sailing . . . but where?

I love the vessel I’m sailing in, it’s sound, tested as sea worthy, and I’ve come to realise that I can land at any number of ports . . . thanks Quinn . . .  Quinn McDonald is a very astute life coach with a mind like a steel trap, ears that miss nothing and heart, lots of heart.

Spring is a time of change, particularly when it comes to wind direction here in New Zealand.  There’s not a lot of land out there to shelter us and the Roaring 40s are well named . . . we expect it but I have to tell you I am OVER IT!  I would like some nice settled weather to get out, walk the beach and think, I think better when I’m walking.  I used to think best when I was running and I had up to 64 kilometres/40 miles a week of thinking time!

I’ve thought so much about what I want to do, which direction I want to go, that my head hurts, and my good-sense-self says “if it hurts, stop doing it!”  So I will, I’ll stop the thinking and just do, do whatever I like, when I like and how I like.  Oh such luxury to be in this place . . .  but I am spoiled for choice. An apt expression, it’s that word spoiled, it brings to mind rotten meat or milk that has soured, eggs that have sat out for far too long, citrus fruit mouldering in the bowl . . . spoiled.

Yes indeed, a plethora of choices is not necessarily the easiest thing to manage.  It’s that whole, ‘to choose one thing is to shut out a lot of other things’ conundrum . . . a very black and white way of looking at it I know.  So like the Lord High Executioner, I have a little list,  sorry about the Mikado reference but it always echoes in my head when I say “I have a little list,” and I don’t even like most musicals!

Sometimes lists are great, you get a wonderful feeling crossing items off upon completion, keep you organised when times are stressful and they help sort out what’s important, especially when the items are arranged in the form of a PMI (Positive, Minus, and Interesting).  I wrote down everything I liked to do, as well as everything that needs to be done, on little bits of paper so it’s not technically a list I tell myself.  (How picky!)  I then shuffled around the bits of paper into the different PMI categories.  After that I put shuffled the items according to my level of enjoyment or lack thereof, and began to see that some of what I get the most satisfaction from work well together.  Of course there is no way to wrap everything into a neat package however a lot of things fit into bookbinding.

I looked at satisfaction level more than what I’m good at . . . I have learned that just because I can do something well doesn’t mean I have to.

Just some of what I like to do . . . before sorting. The ‘after’ will be clear in what I produce.

So there won’t be a change in what I do, just a slight shift in direction towards yet another destination.  I started small yesterday by refilling a notebook cover I made ages ago with stained sketch pad paper . . . I just felt like hoisting sail and going off in that direction.

A3 sketch pad paper, stained with blackcurrant and apple tea, salt crystals on the puddles, dried and repeated on the reverse.

And while I am allowing myself to be propelled by impulse for a time, there will come a point when I know I will need a goal, something big to work toward, because I know me, and I know the NBG (Next Big Goal) is not going to come while I’m thinking . . . I need to be doing.  Direction does not come in a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious) as an adult any more than it does when you’re a young adult starting out in the world, you find your way through finding your way . . . somethings don’t change.

And the Christmas market? Not a raving success up on the school stage away from the throng. While a little disappointed I’ll try again, sell everything off, recoup my outlay, and then give away or donate what is left to charity.  And think again?  No, no more thinking.  As much as I enjoyed some aspects of the preparations, I don’t like the feeling of being on a production line so I shall make ‘one-offs,’ bespoke items, and then decide what to do with them.  Maybe take the odd request, but I shan’t use the word order, I don’t take orders at all well . . . it brings forth a strong rebellious streak.

On the positive side, my work was much admired at the market and I received many encouraging comments although one child was rather bemused that I had already painted the pages of the small notebooks . . . he thought they should definitely be white.

There’s just no pleasing some people.

Acrylic on sketch paper, recycled manila folders as covers.

And the winner of my giveaway? Using a random number selector Jo’s name came up!   Congratulations Jo, I’ll rustle up a box and have it ready to send as soon as I have your address.

Cheers everyone . . . kia kaha . . . stand strong!

sitting with my demons

I envisaged this page complete and just did it . . . no procrastination or consideration about the time or materials, I just picked up the nearest pencil and drew.   The whole page was there, a visual BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious)  in my head . . . or is that my heart?Sitting with our demons

I think perhaps that our demons are nothing more than our hurts child selves, that if we sit beside them and listen quietly we would be able to understand and help them to heal. 

Wouldn’t we all do that for a child? 

Why not ourselves?

Let me in.

Let me help . . . please?

a BFO strikes again!

I was aware of an earlier BFO (a Blinding Flash of the Obvious) being brought to my attention once more – it was around a line in a meditation that went ‘each day passes whether you participate or not’, Deng Min-Dao, 365 Meditations.

Let me tell you, I think far too much.  Sometimes I write just to see where it will lead me and it helps to quiet everything down.  You see I’m an ideas person my mid is constantly in top gear and I like this about myself.  My ideas are often creative approaches to problem solving or for unusual projects – I have far more ideas than I can possibly carry out.  Or could I?  That’s the thing, that perhaps I could and just don’t because of why?  Because of fear?  Of what?  Of my own criticism?  That it won’t be perfect?  That because it may not be ‘useful’ it is of no use?  These questions plague me, they stymie me and stay me from action on all but the simplest of projects – the ones I know I can do immediately or in one sitting.  I need to break out and try something completely new.  Completely new.

