Tag: inspiration

Journal Prompts

I have quite a few errands to do in the next couple of days, so my writing is likely to be sparse. Maybe I will just throw out various thoughts that I have pondered this week, and you may use them as your own journal prompts, if you are so inclined.

“How you start your day is how you live your day. How you live your day is how you live your life.” – Louise Hay (This is why I start my every day, communing with you all, writing on the blog. It’s good for me and it is good for my life. Thank you for enhancing my life. Ty. Ty. Ty.)

“The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.”– Barbara Kingsolver I have witnessed this fact in my own life, and in so many other people’s lives, too. Where are you feeling a constant agitation or resistance in your own life? Are there changes that need to be made? Are you in the way of your own salvation?

“Life is made of two dots and a dash. Make the most of the dash.” – Anonymous

Dash away, dash away, dash away all!!!! See you tomorrow. Please leave your answers to the journal prompts in my Comments, if you are so inclined.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Pawns in the Game

Did you ever feel like you were a pawn in someone else’s game? Did you ever look way up into the sky expecting to see the puppet strings and the puppeteer? What if you are that pawn, though? What if you are a pawn in the enormous, strong, beautiful hands of a brilliant, kind, masterful, omniscient player? Is it possible that in those times that you feel deep, intuitive impulses to do something for someone else, or for yourself, or to do something about a situation in your own life or in your community, it might actually be “the player” using your individual talents and your particular position on the board to elevate the overall masterpiece of the game? Is it possible that you are a major part of the game that is constantly leveling up?

I am a believer that we are a mixture of our own free will, and the overall will of the point of the game – love, creation, joy. We can be stubborn little pawns and we can say, “You know what? Nope. I’m not moving. In fact, I’m going to take a big step backwards, so there.” And the player says, “That’s okay. You do you. I have other moves that I can make with other pawns. The game will go on . . . . And by the way, I love you and I am happy that you are part of the game. When you are ready to take a step forward again, I’ll be here to lift you up.”

Picture credit: Dicebreaker

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

I love our dogs. I mean, I adore our dogs. But Josie, our collie causes more fur-formed tumbleweeds than a major storm in the Mojave Desert. And our dogs can’t look out our glass sliders (which form most of the back of our house) without making absolutely sure to having their sloppy wet noses touch the glass. (And of course, our dogs are all three different heights: small, medium, and large) The bottom half of our sliders are translucent to opaque, on a regular basis.

My youngest son questions everything in life. (I wonder where he gets that from. Hmmm.) He once said, “I love our dogs as much as any of us do, but don’t you think it is kind of weird that humankind has evolved to have animals living with us, in our houses? I mean, does it seem a little strange?” (Despite agreeing with him, we all kissed the dogs and ignored our son the rest of the day. 😉 )

Bottom line is, I love my dogs and I love Oreos. They are worth the never-ending cycle of cleaning up after them. Have a great week!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

This is the Beginning

“– what would you be doing differently in your life if we were approaching the end of the year, rather than the middle of it? Well for one, you’d probably be celebrating! Two, you’d also be doing all those things making sure all the loose ends of the year are tied up and setting intentions for the next year.” – Cassandra Tyndall

Happy Summer Solstice! It’s that halfway point in the year. It’s a great time to hit pause and use the light from the longest day of sunlight, to shine the light on where you’ve “been” in 2023 already, and to reflect on how you would like to close 2023 out. My husband loves to listen to the Gerry Cinnamon song below, when we are relaxing by our pool during warm summer evenings. Sometimes I think that he overplays it, but I will say these last few days I have woken up to the start of the song, playing on repeat in my mind. And it stirs me. Deeply. I hope that it stirs you, too. “This is the beginning of the rest of your life.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Hangin’ Around Friday

Happy Friday!!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!!! Before I get to my favorite for today (hint: see above), I wanted to share two interesting things. One, I just read that the reason why Redwood trees are the tallest living thing on Earth is because they intertwine their roots and they share their water. Isn’t that beautiful? What’s your “water”? (i.e. special gift or talent that was meant to be shared to make our world a more beautiful place) Share your water today, and stand taller for doing it.

