Monday – Funday

Credit: Bored Panda

Today is a full moon lunar eclipse. It’s considered a great moment to let go of all things that no longer serve you. Letting go is a deeply personal thing. It doesn’t have to be a big dramatic announcement. Letting go is essentially allowing outworn thought processes and perspectives and delusions and bad habits, to burn in the fire, so that there is room for healthier ways of being to stealthily grow.

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

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1264. Do you need to write things down to remember them?

Monday – Funday

This is good information to have in our back pockets. (ha ha)

I am coming off of a couple of weeks of one exciting, interesting, unique, fun event after another. And it’s all been really great, especially being with my loved ones. However, I am exhausted. I am “spent.” Energy is energy, and wherever you are spending your every load of energy, whether it be on good times or on bad times, it all needs to eventually be replenished, in order to get on with things, in a healthy way. I hope to replenish my coffers this week with some sleep, with some solitude, and with some unscheduled moments to just be.

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

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2388. Do you know your own worth?

Monday – Funday

Credit: @ArgyllSeaGlass, X

Mondays are tough. Mondays after a Super Bowl that goes into overtime are brutal. What I do love about the Super Bowl is that it is a great connector of people. Even if you don’t love football, you can’t help but giggle at the commercials, be completely wowed by the halftime show (Skates! Usher, you blew it out of the water!), and feel your patriotism rise a little bit. (the flyovers never fail to take my breath away.)

I was flipping through Big Panda and Tiny Dragon by James Norbury. On page 28, is this exchange:

“Nothing is happening,” said Tiny Dragon.

“Maybe,” said Big Panda, “it’s happening underneath first.”

I love this exchange. Sometimes in the beginning of the year, you feel like everything that you want to accomplish and experience is at a standstill. But you’ve made plans. You’ve implemented changes. You’ve gotten organized and did some purging to make room for the new, but your outsides don’t necessarily reflect this. Or do they? We’ve lived 6 weeks into the new year. I bet if you look at these past six weeks, you’ll be amazed at what you packed into them, and all that has already occurred in your life since the beginning of the new year. I did this exercise yesterday and I was happy to realize that in the last six weeks, we created a lot of fun memories with our family, and also with some of our extended family and friends. We attended a wedding, made a couple of nice upgrades to our home, and made some decisions regarding our plans for a secure future. We packed plenty of our normal routine stuff into our days, with some really good, fun times sprinkled into the mix. Our seeds for the year of 2024 are definitely coming up to the surface and they are beginning to sprout.

Reading this passage from Big Panda and Tiny Dragon, also made me question if I was doing a good job, making sure what happening “underneath” is being healthfully nurtured. Am I feeding and nurturing my hopes and dreams, for the year and beyond, with good thoughts, faith, plans of action, and steadiness? Or am I letting what’s “underneath” rot in the decay of negativity, regret, hopelessness, aimlessness and frenzy? What happens underneath the soil, is always a good indicator of how healthy and vital a plant will grow. What does my own grounding of soil need to ensure my own healthy growth? I am the gardener of my soul.

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

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

194. To whom do you matter most?

Monday – Funday

I’m headed out on a trip to visit with loved ones. I am feeling the need to completely let go of my regular daily routine, and that includes writing the blog. I’ll be back on Thursday or Friday, hopefully with my creative juices all amped up. I’ll miss you. Have a great week!!!

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

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

751. What is your own idea of relaxing?

Monday – Funday

Good morning. One of the favorite parts of this time of year for me, has nothing really to do with twinkly lights, and sweets, and celebrations (although all of these things are great), but more so, it is a time of deep reflection for me. It’s the end of a year. My birthday falls in this month. Last night I spent some time going over my journals of the last two years. This really helps me to pinpoint things that I want to keep investing in, and also, circumstances and habits that I want to change in the new year. It helps me to get clear on my goals and my visions for the new year. This time of year is the perfect time for reflection, gratitude, and renewal. I hope that you can find some quiet space in your calendar this month, to do the same. The winter solstice is on the 21st, which in the northern hemisphere is the darkest day of the year, but after that day, the light just keeps increasing and increasing and increasing throughout the beginning of the year. The winter solstice might just be the perfect day to decide where you want to pour your light and energy on this year, and what you are ready to lay to rest in the shadows of what is now in the past.

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

Monday – Funday

Our youngest son was here at our house yesterday, helping us to put up Christmas decorations and to watch some football with his Dad. I asked him what he thought about yesterday’s blog.

“It was great,” he said.

“What did you think about the poem?” I asked.

“Mom, I didn’t read the poem. I consider you to be like a version of SparkNotes,” he responded.

That gave me a giggle, and then I started thinking to myself, wouldn’t that be a wonderful pseudonym to write under: “Spark Notes.” ” Sparky Notes.” “S. Park Notes”

In other news, I mentioned that I read a lot this weekend. An amazing artist and painter, Paul Lewin, was interviewed in Spirituality & Health magazine, and he was asked this question:

“What would you tell readers who are interested in making art but just don’t know where to begin?”

His answer: “I would suggest starting with something simple and enjoyable, something that is free from the pressure of needing it to turn out “good.” Learning to enjoy the process is one of the most crucial aspects of living a creative life.

When I was growing up, the concept of having hobbies was much more popular, something that you did for pure self-enjoyment either by yourself or with friends for a fun time. Nowadays it feels like there is a constant pressure to make everything “good” enough to post on social media. I couldn’t imagine having such high expectations for my art during my early years of creating art.”

