With so many non-negotiable tasks at hand, it’s easy to slip into an abyss without even realizing you’re in free-fall. Everything seems fine on the surface: you’re taking care of home and family, getting your work done, and nothing unusually stressful is going on — and yet something isn’t right. You’re vaguely aware that you aren’t spending much — if any — time being creative, except you’re too busy to think about it. But you start getting irritated with your spouse and children. Even the dog starts bothering you with her constant shedding and slobbery ways. Your beautiful home morphs into a giant pair of shackles, and you’re suddenly only the laundress, cook, scullery maid, assistant, chauffer, accountant, and charwoman — and likely also earning a paycheck. No one appreciates what you do, or the fact that between 6:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. you have about five minutes of downtime. You get resentful, sometimes even angry, which may mean you stop talking and perhaps drop each loaded dinner plate onto the table a little less graciously than you’d intended.

When you spend your life careening from one responsibility to the next — even if you enjoy those responsibilities — it’s easy to lose sight of yourself and start resenting the people you live with, which doesn’t work for anyone. Consider the aphorism “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” If you’re feeling grim, all the little sponges in your house are going to pick up on that vibe, even if they don’t verbalize it.

When you’re already doing so much that you can’t imagine doing more, how can you find time to reconnect with yourself? Start small and simple. Reconnecting may or may not involve “art,” per se. Chose something that makes you feel good. The feeling of ease is what restores your center. This spills over into your creative process.

When are you at your happiest? Interestingly, some mothers aren’t able to answer this seemingly straightforward question. Can you? Grab an index card or a notebook and write down everything you can think of that makes you feel good. Is there a way to integrate some of those conditions or activities into daily life? What can you do every day to help ensure that the present moment feels like the gift that it really is? Are there three small things you can commit to doing every day that might impact your sense of well-being? This is really about developing a few new habits, rather than about heaping more “shoulds” onto the pile. (Goodness knows, the last thing we need is more shoulds.) With a bit of intention and some new routines, you may find yourself living more fully — in art and motherhood — than you ever thought possible.

What works for you?

This piece was reprinted from the last issue of the Creative Times, our monthly newsletter. Click here to subscribe!

Many of us grapple with a mounting sense that things aren’t quite right. 

With trumpet fanfare in the background, we’d finally figure out how to raise happy children while holding down a job, reading two books a week, keeping the house spotless, fitting into our skinny jeans, growing heirloom tomatoes, and making mind-boggling progress in our creative work that results in a finished project that ultimately brings fame and fortune.

Right?

I’ve spent many (most) years of my life pursuing support systems and strategies that I believe will enable the flow and sense of ease that we all yearn for. I often seem tantalizingly close ~ if I could just tweak my organizational systems a bit or come up with a few more ounces of self-discipline then I would really be at the top of my game. I’d be able to do all of the most important things and stay constructively focused on my priorities.

Right?

Well, not so much. Despite my deep, abiding affection for all things organizational and relating to time management and life design, I must acknowledge that my addiction to these tools is often just another distraction. The truth is, I can’t get this messy, often chaotic life to “balance.” The pieces are big and unwieldy and no matter what I do, they’re going to fall on my head. And you know what? That’s OK. Balance isn’t really the point.

Increasingly, when I feel uncomfortable or anxious, I am able to take a breath and say, “This, too.” My preschooler has another toilet-training accident on the living room carpet? This, too. A client miscommunicates a marketing project outline and I end up having to start all over again? This, too. I can’t find time to finish that art project with the kids? This, too. The collard greens I’d planned to steam for dinner have gone wilted and weepy in the crisper? This, too. It’s the resistance that causes suffering.

I’m learning how to let go into things that are seemingly unpleasant or upsetting. I ask myself, in the refrain of Buddhist teachers, “Is this worth sacrificing my ease?” Because in truth, 99% of the time, whatever irritation or anxiety I’m experiencing is really not worth losing my sense of peace. Ease is always there, always within grasp, if I chose it.

When you start choosing ease as a matter of habit, you begin to realize how much you used to get carried away by the utterly minor dramas of daily life. You begin to notice how other people around you seem to complain a lot and are constantly fixated on what isn’t working. You can’t help but observe how so many others unwittingly opt for disharmony.

You can’t change other people, and that’s OK. You can’t be all things to everyone at the same time. You can’t do everything you want to accomplish today, right now. You can’t fit your many passions into a simultaneous funnel. But you can learn to wake up in wonder at the start of each new day.

This, too.

