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Mar 9

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Bonnie Rose: Walk Around Your Neighborhood

I want to encourage you today, no matter where you live, to do this:
Walk around your neighborhood.
Find inspiration.

It’s all around.

I took these photographs at one of our local garden centers.
Bright colorful garden pots.
Big bold color.

My kind of place.

Discover your world.
Walk around your neighborhood.

And discover something NEW.

Are you looking to infuse your life and your world with more color? Check out my self-paced e-course COLOR YOUR WORLD here. Classroom opens April 1st!

XOXO

Mar 7

3 Comments

Monday Post ~ March 7, 2011

“Creativity is an essential part of being human, a vital force without which we can exist, but not truly live.” —Ann Cashman

What creative work would you like to accomplish this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic task or a milestone to reach for. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Mar 2

6 Comments

Jennifer New: Full Circle

Reprinted from Mothers of Invention, by permission. (If you aren’t already a subscriber of Jennifer’s blog, go directly here, do not pass go, do not collect $200!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Everything that happens will happen today
& nothing has changed, but nothing’s the same
and ev’ry tomorrow could be yesterday
& and ev’rything that happens will happen today.
~David Byrne

No doubt it’s the 50+ degree weather and sunshine that’s making my synapses fire more brightly. The sluggishness and fear of just a week ago is melting away with the snow to the point where I have these great ideas that BANG me in the head and then are gone — whoosh. I’m left wondering how many of these ideas might ever get accomplished? How many will ever be realized, let alone remembered long enough to be pondered and fiddled with? Not so many, I’m beginning to see, and I’m more and more ok with that. In the past, the notion of all of these unused, unexamined but no doubt amazing ideas being lost sent me into a state of mortal depression; I will die with my precious ideas.

A useful word advice I once received from a writing teacher: Kill your babies.Good advice for any artist, difficult as it is to hear as a mother. Some of your seemingly most inspired ideas/prose/images are there for your benefit alone. They help you move from one lilly pad of creativity to the next, but they needn’t become full-fledged forms.

BIG IDEAS – not of the Barney ilk, not of the board book kind.

It’s hard to remember this when the ideas are flying. I felt this way most keenly after my second child was born. I’d just signed a book contract at the end of the pregnancy and ended up toting baby Tobey around New York City as a sleepless infant in order to get interviews done for the project. Laying on a blow-up mattress in my friend’s parents’ Upper West Side apartment with a very wide awake tiny kid by my side, I was dizzy and nearly ill with the combination of zero sleep and nerves. I was interviewing David Byrne the next day. David fucking Byrne on no sleep and betwixt and between semi-public breast feedings?!? The next day, I managed to get the collapsable stroller up and down the subway with a hefty six-monther under one arm and a backpack full of diapers in the other. He was charming – both the rock star and the baby. I didn’t spill anything or say anything as chaotic and unhinged as my mind really was.

by Margaret Mendel

For the first two years of Tobey’s life, it was often some variation on this: me not sleeping enough, me wanting terribly to write (my god was I pained by it!), me taking care of a baby and a toddler with mind-numbing attentiveness. Ideas were bombarding me. BIG IDEAS — not of the Barney ilk, not of the board book kind. They were lovely and rich, full of such possibility … and yet they were downright impossible to fulfill, even to consider fully, as I carried one kid on my hip, drove the other to preschool, dealt with acid reflux, and folded laundry. So much laundry.

Grace Paley by Diane Davies

A few months back, I was taken with Garrison Keillor’s (or the ever-so-good writer who surely must work for him) description of Grace Paley — the way in which she somehow got the milieu of motherhood to workfor her:

“So she kept on writing poems, but she had plenty of other things in her life — she did occasional work as a typist, she was active in community projects, and she took care of her two young children. She had moved to Greenwich Village when she got married, and she spent many afternoons in Washington Square Park, hanging out with other mothers, hearing their stories. She would write down poems on scraps of paper, but she was too busy to think of writing anything much longer. Then she got sick, and she sent her kids to daycare so that she could recover. She had several days a week all to herself, so she started to write stories, drawing on the voices of the women she spent time with in the park every afternoon, writing about the kinds of events and characters that filled their lives.”

(Ironically, I’m currently discovering Paley as a wonderful poet of middle age – poems of old people in love, poems of aches and pains and the grace of aging.)

How to step into this moment of our life and open to its possibilities, rather than mourn what can’t be? I think of my friend Jill who lost her photography when she started having kids but returned to drawing, taking a journal to playgrounds and sketching the other mothers. I think of the novelist Marilynne Robinson who kept notes for a novel in a drawer, and when her kids were in school and the university she was working for went on strike (this was during a sabbatical in France), she had the unexpected time to start cobbling those notes into a novel.  I think of everyone who has a crib pulled up next to a writing desk. And everyone who has had to refigure her studio or even her art in order to keep toxic fumes away from a baby. And every mama who has given up her studio altogether in lieu of a nursery.

