November 6

The reopening

The smile of a familiar inner world. 

The golden glow of individuality. 

The silvery brilliance of the night. 

An old house reinvented, renamed.

Such places can acquire the aura of

A warmly remembered

seductively hued

space

soothing

heaven. 

And the quietest place she may be right. 

November 5

HEW

The sky

painted with hearts. 

The world

emerged from the nest

of wide open spaces. 

Her life,

a big cue. 

Magic elements

at work. 

Breathing through a fire. 

November 4

Explore contemporary pleasures

Authentic connections. 

Singular beaches. 

Arrive at a true sense of place. 

Plant your feet firmly in nature. 

This is the essence. 

november 3

The mind is never silent,

as if a shadow lay.

I want to lie down.

There's supposed to be a pill

to tell the unknowable.

november 1

Lots of people I know do NaNoWriMo. And I've tried. But the word count defeats me. A good day's writing for me is likely to be something more like 100 words.

But I've been poking at found poems lately, so I'm thinking of maybe trying to "find" a poem every day in November. I'm not always great at keeping up with ongoing projects, but we'll see...

So, day one I did two poems actually. This is the more inspiring one.

Well Versed

Here's to embracing the -just around the corner.

Time to find some new.

Break out of the stagnant.

Rebel against resistance.

Make things grand

with the emphasis on

the flow

fresh thinking

opportunity

opening.

All are empowering for this fight.

november 2

Day two. Ad copy is awesome for these little poems:

Dreams. Realities.

Still.

Silent.

Weary.

The long day has come to an end.

The vast depth and breadth remain

and never sleeps.

Never sleeps.

do what now?

Poking my toes in the waters of SURRENDER the last couple of days. What is it? What does it feel like? And I found myself bumping up against all the negative connotations of surrender:

give up
give in
being down
and out
failing
losing
succumbing to a loss of control.

So I tried to turn that last one around:

give up control
open
relinquish
cleanse
trust
faith
peace

I find myself ricocheting around in a box between attempting to be open to the process and the possibilities and wanting PROOF NOW. I realized how many times I say to myself "But how will I KNOW?"

So I wrote down these words ...

Be at peace.
Trust the truth inside the mystery.
Allow the answers to appear.

Surrender. Supplication. Trust.

Oh trust. Why are you such a mountain? And what do I do about my fear of heights?!

monday musings

Here it is Monday morning and I'm sitting here at work feeling like I'm just barely surviving lately, and wondering how to move beyond that to a life that feels like thriving. I need to do some more visioning around this, but I was reminded of the page above which gets at the kind of things I want more of in my life.

I want to have more energy, to feel healthier, to be able to move without it being SO HARD.

I want to feel more pro-active and less like I'm just clinging on by my fingers.

I want not to be mired in indecision and fog.

I want my house to be warm and welcoming. A refuge and not just a dusty pile of crap shoved into rooms.

I want a balance of alone time, and fun outings with friends.

I want the patience to allow myself time to create this life too. 

I've started working towards some of this. I try and balance recharge at home time, self-date nights, and social outings. More to do, and I need to manifest more in-person circles in my life, but this is a work in progress.

Started clearing out my house over the last few days. Really really looking at basically everything I own, and if I don't love it, or need it it's going either in the trash, or into the back of my car to be dropped off at Goodwill. 

Eat better. Move more. Drink more water. I'm trying.

Meanwhile, (and maybe it relates in a way), I've been feeling like I've been neglecting my scrapbooking lately so I'm working on a small-scale Week in My Life project this week. Even if I only get a handful of pictures each day, I think it might be good to really document where I'm at right now. And some craft time will be just the incentive to finish re-doing the new craft room!!

Onwards...

seeing the season

the lilac bush in my backyard

Fall is normally my favorite time of year. The crispness of the air. The smell of sun warmed leaves underfoot. The change of seasons. But right now I'm tapped out. I've been fighting off a virus or something for the last 2+ weeks and while I want to revel in autumn joys ... mostly I've just been hibernating. But I'm trying to just breathe, and let myself rest. To honor this month's nesting. To sit quietly in my living room and watch the squirrel couple (one grey, one black) scurry around in the evergreen tree outside gathering branches and making their nest for the winter. 

Transitions are coming. Surrendering is on the horizon. And as such I am trying to honor the quiet. It's just not easy some days where there are so many things to do and so little energy to spare. So like that lilac bush up there, my fall might be a bit more muted than I'd like... but it's still beautiful if you can see the IS instead of the SHOULD BE.

Day 1

October brings with it, every evening, gifts. And already my head hurts from the truth and the #fiercefuckingmagic.

But I'm trying to find my way with my vision book. And maybe some little poemlets. And so after the day one prompt -- "we all need room to show up as ourselves" -- I meandered through my magazines pages and this found me.

(This little pink mum with a yellow streak in its hair clearly took to this prompt too...)

Showing up as yourself...