This piece was reprinted from a past issue of the Creative Times, our monthly newsletter. Click here to subscribe!

and the other one:

I love this simple pattern and wish I had discovered it seven years ago!

[Cross-posted from Cultivate: Within & Without]

If you have a yard of your own, make the most of this bonus. If you have a fenced-off space ~ even a small one ~ so much the better. Many mothers are able to sit on a lawn chair and write, read, or sketch while their kids play safely nearby. You can peruse that stack of magazines you haven’t read yet ~ any reading material that is easy to put down as needed. Outdoor time is also a great opportunity to take photographs of your kids or the world around you.

To stack the odds in your favor, use this four-pronged approach to outdoor (and indoor) downtime:

1. Make sure everyone is well fed, watered, and toileted.
2. Spend some time totally focused on the kids.
3. When the kids seem engaged or playing independently after having some Mommy face time, turn to your creative work.
4. Try to remain flexible. There will be days when the kids don’t want you staring at a notebook for even 30 seconds, and there will be other days when they’re happily immersed in their own worlds for 30 minutes. Go with the flow.

If your inventory of outdoor toys seems insufficient, yard sales and consignment shops are great places to pick up a few more. You might also send an e-mail to friends with older children to ask if they have anything hiding in their garages or attics that they no longer want.

Many toddlers and young children love to play with water. Consider filling a small kiddie pool with a few inches of water and a bunch of bath or beach toys ~ often good for at least 30 minutes of interest. For other outdoor play activities, do a bit of google searching and jot down the ideas you like best.

Food always seems to be more fun outdoors, too. Whether it’s just a snack in the backyard or a full-on picknick basket in the middle of a field, eating outside makes everyone happy.

When you’re headed to the park and your kids are old enough to play safely without constant supervision and won’t walk in front of the swings, don’t forget to bring a notepad, sketchbook, or something else to spend time with while you keep one eye on the children. You may find that it’s worth going out of your way to visit a playground that is fully enclosed and is equipped with a good amount of safe climbing structures to keep your kids entertained.

While you don’t want your kids to feel like you’re constantly on standby, waiting to bolt off to your own thing, you do want to be prepared to squeeze in some creative work when the opportunity arises. Over time, you’ll find the middle way that feels best for your and your family.

What works for you? Share your experience!

This piece was reprinted from the last issue of the Creative Times, our monthly newsletter. Click here to subscribe!

Yesterday my 3-year-old son discovered the camera.

For the last day and a half he has been snapping pictures of anything and everything, from the pantry cupboards to our cat (many, many pictures of the cat), his grandmother, his Ikea crawling tube, rocks, and his own shadow. He especially seems to like extreme close-ups, which come out in a cool blur of color. At one point he was closing in on his sippy cup and his grandma said something like “Don’t do that dear, it won’t look good,” and I practically jumped down her throat. OK, not quite that bad. But I did tell her to let him have his experiments. We’re in the digital age, he can take as many pictures as he wants!

After a day and a half of photo taking, he had filled up the memory card. Here is where I thought the hard part would come. I wanted to teach him about the most important part of photography — editing. So I loaded all his photos onto the computer and asked him to give me a “yes” or “no” as to whether he liked each image. What surprised me was how a string of “no”s came out easily. He kept his favourite subjects (the cat, grandma, his Ikea crawling tube) and quickly nixed anything that he didn’t love. I ended up over-riding his “no” a couple times when I wanted to keep an image. After all, it’s my baby’s first photo shoot! And that shot of the cement tiles was really cool!

And what I have now is really priceless. A collection of images, literally from my toddler’s point of view. I get to see the world from his perspective. And it’s chaotic and swirly and beautiful. And it may just be that I am biased because his father and I are both artists, but I think this first venture into photography shows his already acute artistic eye. But then, all children are artists. We only cease to be artists when we cease believing in our art.

So here again I can learn from my son. I can see his joy in capturing the moments of his day, and it is a reflection of the joy I feel when I look at my world through that lens. It reminds me why I love photography so much. Because in that process of re-framing your world, you become child-like in wonder at the smallest thing. That awe, that connection to the world around me, is why I keep coming back to my camera. It is meditation in motion. And I am so excited that now my son gets to have that experience with me.

I had a very enlightening conversation last night — one of many, in fact — with my host here in Sydney, Ms. Jodie Ekert.

I first met Jodie many years back when we were both fresh faces on the stand-up comedy scene (not saying anything about the current state of our faces, mind you, I am speaking purely metaphorically…ehem) — we hit it off and when some many months later she came to town to perform and was looking for an MC, she called on yours truly.

