January 19, 2011

• My painting studio is almost clean. All the stuff is off the floor, most of it has found a home, and what has not found a home needs to live elsewhere. (That's why our garage looks like it "did" - see below)

• I have started to learn to use Wordpress. And it's fun, way more fun than I ever thought it might be, tho if I am being completely honest with myself, I secretly hoped it would be.

• After many years of knitting, I am dipping my toes into the pool of design. It makes me a little scared, and very excited - I have found that this is always a great combo in any new endeavor.

• After almost a year, our cat has decided that she likes my husband. When he gets in bed, she no longer hisses and growls at him. That makes us all very happy.

• After one year and 4 months of living in our house, we cleaned out the garage. When we moved in we basically piled everything in the garage that we either didn't immediately need, or weren't sure what to do with. We unearthed many things we had forgotten about, and we are keeping too many of them, but getting rid of more. Behind all the boxes and rolled up rugs, we found the shelves. Still no room to park a car, but hey, there had to be space for that extra couch we don't know what to do with...

• Three days of sun, after many days of gray, and more than a few days of rainy since before Christmas, makes the whole world a new place.

• Week 3, we're right in the middle of week 3, and I feel as though I am right where I should be.

January 11, 2011

January 06, 2011

Looking back at my words for the past 3 years, this year's definitely diverges from the flock. My first year of the word was 2008 when I chose Balance, in 2009 I was all about Resilience, and last year I was Passion. I will spare you from evaluating last year's word or any of the other years here, but suffice it to say that each word proved to be important and prospicious in its own unique way, and my hope is that this years will be no different.

So a few evenings before the big year-change-over-event, my husband and I were sitting around the fire, talking about what we wanted to see and create in 2011:

What things we wanted to stop dreaming about and make Real (yes with a capital R)

What things had been on our life lists for a while but now no longer seemed relevant and needed to be removed

What top things did we want to accomplish in 2011

What things were feeling absolutely necessary to add/change/delete/remake etc.

And in the midst of our conversation my word came to me: Stride. I resisted it at first, it sounded kind of funny, dorky even. It felt so basic and elementary. Stride wears Keen shoes, and hats to keep the rain off its head. Stride carries sun screen, and a bottle of water and probably never wears mascara. But hey, that's me too. And then it came to me: simple. elementary. basic. = no drama. no pie in the sky. no, oh let's just say it, no bullshit.

I got this clear picture in my head of me walking, I was on a hill and I was walking with a full open stride. Legs fully extended, hips loose, ankles firm, knees happy, and I was moving, I was for lack of a better phrase, Hitting my Stride.

There's nothing I would like more for this year than to hit my stride with my art, with my business, with my painting, with the illustration styles I have been experimenting with, feeling out how my art as jewelery idea will go, and committing myself to using my words more, and writing, a lot. Full stride owning who I am. To take full and total ownership of who I am, what my art is, and not run with it but rather, stride into it.

Oh, and in the vision I had, I was smiling. Really big smiles, whilst striding along on a mountain trail, in the sun, birds are singing, and the grass is swaying in the breeze. Yeah, so here I am striding in to 2011.

January 03, 2011

After just 3 days of stepping away from work, from schedules, from anything that started with "I must..." I am not feeling ready to start it all up again, which then leads me to realise that I don't make enough down time for myself.

I don't have enough time to regenerate and reinvogorate my ideas, my creativity, my business, and this needs to be addressed in a very big way. A friend posted something this weekend that I need to reiterate for myself: Work Smarter, not Harder.

Right this minute, I have absolutely NO idea how to incorporate working smarter into my life, I actually can't even quite fathom what it totally means, but I know I want it badly. I know how to work harder, but working harder oftenalways ends up with me working longer, and packing more stuff into a day, and sitting in front of the computer for hours that are ridiculously long, and leaving out many of the things that make a life fun and enjoyable and, well, a Life. Translation: I might be working dumber.

I think my #5 for December's goals is a start toward the Working Smarter thing, and #6 for sure, and definitely #7, and then I can't help but wonder, with all the things on my to-do list this year that carried over from month to month to month, how much of that is burn out and how much of it is overwhelm, and how much of it is that I have served up far too much for myself.

So here was December. I got none of it done, except My Word, (more on that later), because I had too many deadlines and too much work that had nothing whatsoever to do with this list of things I want to create, and everything to do with making money to make the budget work.

December Goals

website

New Resin jewelery designs

New Colour Story pieces

Finish my announcements to send to other blogs/websites

Create for fun and joy instead of deadlines and money

Let go of the things that are creating too much stress, and re-evaluate their importance/priority