I have an idea of how I would like my life to be.  There I am in my house, light, open, airy, spacious rooms suited to their purpose.  Not making do and wanting something better, it’s simple and well planned.  Sunshine, a garden with flowers and vegetables, trees for shade.  Or rain beating on the roof, the wind howling outside, a cosy fire and music.

And what am I doing in this environment?  I’m . . . I cannot quite see what I’m doing.  I think I’d like to be making, creating, painting, sewing . . . all for pleasure.  But there you go, I’m not certain what I want to be doing.  I know I’d be gardening, talking and eating with friends, relaxing and reading, but with hands busy making things in a workshop/studio that spills over into the rest of the house which sounds pretty much what happens now because the ‘studio’ is more of a large cupboard for storage.  But if I’m too scared to start doing what I think I’d like to be doing, and don’t really know what it is anyway what hope is there for me?  I don’t want to grow old with too many regrets and I’m afraid that if I don’t start now I will – but I do believe I have started by just confronting the issue.  One thing I do know is that I won’t be doing one thing – I’d get bored . . . I think.

Is that what those dreams are about, where I am using my last ounce of strength to save myself and knowing I should care more for myself so I’ll be stronger?  Where I know that I am entering last-chance territory?   You know the dreams, out there on the rocks, the tide is coming in, have to get back to shore.

To continue I need to look at what I have and think about William Glasser’s three Choice Theory/Reality Therapy questions.

1.  What do I want?
2. What am I doing to get it?
3. Is it working?

I need to make a plan – and I do not need to get everything done and dusted, completed, out of the way (of what you might ask), to make all perfect before I start because if I start all will be perfect, unpredictably perfect.  I need to not wait until I have a definitive answer to question 1.

All those photos that need to be sorted, that ephemera from my travels including the 110+ boarding passes, the family photos and family tree – they can be part of it.

I can work out what I cannot move on without doing (finish painting the laundry and bathroom for a start).  Do it and move on simultaneously – the rest can wait or go.  Moving on fearfully is better than staying stuck.  Oh, that’s a BFO!

Dream the I’m possible dream.   Trite but true.

a significant change of pace

I have done nothing but day-job work all week, arriving home happily tired and usually with some professional reading.  I know it will settle down but in the meantime the poor bear didn’t get mended, very little of my grand-daughter’s cardigan got knitted and I didn’t open my little Moleskine all week, not to mention the brocade quilt!  I’ve been productive and busy so why give myself a hard time about it?  I know I am not Superwoman, don’t want to be Superwoman, never aspired to be superwoman, in fact the whole concept of a superwoman stinks!  Ah, I feel better now that I’ve given her a small ‘s’ which is all that particular friend of my inner critic deserves!

Starting work full-time after a year’s part-time work and 3 months of being unemployed has been quite a shift – albeit an energising and intellectually stimulating one.

With winter coming on I start each day with a 20 km drive through the countryside just after sunrise and reverse the trip at sundown – I don’t even mind the smell of the occasional truck full of sheep as they remind me of sheep being driven down the road past my father’s shop when I was a kid – I’m immediately transported back and can hear the sound of their feet on the macadam, the dogs barking.   Smells are so evocative aren’t they?

Monday and Friday, as I leave the beach behind for the week, I leave even earlier when it is still dark and arrive home with the sun just setting beyond the horizon of the sea.  There is something I find truly wonderful about leaving a sleeping town in the early hours of the morning – I love that sense of adventure and new beginnings that it engenders.

The day job.  I have absolutely wonderful colleagues – knowledgable, generous, hard-working, humourous, caring – and a job that requires us to be endlessly creative in how support people to solve the difficulties that face them each day.   I just love a challenge and think perhaps creative problem solving is my strength – I just wish I was as adept when it comes to my own!  Maybe I am . . . when you’re so close in, sometimes it’s hard to be both objective and yet free in your thinking.

On Friday (yes you North Americans, it’s a perfect, calm, sunny autumn Saturday morning here), I attended a day of strategic planning – more wonderful colleagues meeting up with a clear focus – and had some reading to do about goal setting to overcome the discrepancy between the current situation or conditions and what was desirable.  I came upon the words CONSTRUCTIVE DISCONTENT.  Fantastic descriptor don’t you think?

I’ve never considered discontent or criticism to be necessarily negative although many do – to me it’s simply a signal that change is needed.  The trouble is, when I read a phrase that resonates such as ‘constructive discontent’ it rambles around in my mind and I start thinking and thinking and thinking and . . . you know what I mean?  I need to DO something with this!

So while I haven’t been terribly creative in the evenings, my days are endlessly challenging and satisfying.  Lucky me!

Lucky me this morning too – a plunger (French press) of coffee, return to bed, laptop, favourite blogs, washing on, sunshine pouring in – and to top it off I have a fresh new copy of Cloth Paper Scissors that was delivered to my mailbox!!!

I’m one very happy woman!And with this just 2 minutes from my front door?  Blessed in the extreme.  Of course life throws up challenges which I sometimes struggle to keep in proportion, but . . . life is so good.

Now, what to do, what to do. . . .?  The library have found a copy of Jill Berry’s Personal Geographies on interloan for me, my machine is calling, I want to call some friends and . . . I think I need more than just a weekend!