Fast forward x years later and we’re now playing mummy club together in her suitably faboosh child-friendly pad — her bub 15 months, my little dude just a little older — and we found ourselves with a whole new level of common ground over which to chin-wag.

And so it was that the topic turned to the effect that having kids has on your life when you have them early in life versus later. And Jodie’s take on it was an interesting one to me, given that my experience of parenting has been quite different, at least in terms of the timing in my life.

You see, I remember very boldly proclaiming to somebody that “I’m not having kids til I’m at LEAST 33!”, not realising of course, that at that very moment, I was indeed, pregnant.

Ha. Ha.

I was 22.

And once I’d overcome the initial shock of this unexpected twist of events, my first thought turned to all the things I’d wanted so badly to do with my life but hadn’t.

Backpack through Europe.

Carve out a career in showbiz.

Go to Nepal and hire a sherpa.

I was kicking myself for not having taken action before now: why hadn’t I just pulled my finger out and made these things happen when I had the chance? Now that I was going to be a mother, I’d have to just resign myself to those dreams going on the backburner for the forseeable future, if not off the stove altogether.

Then something in me snapped. I resolved — in my traditional melodramatic form — to absolutely NOT let this new stage of my life mean the end of the things I really wanted to do. I was so completely resolute in this, so determined to still make serious headway on even the maddest dreams and adventures in my heart that I think, to be honest, I actually became quite selfish.

I still believe I was a good mother in those early years, in that I cared for my kids, loved them to bits and made sure they were well looked after – but I also recognise now that I became so damn hell bent on achieving what I wanted to with my life that at times my mind wasn’t really present just to enjoy my beautiful babies right then and there, which makes me sad now especially as I realise how quickly those first years really do pass.

Would I change anything?

I don’t know.

The flipside of this, of course, is that my kids have always known (and will always know) a mother who is at least trying — with various levels of success and failure — to look after her own needs and pursue her own goals, as crazy as they may be. Whether this turns out to be a positive thing for them, I can only hope. Time will tell.

Anyway, I am in typical Jenny-fashion, getting rather side-tracked here.

My point is that for me personally, motherhood at such an early age hugely impacted on the way I live my life (duh!) in the sense that it made me resolutely determined to carve out the life I’d barely even begun to live.

Jodie, on the other hand told me that she felt — as a first time mother at 32 — that her struggle was more about dealing with the sense of loss of the life she’d already had. i.e. the career she’d had, even friends she’d had – the difference between her and I being that I’d barely even begun to carve out my life when motherhood hit, whereas she had an established life that then had to change.

Let me hereby state for the record that both of us adore our little ones to bits and are so happy that they are in our lives — but it is fascinating to me the effect that becoming a parent has on your whole world.

It was only last night that I really thought about my own experience from a different angle.

That is, up until now I’d kinda thought at some level that maybe if I HAD done all the stuff I’d wanted to do pre-kids, even if I HAD waited til I was “at least 33″ to have babies, maybe even if I HAD backpacked, treaded the boards and found my sherpa before embarking on the adventure that was family life, that the transition to “mother” would have been simple.

It’s now that I realise that’s just not so.

There’s never a “right time” to have a baby. They change your life no matter what.

And carving out a life for yourself is not just something you do in your early twenties — it’s a lifelong undertaking.

What do you reckon?

[Cross posted from Comic Mummy]

I did it on a fluke, and had seriously low expecations going in because three-year-olds don’t produce asthetically-pleasing art, right? Well, Sam proved me wrong. Granted, his pottery painting technique was more Jackson Pollack than Picasso, but the end result was interesting, vibrant, and better still, utilitarian.

I love making crafts, and I want my kids to share in that love, but to be brutally honest for a second, most of the kids’ craft ideas out there are just plain stupid. I don’t want a tissue-paper-bedecked toilet roll pencil holder and I can’t think of a single person out there who does. Yes, I’m a strictly if-the-ends-don’t-justify-the-means-I-don’t-waste-my-time kind of person, and my philosophy is that if I or my children are going to put in the time and energy to make a gift for someone, I want it to be something well-received. I like gifts that are beautiful and useful, so that’s the criteria I adhere to before I pull out the craft supplies.

Now that Sam is old enough to make handmade gifts for Christmas, this has become an annual event (or at least it will be, now that I’ve done it twice in a row!). I’ve alluded to our top secret Christmas craft for a while now, and I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting my reveal, so without further ado, here is Sam’s Christmas Craft for 2010!

