Story-filled Linkyloos for you
March 9th, 2010, 9 Comments
I love the way the monthly theme worms its way into my brain and pops up everywhere. It may not always show up in my art, but it's always in my head. Just goes to show how the things we focus on really do expand in our lives. Which makes me wonder about what it is that I'm focusing on!
Today, I've got some fun links to share with you before I go off to enjoy the sunshine. I truly can't get enough of walking in the woods lately. After the long winter, I've been so excited about the warmer weather, the sun, and oh, the little yellow crocuses! So precious! Life! Woohoo! Um, yes, I get a little excited about spring. One thing I can say about living in New England, it makes you reallllly appreciate the Spring when it starts to stretch its wings.
On to the links:
- The lovely Lianne Raymond has complied this absolutely beautiful ebook, Dying to Be Born, filled with wisdom and art from inspiring women such as: Martha Beck, Pam Slim, Brené Brown, Patti Digh, Jan Phillips, and many more. I've got a piece of art in it too! It's beautiful and it's free! Go download a copy for yourself. If you leave a comment on Lianne's post here, you'll also be entered to win Jan Phillips' CD set, Creating Every Day (now that sounds cool!)
- Thinking of the old stories we tell ourselves, reminded me of this post I wrote a couple years ago called, Digging Into Defining Beliefs. It was something I needed to read again today.
- Martha Beck is one of my favorite authors on the topic of changing up your beliefs and this recent post from her blog is a great example of why. It's hilarious and super smart, great combo. I also loved her book Steering by Starlight
- Have you heard of Jen Lee? I've had the pleasure of listening to an audio of her telling a story, and oh, she has a way with words! You can download a copy of her ebook, "the story catcher" here.
- If you enjoy listening to stories, you'll love The Moth podcast!
Well, that's enough links to send you down a few rabbit holes. Enjoy the stories and keep telling yours!
p.s. The art above is titled, Fishing and is available here.
Creative Every Day Check-In: March 8 – 14
March 8th, 2010, 14 Comments
This weekly check-in post is a place for Creative Every Day Challenge participants to share their creative activities.
Join in the Challenge: You can sign up for the 2010 Creative Every Day Challenge anytime! Find out more and fill out the sign-up form here to join in!
Ways to share: Once you've signed up, you can leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a blog post(s) about your creative activities during the days of 3/8/10 - 3/14/10.
The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) or flickr image during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! If you're unsure about how to use the widget, check out the "How to use the Mr. Linky widget" section on the Creative Every Day Challenge page. (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.) If the Mr. Linky widget is missing from this blog post, it's probably a problem with their server and it will come back as soon as it's fixed. You can always leave your link in the comments.
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to. If you're on Twitter, there's a growing Twitter list of CED participants and you can use the hashtag #CED2010 to help others find your Creative Every Day tweets!
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for March is Stories. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month and you can feel free to use it to inspire your creations, follow your own muse, or do some combination. You can find out more about this month's theme and some prompts to get you started with it here.
Happy Creating!
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. —Ursula K. LeGuin
Travel Stories
March 7th, 2010, 4 Comments
Ah, a bit of travel is good for the soul. Something about being somewhere you've never been, can really wake up your senses. It was especially nice in a middle of a gray winter season. The hubster and I had never been to Arizona before and being surrounded by the beautiful mountains, creating shapes of camels, cathedrals, and arched cat backs was inspiring. Plus, oh, the sun. Yum.
The theme of stories was on my mind as I traveled, and so I was especially aware of the little snippets of stories overheard while we were out to dinner or passing people on walking trails or sitting at a basketball game. Some of these stories were funny, some made no sense as they were taken out of context, and some were intriguing. But it also made me think about all the stories a place holds...a hotel room (who has been here, what was their story?), a mountain trail (what animals and people have passed through here, what kind of stories are stored in this dirt, in these trees, in this stack of rocks?)
Stories can really bring a place to life. Cities seem to swim with them, which I've tried to capture in some of my city art. But quieter places hold them tight too. Have you noticed that some places just seem to be rich with tales, stories on the tips of the tongue, that would just come bursting out if we listened closely enough?
While we were in the Phoenix area, we also had the opportunity to meet the super creative and cool, Miss Connie of Dirty Footprints Studio. So fun! It was a full trip with lots of adventures mixed with some beautiful relaxation. It was hard to leave!
It's good to be home, though. I missed our meows and our bed. And I was so happy to come home to spring-like weather (perhaps all that sun I stuck in my pockets traveled with me?) Thank you to the fabulous guest posters who helped fill in the gaps here last week. I loved reading their beautiful words and I hope you did too!
