Mother guilt (and my Best Shot)

For the record, I will state that I have a pretty good set up going on in my life. I work part time with benefits (meaning vacation, holiday and sick leave) and my job is fairly flexible. After years working retail and then adjunct teaching, it is a huge relief to know that when I or my daughter are sick, I can simply choose to stay home without any guilt over how my absence will impact co-workers. I work a 4 day work week with afternoons and 3-day weekends to spend with my family. I do not bring work home with me, nor do I stress about it once I walk out my office door. Sounds ideal, doesn't it?

But with Cowgirl leaving the world of preschool and becoming an official full time student (kindergarten is full time where we live) next fall, I am feeling huge guilt and remorse over the absence of unstructured time in her life. It is a feeling that has been nibbling on my emotional toes but last night felt like a great white shark ready to snap at my heart. As I struggled to fall asleep, I was remembering all the summers I had as a child when days seeped into each other with the only routine to speak of being play. When I was very young, we would spend summer's at the Jersey shore, my dad driving down on weekends. Weekdays were spent with my mom and the pack of neighborhood kids I roamed around with. I was either on the move via my blue hand-me-down boy's bike or sauntering in flip flops to the bay or ocean for swimming, card games on beach towels, or sandcastle building. Adventure was an excursion to the drug store or 5-and-dime to see what our quarters would buy us. A new Archie comic book was a celebration and evenings at a putt-putt golf course this child's dream of perfection.

This summer will be Cowgirl's third time in summer school. I know she has a blast, has access to so many wonderful activities, other kids (which our neighborhood lacks) but still this huge BUT has logged itself in my throat. School mornings I have to drag her out of bed and down to breakfast. Her demeanor is crabby and whiney. On "home days" (non-school days) she is up at the crack of dawn, playing and happy to just hang out in her p.j.s all morning. She gets up early because she doesn't want to "waste time" - her words - sleeping in on a home day. Now, she never wants to leave school when I pick her up, so I am pretty certain her resistance is not because of a problem at school. I think her resistance is to the busy-ness of another school day.

I totally get this and I wonder how I would have felt as a child not to have enjoyed long summers which invariably ended with a level of boredom and readiness to head back to school. And I understand she doesn't know anything different so my guilt has more to do with my expectations and memories. I guess I miss not having a long string of days in which play is the main objective, busy-ness is replaced by laziness and boredom acts as motivation to become more creative, silly and spontaneous. Life seems far more mapped out and planned these days. I suppose my challenge for us all is to figure out ways to loosen things up a bit. Slowing down and making a priority "spacious time" as I like to think about it. Time when things are allowed to unfold, plans change and the attitude of "why not?" prevails.

How do you built spacious or unstructured time into your child's schedule? Or even into adult life? Summer always seems like the season for loafing, lolling, cloud gazing and general relaxation. Am I the only one feeling anxious about facilitating all this?

Happy Monday! Here are my best shots of spacious time from this weekend.

Inspiration Friday: Scratching my creative itch!

The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight.... You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however minuscule, is what turns the verb into a noun - paint into a painting, sculpt into sculpture, write into writing, dance into dancing. (Twyla Tharp - The Creative Habit)

The habit that Tharp uses to approach her blank page she calls scratching. Like scratching a lottery ticket to uncover your prize, or as Tharp explains it "It's like clawing at the side of a mountain to get a toehold, a grip, some sort of traction to keep moving upward and onward."

I love this notion of scratching. What gets me started on a piece or project? How is a seed discovered and then planted? How do I coax creativity out of its dark cave?

As much as I tend to be an orderly, organized person, I am discovering my need for some sort of controlled chaos in order to free up my creative juices. My own personal scratching technique is to be sure I have a couple of projects ongoing to turn to when inspiration strikes. If nothing else, in those seeming lulls of creativity, I have to remind myself to do some prep work. Using this means readying my materials like gesso-ing some journal pages or postcards, shifting through my photo files and uploading pictures to Flickr, or cleaning out my materials bins and discovering new scraps of background papers, magazine clippings and other ephemera that I have collected and which may spark an idea.






When working, I like to move around from project to project striking when inspired. Often when I am working on one piece, I have an idea for another piece and while something is drying or when a piece is marinating, I then move over to a second or even third piece. I am finding my postcard paintings are fantastic vehicles for scratching an idea or image or color scheme that may move into a larger format later on.