Who you are

What you do

Where you go--

The more beautiful you can become.

Your story improves with time.

Secrets of self-preservation

Yours to define

Splendour

Like having a secret power

Beauty from within

now revealed

Written in layers of bliss.

My word for October

Nest.

I am starting to think perhaps I will do better with monthly words, rather than one word for the whole year. Something relating to my attention span, or lack thereof I suppose.

So I was sitting there last night at self-date night eating my pizza (sadly no beer thanks to the cold pills) and pondering what word might be calling to me to dedicate October to. And then I remembered that strong pull I'd had earlier in the day to do some major cleaning and re-organizing in my house -- if I can ever get past this stupid cold and get some energy back -- in combination with my continuing exploration of my inner self... and it came to me. October is about nesting. About drawing comfortable things towards me, and letting go of the things that don't support me. 

We'll see how it goes over the next 31 days... 

"Thirty days has September ..."

How often I say that ... and how profound these last 30 days have been. Lots and lots of soulwork this month. A table that I can't really eat at any more as its covered in magazine clippings. An ever growing stack of tattered magazines. (I tried to resist that copy of Simple Living I really did, but there I stood in the check out line for so long that I couldn't help myself! :) Two volumes of vision books that are radically changing my relationship with myself ... which changes everything else.

Between my visioning "homework" and this stupid cold that's been hanging around for two weeks now I haven't had a lot of energy for writing here. But I want to try and change that in October. Things to process, and the call keep coming to me to find words. So we'll see how that goes.

order up!

Tuesday night I came home from work utterly fried. My brain hurt. My eyes and fingers hurt. All of me hurt. It's been super stressful at work lately -- partly its the time of year, and partly its a bunch of projects all converging at once at the worst possible time of the year. And of course, it was the first day back to work after a three day weekend. 

So I was ALL as my friend and former co-worker would say. 

But there was this little voice in my head as I was driving home which said "Hey. You don't have it in you to fix yourself dinner. Why don't you take yourself out for pizza and maybe a beer. Wouldn't that be nice?" 

And sure. That sounded great. But there were a million reasons not to do that. Money, time, having to face eating by myself in public, the fact that I had just been to the grocery store the day before and had a whole fridge full of food...

But I've been learning to listen to that little voice. So despite some anxiety (turns out being exhausted is a good way to dampen the doubt in my head!) I got back in my car to drive a couple minutes away, down the hill, to a local pizza joint. 

In my head, as I'm thinking about solo dining I'm always imagining exquisitely awkward conversations about my solo status, and I'm always sure I'm going to have to justify my existence on the planet to my waitress. But in reality she just took away the second place setting, and took my drink order. 

And hey, I don't even like beer that much, but lemme tell ya, that $2 draft Yuengling was the tastiest thing ever. And by the time I was halfway through the beer, all the way through with my salad, and digging into my first slice of pizza I realized I had this huge grin on my face and I couldn't stop smiling. Some of that might have been the beer! But mostly it was a combo of being proud of myself for being brave and doing this thing. And of course, partly that sitting there in my booth (a little bubble of ME), just BEing and eating yummy food, and having a drink was exactly what I needed in that moment. 

Go me. 

Self-care. Leveled UP!

and bonus: enough leftovers for two more meals of yummy yummy pizza. It's my total favorite pizza ever. 

On this journey.

I was driving to Trader Joe's this afternoon and there's a stretch of road where the elevated highway curves, and as I looked out all I could see was sky and clouds. I felt in that moment a bit rootless. Weightless. Untethered.

It's not unlike how I am feeling as I start to work through this month of visioning joy. It's only day 2 and the soul work is giving me so much to sift through. So many "feels" as my friends might put it!

We were asked to name our vision books, and I struggled with that. I had words that I liked, that I was drawn to and I kept gluing them down thinking I'd found the right combination. And then I'd think some more, and cut and paste some more. But finally my book has a name.

A garden of effortless love tattoos. 

And yes. It's like that. The soul work here, and in the previous classes feels like pressing love into my skin. Like every kind word from myself, or from my fellow joy sisters is a balm to soothe old wounds. Well, or sometimes a saucy slap on the rump to get me moving!! 

Working intuitively this way isn't easy. It's twisty and frankly confusing sometimes. And things tend to spill out that you either never expected or didn't think you we're ready for. But I'm finding that for me, it's crucial to find the feeling first. Then the process is more like finding your way home. 

September is going to bring wonderful scary brilliant things. I can feel it. 

I wonder what they will be? 

shifting sands

I came home from work yesterday beat down by life. Over tired, under-slept, dogged by anxiety and fear and a with a whole bunch of mean girls yapping in my head. (Today has been bad too, but in different ways.)

In an attempt to shift my energy, I grabbed the two pieces of junk mail that comprised my mail -- a clothing catalog, and a snazzy publication from my college degree program alumni society. I sat down at my kitchen table, my little joy nook, with those magazines and my current journal and asked "what do I need to hear?"