Our babies will kill something in us – a certain degree of focus perhaps, naivete or selfishness.

So many babies being born – one to a friend this very day, another to a fellow yogi a few weeks past. So many ripe ideas and fresh perspectives being born — not only in the babies but in their mamas. Our babies surely kill something in us — a certain degree of focus perhaps, naivete and selfishness. They’ll also take a few “brilliant” ideas away through their need for our attention. Their all-encompassing love won’t always leave room for clever wording for a pitch-perfect verse. But these are replaced with patience as we surrender to the knowledge that it will all come around. Full cycle. We grow into our ideas; they re-find us when we are ready. I had dinner with a friend a few weeks ago who is a few years into being a widow and has a grown son who is through with college. “I get so much more writing done now,” she said with clear pleasure. I heard no regret for what had come before; only satisfaction in the now. It was a window of what is to come. The ideas that are out there, ripening and reforming.

Cue the song, David. Thanks.

Feb 28

4 Comments

Monday Post ~ February 28, 2011

“Doing one thing, taking action toward your goal, can be an immediate means of pacifying self-doubt.” ~Cathleen Rountree

What would you like to accomplish creatively this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic task or a milestone to reach for. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Feb 25

14 Comments

Miranda: Putting it all together

In January I made a big decision. Something had been on my “maybe” list for over a year and I decided it was time to jump in with both feet.

I decided to become a certified creativity coach through the national Creativity Coaching Association (CCA). This means I’ll spend up to two years taking classes and coaching clients in order to earn my certification. My first class, with creativity guru Eric Maisel, began at the beginning of February. I’m already learning so much that I can hardly contain my excitement. I am now a CCA member, although I won’t be a certified coach until I complete the training program.

For me, becoming a certified creativity coach is the natural next step in what has long been my passion: understanding the ways in which we express our creativity and striving to help creative people (women, and mothers, most specifically) overcome obstacles, reach their creative goals, and live in alignment with their priorities. This work directly informs the nonfiction book I’ve been working on for the past three years: A Mother’s Guide to the Creative Life (a survival guide based on interviews with dozens of creative mothers). Receiving professional training helps me re-asses and refine the framework and strategies that I developed in my manuscript. And of course, certification will enable me to step up the informal coaching atmosphere of this blog — which is really an exciting prospect.

If you’re wondering what a creativity coach really is, here’s a blurb from the CCA website:

What is a Creativity Coach?

  • Creativity Coaches are similar to life coaches, but focus more specifically on your creative work.
  • Creativity Coaches help you to develop your artistic and humanistic talents.
  • Creativity Coaches have helped thousands of artists, writers, inventors, entrepreneurs and other creative souls to accomplish their dreams.

I feel so good about this decision — and the process itself — that I’m pretty much a grinning fool, even when nobody’s around to see me. Of course, one of the primary bonus by-products of coaching training is that I am learning how to address my own issues and perceived obstacles. By helping others, I help myself. And the more I help myself, the more able I become to help others. A pretty awesome self-perpetuating loop. While I naturally had concerns about how to fit one more thing onto my already overflowing plate, I know that this is an important step for me — one that merits prioritization. Like most “right” decisions, it’s working itself out organically. Even though I’ve been busy with classwork and coaching, I’ve also made time for my own creativity, with a renewed sense of presence and commitment. It’s happening.

Along the way, I’ll be needing volunteer “coachees,” in the same way that you can go to a hairstyling school and get a free haircut from one of the students. The student stylist gets to learn on a live person, and you get a free haircut — and hopefully leave the school’s salon without looking like a poodle, unless of course that was the look you were going for. So if anyone is interested in joining my pool of coachee clients, drop me a line at creativereality (at) live.com and let me know. I promise I’ll do my best to avoid bad perms.

Feb 23

5 Comments

Cathy: Love and writing

I really do often feel stuck between what I “should” be doing instead of writing, and my writing. If I don’t put it first right now, I will only be a resentful pig of a mother and wife. And that’s the truth. Plain and simple.

So yesterday, when I needed a moment in the midst of writing, I doodled this instead.

It’s really almost done. This is the final push. So if my family sees less of me, if you see less of me around the blogosphere, etc., this is why. I am hard at work. I will be back in my family’s life more when I can focus on them better because I will not be dissecting and rearranging a manuscript in my head during our interactions.

And that’s it.