Other ways I scratch or stretch out my creative muscles include drawing up inspiration from nature:





Children's books are great sources for inspiration. An image, character or technique pops out at me while reading to Cowgirl and I secretly stash that book away in my art space to peruse and explore later on. (Oh yes, I steal freely from Cowgirl's collection!) The illustrators of children's books are some of my favorite artists and their imagery and styles appealing to the child in me.






Paying attention to Cowgirl's stories is another way I mine for artistic gold. Her imagination and spin on the seemingly ordinary always has me rushing for my journal to jot down ideas. A series of images based upon the antics of our otherwise lazy dog Moose has been particularly fertile ground. Cowgirl has a wonder spin on language: reading the weather section in the paper, she will inform us "Today is sunny, tonight is moony ..." She loves me "all the numbers" (which means a lot) and is wise to the times when I am trying "egg her up" (her interpretation of "buttering someone up.") Lots of good visual puns there!






Any kind of movement - taking a walk, free form dancing, yoga - are all ways to shake off the cobwebs, get the blood flow moving to the brain and stimulate some fresh thinking. Tharp writes about this and it is amazing how I can begin my yoga practice with my mind all cluttered, confused and tied up in knots. Even 15 minutes of movement and focusing upon my breath has the incredible effect of resetting my mind so thoughts flow freely and easily. (Yup, got my bit in for 21-5-800!)





Of course a huge place to scratch is here online. You all are some of my favorite sources for ideas, challenges, and projects. I sometimes wonder if my best pieces of writing are over in someone else's comment section! But as I read and write in others spaces, I often find myself typing my way into a new topic to be explored here and in my written journal.

My absolute favorite way shimmy into creative flow is to watch How To videos. For a mega-normous dose of creative juiciness, any video from the always inspiring Connie of Dirty FootPrints Studio has me humming and buzzing with art making potential.







Oh yeah, can you feel that?! Aren't you ready to hop to ASAP? (And if you feel inspired but intimidated, then I encourage you to check out Connie's newest e-course offering entitled BIG. I'll be there along with some super wonderful art lovelies painting our hearts out this July. And just to be clear, Connie does not know I am posting her video or writing this. I have grown so much as an artist - there, I said it, I am an artist! - and a huge dollop of gratitude is owed to the generosity of Connie as a teacher and as a fellow traveler on this crazy path of art and yoga. Okay, love letter over ♥)

Anyone who meditates will tell you, once you start scratching, the itches become endless. Not what you want when sitting on the zafu trying to focus on the breath, but hallelujah YES! when surrounded by paints, pencils, paper and pen.


What ways do you scratch for creative ideas? Thinking about your scratching habits, it is useful to have your list handy so the next time the paper seems especially white, you have your habits ready to move over the hurdle of that blank page.

Meanwhile, I ask you: Isn't ecstasy supposed to come before the laundry? I'm just wondering where mine went ...

Leapin' Lizards!

I almost skipped today's Wishcasting as I thought I pretty much covered the subject of leaping here. But as I walked Moose in the golden glow of early morning, new forms of leaping tumbled through my brain.

How to answer: What leap do I wish to take?

I wish to leap into my dreams

To leap into flight

Into my truth

Into my calling &

My passion

I wish to leap over

my fears

notions of lack

rocks of self judgment

the mud puddle of comparison

the quagmire of inertia

But really, when all is said and done, I wish to leap into contentment for all that is available to me right now, as I am, as life presents itself to me.

Santosha or contentment is one of the foundational principles in the Yoga Sutras. To understand contentment, the opposite state or discontentment is often considered. Attachment and desire drive discontentment. Feeling a lack, believing what is out there will make me happy/better/more fulfilled only deepens my sense of discontent. To be free from grasping, desire, a sense of incompleteness is to experience Santosha and a happiness that cannot be effected by outside conditions.

Santosha, or the practice of content-ment, is the ability to feel satisfied within the container of one's immediate experience. (Donna Farhi)

When at peace and content with oneself and others (Santosha), supreme joy is celebrated. (Nischala Joy Devi)

Supreme joy ... yeah, I wish to leap into that.

(you could say I also leapt into a new challenge - Thank you Lisa! - of 21 days of yoga practice and writing. I am ready to commit ... or be committed!)

Weekly Reflection (week 22): organic growth

[H]ave patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. (Maria Rainer Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)





I've definitely been reflecting upon and searching for a healthy perspective on process. To say I've been feeling overwhelmed and limited would be an understatement. Part of the problem is my diving into so many rich programs undertaken with the intention to gather an awareness of the tools available to me. My problem is I immediately jump to the conclusion I should have complete mastery over everything: Photo Shop, Blogger, Blogging ... never mind the other lists from my life. And I believe I must always know exaxctly where I am headed before embarking upon any journey. Part of my personality is easily overwhelmed by too much stimulation (there goes my Vata-ness again) and my eye-on-the-prize tendency (the Pitta or fire element in me.)