Back in September, I got a wild hair that maybe Sam would enjoy making some jewelry-type gifts this year. He seems to have an appreciation for color and fashion (with really specific ideas about what Mom needs to wear in public), and after several years of manpulating a bunch of magnetic trains around, he’s got killer fine motor skills. So it wan’t as totally far-fetched an idea as it sounds.

But when I went digging around the internet looking for kid-appropriate-jewelry-making tutorials, I got a whole lot of foam, a whole lot of pasta, and a whole lot of plastic. Nothing says Merry Christmas like a macaroni necklace. I began to dispair.

Then, around Halloween, one of Sam’s classmates brought in candy necklaces for the kids to make, and when Sam excitedly told me all about how much fun he had making his, the wheels in my head started turning. I’d seen simple beaded bracelets on stretchy cord that he’d be able to make. How different could that be from making a candy necklace?

I wasn’t quite ready to go into this whole hog yet. Beads–the real things–aren’t cheap, and I didn’t want to go buy out Michaels if this was a one-time thing for him. So I went to Wal-mart and bought a hideous foam bead kit and pulled it out on a rainy afternoon. Sam wanted to make one necklace after another…

So I was on to something… but I still had my doubts.

Before I committed to the project, I emailed my friend (and fellow Studio Mothers blogger) Kelly, who’s an amazingly talented jewelry designer in Jacksonville, Florida (and she’s done quite a few jewelry projects with her girls who are a few years older than Sam). I asked her for advice on materials and bead size/type and basically asked her if I was insane to even consider doing this. She gave me the go ahead. My instincts were correct–Sam could do a stretchy bracelet, especially if we used big(ger) glass beads and a product called Stretch Magic (a stretchy cord–we used 0.5 mm).

So then we went to Michaels and Sam got to go bead shopping. I encouraged him to take his time and really look at the beads. Eventually he picked several types that he especially liked and we came home and got started. There are a zillion tutorials for stretchy-bracelet making on You Tube, so I won’t bother posting another one here.

Sam really got into it and would sit down with me and work with the beads–turning out one or two bracelets a day. He does the beading, and all I do is tie them off for him.

Here are the final products after months of hard work:

The bonus is that he’s learning about measurement, sorting by size and color, and practicing counting the whole time. And he says he’s making “really long trains with lots of boxcars,” because everything Sam does is with trains in mind.

After he made bracelets for all the women in the family, he wanted to make bracelets for all the men, too. Knowing that they wouldn’t be quite as keen on jewelry, Sam and I compromised and made the guys beaded bookmarks. This is how they turned out:

Then I started thinking about how best to present these. I mean, they’re gorgeous, right? They should have packages to match.

I wanted to make come sort of cardstock business card for Sam’s “brand” (because I’m actually kicking around the idea of opening an etsy store for our bracelets), so I had him go outside and I took picures of his hand in the fall leaves (this was back in October). It was just a fluke when he made a four with his fingers, but since he was four when he made these, I went with it.

And then, poking around the web, I found the perfect quote to go with it: Love, with little hands, comes and touches you with a thouand memories,and asks you beautiful, unanswerable questions. ~ an excerpt from a poem by Carl Sandberg 

And then I wrapped it up like this:

Sam really seems to enjoy beading. He didn’t stop after the Christmas bracelets were made, and still asks me on an almost daily basis to make a bracelet. John even got into the act one day when I left our beading supplies on the table. I walked in and found this:

He likes to bead just as much as Sam (but rarely beads long enough to complete a whole bracelet).

I’m so proud of them.

[Cross-posted from Re-Writing Motherhood]

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.

The second memory was far more fun. I think I was about 13, so Kim would have been 3. Mom was trying to take me to school and Kim to Nana’s for the day so she could go to work, but the Pinto wouldn’t start. She got out of the car, beyond frustrated, and Kim and I followed. She kicked the car and said, and I remember this soooo clearly, “This f*#%ing car isn’t worth a s*^t!” Kim looked at Mom and then kicked the car and repeated word for word what she said. That was the first and last time I ever heard my mother cuss.

