April, 2022
More than once the narrative in my mind while I try to find peace in my sitting meditation is a critique of my failure to find peace.
That’s not the best path to satisfaction.
Most of the advice I’ve ever seen says maybe the most important thing you can do while watching your thoughts is to suspend the judgement of them. How often do you really have the chance to practice tenderness toward yourself – what is called metta, or loving-kindness? When I have had conversations with people who say they have tried meditation, but it just doesn’t work for them, usually there is some kind of self-criticism attached. It’s not something you would do to other people you cared about, so it’s probably not a good idea to do it to yourself.
March, 2022
The picture I chose of March is a sampler piece I completed during an on-line workshop with Valerie Goodwin, a quilt artist. The workshop is called Map Haiku, and the pieces are abstract representations of places, real or imagined, rendered in transparent inked layers of silk organza and hand stitching.
Mapping seemed particularly apt this month what with all of the internal excavations I’ve been doing during my Artist Way program, my morning pages, and my Arthur Brooks reading. Turns out there are a lot of nooks and crannies in my mind and soul, and even some newly discovered territory.
March, 2022
I’ve been aware of Arthur Brooks as a “think tank” guy, and more recently as someone who writes for The Atlantic magazine. Recently, my husband came across an interview he did on the 10% Happier podcast for his new book From Strength to Strength, and we listened to it while on a road trip to Tucson. Then, we each got the book. Wasteful, perhaps, but he likes hard copy, and he likes to write all over his hard copy, and he likes to read his hard copy at the cigar bar, so that by the time he finishes, let’s just say, well-loved and stinky. I suppose I could have read it first, but neither of us wanted to wait.
Which is a long way of saying we were pretty intrigued. He and I have talked about a lot of these concepts before, but there was some great new language about the second stage of life – not a retirement planning book really, more about finding meaning as you go through life’s inevitable transitions, many of which are driven by simple biology.
Each of us really was compelled to keep talking about it. For my part, I reached out to three women that I thought might indulge me in some conversation. It’s hard to do any kind of book club thing when you are busy, and we are iin four different places in the country and three time zones, but we’re doing it – April 1 is our date. I didn’t even want them to have to bow out if there wasn’t time to read the book, so I created a little cheat sheet, and maybe I’ll do a video.
I especially want to talk to these women, because as much as I really liked the book, he does seem to me to have a man’s perspective, and a lot of the research cited only used men as subjects. That’s what my husband called a “Brene Brown problem”. She outed herself shortly after publishing a lot of her work on shame, and said she hadn’t adequately incorporated men’s point of view or experiences, something she has since worked hard to correct.
I’m so grateful to these women, that they would be open to my out-of-the-blue phone call asking them to indulge my craving for conversation.
Perhaps more later ….
March, 2022
If you are an Instagram Artist, the #100 day project is familiar to you. If not, here’s the gist of it – starting this year in mid-February, if you choose to participate you choose some kind of project you will work on every day for 100 days and post whatever you did each day. Now, from there you have a lot of freedom – define it however you want, do something different each day, or work on one thing every day for 100 days, post every day, never post, whatever. The idea, at least for me is to give you a chance or focus, even if the focus is on something new, and to build that muscle that says you get better and discover your style by making every day.
So, after that intro, here was my plan. I have several tubes of gouache, for some reason (if you are any kind of maker, you understand the concept of those mystery items in your stash. I also have a bunch of old report covers for my business, back when every job required multiple printed copies. These have my branding on one side, but the other is blank and is a nice heavy cover stock. And, I need to loosen up and do some painting of some kind every day. All that combined means I chopped up those report covers into 3” x 4” pieces, and every morning I do a little painting.
There’s another layer to it as well, kind of my personal secret color palette. I’ve talked before about Louise Hay’s book Colors and Numbers – in that book is a scheme to use your birthday or calculate a number for each year, each month, and each day. Then, each number correlates to a color. That’s what I use as my color scheme. My color theme for 2022 is purple, so that is somewhere in every little painting.
On the back of each little painting, I’ve recorded the date, then the color code, then a word or phrase or two that come to me.
I’m about a third of the way through. Some pieces are landscapes, some are just patterns. Some are better than others. I don’t post all of them, because I can’t imagine anyone would want to see each one, but from time to time I pick out a selection.
The important thing is that it’s working – just these 20 minutes of painting are becoming routine, I’m learning about a new medium that is beautifully portable, and that big stack of old report covers is finding new life.
March, 2022
Well, I got my answer from the universe on how to work with morning pages. Just as I was beginning the Artist Way program, an artist named Catherine Rains that I follow on Instagram spoke about something called Illumine Hour. It is hosted by a woman named Daphne Cohn, and she opens a Zoom room every morning for an hour, for free, and invites anyone who wants to be there. She opens with a blessing and an artist’s prayer, people may or may not share what they intend to do for the hour, and then everyone just “makes” their art.
I have been using the time to do morning pages (about half the time) and then to work on a 100-day art project I am playing with – more on that in other posts.
At the end of the hour, you will hear her voice, calling you to a closing blessing, and that is it. People silently not even really witnessing, just sharing space. I have wanted better focus, and it appeared just as I needed it.
A few weeks after I joined Daphne sent out one of her newsletters saying she was overcoming a fear of asking for support, and was going to start to accept donations – appropriately, just around International Women’s Day. Again, just perfect, because I was intending to find a way to support her. Something that arrived in my life so perfectly timed and became such a quick part of my routine is certainly worthy of support.