I cannot put my finger on it, but there is also this sense "out there" (or maybe I'm just creating it in my head) that the boat is taking off and I had better jump on board or risk being left behind and losing my one big chance. And I find myself reacting rather than mindfully engaging.

Funny how the signs are all around me to slow down, pace myself and understand the false demons that plague me. I keep pulling the Isis card which counsels that a current situation involves a past life or childhood event. Thinking about my more immediate past I am aware of a pattern in the area of my vocation. I have felt compelled to make a clear cut decision about what it is I want to be - university professor, yoga teacher, activist just a few labels I have tried on - and then I single-mindedly pursued those careers. I am realizing that I choose a label and then try to squeeze myself and my life into that form rather than allowing my vocation, my calling, to emerge organically out of a process of exploration.




Even when we were preparing to bring Cowgirl home, I had this panicked sense that I wasn't prepared; that I should have been reading more, studying more. I despaired that instead of art history (or yoga), I should have been studying child development, pediatric nursing and Chinese to be really be ready and able. Now I am understanding total preparation is an illusion; a favorite saying of mine is "planning is priceless; plans are useless." So here I am planning and studying and gathering more tools than I every could hope to employ. What I need to remember is the second half of that statement: the part where living happens in the Now and plans are tossed out as life shifts and changes.

As Cowgirl moves through her changes, each stage is marked by a period of complete chaos and then a break down before she masters a new skill and moves into a new phase of development. I recognize this process in her (the calm phases only become apparent when the calm is over) and now I am seeing the same is true for me. My utter confusion as to how I am to proceed marks my moving from one stage of growth into another. I have a sense of something ahead, but I am lack mastery of all the tools and understand that will take me there. It is a process that must be lived through, not rushed. Skill, mastery, understanding develop best when allowed space to integrate and process.

So I am thinking a lot about organic growth. As the Rilke poems suggests, I am trying to live the questions and let go my fixation on the end result. I do not want to put myself into a hot house environment to force growth. I want to have patience and acceptance about where I am in my process. I am embracing the title of Explorer. And with exploring, it is given I will get lost, make wrong turns, lose track of time and space but hopefully have a journey full of discoveries and new adventures. And perhaps the end of my exploring is to arrive exactly where I am but with a new understanding of who it is I want to be.





Organic growth - what would that look like for you? How do we resist the compulsion to measure our growth against another's thereby stunting natural development?

Summer: Let the Games Begin! (and taking my best shots)

I know summer is officially a few weeks away, but in our house summer begins in earnest with the opening of the neighborhood pool. Add to our daily pool routing lots of cooking out doors (the husband has a new smoker/cooker that he is passionately involved with these days) and house guests visiting, it feels 100% like summertime. I love the pace of summer when the days seems to climax with dinner on the patio with goods from the farmer's market and reading novels seems the height of ambition. But I am also aware of this shift in our daily routine that I have so carefully crafted and there is a level of anxiety about losing track of those activities I need to keep me balanced: art journaling, crafting, writing, playing with my photographs. Ironically, I can think of lots of things I want to explore here when I have very little time available for blogging. In fact, I am working within a window of 10 minutes before I have to get dinner started and while Cowgirl is away at a swimming lesson and our guests are napping after a day spent at the zoo.




The challenge for me will be to strike a balance with my need for routine and summer's spontaneous character. Vacations are planned, interrupts will be occurring on a regular basis and I want to be open to enjoying the carefree quality of summer without losing the momentum of my art-filled life. This blog feels like my touchstone: coming here connects me to what I want to play attention to in my life. And while I am busy living my life, I find myself anxious about losing touch with this life. I find myself wondering what others are up to; I want to check in on Flying Lessons; I want you to know I appreciate each and every comment and I feel so guilty when I fail to immediately get over to your home space and chat.

an outing to a favorite ice cream shop

Here is how the craziness looks around here:














So tell me: how do you find balance in the crazy days of summertime? Any secrets besides having a gin and tonic on hand? For more on this subject, check out today's Best Shot by Tracy Clark.

Is this how all mommies feel?