And two, I had a really interesting, kind of hilarious conversation yesterday. I was doing quite a few returns at a local department store. I was being waited on by quite the colorful lady. She and I both agreed that we especially enjoy the thrill of getting quality items, at discounted prices. The lady, a quirky, jumpy, constantly smiling, slim, elfin type of a person told me, “My talents aren’t limited to bargain hunting. I’m just the kind of person who knows people. I get what a want.”

“What are you, a mobster?” her coworker quipped and we all three nervously giggled.

“No,” the confident lady replied. “For example, I get reservations where no one can get reservations. I get to the best seats at games, and I get backstage passes when I want them.”

My curiosity overcame me. “Okay, so how do you do that? What’s your trick?” I said, half-believing her.

“I just call ’em up, or I show up and I say I’m with Senator So and So’s party and then I march right to wherever I want to go.”

“Do you ever get called out?” I asked.

“Only one or two times, but then they still let me go on through, and I think it’s because they admired my pluck. The key is to have total confidence. Know that you belong in the place where you want to be, and act on it. Never show doubt.” And then she smiled like a self-pleased Cheshire cat, who was already dreaming about her next stunt to pull off.

Okay, back to the moment that you have been waiting for: today’s favorite. (See above) Another Studio’s plant animals are like jewelry for your plant babies. They are adorable and light and rest easily on even the lightest of leaves. They come in many different varieties (I personally purchased the bee and the gecko). They run around $7-$8 a piece. I got mine at a local store but you can go to their website and purchase them from there. For those plain plants of yours who don’t naturally flower, why not give them a cute little bling of their own with an A-S plant animal?

Have a great weekend, friends. Find the small things/experiences that bring a smile to your face, and buy them, and relish them and act on them (and share your water). See you tomorrow!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Two Nags

I have two situations in my life which are driving me nuts right now. For the sake of mystery and privacy, I will keep the particulars to myself. These experiences are nothing major. I have been through much worse in my life, but they have been persistent, aggravating, longtime nags that show no sign of leaving anytime soon, despite my best efforts to liberate myself of them. I have this overall sense that if I could just rid myself of these irritations, I could finally open this new empty nest chapter of my life, with a clear, clean slate. (I fully understand that new problems always crop up soon after old problems resolve, but honestly, I am ready for some novelty, even in the way of issues to solve.) So dear readers, I could use your positive energy, prayers, juju, whatnot to ask the benevolent forces that be (whatever your beliefs are) to help me to clear these botherations off of my plate, or at the very least, to help me to stop giving attention and focus to them. If you choose to add your own situations to my Comments section (with or without details), I promise to add you, and your concerns to my prayer list, too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And for my fellow nature lovers, last weekend my husband and I were sitting in our garage, talking, as my husband was cooling off from his biking trek, when a visitor appeared by my magnolia tree right outside of the garage.

It appeared to want to check out my “artwork”, my outdoor gallery that started out as a small melange of broken jewelry, ornaments, and garden trinkets that I just didn’t have the heart to get rid of, and then, as seems to be the way with me, it soon took on a life of its own.

This beautiful, ethereal, majestic creature is welcome to visit my yard whenever he or she feels the urge to do it. Its appearance made my day!! And if you feel an affinity for hawks (perhaps maybe even consider hawk to be a “spirit animal”), consider this the sign that you were looking for . . . .