Isn’t it interesting what memories stick with us? I honestly don’t have a lot of early childhood memories; I wish I did. Most of the memories I do have revolve around my Nana since I spent so much time with her, like the time we visited Aunt Livy and Uncle Wilbur in Key West when I was 7 or 8 and Nana discovered that I was a sleepwalker. I went to the mall that night, sitting on the end of the bed pretending to drive and then walking down the hallway to Sears, Nana told me. (I still sleepwalk and now tend to move furniture and groceries in my sleep, go figure.) I also learned how to play penny ante poker that week. My Nana and Aunt Livy were card sharks, and I still love to play poker today. DH is a very sore loser and says Aunt Livy and I cheat. And at 88, she just grins at him and hands me a card under the table…naw….just kidding…sort of.

Before my parents divorced, Mom worked all day as a nurse, and Dad often worked two jobs, one of which was at Sears selling appliances. I know they did their best, and I’m thankful for the determination and independence they created in me. I want to create determination and independence in my girls as well, and I’m hopeful that I’m also creating lots of memories for them. I want them to remember these days. Maybe that’s one of the benefits of blogging; hopefully they’ll be able to go back and read these stories and they’ll spark memories.

Right now, the girls and I are taking an online class together called Mermaid Warriors. It’s with McCabe Russell, and we’re loving it. McCabe works with young girls using art to help build self-esteem, and she’s taking us through her class with wonderful videos and a discussion blog. One of the things I want to do with the Purple Cottage is mother/daughter art retreats combined with lessons in self-knowledge, self-esteem and good citizenship, and when I stumbled across McCabe’s blog and class that teaches you how to do just that, I knew the Universe was speaking to me! (I’m slowly learning to listen to her.)

This weekend, the girls had a friend sleep over and we created our first Mermaid Warrior project together, these fun little journals out of scrapbook paper and ribbon. We had so much fun! DH even pitched in where we’d let him. It was a girls-only event after all. I took some video of the girls creating their books and talking about what they wrote in them. If I can ever figure out how to create a movie, I’ll share it with you (anyone point me to a good tutorial?). They’ve since continued to write in them and add stickers and drawings. They even created journals for their primary teacher and their art teacher and are so proud of their work. I know we’re on to something here. More Mermaid Warrior projects coming. Don’t you just love that name? Perfect for us, don’t you think?

Cross-posted from my personal blog….

For this post, I was drawing blanks. Each thought I had shot forth from my brain like I was out clay pigeon shooting, and having terrible aim. I yelled, “Pull!” and fired, and two things would sail quickly through the air away from me, and somewhat toward each other, arch, miss completely, and drop dead to the ground. The clay pigeons fell with a thud and a puff of dust. The bullets lay listless in the dirt. There was nothing left to salvage. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Not that I have ever been clay pigeon shooting. But I have watched it on tv. That’s right. That’s about as exciting as it gets around here. I like watching Dog Shows, too. Although, I have fired a gun and target shot at antique colored glass pharmaceutical bottles in the woods in Vermont. Oh to be 14 and that stupid again. I should have kept them, they were very pretty, and sold them on ebay. But there was no ebay back then, or the internet. It was the dark ages, between Lynyrd Skynard and the B-52s, at a vinyl speed of 38rpms.

So, because it’s a half day of school, for the rest of the week — more on that later – -a Certain Someone kept wandering over and asking if he could use the computer now to… (this is where I tune him out because it’s something long and involved and involves giant monsters, most likely, or funny cats, and he’s told me the particulars or something like them so many times I feel like my face is melting off when he starts again, especially when I am trying to focus on something else, like say, my own imagination and what I want to write from it because, really, this is all about me you know). So I asked him, “What should I blog about today?”

“Write a blog about how I was inspired by the nicknames you gave [Mr. Cynic] and me on Musings in Mayhem and how I’m making a video mini-series called ‘The Adventures of Mr. Cynic and Captain Comic’ to post on youtube,” responded Capt. Comic.

Only problem with this is he has not actually started filming because Mr. Cynic wants absolutely nothing to do with this. His friends might see. This is causing great consternation and Wars of Words that are particularly virulent around when I’m making dinner and everyone’s hungry and tired from a long day of school, toddlering, taekwando or bass lessons, etc. There is much door slamming and stair stomping and MOOOO-oooooming involved, too.

Someday, the boy will be a filmic genius, I’m sure, but his brother will not be starring in the films as the villian. That will have to remain true to life and in the house. My house. Probably in a couple of hours. Yep. I’m pretty certain of that.

So, on three days in a row of half-days: can I just say that this is not how I wanted or expected to spend the remainder of my ‘free time’ *cough, sputter* before I go in for surgery on Monday.

If it rains, I’m a goner for sure.

[Editor's note: Cathy's surgery is today. Please send her your hugs and healing thoughts!]