I started keeping quotes. The first one I ever kept was by the choreographer Martha Graham. She advised to use your gift, because it is yours to give. There is only one unique you. My collection of quotes has grown over the years. Whenever I read something that pulls at my heart or makes me gasp, I jot it down and store it in a folder. Mine are currently in two places, tangible and at-the-ready. One is in my cobalt blue three-ring binder that holds ideas for this blog. The other is in a threadbare moss-green file folder in a drawer of my white Formica desk.
Allowing for serendipity plays a part in this enrichment practice. Today, the blue binder won out. This was on top:
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
– William Wordsworth
Creativity and wellness message for today: When your energy is low, reach for something bigger than yourself.
New Day, New Year, New Look
Hello everyone. I’ve been re-creating my professional website, and giving it a full makeover during the last several weeks. Sometimes the experience of doing it myself has been hair-raising, and other times absolutely joyful, like life itself.
You’ll see today that the look of my blog has changed too. I hope you like it. Stay tuned for the official re-designed website roll-out!
Creativity and wellness message for today: Changes happen, be glad to color along with them.
Be Ready for Surprises
I spent Saturday with my 89-year-old mom celebrating her birthday. At a local flower show we saw competitions for complex garden/art related theme exhibits and witnessed the Best in Show simple floral blossoms in minimalistic containers. My mom introduced me to several of her friends, we watched bees working in their hive, and enjoyed the day. Before leaving to bring her back to her apartment I stopped in the Women’s room. What greeted me was a most unexpected surprise.
A glass vase full of calla lilies sat poised on a countertop in front of a mirror, next to a dramatic frosted window. For me, this was the best display of the entire flower show! Taking out my new smartphone (a Mother’s Day gift from my sweet husband) I quickly snapped this picture. It’s a beauty I must say.
Creativity and wellness message for today: Be prepared, use your artistic eye to spot creative expression wherever it pops up.
P.S. I’m in the process of changing my website and this blog’s layout will change with it. I’m excited about the upcoming new way of communicating with you. Stay tuned!
Starting Again
Hello everyone, I’m back to writing my creativity and wellness blog, after enjoying a break from it this summer. If you are a regular subscriber to this blog, welcome back! If you are reading it for the first time, I hope you find something you like and visit again. In once-a-weekish short essays I’ll share inspiring quotes, messages, and revelations geared to enrich your thinking and sometimes soothe your soul.
After having a busy summer, filled with deadline-oriented professional responsibilities and a truckload of personal ones, I’m getting my feet planted in this new season. I was reminded over the weekend how easy it is to slip back into old habits, ones that aren’t good for me. My vulnerability is going into an emotional place that I call the wounded victim. It’s that place in which I consider my glass half empty instead of half full. It’s an old familiar place of discomfort and I see that I have more work to do digging myself out of my own pit. Writing this blog entry actually helped me clarify my thoughts and in turn my spirit lifted.
If you find yourself in an old habit that doesn’t serve you, use the metaphor of going back to school as your guide. Start again changing your frame of mind or commit to applying paint brush to canvas, or hands to wet clay. Pick up your unfinished manuscript and start where you left off.
Creativity and wellness message for today: Just like an artist with a sketch pad full of empty pages, let yourself create a new sketch.