Annette Varoli: I am the proud momma of 6-year old girl, I’ve been married 11 years to a guy who is a modern day “MacGyver” and I’m in love with my cat, Coco. I’ve lived half my life in New York and recently returned to my birth state of Maryland but I love traveling, having been to over 100 cities in 20 countries. I am the artist of my life. My mission is to live my life in FULL color and inspire others to do the same. This has taken the form of architect, project manager, and holistic health coach to name a few. Currently, I’m a budding entrepreneur, exploring the next best fit for my creative expression. Three themes that have run through the course of my lifetime: making heart-to-heart connections, the creative arts, and abundance. This is what inspired my new blog. Check it out!

Fertilizer for Your Soul

Recently, my six-year-old has been asking me to keep her company in the bathroom, specifically for “number 2’s” — and not just for the wiping part.

Although I don’t particularly enjoy the aroma, I know that this is the time of day where she either imparts deep wisdom or where she philosophizes about life, so I go willingly. I sit on the floor of the bathroom ready to listen to what my little Buddha will teach me each time.

Yesterday, she did not disappoint. She assumed her position on the throne and within a few seconds, she says in a voice that sounds like when you rave about your favorite dessert, “Mommy, why does pooping feel soooo good? It just feels sooooo good. Why is that?” Her angelic face alternating between an inquisitive look and a squinching one, whenever she unloads her bowels.

She’s dead serious so I do my best to contain myself and say, “Well, sweetie, it’s because it’s a great release and a way for your body to get rid of the icky stuff… imagine if you couldn’t poop, then all of it would get STUCK inside you.”

That’s when it dawned on me that doing daily creative practice is like having healthy bowel movements… it just feels soooo good. It helps you get unstuck and feeling like yourself again. Like taking all the crap in your life and turning it into fertilizer for your soul!

I know this for a fact because over the past 15 weeks, I’ve been doing a daily creative practice and it has been life changing. Although most people know me to be a creative person, it feels like it took me a hundred years to arrive at this particular place in my life. One where I finally understand how essential regular creative practice is to my life, my success and personal happiness. But how did I get here one might ask? Allow me to share a bit of my creative journey.

Creativity Controlled

As a toddler, I got spanked for drawing on walls and climbing up on the bench so that I could play the keyboard (not before they took a photo for posterity like the one at right). My parents wanted clean walls and feared for my safety if I sat on the bench unsupervised. They meant well but that marked the beginning of my creativity being controlled.

Later in my early education, elective classes and extracurricular activities fed my creativity. I loved anything music and arts related.

However, I didn’t realize at the time that my creative pursuits were being filtered through my young, naive, brain. The one that bought into the idea that these activities were called extra or elective because they were outside of the normal curriculum, optional… in other words, “not really important.”

At the same time I was an academic, excelling in my normal subjects. Unfortunately, my achievement in what society deemed “serious subjects” led me to pick a major using only my head and not my heart. It was a decision based on this equation, “I’m good at math, science and art. What does that equal? ARCHITECTURE.”

With that decision, I entered my first semester in architectural school and quickly learned that they frowned on extracurricular activities, wanting the students to focus solely on architecture. Thinking I was taking a vow for creativity, I willingly followed the rules, not realizing that I was trading in my 18-year-old creative self for a creatively stifled 50-year-old.

My inner child decided to leave the building, while the school’s climate and a few misguided professors helped grow my inner critic.

Everything became very serious, very quickly. Ironically, all the creative passion that I threw into my portfolio which in fact, got me accepted into the college would be exactly what the school intentionally wanted to strip away. My passion for mixed media, vivid colors and freehand drawing was replaced with ink line drawings and white box models. Color was forbidden.

Once, I was getting a desk critique from a visiting professor, whose teaching style was unlike the majority at my school. He looked at my sketches and looked at me and then said, “You’re a young woman, why don’t you draw like one? Be more young and free in your drawings.”

The school had successfully controlled my creativity. I made drawings that finally fit the mold and yet I didn’t recognize myself in any of my drawings and neither had the visiting critic. I had failed at being myself but my true creative spirit didn’t leave me. She just ended up biding her time in once again “elective” classes, taking every type of dance class offered.

I’ll admit that architecture school allows more individual creativity in the latter part of your education, but by then for me, it felt too late. One of the only places that my authentic self overlapped in the architectural world was when a few students and I formed our own acapella group and sang at architecture events.

My education culminated in me on stage at the graduation ceremony singing “Blackbird.” I had partied a little too much the night before drowning my sorrows in disbelief that my education didn’t feel more fulfilling. The next morning, I actually woke up without my voice and barely squawked out, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night… take these broken wings and learn to fly… You were only waiting for this moment to be free.”

I don’t think the universe could have sent me a clearer sign that my creativity was stifled.

How I developed my creative practice

When I became a mother, I took some time out from the corporate jungle and went on maternity leave. While I was breastfeeding and soaking up the stillness of my life, I realized that I needed a career reset and no longer wanted to return to my old life.

I explored other interests and decided to jump onto the entrepreneur’s path and started building a business. With no prior background in business or marketing, I dove into learning and implementing everything I could to figure out a way for my creativity and passions to be birthed into a new career, one of my own making.