And now, for my final thought for the day, if Al Capone called John Gotti a mobster, he would be correct. But that doesn’t negate the fact that Al Capone is (was) also a mobster. “Pot calling the kettle black.” It’s all over society/organizations/leadership these days, and yet many things of magnaminty still aren’t getting solved . . . . sigh.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Lists

*****So sorry for the delay, friends!! My server was down this morning, which is thankfully, a rare issue for me and the blog. <3

There is a common rule of thumb that for everything that you buy, you should immediately throw away/give away something else in your home, in order to avoid cluttering and future mayhem. This makes sense for our daily lives, too. I have a typed-up list of basic things that I like to get done on a daily basis: things such as doing a load of laundry, writing in my journal, sorting mail and paying the bills, writing my blog, walking the dogs, etc. These are things that are basic to my peace of mind, and give my life shape and form and order. Once these basics are taken care of, there is plenty of room to add other extraneous things on any particular day, but the things which are on this list are what I consider to be essential to my daily existence, for my own wellness and peace of mind. I am pretty careful and considerate when adding things to my DAILY list. (I also have a similar WEEKLY list.)

Lately I have noticed that I have penciled in a few other things on to my DAILY and WEEKLY lists. This is something which I am quite careful and thoughtful about. I do not take adding things to my lists lightly. As a person who treasures and thrives on spontaneity and adventure and whim, I am extremely careful to not add anything to these lists, other than what I feel is essential to my own well-being. I constantly consider and review the items of these lists to see if I can pare down, or change the frequency of anything, on them.

Why do I need to make lists for my everyday chores and daily routines? Shouldn’t these things be intuitive and habitual by now? It’s not because I am losing my memory. (although these lists will come in handy, for when I do get old and forgetful) I have these lists because I want to live intentionally. Our lives are just an accumulation of our every days, and I want to make sure that I am filling my days with things which make me feel peaceful, meaningful, intentional and happy. It makes me feel relieved and balanced when I can check off doing my daily “stuff”. Also, when I am noticing a trend of feeling overwhelmed and irritable and scattered in my life, I can see if I am letting too much other “stuff” get in the way of keeping with my daily program. It’s amazing how much space, time and energy is cleared when you check off your “to do” lists, and you also notice things which would benefit you, to add to your “stop doing” list. Also, when you write a list of things that you consistently do on an everyday basis, you might be amazed. You might give yourself a pat on the back for doing more than you ever realized. You might decide to add a couple of things or you might decide to subtract some actions.

Perhaps lists are just illusions of control. Perhaps lists are just mindful ways to be mindless. Whatever they are, lists are my way of life. They are simple tools that have helped to get me this far in my life. Without my lists, I might be floundering. As a lover of the written word, my lists are my written path for leading my life.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

Credit: @Titsay, Twitter

Summer slows things down, in a different way than winter does. Summer comes after Spring, a season of rapid growth and change, and so Summer turns up the heat, in order to slow things down. It says, let’s take a pause and let’s just bask and simmer in everything that spring has brought forth. Let’s shine the light bright on everything that has come forth, and let’s just watch it all beautifully burst at the busting seams. Let it all just sparkle and explode and rejoice. Winter is an introverted, reticent, quiet, slow season. Summer is an easygoing, yet extroverted, leisurely, lulling slow season. Spring and Fall are the moments of movement and rapid change in our lives. Summer and Winter tell us to slow it all down and just be.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Welcome to poetry day on the blog. I hope that you will try to write yourself a poem today. It’s fun. It’s relaxing in the way that things which take total concentration are relaxing. Writing poetry focuses your wild, distractible, meandering mind. I wrote today’s poem in honor of Ralphie, our Labrador retriever, who has come down with Limp Tail Syndrome (it’s a thing – look it up). He’ll be alright. It’s similar to when we roll our ankles. Still, it is sad for us, to see him sad.

Limp Tail Syndrome

They say it comes from swimming too much,

It came from doing your greatest love.

It stole your wag. It stole your grin.

Your body can’t smile in your wiggly way

with the big wet soppy toy in your mouth.

It will pass. All things do. But now

Your body just grimaces and growls,

And your tail hangs limp.

You wear your emotions on your whole body,

Not just a sleeve. You don’t hide anything.

You are the embodiment of life, breath and love,

And joy and pain and listless agitation.

You are so fully you, always and ever.

Soon your sprightly tail will wag again.

Easy, light, high and fast and free and happy.

Your tail never hangs limp for long.

It’s not in your nature to be kept down.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.