Then I went through the two magazines ripping out any words that spoke to me. Whatever caught my eye. Whatever I thought might answer my question. 

I started doing these found poems using words cut out of magazines recently during Hannah Marcotti's JoyUP and they always inspire me. (Some day remind me to share my manifesto that brought me back to this practice!) After a bit of tearing and cutting I ended up with twelve words or phrases on the table and then I tossed the magazines into the recycling and sat down to see what I could make out of the words. 

I try not to think about this process a whole lot while I'm working.  Sometimes words just seem to cling to one another. This one wasn't a clear as some of the other ones I've done, but in the end I came up with this:

The rooftop image was completely me listening to my intuition. I'm still not wholely sure what it means. Something about the windows is my best guess. But it wanted to be on the page and who was I to argue?! (And hopefully I'll find something to put in that seal that I colored over to block out the words that weren't relevant.)

The title is Re: thinking and the text reads:

Insights

are

effortless beautiful gifts, 

radiant,

colorful,

fluid,

sensations.

Here {hear}

the next step.

You will lead the way...

The "are" and the "{hear}" I added with letter stickers to make things flow better. Otherwise I used every word I cut out. Sometimes I don't. Again I try to listen to the voice in my head.

Which turns out to be the answer to the question I started with "What do I need to hear?"

MYSELF. I will lead the way. A little love note to myself asking for more quiet time. More room to hear what is inside myself. 

I don't always want to listen. I don't always like what's inside my head. But its clear that I've got to find more time to sift through the bad, and encourage the good stuff to come out. But damn is that scary!! I know that some of my anxiety lately is thanks to all this soulwork I've been doing. It's jogging things loose that have been kept caged for a long time and so its a bit of a wilderness in my head right now. And so I listen.

Hear the next step....

Send breadcrumbs, okay???

note in a bottle

Note to self: Keep looking up. 

To no one's surprise, least of all mine, the cure for a crappy work day is to go and sit on a blanket in the grass in a local park with your friends, and watch other friends do Shakespeare! A perfect evening. Even the storm clouds waited until the last scene to roll in! Next time I'm bringing a full-on picnic (and maybe a pillow) for added awesome!

just a shadow of myself today.

Having a foggy day. Not really sick, but not well either. Would like above all things to sleep the day away.

Ideally, I would have been able to call in sick and spend the day in bed. But this is one of our busiest times at work, and I am just this side of functional, so here I am at work.

Days like this I have to strip self-care back to its very essence. There's just not enough energy for more than this.

Lemon water. No fancy organic lemon wedges hand squeezed here today. A bottle of water. A packet of crystallized lemon juice. Combine. The very basic basics.

A bagel bought here in the library coffee shop. Cream cheese even though it may not be the best thing for me today. Just a little, anyway.

Kindness. Days like this the negative self talk has GOT to go. When you can't wrap yourself in a blanket burrito and shut out the world, you can at least wrap yourself in kindness and say "It's okay baby girl. Just rest. I've got you."

My default uniform of jeans and a soft white cotton top. My most comfortable shoes.

That's it really. Maybe a few pretzels, and perhaps a smoothie later. Whatever is easy.

I seem to be developing two or three levels of self-care. Today's flavor appears to be called something like "What do you absolutely require to be able to hold yourself together and get through the day?" With a subset of "Hold tight and hope tomorrow's better."

I added a picture to my tumblr this morning. Tagged it "uplift." That's what self-care feels like for me today somehow...

(photo link)

Lessons from the Universe

Backyard cookout for one. Full blue moon. Hello extra-special Tuesday.

I found myself last night sitting in the dark, watching the moon rise, and attempting this bubble meditation exercise I was given in a recent class. The gist of it is using the floating bubbles to focus your thoughts. Awesome. Except it wasn't working. I just kept watching the bubbles and losing track of my thoughts.

But I'm trying, going with the flow, seeing what develops and eventually I realize that almost all the bubbles are being attracted back towards me. So I'm sitting there blowing bubbles, watching them as they come closer, and then *POP* against my skin. Little tiny exploding splashes.

And then I realized.

Bubble kisses.

Hello Joy. Hello self-care. Hello.

I don't have much experience with kisses outside the realm of platonic ones. But they're something I want, and as I'm learning over and over again lately, the universe gives, but you have to be open to receiving things that arrive in ways you never expected.

Bubble. Kisses.

Self. Care.

OK Mama Full Blue Moon Universe, I get you.

first steps. baby steps.

Finding myself on the path to happiness these days, and being a memory-keeping sort of person, I thought I should have a little corner of the internet to write down some of the things I learn along the way.

As long as there are bluebirds, there will be miracles and a way to find happiness.- Shirl Brunnel, "I Hear Bluebirds," 1984

Welcome!

coming soon... still unpacking boxes and figuring out where all the lamps go!