However, the “academic student” in me took over the reigns and focused on learning the how-tos of marketing strategy, development and production. While I learned a ton, somehow I left so much of my creative self out. Once again following someone else’s rules left me feeling creatively stifled. On the flip side, when I wasn’t following anyone’s rules, my passions ran amok and had me jumping onto any idea I felt excited about. I’ve since learned that not having some kind of focus is not sustainable.

There’s a delicate balance required and I’ve learned that regular creative practice is a healthy way for me to contain my creativity so that my passions have a safe place to be free and focused.

This past November after months of working my marketing plan with little success, I got sick. In the days I laid in bed, I had decided that my current business wasn’t the right fit for me. I knew I needed to put an end to the madness and reclaim my creative self and really integrate it into my entire being.

This decision led me to Lisa Sonora Beam and so began my daily creative practice. Ms. Beam is a ray of light who provided me with the framework of creative practice so that I could start defining my own rules for my life and work.

Creativity Contained

There was a moment after I had weaned my daughter when I felt like a shell of a human being. My daughter was budding into this vibrant, bright-eyed energetic human being, while my deflated breasts, flat butt and rolls of distended belly skin left me feeling like whatever energy and spirit I had, I must have just handed it all over to her.

Psychologically, I was no longer an architect or a project manager and I hadn’t yet fully stepped into a new career. Who was I? I gave everything and it seemed there was nothing left for me.

Women are literally the containers of life — of CREATIVE ENERGY. On the positive side, we provide the containers that feed and nourish, the containers that offer shelter and comfort and we are the containers that birth life itself.

On the negative side, we physically and metaphorically carry the collective baggage of society. We take on the emotional toll of the dark truths of humanity and we continue to open our hearts, offering creative solutions in dire circumstances, even when we feel our backs might break.

But what contains US? There is wisdom in the ones who continue to feed, nurture, and create beauty and peace in the world. However, I realize NONE of that wisdom can be harvested if women give and never receive. When they don’t know their own needs because they’re too busy tending to everyone else’s needs and when they can forgive others but can’t forgive themselves.

Everyone needs a supportive place to express their biggest dreams and a place to examine all their dark, ugly, “poopy” parts.

This is the gift that having a daily creative practice has been for me. What started out as a combination of journaling, painting, drawing and collaging, has expanded to more meditation and more sketchbooks to navigate other specific areas of my life. After all these years of helping others, now I’m finally birthing myself, filling my own vessel with self-love so that I can continue to give all my gifts to the world in a more sustainable way.

Here are some of the other blessings a regular creative practice has given me and can give you:

1)    RELAXING THE ROCK

I get to have freedom from my roles as wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend to name a few. I know many women who serve as the ROCK, the anchors for others but in my creative practice this rock can relax and be myself.

2)    MIRROR OF MY SOUL

For the longest time, I was solely identified with being a “good” girl, like a princess. Pretty, polite, and kind. But every once in awhile my anger would rear its ugly head and explode on some unsuspecting human. Not pretty.

Through my practice, I remembered that as a child I loved the Incredible Hulk and yet as an adult, whenever the subject of superheroes came up in conversation, I only mentioned my love for Wonder Woman. All these years, I was rejecting a darker side of myself.

During the time I was examining the ugly “poopy” parts of myself, my sister synchronistically bought me a little Incredible Hulk doll. When I saw it, to my surprise, I cried uncontrollable tears. After some thought, I realized that I was crying tears of joy because I finally welcomed home a long lost friend.

Now Princess and the Hulk are married in my heart and I love them both equally. Now, whenever I feel the angry hulk acting up in me, I know it’s just his warning that my own needs are not getting met and it’s time for me to tend to myself.

3)    CONFIDENCE

I am more confident to weather the ebbs and flows of life and to accept things as they are. The world has been changing dramatically in recent years and we can feel the changes both universally and personally. There’s been a lot of “WTF?!” energy around but my practice has helped drive away anxiety, helping me breathe and live even more in the present moment.

4)    SELF-DISCOVERY

My creative practice has served as a tool for self-discovery. I’ve been setting intentions and the practice has been putting them in motion. Discovering my true purpose was one of my intentions and I found out that I had been leaving out a big piece of the puzzle, which is that whatever I bring to the world is meant to have a spiritual focus. I believe that creative practice is spiritual practice. Every time I go to the page, it’s as if I’m making a silent prayer to discover more of myself so that I can fulfill my purpose in life and help others to do the same.

Another current intention is releasing all the stuff from my past that doesn’t serve my highest good. A few days into this intention, I was able to truly make peace with a friend’s death. In the 11 years since her death, I hadn’t found the time to properly grieve my loss and tend to my sadness, but alone in my office doing my practice; I found the freedom and peace to do so.

5)    ABUNDANCE

What’s really exciting is that my practice has organically taken on a life of its own. It has served as a launch pad for future business plans, the design of a new home, and for increasing my spiritual practice. The more I do my creative practice, the more I am drawing all kinds of abundance to me in the way of finances, things, people and opportunities that support my growth.

Sometimes life can feel like we’re all weaving our way through piles of sh*t, but if we can leave the baggage behind and use the rest as fertilizer for our soul, AND if I can turn my voiceless, broken blackbird into a singing canary on the page, then you certainly can too through creative practice.