Archive Edition

Things are a little hectic around here. Good friends are visiting and keeping up with Cowgirl and her best buddy Ava seems to demand all of my energy. We met Ava's parents when we were in China and the girls are only one week apart in age. Ava is Cowgirl's oldest friend and our families have made it a priority to get the girls together at least once a year. Well, okay, the Mommies, as we are known, have our priority to see each on as regular as a basis as possible. I'm not sure who has more fun: the girls who immediately fall into a routine of mimicking each other (imagine: DOUBLE the knock-knock jokes!) or the mommies who usually kick back with good food, good drinks and lots to talk about. It is a rare treat to take time out to hang out with another family. It reminds me of my childhood when families gathered regularly - the adults socializing and the kids doing what kids do best: running wild.

So I am distracted by the Wild Things here and am hoping I can capture some of their magic to share later on. In the meanwhile, I've been digging through my archives if you will and polishing up some pieces written last fall when I was taking a 30 day Juicy Journaling writing course with Sark. With the start of Kelly Rae Robert's Flying Lessons course, this piece entitled LEAP seemed very apropos. And after a weekend with 2 five year olds, I should know a few more things about leaping. And jumping. And skipping, and singing and endless demands to stay up late pretty please darling mommy.

Have a great weekend. I hope to be back to normal later next week. Or maybe I hope to expand my normal to include more summer madness?

It jumped out at me

A line I saw somewhere yesterday

“If I do take that leap,

will a net really materialize?”

I’ve been thinking about it

Ever since

What leap or leaps

Do I have inside me

Awaiting the opportunity

To propel me forward and up?

It seems I’ve been dancing around

An issue

A discomfort

An obstacle in my life

That screams at me

To go another way

An immovable object

In my psyche

That requires me

To create a new path.

My problem is

And always has been

Knowing whether reservation

Hesitation

Is the voice of intuition advising me

Or Fear seizing control?

Reflecting upon past leaps

I know at the time

I had a flash

“Do this”

And so I would set off

And yes, there were

Lions and Tigers and Bears

But oh my what journeys!

None I regret taking.

Honestly,

Maybe it is selective

Amnesia

But I cannot recall

A chance I took that didn’t

Take me in the direction

I needed to go

Even if at the time

I wasn’t clear about

Where

That would be.

So why do I

Continue to

Second-guess myself?

I do not want to become

A female

J Alfred Prufrock

Measuring my life

A coffee spoon at a time

My moment of greatness

Another quick flicker

That fades before I can

Enjoy it.

No, I do not wish to say

Of myself

“In the end,

I was afraid.”

My mermaid

My muses

My angels

All singing

And whether they are singing to me

Or for others or just themselves

It does not matter

For if I choose

To add my voice

Then it becomes my song

As well.

If I leap, will a net appear?

If I sing, will voices join me?

If I dance

Will I twirl my way

Into a new beginning?

Weekly Reflection (week 21): The great pretender

Two days into Kelly Rae Roberts amazing e-course Flying Lessons and I am already needing a new journal to keep up with all the ideas, prompts, questions and suggestions heaping up in my brain. Yesterday she raised a question which resonated with me:

What would I like to pretend to be?

And then she suggests a great strategy which is basically a spin on "Fake it until you make it" or to rephrase her idea, fake it until I am no longer faking. This is where I've been headed these past weeks and I am feeling ripe and ready to embrace this central fact:





Now, I've been walking around, trying on for size the mantle of "Artist" and "Creative Being" not quite ready to voice it, but certainly feeling it in my bones and in my sap and spirit. And it feels pretty darned good. Like prancing around in the fitting room in expensive but beautifully made outfit and realizing "hey, I deserve this! And I can afford it!"

hard to believe, this is me in Unravelling, 359 days ago. My, how things have changed!

Oh yeah, I've got my list of fears and obstacles to work through. My fears revolve around lack: talent, skill, ideas, time, and resources. But I know from experience each time I push myself out there, what I need always rushes up to meet me where I am standing. Abundance and creativity are the lifeblood of the Universe, so why would I persist in believing I am exempt from receiving any?

Ultimately, I do trust, I do believe in the cycle of giving and receiving, flow moving out and coming back in. Creativity is an energy that defines life/living and we all have access to it, we all are part of it. The trick is to strengthen my creative muscles with daily practice; keep the lines of communication flowing and know it is all about process and flow. I am a work in progress; my life is a creative act and each day I am choosing to celebrate that fact. As Twyla Tharp counsels in her wonderful book The Creative Habit "[T]ake a deep breath, stamp your foot, and shout 'Begin!' You never know where it will take you."




Starting where I am ... believing, trusting, being fearless (my word for the year!) and most of all, loving. Loving myself, loving my life, and loving through creating and sharing. A pretty good place to begin I would say.