Guest Post by Heidi Fischbach
March 5th, 2010, 15 Comments
Stories. Ooof!
Don't get me wrong. I love a good story as much as the next girl. Also, I'm not talking here of wonderful books or stories I see on the big screen.
No. I'm talking about certain stories that run in my mind and keep me from moving about with ease. The kind that put kinks in my back and pains in my neck. Oof!
Oftentimes these are stories that I've been telling for some kind of forever, and over the years, what with all the things I’ve gathered as supposéd evidence and exhibits a - z for these stories, some of them tend to get rather heavy.
I'm also not necessarily talking of stories that leave me sad, because, truth be told I don't mind me some straight-up-sad from time to time. At all: a good cry can clear my heart of clutter, not to mention draining my sinuses, which is not a bad thing these days.
The heaviest stories tend to be old. I might have started telling them when I was a kid. Maybe I even took them over from where my parents or grandparents left them off.
I know I'm in the presence of a heavy story when the canvas of my future feels like it's been washed in doom, and any paint I splash takes on a hue of hopeless.
This winter, an old and heavy story has come to my awareness for some loving. It is long and convoluted and in need of fresh eyes, not to mention an editor who is unafraid to discard anything that doesn't serve what would otherwise be a lovely life plot. I will spare you the details—you're welcome! Don’t mention it—and cut to the gist: "I have a hard time."
Oof-stories have no respect for grammar and so my succinct little 5-word sentence very quickly runs into, "and I have always had a hard time." And then, not to leave out the future, “and I will always have a hard time.”
End of story. Except for how it tends to repeat and go all Star Wars prequel-sequel on me. Sure, my characters get new names, the numbers in the year flip over, the costumes get changed up, but at some point I notice this story is pretty much following heavily tread and tired mental pathways.
Let me save you time and tell you a few things that do not work on an old oof-story: bitch-slapping it and trying to make it shape up (it will so mock you behind your back and then sneak down to the kitchen for icecream or drinks in the middle of the night); trying to make it go away (oof stories have serious staying power); going all Spanish Inquisition on it (it can smell your agenda to get rid of it a mile away and tends to stick its chin out protectively); calling in the white light brigades to banish darkness (yes, it might go hide in the closet for the afternoon, but watch out at 3 a.m. Booo!). Even what otherwise can be wonderful practices like prayer and meditation have a way of not working when done with the motive of getting rid of a story.
I started noticing my hard-time story sometime in January, and yes, proceeded to have myself a very hard time about it. Crying, hopeless, insomnia…
And then I called in my favorite superhero, Curiosity, and while he didn’t go all vanquish-the-darkness like other big guns might, things have been shifting.
A few things about my superhero. Curiosity can be oh-so-subtle or orange-bright. He looks different at different times, and yes, sometimes she wears a cape. (And, in case you didn’t notice, she really doesn’t get tripped up about pronouns or gender: he, she, it, whatever.)
Curiosity is never pushy, which doesn’t mean she doesn’t stick with an assignment. She is kind but not at all nicey-nice fake. She will never say something just to make me feel better.
Curiosity also has a kick-ass and irreverent sense of humor. I have yet to find something he doesn’t get me laughing about at some point. (Without ever tickling or poking fun, because that’s just mean, and he doesn’t roll that way).
And when I cry, she is there with the towels, or answering the door to let in friends bringing blankets and flashlights for dark times.
The best part about Curiosity is that it has no agenda other than being curious. Even in the face of a part of me that feels desperate and in a hurry, Curiosity opens its eyes, has a calm Clint-Eastwood-ish look around and without missing a beat rolls up his sleeves and gets on with his reconnaissance.
Thing 1 that Curiosity helps me with is noticing. Especially with old oof-stories noticing is key. Curiosity looks at a thing just as it is, without prettying it up, and without making it worse than it is. Straight up truth without bush-beating.
With my hard-time story, this went something like: yes, I had my first panic attack when I was 10. Yes, I swallowed pills when I was 26. Yes… yes…
Invariably, doing this has the effect of giving me some welcome distance from my ooof story, helping me see that IT is not me. Or in the least, it is not all of me. How can I know? Because I’m noticing it, which means something bigger and wider than IT is here. Sure, the story plays out on the screen of my mind, expressing its plot and feelings in the body of me—images in my mind’s eye, stiffness in my jaw, a sore neck… But now something greater and wider than IT is noticing. And that, dear visitor of my friend Leah’s blog, is big. BIG.