[Cross-posted from musings in mayhem]

Feb 21

5 Comments

Monday Post ~ February 21, 2011

Making it happen

What would you like to accomplish creatively this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic task or a milestone to reach for. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Feb 17

7 Comments

Joyelle: A Toddler’s-Eye View

Yesterday my 3-year-old son discovered the camera. Now, given that his father and I are both photo obsessed (to the point that we have weekly photo dates and are signed up for a photo retreat together this March) the only really surprising thing is that Gabe hasn’t picked up a camera sooner. I do have to put in a little disclaimer here, that the camera he picked up was our point-and-shoot Fuji, not one of our two DSLR cameras. So instead of freaking out and yelling “PUT THAT THING DOWN NOW!” I was like, “Go nuts, kid.” And he did.

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.

Feb 15

2 Comments

The Feminine Mystique

Canadian painter Robert Genn has a twice-weekly newsletter that I always enjoy reading. While Genn writes about painting, his thoughts usually apply to any creative pursuit, including writing — and we’ve reposted his letters here before. Recently, Robert wrote a letter entitled. “The Feminine Mystique.” I found the letter quite timely, as I’d just dusted off my copy of Friedan’s classic and reminded myself that I needed to finish it (read all but the last 100 pages several years ago before getting pulled into something else). Genn’s newsletter is reprinted here by permission.

Many readers of my letters may not be old enough to remember Betty Friedan’s 1963 bombshell book, The Feminine Mystique. In those days, 78% of college faculty were men, as were 95% of physicians and 97% of lawyers. Only 30% of college graduates were women. Now, women outnumber men in higher education and are apparently nearing par in job placement and life achievement.

One of Friedan’s main points was that post-war, middle class women had to figure out what they were going to do after their little ones had flown the coop. With longer life expectancies, smaller families, relative economic freedom and a shopping cart full of labour-saving devices, millions of women apparently grabbed the brass ring of creativity. They found they were well suited to it. Based on this subscriber list, workshop attendance and popular statistics, 78% percent of living painters are women. And to the disgruntlement of some of the boys, we know that women in general tend to have better art-brains. Long-time readers may remember I’ve frequently identified women artists as the next big thing.

Going by my inbox, it’s possible to get the idea that women are in a bit of a bad patch. Many tell me they are “not motivated,” “lack passion,” and are “too distracted to be anything other than mediocre.” Perhaps an indication of our anxious times, in my darker moments I also wonder if these concerns are mainly from those who are reading too much self-help stuff. Like the sort of thing I put out.

But in my vast and virtual part-time mentoring practice, which I generally do for free, I also see highly optimistic, ambitious women who value education and are willing to put in time and treasure (when they have it) to achieve their goals. These women cut to the chase and, in my experience, get good. Here’s what they bring to their easels:

* The capability and the desire to work alone.
* A degree of independence from outside opinion.
* Steady, well-regulated, workmanlike habits.
* The understanding that passion comes from process.
* The curiosity to explore sets and series.
* An intuitive sense of quality and reasonable taste.
* A philosophical but nevertheless combative attitude to the miserably dying vestiges of the boy’s club.

Betty Friedan would have been particularly enthused by these ladies.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: “Who knows what women can become when they are finally free to become themselves.” (Betty Friedan)

Feb 14

3 Comments

Monday Post ~ February 14, 2011

Give yourself
a creative valentine

What would you like to accomplish creatively this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic task or a milestone to reach for. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.

Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.

It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.

Feb 10

1 Comment

Bonnie Rose: Treacherous Roads

Once upon a time, there was a woman that was going down
a new road.
An unfamiliar road. Her friends at first, were right alongside her, cheering her on. Applauding her. Supporting her. Uplifting her. Believing in her. They were cheering her on. 

This road looked dangerous.
Unfamiliar.
Almost scary.

ND roads, Feb 6, 2011

But this woman —
she believed in herself.
She had FAITH.

She took the time to listen to that still small voice deep within her soul. She wrote feverishly in her daily journals. She wrestled with so many ideas and thoughts.

She knew the road looked unfamiliar.
And she also knew some of her friends would fall away. Stop supporting her. Go on with their own lives and their own plans.

She knew she had to go down this road
herself.

And make her own decisions.

ND roads, Feb 6, 2011

And despite the disappointment she felt, knowing those friends were no longer beside her, she pressed on. She pressed on. She gained more faith in herself daily. She grew stronger.She started to believe in herself even MORE.
She walked down that dangerous road with more purpose, with more tenacity than ever before. 

She recognized the people along the way that were only there to sabotage her plans. Inside deeply, if they were to stop and think, they wanted her to fail. They wanted her to not succeed, for it would make themselves look better. These people would indirectly try to thwart her determination, they would try to rain on her parade. These people would try to squash her dreams.

As she walked on the dangerous road past them, all she could do was walk by and smile. Just smile. These people were once her friends and now, were becoming part of her distant past.