The author Matt Haig talks about his when he came back to playing the piano after years of staying away from it, because he felt that he would never be a good enough pianist to become famous. He writes this:

” . . . I have access to the ability to play music, and enjoy playing music and that is enough. The joy of the music is in the music. The playing of it. The listening to it. And it is a joy with a wide open door, welcoming all.”

I have recently started taking art classes after a long hiatus of doing any type of visual art. It was something that I dabbled in more when I was younger, but then I became a mother of four and that’s when I put my focus more on my children’s art and their creative abilities. (and this is not something that I say with pride. If you are a young mother or young father, keep up with your own creative pursuits and interests, as well as you can, despite your busy schedules. It is honestly not fair to yourself, nor to your family, to “lose yourself” in them and their pursuits.) I honestly started taking the painting class that I take now, out of curiosity and for the excitement of lighting up my creative spark. And I love the class. But I have noticed that there sometimes is an air of “I must achieve” in the classroom. Comparison of end-products happens. People discuss their art backgrounds, and art degrees, and level of competency, and ability to sell paintings, and making “framable” works, and I’m not immune to this underlying feeling of competition, and also insecure feelings of inadequacy. Interestingly, it is the days that I go to art class, feeling just the vital need to get “lost” a little bit in a creative pursuit, with no thought as to the outcome, and no notice of the distractions outside of me, that I often produce my best work. And the end-product doesn’t even matter at that point. Usually I just smile down at my painting, and it smiles back at me and it seems to say, “Yep, you enjoyed the process of getting lost in making me, didn’t you? Wasn’t it fun? Wasn’t it magical? Isn’t life just grand?”

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

Monday – Funday

Here’s a good reminder from Dwayne Johnson (“The Rock”) to start the week out:

“When you focus on you, you grow. When you focus on sh*t, sh*t grows.”

Let that sh*t go! I was at a little arts and crafts festival over the weekend, and I purchased this little rock from one of the vendors:

I thought that it was a rock crystal carved into the shape of a little cone-shaped shell. I told the woman selling it that I didn’t know why, but this little piece seemed to be calling to me (in retrospect, I am sure that she got a giggle out of my statement). Upon closer inspection when I got home, I saw this:

My “shell” has a face. I didn’t buy a shell. I purchased a rock crystal poop emoji. I still love it though. I think that I am going to use this little guy as a visual reminder to “Let that sh*t go!!” Rocks know what they are talking about. They’ve been around a long time.

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

Monday – Funday

I’m back!! As promised, Mommy always comes back. I missed you all. I definitely missed writing my blog, but I learned something important by not writing at all, on this particular trip. For a true “getaway”, you must escape all of your everyday life – even the good stuff. By really experiencing life completely out of your element, it makes it really easy to sort out what is important to you. The people/places/stuff that you miss the most about home, are what’s really important to you. These are your priorities. These are the vital things that make your life hum to your own unique inner rhythms. You also get clear about the other stuff in your routines, that aren’t so important, and you realize things that might need to be changed or finessed, in order to live a life which is more authentic and contenting to you.

It is also surprisingly shocking to me, every. single. time. after vacation, just how much needs to be done when you get home. I have piles of mail to sort, piles of laundry to do, piles of souvenirs to find places for, piles of groceries to buy, piles of emails to go through and unusual surprises to deal with, like the fact that my web server for this blog, must have had an entire major update while I was gone, and I had to watch a tutorial and go through security measures more stringent than the ones on my bank accounts, in order to load this precious space back up on my computer. Welcome back. Ugh.

I saw a shortened version of this beautiful thought, on a pillow in a shop in the beautiful town that we visited. Here is the full version of “I Want to Age Like Sea Glass” by Bernadette Noll:

I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next. Not stuck—just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along—just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina. Neither flashy nor dull, just a perfect luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to be in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.

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

Monday – Funday

RIP – Suzanne Somers I was such a fan of Three’s Company. It always made me laugh and Suzanne’s character, Krissy was probably the funniest. Here are some of Suzanne Somers’ best quotes:

“All my careers had hit walls at various points, but I made sure to reinvent myself and kept going.”

“Creativity is life.”

“What I really need is for people to know that I don’t just do this, I do this and this and this and this. We all have creativity in us and we all are multi-dimensional and we are all interested in a lot of things… and that women are fabulous. We can handle a lot of things.”

“I sell my problems. I’m a woman with problems. I’ve had problems since the day I was born. And I have found a way to turn my problems into assets.”

“Writing is my greatest passion because I can share the things that matter most to me with you.”

“Wisdom is the gift of aging; no young person can have or buy it. My success was and is self-evident. I’m alive. I’ve lived. I’ve thrived and have grown as a person. I’m now healthier than ever. Who can argue with that?”

“I’ve learned to follow the flow that life takes you on. Don’t fight it because you’ll probably end up doing the right thing.”

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

Monday – Funday

(credit: @woofknight, X)

Okay, this meme really resonated, especially for me on a Monday morning (okay, truthfully this resonates for me, during most of my mornings, but especially on Monday mornings). My brain cells do not seem to be allowing the coffee to permeate. And I’ve already watched a video of a quokka kissing Robert Irwin, made half of my bed, and put part of the laundry into the washer. Now, I guess I’ll circle around and finish up all of the tasks which I have half-started.

Have a great week!! Oh, and did you know that quokkas are considered the happiest animals on the planet?

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