And then Curiosity dons his editor cap and says, “Um, Heidi, that part right there, can you rewind that for a sec? Let’s look at that scene again, right about the part where you are also 10 and your dad is teaching you to dive off the rocks at the lake in Lican Ray. Awww, would you look at you. Gosh but it sure does look like you’re having a good time. And oh my but does your dad look proud…”
And so it goes with the editing of the “always had” part. And today it looks like we’ll have a look at the word “again,” which is seriously overused in most hard-time stories.
As you can see, this oof story has not left, at least not entirely. But it’s changing. And who knows, maybe one of these days the final cut will be released, and when it is, don’t be surprised when the opening credit reads: “To Curiosity, my hero. With love.”
***
Heidi Fischbach is a massage therapist, writer and potion-mixer. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. You can visit her at Heidi’s Table, where she and her aardvark business buddy make their virtual home. She looks forward to traveling and writing stories, with or without a hard time.
Guest Post by Darlene J Kreutzer
March 3rd, 2010, 8 Comments
a story of me
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who sat and sketched all the birds that lived in a bird book on a wooden shelf at her grandparent's farm. She had grown bored with the big box of comic books that lingered at the end of the scratchy wool couch that always left a red rash on the back of her legs. She spent hours drawing and drawing and then drawing some more. Her face crinkled in concentration as her nubby yellow pencil scratched the paper atop a big book filled with maps balanced above the shaggy dark green pillow that sat cozy on her lap.
Her mother was an artist who painted the colours of life swirled on canvas in bright flames of blue green. Her brother took art classes and knew how to draw a line that lead to the secret life that lived in the possibility.
As she grew older and older, she ran a story in her head that went something like this. The artists that she so admired held a secret key of talent that she didn't possess so instead she painted her stories with words, burnished gold highways of melted car tar ink swirled in clouds of imagination. She searched for captured light and found poetry in the sighed click of of exposure. But art was for those whose talent lay in a heart that she didn't possess and so she doodled in the margins of poetic lines as her heart longed for something she couldn't quite grasp.
So she took a good look at herself and realized there was a light in her eye that smiled a little brighter at the thought of playing with the pretty shiny art supplies that she collected and filled the bins that hid in her studio room.
She is examining her stories, the stories that she tells herself about not being enough and how she makes herself so small and so I am creating a new story right now with every paint splatter and every pencil sketch. I am finding all the shades of me as I follow the line to my heart.
I am choosing the story that serves me right now and that story remembers how much joy I always got when I sketched birds and horses turned to unicorn smiles. I remember how much magic lives in the simple line of a pencil. I lose myself in the sound of my heartbeat and the scratch of the pencil as it pulls out more truth of who I am, who I long to be. I am a girl who not only collects art supplies but also uses them more and more every day and I can't wait to uncover more of her story.
And I am incredibly grateful to my artist friends like Leah, who provide the space of support and inspiration that allow me to continue to play and grow, to get messy and to continue to learn about myself.
peace.
***
Darlene J Kreutzer is a writer and photographer who lives in a wee colourful cottage with her musician husband and sports-minded son in a lovely old eclectic neighbourhood in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is grateful for family, the light that casts beauty across shadows, music that lifts emotions, a little house and garden filled with colour and love, friends and inspirations, the beauty of nature, the ocean's cold spray, the soft barnacle skin of the grey whale and the possibilities that exist in life.
She shares snippets of her life and current obsessions at hippy urban girl and is a contributing writer at life as a human.
Guest Post by Elizabeth Halt
March 2nd, 2010, 15 Comments
the story we find ourselves in
I love that the Creative Every Day theme for March is stories. I love stories. There is magic in them. It got me thinking about stories, and creativity, and reminded me of something.
I used to have a story that said I wasn't creative. Now, I have a new story that says I am.
The old story said that I wasn't creative because I couldn't draw as beautifully as two of my siblings. The new story says that I am creative because I look at this photo and see a castle rising out of the mist.
The old story said that I wasn't creative because I wasn't in a creative profession. The new story says that I am creative because I tell my puppy stories about a girl and her dog and their adventures together.
The old story said that I wasn't creative because I wasn't regularly creating artwork. The new story says that I am creative because I can take a bunch of random food items and turn them into a meal.
The old story said that I wasn't creative because I'm not a real artist. The new story says that I am creative because I make birthday cards for friends and family.
I could go on and on.
The funny thing is that nothing has changed except the story. Well .. and my state of mind. The old story used to make me feel sad. I really wanted to be creative, but the story made me feel like I was failing at it. The new story makes me feel happy. It reminds me that creativity happens in moments, and it is so much bigger than my idea of it.