In the meantime, I echo performer Ani DiFranco when she sings, “I’m Queen of my own compost heap and I’m getting used to the smell.” Like Ani, I too got a vision of blue sky and dry land and it feels soooo good!

:::::

It’s all going so well, and then….it’s not. I fumble a piece of copper coated with enamel and drop it on the floor, I smash my thumb with a hammer, and then lose the teeny tiny rivet I was trying to tap into place. I break a saw blade, and realize I cut out the wrong size shape and punched too large of a hole in it.

The errors and injuries increase and are compounded the harder I work. I know the kids are happily playing, but I know it won’t stay that way for hours, and I’m running out of time. I feel like screaming, or throwing something (always a bad idea in the workshop), and I can feel my agitation level rise.

GAH! Why does this happen? For me, any number of reasons. To begin with, one of the things I struggle with from time to time is claiming my “artist-ness”; that is, allowing myself to really believe that I am an artist, that I have talent and skill, and that what I can do really is unique. Whenever I am in a position of feeling less than confident, this old monster rears its ugly head. And I have to firmly shush it.

Another factor is usually time related. Instead of allowing myself to work without expectation and to create whatever I can in the time that is available, I push. I forge ahead, sometimes blindly, in an effort to *finish*, because I do not know how much time I really have before the kids are punching each other, or have gotten into something they aren’t supposed to, or they just plain old need me back.

And then there are the good old high expectations I have for myself. Yikes. If ever there was a club with which to beat myself, this one would be it. It takes quite a bit of effort for me to cut myself some slack from time to time.

Like being sleep-deprived and trying to create, as I talked about in my previous post, sometimes I have to remind myself that this is not a picture of things as they really are.

So, what helps? For me, walking away from the workbench completely. Going for a ride on my scooter. Watching a movie with the kids. Cooking. Going out and getting a latte. The world will not end if I don’t make a bracelet or rivet that pendant. Remembering that can be difficult for my goal-oriented, occasionally driven self. But it’s necessary, especially as I remember that I have come to my “artist-ness” because the act of creating fills a soul-deep need. So, the journey and the process is really what I’m about. And, I’ve discovered after a self-imposed period away from the workshop, I can usually either solve the problem I was having, or find a new path to a different end result. Sometimes the end result is even better than the original idea!

I think periods of creative frustration are part of the process, at least for me. It seems to move my work along at points when I need it to — when things seem stagnant, and the ideas aren’t coming to me. That pendant I was trying to rivet at the beginning of this post? It became something else entirely, and I like it even more than what I had planned.

How do you handle creative frustrations?

Dear Fantastic Girl,

Just when you think you have things figured out, even in ONE part of your life….life throws you a curveball.

This is a place where you have a wonderful opportunity…many wonderful opportunities, actually. You get to decide right here, right now…what you will do next. You get to test those amazing skills you’ve been learning about concerning the power of your choice.

You have several choices ahead of you when unexpected things happen. You can sit and cry about it, and just sit there, IN IT. You can get up and stand there, and wonder what the heck just happened…..or WHY DID THIS HAPPEN? You can stand up, dust yourself off and move forward in anger…..or you can stand up, dust yourself off…..and say “HEY, LOOK HERE! ANOTHER ADVENTURE!!! I’m going to LEARN SOMETHING NEW, GET STRONGER and find ALL SORTS OF SURPRISES ALONG THE WAY! I surrender to this!!! I am going to go with it…there’s nothing I can do to change it, so I am going to just make the most out of it! I am going to have a beautiful life anyway!”

Now, keep in mind, beautiful girl….that you can make any of those choices listed above….you can even make ALL of those choices in the very same day as you work through your unexpected bend in the road. Even if your first reaction or your first FEW reactions are reactions that you wish you could change….you still get to choose what your next reaction will be. You get to choose how you end up feeling at the end of the day….AND at the beginning of the day, no matter what is happening around you!

Just know that even if something big or small happened that feels like it’s going to derail you….or if it DID derail you…or knocked the wind out of you…..that once you get your bearings, you get to move forward and choose to make the most of it. You can, you can, you can…..because you are such a brave brave girl!

C’mon, let’s get on with your beautiful life!!!  xoxo

Now, I’ve always been a glass-is-half-full rather than half-empty kind of girl. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I fully believe that happiness is a choice, regardless of your circumstances, and I do my best to live by that. I have a good friend who was also a finalist for this position, and when I ran into her after my final interview, there was a big part of me that wanted to go right back in the campus president’s office and tell her to select my friend for the position. I have a full-time position with the college already; she doesn’t, and really needs one. Of course, the other part of me was really looking forward to the chance to have more time with my family.

So now, as the Brave Girls so eloquently reminded me, it’s time to keep moving forward. I didn’t applying for the faculty position because I did not enjoy my current role. I was applying because I wanted more time at home. I knew that if I got the position, there’d be so many things I’d miss from my current position, so now the positive is that I don’t have to miss them. I’m still here! And I’m taking four students and my family to New York City next week for a conference. That’s certainly a nice perk. So I guess, all in all, once again, God has reminded me I’m right where I’m supposed to be right now, jammed packed schedule or not.

