Bel Mills of @scrap_paper_circus is my Thankful Thursday this month. She was one of many lockdown-era sanity savers who came to us via Zoom with great projects and skill builders. This paper wallet made the 3 year old girl who got it very happy (and contributed to my inability to throw anything away without great scrutiny)
I’ve gotten up and down three times since I started to compose this post. Isn’t meditation supposed to help me with focus? Or maybe without it, I would have gotten up six times by now, scrolled a little, and washed my hair. I’m going with that theory.
There’s a lot competing for our attention these days, a lot of noise for even the most focused of us to contend with. One of my favorite writers on the subject is Tim Wu, the author of “The Attention Merchants”, a long but engrossing account of the forces that are designed to make us look where they want us to look. Add to that the many studies showing our attention spans are measurably decreasing. So, really, isn’t it a triumph to just be able to sit still for a bit? And maybe tomorrow a bit longer?
My #thankfulthursday shout-out this month is to Dr. Merideth Hite-Estevez of @artistsforjoy .
After years of trying, something about the free on-line Artists Way group she facilitates finally helped me flip the switch on morning pages and stick to it, to great benefit. It still astonishes me when I see the filled journals that have piled up.
I’m looking forward to a conversation with her next week to talk about how #enneagramtypes influence creative practice — look for this and other topics on her Artists for Joy Podcast. I’m an Enneagram 6, and to be honest don’t know much about the types, but when I read the basics and started to consider the questions she is posing, it feels like there is a lot of insight to be had.
As I write this, I’m having an amazing vacation on the Amalfi Coast. Feeling relaxed, good company, great vistas. There is a beautiful garden where I could sit quietly and keep up my practice Of course, there are also people to be with, naps to take, wandering to do. Who needs meditation at a time like this?
Based on my experience, it turns out I do. It has to do with the realization that meditation is a lot more like a vitamin than an epipen. It’s something to take day after day, even when you feel OK, to build you up for those times when something unexpected or something that could destabilize you arises. In other words, it’s not just for emergencies.
I’ve been wondering why these colors have been insisting on being part of the new series of mixed media paintings I’m starting. They also showed up in the collage pieces I created as part of #collagejoylove.
Today I realized it is probably because I’m just now on my way to spend some time at the lovely @villa_la_contessina in Sorrento Italy. It’s a long-delayed return visit, but apparently the colors have stayed with me all this time wanting to be seen.
If you want to know more about this beautiful villa and the other places we go along the Amalfi Coast, I’ve written up a guide that is one of my gifts to you when you sign up for my newsletter.