A place where you can be human.
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
Edward Everett Hale
This!! Teamwork is so important in everything. Is it important in the arts? If you want to improve as an artist you have to learn to give and receive feedback. Before you can even reach the beginning point of coming together, you have to be aware of yourself. Know yourself, then let the team come.
Look what I found!
Above I added a new block I’ve never used before called a post carousel. haha! pretty cool.
I’m just now seeing all the options we have with these blocks. It’s wild how much time we have to take to stay up on the latest technology. What makes it not so bad is when you find ways to enjoy learning new things. Let’s be honest though there are days when learning new tech things isn’t fun at all. I get that. New technology is stressful and can daunting especially under pressure. But it’s not so bad when you allow yourself to check it out at your own leisure.
Have you taken time to play around with the new blocks? Let me know.
I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley the writer of Frankenstein also has the best advice I’ve heard from a woman fiction writer who I appreciate. Now that I’m witting this, I’m wondering what other female fiction writers have said such empowering things like this. I’ve already thought of another one! Maya Angelou! She’s an empowering woman not only with her words but with her actions. Listening to her tell stories while she’s over seas lights my fire.
Who am I missing?
You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.
Brene Brown
I always like the phrase perfectly imperfect. Harry Potter has the phase, “Extraordinarily Ordinary.” I think it’s human to suck at new skills and relationships. They both take lots of conscious intention. These saying allow us to grow from our imperfections and/or accept them as they are.
Let’s face it, a nice creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people; it does for me.
Audrey Hepburn
It’s true a big fat slice of Miss. Trunchbull’s super moist chocolate cake tastes like a hug. I didn’t like forbidden chocolate as a kid. It tasted too bitter. Now as an adult, I close my eyes and sit in a quiet space to get the full experience.
What’s your favorite dessert?
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
e. e. cummings
First, find all the parts of you that have been scattered and hidden over the years. Life does that to you. It pushes you around trying to get you to lose yourself, in order to conform to its ways. But there’s so much of you worthy of trusting of believing in. Don’t go out without giving yourself a chance to shine. It took me some time to finally trust myself. The one things that helped me most was getting rid of all the toxic people in my circle. The ones that didn’t have my best intentions in mind. Once I purged my circle, I began to heal. I began to give the positive parts of me more attention and my belief in myself my art my abilities grew stronger over time. I still am aware of my shortcomings and realize that I’m not perfect but at the same time, I’m good enough. And that works for me.
Have you found parts of yourself that you’re proud of? For me, I’m proud of my ability to try new things and accept that I’m a beginner. This is important to me because for sooo long, I was too afraid to even try new things. Now I try them scared. My life is fuller and more rich for it.
then there’s you.
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Barack Obama
In honor of presidents day I share this quote from Obama. Things change whether we wait for it or not. Time marches on and we have not one ounce of control. I spent time wishing the world could stop and give me time to grieve my losses. It didn’t stop so I pressed on. I pressed on with more rest. With gentle words. With more self care than I normally needed but I pressed on all the same. Change happened when I didn’t want it and it happened when I created it. This speech isn’t about the philosophy of inevitable unpreventable change. It’s about being an intentional member of your community.
It’s about being the one that takes the action when you see a problem. It’s about investing your gifts and talents in a mindful way that can positively impact those around you. If we all waited for someone else to improve our cities, towns, schools, communities, churches, families, small groups …, we would all still be waiting. We wouldn’t have one thing on that list.
In what ways are you being the change you seek?
Don’t lose hope, your reaction to change is where your freewill lives. That’s where you get to decide.
I’m spending time with the family tonight. I live for friday pizza nights! We got pepperoni and supreme with motz sticks for an appetizer. Today I wanted to come home and rest, that’s just what I did.
There’s this story you’ve been waiting to write. There’s these words that pop into your head as if they’ve lived there since before you were born. I don’t know where your words come from. Maybe they were there before you were born. What I do know is that words have power and sharing your story frees those words from your cranium. Just think, you can give your words an entire world to live in. You can add to them, embellish them, make sure they are heard by everyone in your story.
Here’s the thing about hiding away, it might feel comfortable for a little while, but it gets lonely, dark, and boring. There’s no growth there. There’s no freedom. There’s especially not connection. Hiding just goes to show that there’s something big out there waiting for you. You know it’s big and you can feel it but sometimes the things that feel so big are just shadows being cast on the wall. Here’s the secret, that shadow, that thing that feels so big that it makes you want to run and hide, that’s the art.
Where are you writing?
If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.
At the same time, doing what you love and maintaining that love takes vulnerability and consistency. In this world they’ll make you think that doing what you love is too expensive and loving what you do is childish. There was many times in the workplace that my light was dimmed for the simple fact that it irritated people. Loving your job pokes at the wounds of those that are making themselves suffer. The truth is they can easily find another place where they thrive. But wait, this post isn’t about others. This is about us choosing joy, peace, and happiness by defining what that looks like, then working at it everyday until waking up and showing up brings you nothing but the chosen values. I want that for us. Show up. Face your ghosts. Face potential heartbreak. Don’t sit on the sidelines. There’s more that awaits you on the other side of fear.
All I ask, is that you create a place where we can grow and thrive together.
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