[Cross-posted from Artful Happiness]

One of the gazillion images I need to edit, this one captured in Virginia last month.

I had to meet with Olivia’s teacher yesterday morning regarding her reading grade. Livvie started out poorly this year, then made the A/B honor roll for the second and third quarters, and now has dropped back down as the school year is winding down. Ever feel completely powerless? Have a conversation with your second-grader’s teacher about her failing reading grade.

We talked through why this might be happening. After all, she did make the A/B honor roll for two quarters! I think with Olivia, it’s all about concentration, or lack thereof (something she, unfortunately, probably gets from me). Ms. G said that lately she’ll race through her reading comprehension quizzes and just circle random answers, seemingly without giving any thought to what the correct answer might be. She’s one of the first to turn in her quizzes. We asked Livvie about this at home, and she said that when she sees other classmates start to turn their quizzes in, she feels like she needs to hurry up and finish and turn hers in, even though these quizzes are not timed. Wow, ever feel like you are trying to keep up with everyone around you when you really don’t need to? I know I could learn from that lesson. Food for thought there… I asked Ms. G to send home several sample quizzes so I could work with Livvie on them over the long holiday weekend and try to get her grade back up. Her reading skills are fine. She’s reading above grade level. It’s just the patience it takes to actually complete the quizzes that she’s struggling with. I also need to help her realize that she is a wonderfully beautiful individual and doesn’t need to compare herself to her twin sister.

I do often feel powerless when it comes to trying to do what’s best for my children. Sounds crazy, maybe, but that’s how it hits me at times. I’m not home for homework time. Most of the academic year, I get home about 6pm Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and 9pm on Tuesdays. Fridays are my only decent days since I can usually get home by 4pm.  DH picks the girls up from school about 4pm and does homework with them when they get home, so by the time I get home, it’s time for dinner, baths, snuggling, a little reading, and bedtime. DH is great with helping them with their math, but he admits he struggles helping them with their reading and writing. And those are my strong points! That’s where I can and really should be helping them! It all comes down to time.

And that’s also where I’ve been feeling powerless lately and am trying to find ways to make some major changes. Overall I think I’m at a point in my life where, though I’d love to be working on my creative endeavors more, there simply isn’t much spare time most of the year. And I have to tell ya, if I hear one more person tell me “Oh, you make time for what’s important to you,” I think my head will pop off. You can’t create more time, so, no, you often can’t make more time for what’s important to you without something that’s just as important suffering. That’s where reality kicks in. “Find some time after the girls go to bed!” others have told me. My girls go to bed between 8:30pm and 9pm. I can’t give up sleep due to my balance disorder. It’s crucial that I get at least eight to nine hours of sleep a night or my spins pick up. My dizzy meds work to reset my balance while I’m sleeping, so that sleep is ultra-important. I have to get up at 5:30am or 6am, so that means my bedtime is typically about 9pm.

But there are changes I can make, and that’s what I’m working on. I’ve cut back quite a bit on Etsy. I’ve pulled out of all my team commitments, am saying no to new requests, and rarely even pop in to team chat threads anymore. The most I do is post team treasuries I’m included in on my blog as a thank you to the curator. I’ll be keeping up my website and my Etsy shops as far as inventory, but I’ll be spending little to no time on Etsy promoting. I know that my sales primarily come from my shows anyway. And speaking of shows, I’ve been re-assessing my goals there as well. Though I love having the opportunity to combine both my jewelry and my photography in one booth, I’m finding that it’s just too much darn work, especially when nine times out of ten, I’m on my own for shows. And I think in some ways having two media in one booth, no matter how much I tie them together, is confusing to many visitors. Given that, this fall I’m returning to concentrating strictly on my jewelry at shows; that’ll free up some time for me as well since I won’t have to prep for two media. I’ll keep up with my photography online since it’s something I really enjoy. I’ll also stick to my traditional three shows instead of adding anything else.

And the biggie, which is totally in God’s hands…I’ve applied for another faculty position. If I’m successful, that will give me quite a bit more time, so keep your fingers crossed for me. I’ve been wanting to get out of administration and over to faculty full-time for a few years now, but it’s a difficult transition to make. The screening committees are made up of faculty members, and though many of them are my friends, many also don’t understand why I’d want to take such a large pay cut to leave an administrative position in which I excel. But even though you excel in something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something you should continue doing at all costs. I’d be happy to take that pay cut to get more time. My family needs that time, and I’m starting to realize that my health and my brain need that time, as my brain seems to misfire at least once a sentence these days. I enjoy teaching, I know that I’m a very effective teacher, and the tradeoff would definitely be worth it.