Really, when it comes down to it, life itself is a creative act. We are creating our own life moment by moment. And every moment can be a new story. Maybe all we really need to do is pay attention to them.
****
Elizabeth Halt is always looking for beauty - in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. She shares photos from her search on her photo blog, retinal perspectives.
Creative Every Day Check-In: March 1 – 7
March 1st, 2010, 26 Comments
This weekly check-in post is a place for Creative Every Day Challenge participants to share their creative activities.
Join in the Challenge: You can sign up for the 2010 Creative Every Day Challenge anytime! Find out more and fill out the sign-up form here to join in!
Ways to share: Once you've signed up, you can leave a comment on this post and/or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a blog post(s) about your creative activities during the days of 3/1/10 - 3/7/10.
The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) or flickr image during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you! If you're unsure about how to use the widget, check out the "How to use the Mr. Linky widget" section on the Creative Every Day Challenge page. (If you're reading this in a RSS reader or email subscription, you will not see the "Mr. Linky widget", so click on over to the blog to use it.) If the Mr. Linky widget is missing from this blog post, it's probably a problem with their server and it will come back as soon as it's fixed. You can always leave your link in the comments.
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to. If you're on Twitter, there's a growing Twitter list of CED participants and you can use the hashtag #CED2010 to help others find your Creative Every Day tweets!
Theme: The (totally optional) theme for March is Stories. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month and you can feel free to use it to inspire your creations, follow your own muse, or do some combination. You can find out more about this month's theme and some prompts to get you started with it here.
Happy Creating!
The universe is made of stories, not atoms. —Muriel Rukeyser
Loving our Rooms, an Interview with Lisa Baldwin
February 27th, 2010, 5 Comments
To close out the month of home for the Creative Every Day Challenge, I'm so thrilled to be able to share this interview with the super smart, funny, and lovely Lisa Baldwin of Zen at Play. Check out her awesome clutter-clearing advice below and her super cool Love that Room e-course!
1. Please introduce yourself:
Hi! I'm Lisa, and I help people make space for their awesomeness.
2. What led you into the work of helping people with their clutter?
I got interested in clutter because I had a lot of it. As I cleared, I noticed unexpected benefits that went way beyond just having a tidier house - it can be a journey of discovery and an act of self-care, and creating a less crowded environment makes way for better things. It didn't seem right to keep all that a secret, so I set about finding ways to teach others and that became my work.
3. I used to use the excuse that I'm artist as a reason for my messiness. Do you think there's a correlation between creativity and a messy house?
Ooh, the answer to this question could be a whole post. So many layers! So many angles!
Active mess is a side-effect of living and is a part of the creative process. If you've got a creative, busy mind, then that can certainly result in something that looks a lot like mess. In that sense, I do think there's a correlation between mess and creativity.
At the same time, there's a difference between that active, creative, happy mess and the passive, stagnant, stuckifying kind of mess that is clutter. (Clutter isn't necessarily messy, by the way, but that's a different question. See? Layers! Angles!) That kind of stuff hinders creativity by sucking up your energy and attention, so there's a relationship there, but not a happy one.
The trick is to determine the level of mess that feels good to your creative self, and then set up helpful systems and habits that support you in maintaining that. If your way of being tends to create mess, then run with it - just be sure to keep that mess fresh by letting go of that which no longer serves you.
Did I answer your question? I answered something, that's for sure. I really need to write a post about this.
4. The theme this month at Creative Every Day is home. Do you have any tips for bringing more creativity into your home?
Create space for what you love. Hold it high. That's all.
5. What's one small, simple thing we could try at home to enjoy our space more?
Recognise your treasures, then love them up. Some things you own light up your life with their beauty, meaning or usefulness. Other things just sit around taking up space and blocking your view of the good stuff. Once you know what your treasures are, treat them as such - put them where you can see them, take care of them, appreciate them - and create more space for them by letting go of the other stuff.
6. I love the name of your online course, "love that room." Could you talk a bit about what the class involves?
Love That Room is a clutter-clearing adventure where we focus on loving up just one room. (You know, that room.) It starts with seeing - really seeing - the space, then gently letting go of the stuff that no longer serves us. There's private blog where course-doers can download exercises, support each other, ask questions, celebrate wins and check in for gentle accountability. It's definitely not a scary bootcamp course - it's all about mindful interaction with your self and your stuff, so it's pretty special. I just opened up registrations for the next offering (starting March 22) and you can take a peek here.
7. Do you think focusing on clearing clutter in one room at a time is the way to go? And how do you deal with clutter overwhelm?
