The One In Which I Catch You Up
I have a lot to cover in this post, so bear with me. It's picture heavy and TL;DR. :)
I did a mini-retreat in December shortly before the holidays. This was the second year I checked into the Frederick Street Inn here in Kitchener for a few days of no work and lots of whirlpool baths. When I arrived, the lovely owner, Amanda, give me a big hug and helped me get settled in. The next four days were pretty much glorious.
This sums it up.
I took nine baths in four days. I am totally serious. :)
I also ate a lot and wandered a fair bit, and dug into one of those yearly planner things. Then I realized that I really don't want to do someone else's planner every year. I'd rather create my own! So that got put on my list of things to do in 2015.
I meditated a fair bit as well, and came to some conclusions. I work too hard. I take on too much. It isn't good for me to be so busy with content creation that I feel overwhelmed all the time. It's a good way to self-medicate, but I don't *want* to self-medicate. I let go of Moonshine for 2015 and decided to focus on Book Of Days & Life Book pretty much exclusively, at least in the early part of this year. As spring arrives, we'll see what happens, but for now, I am working in a pared down way that allows for lots of personal work and healing.
Creating the cover really brought me into a state of readiness for the year ahead. I realized, as I was creating it, that I wanted to coast into 2015 without a whole lot of unnecessary fanfare or hooplah. I recognize the value in marking transitions from one year to the next, but my spirit was wanting to experience the transition in a gentler, less linear way than I might have done in the past few years. I wanted to acknowledge that while, yes, New Year's is a big deal, a new calendar year is a big deal, it is also just another day in a long, long cycle of days...
Something about the cyclical nature of each year felt really soothing and gentle to me.
I also wanted to put 2014 behind me without a whole lot of focus on what had transpired. I'm still so firmly IN what's been going on all year that it seemed disingenuous of me to call it 'over'. It is what is. I want to embrace what is. That seems a gentler path to me than treating it as though it was a closing door.
Doors do close, it's true, but what had been going on in 2014 would only spill through any cracks in doors I'd closed. It felt better to leave a portal open so that whatever needed to follow me into 2015 would have a way to do so. All the finality of releasing and closing ceremonies felt just plain *wrong* for me at this time.
I did, however, choose a word of the year. Joy. I was going to choose audacious, but that felt like way too much pressure. Joy felt somehow more in line with what my soul was craving. And, we're not talking about 'I WON THE LOTTERY' joy, either. We're talking about the perfect cup of coffee joy. The sound of the creek joy. The warm puppy and a good book joy.
Gentle would have made a good word, too, but it was lacking something so I embraced joy.
This is my first spread for Book Of Days this year:
It's a hot mess, but it's MY hot mess and I am in love with all that joyful colour.
Life Book got off to a gorgeous start. I am already behind, but the bonus weeks between 'main' weeks gives one plenty of time to play catch up. I got my warm up done, which was super fun and allowed me to focus yet more attention on my word of the year.
And the girls in my seekrit Life Book club are doing beautiful work as well. (In case you missed this: if you sign up for Life Book using my link (which is how I get paid for teaching), and then you EMAIL me to tell me you signed up, I will let you into our seekrit club house where I teach my Ultimate Notebook class do Life Book alongside you all year. It's awesome!).
The thing with keeping a notebook for classes one takes is that not only do you end up getting more out of the class because you are better prepared to integrate what you've learned, but you also end up with a work of art in and of itself. The notebooks end up all fat and juicy with your notes, clippings from the PDFs, screen shots, and ultimately, images of your own work.
It really works for me, though I will admit there are times it feels like a bit of a slog to watch the videos first, take notes, cut and paste (literally as opposed to the kind we do on the web) images and snippets from PDFs, print images of works in progress to glue in, etc. etc....
But when I've done the lesson and I glue in the final image of my work, a sense of accomplishment unlike any other I've ever experienced (except maybe the one experienced after childbirth) takes over and I can't wait to do it all again with the next lesson!
I introduced this concept in Radiant (you can still register!) and it has really changed the way some folks take classes. I heard nothing but positive feedback about how the notebook helps a body really dig into course content. It's also kind of like 'keeping score' in a visual and tangible way. When you're done, you can flip through the notebook and KNOW that you DID IT. Maybe not all of it, but enough that your notebook is a scrumptiously full bank of inspiration, ideas, and examples of your own progression as an artist.
New Year's was really special this year.
My Umfriend (formerly known as Manfingy formerly known as my ex) and I drove to Montreal on December 31st for smoked meat at Dunn's (a restaurant I remember from my childhood), and then to Ottawa to hang out with my daughter, sister-in-law, brother-in-law and niece.
We are family. Whatever else we might be, we're that, and that's okay with me.
I spent Jan 1 teaching my loves how to layer in the kitchen nook in Vivi's house. It was splendid...
We spent about five hours painting that day. I can't think of a better way to spend the first day of the year! Can you?
This is a not very good photograph of the painting I did while demonstrating layering techniques. It is my very first art of 2015 and I really love it. Vivi wants a print, so I'm going to send her one as soon as I get this one sealed and properly photographed.
I Said Farewell To Moonshine
As a bonus and a thank you to my loves in Moonshine, I created a painting for the first full moon in 2015 on camera:
This is an ode to joy and change and all things feminine. I loved creating it.
So how am I really?
I swing between perfectly okay and miserable, but I think that's okay considering there were a few months there where it was all miserable all the time. I am moving forward, one foot in front of the other, towards gentle joy. I am investing in my own art, spending time playing for the sake of playing, continuing in therapy, and letting myself be desire led wherever possible.
Yesterday, for example, after three days of zero human contact, I bundled up and braved the weather just so I could breathe the same air as other human beings.
Last night, though? It was imperative. I needed to be out among humans, so I braved it and went. I got a new nude lipstick from Mac (with matching lip liner) a hair cut (just a trim), my eyebrows waxed, and a delicious dinner. A friend (not that kind of friend) met me at the restaurant and we talked for a few hours before I headed back home.
My mood lifted, but then sank again when I got a call from a family member in crisis. I had a lot of triggery feelings around what was going on there, and decided that I really could not be alone with all the feels for the rest of the evening.
Umfriend came over. We talked about what's going and I got to a place of calm and inner peace, and then curled up to watch an episode of Luther on Netflix (it's awesome, by the way). When he arrived, he came bearing gifts (all my packages go to his house since I don't have proof of address for my new place yet) - a box of Dina Wakley mixed media paint that I purchased from Artistcellar.
And that brings us to now.
I'm wearing flannel pajamas and sipping a mocha with whipped cream. I have done all my admin work for the day, so I'm going to paint. Umfriend is picking me up later and we're going to go for Pho.
And that's today.
And you? What's up with you? Tell me everything. xo