Somewhere along the line, I’ve gotten off track, and I have to re-find my way. And some of the paths I’ve been trying, and some of the groups I’ve been trying to connect with, just haven’t felt right. They haven’t felt like me. I’m not a deep-thinking, existential, the-universe-will-bring-it-to me kind of girl, and I can’t pretend to be. I am a risk taker, but I’m also a very practical thinker. I have some big dreams that maybe one day I’ll realize, but I also remain closely in touch with the reality that is life. So, there you have it: one burned out superwoman admitting that she can’t do it all, and frankly, realizing she doesn’t want to try to anymore; I’m surrendering my superpowers. Oddly enough, I’ve been craving cross-stitch lately. But when I think about why I might be craving cross-stitch, it does start to make sense. Though I haven’t cross-stitched for years because it started getting too hard on my hands and my over-40 eyes, thinking back to when I was an avid stitcher, I realize it was that rhythm of the needle and thread going in and out of the canvas that soothed away stress, and that completion of a piece that brought great satisfaction. Wrapping up that last finishing stitch in a large piece, I didn’t feel powerless. I felt like, “Dang! There’s gotta be more than 19,582 stitches in this piece! That’s accomplishing something!” I need to get that feeling back. Maybe it’s time I teach my girls how to cross-stitch.

[Crossposted from Artful Happiness]

I got an e-mail from my father recently with the subject line “This is our old house!” I looked at this picture but didn’t recognize the house, so I asked him the address. He couldn’t remember the address but said it was the one by the old Levitz and the arch in North Miami; we lived there through my elementary school years. I immediately e-mailed back with “17045 N.W. 11th Avenue, 305-620-0367. I remember the house being pale yellow with a big tree in the front yard.” Dad said that, yes, it had been yellow with a big tree in the front yard. I remember that Dad’s boat was always parked on the trailer on the side of the house where that car sits now. It was a pale blue boat with a large number 44 painted on the side. Dad was a daredevil, racing both boats and motorcycles when I was a kid, probably why speed is still in my blood today. My friend Timmy lived two doors down, and my best friend Terri lived around the block. My mom and dad were good friends with Carol and Wally across the street; they had children, too, but I can’t remember their names. They were even younger than I. Dad was down in Miami on business, and when he saw that old arch, he became curious about the old neighborhood and found the house. Looks pretty sad now, doesn’t it? That address was the opening line of this emotionally raw essay.

It’s fascinating to me how our perceptions change as we grow up. When I was a child, that house seemed huge! But thinking back now and seeing this picture, obviously it was quite small. Dad said it was about 800-900 square feet, three bedrooms, one bath. I remember there being a Magnolia tree in the corner of the back yard. I think the tree in the front yard was a Magnolia as well. Based on this little house, I guess we didn’t have much money growing up, but I clearly remember that I never lacked for anything I needed in those days. My mom was a nurse and my dad worked more than one job while going to school at night; they were 20 when they were married in May and I was born in December of the same year. It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized that math didn’t work out quite right.

There was an elementary school at the end of our street, but because of the times and busing in Miami in an effort to better integrate schools, we weren’t districted for that school. I was to ride the bus to a school on the other side of town. Instead, my parents put in me a private Christian school closer to home, where I was sent home more than once, a tomboy rebelling against the “dress” code by wearing pants. My sister was also born in Miami, but then we moved to St. Petersburg before she was a year old. We were in St. Pete for two years before my parents divorced, and Mom, Kim, and I moved here to the Jacksonville area to be near my Nana and Granddaddy.

My girls and I were driving through “the old neighborhood” a while back, and I showed them the house their daddy lived in when we met and where we lived together for six and a half years. “It’s so small!” they both said. It was about 1,000 square feet, three bedrooms, one bath, built in the ‘50s, a cute little concrete rancher in a neighborhood that has now had its share of neglect. Once we were ready to get started building our current home, we put that house up for sale on a Friday, and I went over to Tallahassee for a football game.  When I got back that Sunday, DH had already sold the house. We didn’t expect things to happen quite that quickly! Luckily, DH’s daddy’s house was vacant at the time, so we were able to move in there, the very house DH was born in and grew up in. It was about the size of my childhood house, and we lived there for the nearly year and a half it took us to build our home.

I think of my perception of my house when I was in elementary school and wonder what my girls think now. Our house is not overly large by any means, especially when I think about the houses my mother and her third husband lived in and the homes of many of my friends, but yes, we are blessed to have a river in the back yard. It’s interesting for me to see how my girls react to the houses of their friends. They have commented that their friends’ houses are smaller than ours…but they’ve also commented that their friends have “soooo many toys!!!” Maybe that’s perception, too, a perception on what’s really needed.  In their friends’ houses, yes, there are lots and lots and lots of toys. Here at our house, sure, the girls have some toys, but we try our best not to give in to every new toy on the market and instead encourage playing outside, making art, playing games together, and playing with the toys they already have. They always have their favorites anyways, don’t they (and the piano makes a great fort)? I don’t remember having a lot of toys. But I do remember always being outside playing, whether in the back yard, over with Timmy, around the block with Terri, or a combination of all the above.

I know you’ve probably heard that old saying about wanting more for your kids than you had as a kid. I wonder if in these days of excess and social media overload if that line of thinking can be a slippery slope. Maybe going back to those simpler days of no internet, no video games, fewer toys and more time playing outside is what our kids, and we, really need. That’s where memories are made.

[Cross posted from Artful Happiness]

This little scrap of spelling list has been floating around the house for months. I find it here and there, and for some reason, I’ve just never thrown it away. Today I was thinking about everything that I have on my plate on right now, and when I came home, I saw this on the floor in the bedroom. Shall.