This woman grew stronger.
She recognized those people in her life that truly had value.
Lasting value.

The people that were still there, cheering her on and helping her along this dangerous road.
This unfamiliar road.

ND roads, Feb 6, 2011

At times, she couldn’t see what was to come, but these friends —
they held her hand, and assured her that THIS is where she should be traveling.

So she pressed on.
She pressed on.

ND roads, Feb 6, 2011

They gave her even more FAITH.
They truly believed in all she had to offer the world.

They saw the value of her person.
And they celebrated it.
They celebrated her.

HER.

And this woman?
What did she learn?

She learned to follow her own path, her own road, no matter how scary it looked. For she knew she had good friends and people in her life, that would be there if she fell down. If she took a wrong turn. And these same people would be there for her when she reached her destination. They believed in her. They so believed in all she could be.

IN ALL SHE COULD BE.

This woman learned to press on.
And believe in the woman
she was becoming.

XOXO

[Crossposted from A Life Unrehearsed]

Feb 8

4 Comments

Cathy: Rebirth

Duck, NC, 1.14.2011

This time of year is so odd. For most of the Northern Hemisphere, and certainly for my own 40 years lived in New England constitution, the world lies most fallow, yet there are hints of the promise of spring. The renewal of the land.

In Ireland, it is the celebration of the birthing of the lambs, the burgeoning of dairy abundance, the harrowing of the fields. St. Brigid’s Day celebrates the creative fire that burns within all of us of poetry, childbirth and craftsmanship, esp of iron.

Chinese New Year is now, the time of the seedlings underground, and the promise of abundance crops. The sun is returning, and so the fire within burns a little brighter.

Now, when winter can be so brutal, we find signs in a random clear bright day that assures the sun has not forsaken us after all.

Here, in this most wintery winter since I’ve lived in Virginia, last week I saw robins flocking in the trees. A raven cackled at me from high up in a tree whose branches were tipped in buds. Some of my gardening friends reported daffodil sightings. Mine have not made an appearance.

This weekend I went out to a handful of events, obviously overscheduled. I missed spending time with my family, I missed the rarity of hours spent with Honey. But I took time to pay attention to myself at two different meditations, and to have fun with friends.

I wore myself out, also because once again Honey and I squeezed in a Home Depot date on Saturday afternoon, too. But I needed to take time to find my focus again and these meditations really worked. I found my personal strength and was reminded that my personal strength isn’t only for giving away to everyone else. I need to keep some reserves for myself in order to focus well on my writing and finish the manuscript.

I went through a period toward the end of 2010 in which I started taking better care of myself physically, but let it drop off again, various reasons, the main being that I am allergic to the first gym altogether. Then in joining the local Y, I found I was allergic to their workout room and their yoga classes were inconveniently scheduled during my precious writing time. And then it was too cold to consider waking up before dawn to go swim laps and freeze in the winter morning air with wet hair.

But now, it is beginning to warm up. I ache all over again when I wake up in the morning, and all day long. This ache will never completely go away, I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and I am aging. I have a significant lack of collagen to take care of my muscles, even less now that I age. I am more prone to muscle injuries and not so great in the healing department. But when I take the time to exercise, whether I do laps in the pool, or walking around the neighborhood, it makes a huge difference. Not just in my muscles and posture, but in my mental and spiritual well-being.

The meditations and the game night Saturday with friends I rarely see, took me out of my daily rut and into my interior to wake up my creativity and sense of purpose.

Honey and I have planned and he started some spring household projects — mended the porch rail himself while I was out and about yesterday. And he did the taxes, which will net us a much-needed return. For this, I thank him. He’s my guy.

We’re going to build some storage solutions and a partition in Mr. Cynic’s room in order to move the boys in together, and move Toots into currently Captain Comic’s room. I’m going to milk paint some antique twin head and footboards for Toots, and sew new curtains for both rooms.

Honey and I agree it’s definitely time to move our little miss nearly three-year-old out of our room. That decision has definitely begun a sense of renewal for our relationship.

So you can see, not just this weekend, but leading up to it, I’ve been doing some harrowing of the fields of all the acreage of my life.

1. In writing, I am rewriting for the third time my little novel with the purpose in mind to send it out come spring.

2. Shifting around and taking care of the house.

3. Will also take care of Honey’s and my relationship.

4. The changing of the season is renewing my health needs, mentally, physically and spiritually, not just so I can take care of others and contribute more for their well-being — mainly I mean the kids, but that in taking care of my personal strength, I will be giving myself the gift of self-respect and confidence to be who I really am and accomplish what I set out to do. All of it, with a clear head.

Is any one else finding themselves in this place of assessment and focus on change for a better life?

[Cross-posted from Musings in Mayhem]

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