I like to focus on one room at a time because I like to set up a series of small, easy wins. Clutter can be so overwhelming when you look at it all at once, because we tend to think of it all as one big thing - The Clutter! [cue ominous music]. But it's not a big thing - it's a gathering of many little things, and little things we can handle.
8. Is there anything else you'd like to share?
Just that I'm so happy that you invited me to hang out on your lovely blog with your lovely people. Thank you! *waves to Leah's lovely people*
9. Where can people find you?
I have the beginnings of a blog over at ZenAtPlay.com and there's a newsletter there too. I'm an enthusiastic Twitterer - @zenatplay. (Let it be noted that I don't often talk about clutter on Twitter - I'm more likely to do magic tricks and show off my Wonder Woman underwear. Just so you know.)
**
Thank you so much, Lisa for sharing your awesomeness!!
Coming Home to Yourself
February 26th, 2010, 15 Comments
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Chairs in a Row, mixed-media on panel, available here.
As we move swiftly towards the end of the month of home at the Creative Every Day Challenge, I notice that I've been thinking about and working on feeling at home with myself quite a bit.
Part of my working on this has involved regular movement. I mentioned last month that in the past, I was super strict and harsh with myself around exercise and food. I realized recently that my movement practice has very little to do with how I look and is now all about how I feel. What a difference that makes! I started out the winter with a practice of at least 20 minutes of movement 3 days a week. As the winter went on, I realized that to keep my mood up, I really needed more than that, so I stepped it up to 4 or 5 days a week. Much better.
And I've found as I stay more in touch with what helps me feel good, I feel so much more in touch with my body and my whole self. I feel like a work in progress (I suppose we are always a work in progress), but I like the connection I've been developing and this returning to myself.
Making art is another way I connect with those deeper parts of myself that are not always right on the surface of things. Creating art intuitively, helps me to get in touch with the ideas and feelings that may not have words yet. Along those lines, I'm excited to be teaching a workshop about creating art from the heart in Mindy's Wish*full virtual art retreat this spring!
How do you move towards feeling at home with yourself? What are the things you do that lead to feeling this way? How can you bring more of those things into your life?
Some of the things that help me re-connect are:
- * Creating art intuitively, just letting it flow out.
- * Getting regular movement.
- * Returning to the present moment.
- * Laughter.
- * Being in nature.
- * Taking a look at what I'm avoiding/procrastinating about and making a step forward. (Recently, that meant making a dentist appointment after a 2 year hiatus. Super scary to make the appointment, but it was totally fine and I had no cavities! Phew!)
- * Writing in a stream of consciousness style (Morning pages style as suggested in The Artist's Way.)
- * Getting support from friends and loved ones.
I'm curious about how you come home to yourself, so feel free to share in the comments!
I'm going to be out of town next week, but the check-in post will be there on Monday as usual and I've lined up some fabulous guest posts to keep you thinking about March's theme of Stories! Wishing you all a fabulously creative week!
Creative Every Day Theme for March: Stories
February 23rd, 2010, 24 Comments
At the end of each month I will announce the totally optional theme for the following month. March 2010's theme will be: Stories.
As always, the themes for the Creative Every Day Challenge are totally optional. Use it if it sparks you, continue being creative every day in your own way if it doesn't, or do something in between.
I'm thinking of this theme in terms of telling stories, making art about our favorite stories, and examining the stories we tell ourselves. There are endless ways you can play with the theme and I'm open to any interpretation.
I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month on the blog to help keep you inspired. You can use the posts here for jumping off points or interpret the theme in your own creative way. If you need some suggestions, here are a few ideas to get you started. You could:
- *Tell a story in a piece of art
- *Illustrate your favorite story.
- *Write a story of your own.
- *Take a look at the old stories you tell yourself and make new ones.
- *Make story books.
- *Read stories out loud to your loved ones.
- *Tell a story through dance.
- *Re-imagine an old story and empower the characters to create better endings.
- *Create a comic-strip.
How to use the CED themes:
If you're feeling creatively stuck or blocked at any point during the month, use the theme as a source of inspiration to get you moving. Feel free to focus on the theme in your creative activities for the entire month or as much as you'd like.
Using the theme is entirely optional for CED participants. Use it if it inspires you, ignore it if it doesn't. I'll be sharing posts throughout the month around the theme (among other things) to get you thinking about how to incorporate it into your life. I'd love to hear how you use the theme in your creative world.
And have fun with it!
p.s. The art I adapted for this post is from my mixed-media piece titled, Storyteller.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~Maya Angelou