Sometimes things get so crazy that we lose track of all the things we said we shall do. The kids get sick (Olivia). You get sick (me). The cat goes on the lam again (Tink). You become over-committed, oftentimes because of things you cannot control (me, work). You stay sick because you’re over-committed (me, still). You follow through on obligations you make because you committed that you shall do them (me, participating in the Halifax Arts Festival even though I was still sick). You work one very demanding full-time job, one part-time job and try to manage a creative business, for a reason (you, um, I, want the part-time job to become the full-time job so you can have more time with your family and more time for creativity). So you keep going.  What shall you do to pull all this together?

Today, I shall try to remember that all things will fall into place where they shall, in their due time, as the Man above plans. And I shall be thankful that I got to get away for a brief 24 hours to reunite with my sorority sisters Saturday (45 of us), antibiotics and cough drops in hand (and a few beers to help battle the germs). And I shall decide that those custom orders can wait just a little while longer, and that will be okay. And I shall decide that I’ll get to my blog when I get to my blog, which obviously hasn’t been very often lately. And I shall sit on the couch and cuddle with my girls while watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and then lie in the bed and snuggle with DH while watching Antiques Roadshow. And I shall try not to worry about all those things I’ve been losing track of. And I shall decide that everything will be just fine. What shall you do today?

[cross-posted from Artful Happiness...pictures from the reunion there ]

What I e-mailed back to him I cannot repeat here for the sake of children’s eyes, but it amounted to a firm No Way.

Last year, I drove myself insane. I resented when life took precedence in the form of repeated visits to the pediatrician for infinite reasons including the virus sent from the inferno below that I along with the entire family contracted, amidst the usual mayhem challenges to write that abound around here. I also wrote a whole lot of crap, of which I haven’t opened the document to see the results of and edit. The novel was supposed to take place in Ireland and 31,000 words in, the family was still on the plane from Logan Airport, crossing the Atlantic and playing gin.

I am currently STILL editing the novel I wrote before last year’s Nano, and barely have the time and headspace for that, let alone start another project.

But then I was in the shower one morning — the only time and space I have completely alone to sort out whatever might be going through my head with minimal distraction — and a funny thought occured to me, which included a nonsensical opening novel line I could take in any direction.

And as I said, no, no, no I will not NOT do Nano this year, the idea grew. A plan fell into place.

I couldn’t help it, by the love of all things chocolate with caramel. I have to do it now. But first I am setting some ground rules:

1. Being likely a children’s novel, I will accept 35K words as a good win if that’s where it seems to end.
2. I will not make myself crazy if life gets in the way. I have a very full life. I will not resent the vicissitudes and interruptions, because really Nano is an interruption to my everything else. And my everything else is mayhem enough, thank you very much.
3. As long as it remains fun, is a catalyst for inspiration and I enjoy it, I’m in.
4. As soon as I break any of the above, and it becomes not fun, I am out.

Inspiration is my game this time, not racing to the finish line.

Call me crazy, but I’m in. How about the rest of you?

[Crossposted from musings in mayhem]

I didn’t know what New York had in store for me, but I knew it couldn’t be good — not in the short term, anyway. I was leaving home, and all my friends, and all my sons’ friends, 14 hours (and a universe) away. We would be living in isolation in temporary housing — a two-bedroom suite hotel — for three weeks, and then after that I could look forward to a long, depressing, boring summer. I figured all that solitude would give me ample opportunity to write, even though I didn’t welcome all that free time, and was feeling grumpy at the prospect.

Mind you, I was trying to be optimistic, and was going to try my hardest to have a good time no matter what, but deep down I was steeling myself for disappointment.

And then the happy surprises began.

The first surprise was the drive itself. A 14 hour car trip with a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old can easily become a 20-hour car trip, so Tom and I decided to break the trip up into two days. Since we were driving both cars up to NY, we split the boys up, plugged in the DVD players, and fervently prayed that the drive wouldn’t be too bad. Now, I don’t even like to drive across town, so I dreaded the cross-country drive with a (possibly hysterical) two-year-old. But I put on my complete collection of CS Lewis Narnia books on CD, plugged in the portable DVD player for John, and hoped for the best. And then the miles flew by. I was listening to Voyage of the Dawn Treader when we arrived in NY and felt like my brain had spent a week at a spa. I had not had to think in two full days. It was wonderful, and a welcome relief.

The second surprise happened with a knock on my hotel room door. Our next door neighbor turned out to be the best friend I could’ve hoped for under the circumstances. A mom of 2-year-old and 4-year-old boys, whose husband had just started at the same company as Tom. Both of us were stuck at the hotel until the 1st of July, both of us were a long way from home, and both of us were about to lose our minds. What was supposed to be Part I of my long, boring summer of solitude turned into a whirlwind of little boys out-on-the-town. Kira was destined to be my friend, because we have similar interests and personalities anyway, but it certainly helped that our boys loved each others’ company and wanted to spend every single second together, and that our engineer husbands could hang out, talk, and understand each other, as only a pair of engineers could. They’ve moved to the town right next to ours and even though we’re no longer together at the hotel, we see each other almost daily.

And then a third surprise. I thought our neighborhood in SC was the friendliest, most awesome neighborhood that ever existed. But I was wrong. Our new neighborhood is just as friendly and the neighbors we’ve met so far have all been so welcoming, at times I have to pinch myself because I really feel like I’m living a dream. Our house is cheerful and quirky, and the most “me” of any house I’ve ever lived in. The neighborhood itself is picturesque and charming. The location, absolutely ideal.

And yet Tom and I were this close to losing it all. When our house was on the market, a family loved it, but ultimately chose another house in our neighborhood with an identical floorplan but a larger, flatter lot. At the time I was really perturbed that another house was chosen over ours. But the final happy surprise occurred last night, when Tom and I checked out the MLS listings in our old neighborhood to see what the market was doing. That house, which had gone under contract several weeks before ours, was re-listed and touting its recent home inspection and appraisal. The sellers moved out and then, we’re guessing, the deal fell through, whereas our buyers came along a scant few weeks later, fell in love with our house, and couldn’t move in fast enough. I feel horrible for our neighbors whose house is re-listed, and I feel boundless gratitude that the Fates smiled on us and let the sale of our house go through.

I can’t think of another time things have aligned so perfectly in my life. I’m reassured that the upheaval was worth it and our lives are finally on the right track where, no doubt, other happy surprises await us.

Over the past month, I’ve been taking an e-course with Kelly Rae Roberts called Flying Lessons. Let me just say wow. The amount of content Kelly Rae has written for this course has been absolutely phenomenal. I imagine the full thing would print out to be a 300-page book. It’s been crazy chock full of great information. Of course, as par for the course for me, I’ve been having a heck of a time keeping up so I’ve been hopping around a bit, but today’s post really struck a chord with me. It talks about embracing the journey of a creative business… “the ebb and flow, overwhelm and burnout, celebration and joy.” I’ve most definitely been experiencing that. (Bracelet above listed in my Etsy shop.)

Kelly Rae said, “After all, in the big scheme of things, it’s often not the destination that we can control. The only thing we really can control is staying centered and inside the perspective that the creative biz path really is a journey. If we can give ourselves permission to not always know, to give up the “shoulds,” then we allow ourselves and our creative spirits a bit more freedom to roam the mysteries of its possibilities.”

Well said, sister! Last year, I postponed the majority of my regular juried show schedule in lieu of participating in the Riverside Arts Market (RAM). I was so excited about RAM. The venue was gorgeous, the idea was fabulous, and I felt like it was something Jacksonville really needed. And if I could stay right here at home and sell my jewelry and photography, awesome! Now, I still think the venue is gorgeous, and the idea is fabulous, and the people running it are truly wonderful; it’s very well organized. It just didn’t work for me. My sales for 13 weeks at RAM barely surpassed what I normally do at a large juried festival in one weekend. Granted my jewelry is on the higher end of what you’d typically find at a market like this, so maybe that was part of it. And maybe I expected too much. Who knows? I’d love to see RAM move to a once-a-month format instead of a weekly format. While RAM is still the top dog and the best run market in the best venue, nearly a dozen little Saturday arts and farmers markets have sprouted up in the area, and I wonder if the market is getting a bit too diluted.

My experience with RAM was a big lesson for me. And it was a big lesson that caused some major burnout. All those Saturdays in a row at the market away from my family, not making many sales, really took a physical and creative toll on me. Because of that, this year I took a big step back. I only did one show this spring, the always fun and profitable Springtime Tallahassee Arts Jubilee. (I wrote about my very first Springtime Tallahassee here; it was quite an experience!) I’ve started worrying less about selling my art and started enjoying more the process itself, creating whatever I’ve wanted to create when I’ve wanted to create it (obviously, since in the last week on my blog I’ve shared the jewelry above, a mixed media postcard, and some Best Shot Monday photography!). That’s been very freeing. I guess that’s part of the ebb and flow Kelly Rae referred to. And because I’ve let go of the need to sell, every little sale I do make on Etsy or on my website is cause for celebration! And it’s made room for other things, allowing me the time to explore other creative areas, the freedom to experience amazing adventures like Artful Journey, and even the room and opportunity for my first solo gallery showing of my photography (more on that later!).

It’s fitting that I wrote this post on June 30. Thanks to that letting go this first half of 2010, I’m now starting to feel better about loading Sally up and hitting the road again, so this fall, I’m planning to get back to a scaled-down version of my regular show schedule. Because I’ve been so scatter-brained lately (okay, I’m always scatter-brained, but I’ve been more scatter-brained than usual lately), I missed the application deadline for Market Days in Tallahassee, which has been one of my regulars, but that’s okay; that’ll save me that $375 booth and application fee, and I’ll fill that spot with a less expensive show. I’m looking into the Glynn Arts Association shows for this fall. I could essentially still sleep at home with those since they are just an hour up the road in St. Simon’s! So thank you, Kelly Rae. That post was just what I needed to read today. It was a good reminder that the journey really is so much more enjoyable when we worry less about the destination. That’s a good lesson learned.

[Crossposted from Artful Happiness]

Yesterday I had one of those rare creative spells in which, no matter the interruptions, I wrote steadily over the course of about 6 hours on the new idea.

I’m really enjoying it. That spark was what was missing in the edit draft two stage of the manuscript. I mean, I enjoy making the improvements, but it’s a slow road.

But having something else to be excited about is just plain fun.

So I will continue to edit when I have good uninterrupted chunks of time, as in when my writing group meets. But in the meantime, I’m going to have fun over here on this little idea in all the little moments I have between the usual family business.

Making stuff up is so much easier than fixing what I already have. And it’s fun. I feel like a kid with a kite. It’s time to fly.

After my prior whiney blog share, I felt compelled to crosspost from musings in mayhem something more positive on writing that happened shortly after.

I am happy to have taken part in NaNoWriMo this year for the first time. It put me into a good lead on a companion book to my first novel, and now both need some serious editing. I lost my momentum between lots of doctor appointments for my whole family, getting quite ill myself and caring for sick kids, then my back went out as we leaned toward Thanksgiving, and I got hung up in word count rather than having fun enjoying writing well.

That last part was what killed the project for me. Not the whole project, I am happy to continue work on this particular piece, but I want to go about it in the way that is familiar to me. I am an editing nightmare to some, but I’ll tell you, that is what I really enjoy about writing as I write, the scribbles and rewording, the back-typing and rewording, the considering of the scene from an entirely different angle, etc. It’s what I enjoy about the middle of breadmaking, too: the kneading, the punching it into form.

I have just a few days left to try to make it to 50,000 words. I am at 19,201 and have my family home, no one at work, no one at school or at senior exercise programs until the thirtieth. I don’t think reaching 50,000 is my personal goal anymore. A children’s novel is typically about 30,000 and I don’t want to just write crap for filler for a contest that has lost meaning for me in it’s final goal. I’ve also lost my thread plotwise and feel like I’m wasting precious word count time doing what I actually love about writing and my process in it. That is indicative that it’s time for me to move on and refocus without the contest looming.

For now, for me, this year 19,201 is a fantastic stopping point. Now I can sink my teeth back into the edits of the first novel and then run right into edits on the second I started because of Nano.

Does this then make me a loser if I am not a Nano winner? Certainly not. I have 19,201 words written that I didn’t have before I started NaNoWriMo. That’s a big win in my book. I’ve never written 19,000 words toward one thing in three weeks time in my whole life, nevermind with a houseful of sickies and also school days off throughout the month.

I may not have hit 50,000, but I did a lot more than I would have if I hadn’t tried.

“I keep messing it all up, Mama!”  Livvie is a bit of a perfectionist.  The one thing she was doing differently than me was that she was using a paintbrush, not her fingers, because she didn’t want to get paint all over her fingers (which surprised me because the child has no issue getting completely covered with mud in the back yard). But I guess—maybe because of her art resource period at school?—she thought that painting with a paint brush was the “correct” way to paint. I quickly took her over to my laptop and showed her some of the canvases our class had posted in our ning group…to show her that, like mine, none of them were “perfect.”  (No offense to my Spill It! friends!)  After that, I asked her to consider putting her paintbrush down, and I helped her smush some paint around with her fingers. Then I showed her how we could take the opposite end of her paintbrush and draw smiley faces in the wet paint.  That got her. :-)  From there, she tried a little of the bubble wrap method and then dipped the heart shaped cookie cutter I had given her into her pink paint and added the heart you see in the middle. After the addition of the stickers, she declared it done with a quiet smile on her face, remnants of tears still on her cheeks.

I’ve been thinking about that all week, particularly in regards to the expectations we put upon our children and our selves. I didn’t have any expectations for Livvie’s painting; I just wanted her to have fun. But because of her own expectations, she wasn’t having any fun at all at first. She’s been struggling a little at school, and we’ve had to meet with her teacher.  Boy, did that break my heart. I was heartbroken for her because she was struggling, and I know that she notices that Sarah hardly ever struggles with her schoolwork, and I was heartbroken for me because she wasn’t meeting the “standards.”  Terrible of me, huh. What standards? My standards? No, I guess they weren’t my standards, they were the school’s standards, but I realized my standards when it comes to academics are probably pretty high, too. She’s in first grade, for Pete’s sake! I have to admit, I never struggled in school. Not even through grad school. School just always came easy to me. But I see that it doesn’t come easy to Livvie just yet. She’ll get there; we’re committed to helping her at her pace, in whatever way she needs, providing mountains of encouragement and positive reinforcement along the way. We’re spending more one-on-one time with the two of them while they are doing their homework, so Livvie doesn’t have that in-your-face opportunity to compare herself with her sister.

Back to my expectations of myself…  I guess because I was always good in school, I expected that I’d be able to help my girls be good in school. I’m finding that that’s going to be a big learning process for me. And then I think about my expectations in regards to all this art stuff. I’ve always played with art. But when I started playing with mixed media, I realized I was definitely going to have to lower my expectations for myself.  The first mixed media piece I created with Wyanne taught me a big lesson. Like Livvie, I too, was a perfectionist! Wy sweetly told me that I was just going to have to let that “crap” go, just play, and not worry so much about the end result. Maybe that’s a really good life lesson too.  Let the crap go…just play…and maybe everything will fall into place as it’s meant to be. That’s definitely a good lesson for me right now.