Positives Outweigh Touches of Sadness - Yay!

I am not truly a sad person. I don't do depression well. And it seems like every job I end up at, they call me "Sunshine". Only after they do I tell them it follows me everywhere. In my normal life out in the world (this could lead to another post about who I am at home and who I am out in the world...) I do my best to be optimistic. To be positive, to keep moving forward to live the life I want.

I also move forward when I am who I am at home. Yet I'm much more free at home, in my space. (Even with my daughter!) I relax. I just am. I'm human.

At home in the midst of relaxing and healing and not pushing myself yet pushing myself to move my life forward (being "productive is cyclical), I have sad moments. Not so many lately. I honor who I am inside and what is working it's way outward. Yet I am truly happy to have all this creative encouragement around me! Other humans who are doing their art and sharing it with the world. I love that we all do our art. I love that I am writing more frequently. Yes, it does lift us out of ourselves and into who we might or could truly be.

I still have moments where I cry. It comes less and less. I notice when I allow myself to be sad and sink into it, I feel so alone in this world. I feel shocked about the things that have happened to me. And these days, it passes even more quickly. I am choosing to be more conscious about no longer even needing to stay stuck in the unmoving spot. Hooray for me and my healing. Hemal Radia pointed out that even when something horrific has happened it's best to place your energy clearly on something else in order to distract yourself from focusing on the bad things.

I feel blessed to have all my friends and positive influences surrounding me. I feel blessed to feel the not so great feelings fluttering away that have been dwelling within. I feel even more blessed to be creatively moving forward. Okay, they might be tiny steps right now. I know I have it in me to keep creating. If I live out all the dreams I have inside for my creative adventures I live them. It's good to keep working on them, in any case. It's good to simply create.

Happy Moves

This girl is happy! I've been on the fence about something. For at least one reason I'm now commiting to something soooo close to my heart, to happiness, to more joy. To making a good life again! Now I'm ready for life to keep flowing great again. I'll keep you posted about the good news as I actually move into it.

I love it when you make a decision and things fall right into place. When that happens, it's the universe whispering you are my beautiful child and you will live what you desire, here you go, let me help you. :)

I feel like I have many things I want to write about ~ some of my posts have been like that, meandering this way and that. And if you've ever met me, I speak like I email. I've just got lots of stories inside me!

I just feel like life is ready to open up again. I love that this happens every summer for me. It has to when I'm living in Minnesota. Chuckle. The winter season is mostly miserable for me after living in Key West and Miami Beach. Of course summer here has got to be fabulous. I've loved how I work on the internal in the fallow months. I've loved all the work I've done in Lynn Woodland's wonderful groups. I'm pretty sure I'll partake in one more before I sail off again.

When your life isn't going absolutely fabulous, one recommendation is to be in gratitude. All the time. I have started a new practice for falling asleep for the last several months. My mind goes and goes (especially now not leaving for a day job but staying home with my daughter instead), so it can take a while to fall asleep. Lately I start with forgivenesses. I have gotten miles out of forgiving myself and those in my life for everything. Things happening that day and many more things that already happened. It has freed me up. I admit knowing I had been stuck and physically not what I want to be teaches me to work on loving myself again. Loving yourself is such a great thing to work on day in and day out! After forgivenesses, I list what I am grateful for. I love falling asleep doing one of these self-talk exercises. Much healthier than worrying and having fitful dreams! :)

Do you have any thoughts on how we can use gratitude to transform our lives? The one way I have seen it transform my life is when I bring good things in, to truly be grateful all the time. It feels good to stay in this energy. And I tell you, I may be at the tail end of being in a Minnesota funk, but I've been in terribly worse funks. I'm grateful to be where I'm at in this moment! Thank you for reading my thoughts ~ I appreciate you!

Stop Caring What Others Think About You!

I just got back from a walk with my mom. I had turned into a slug with a bad knee and swollen feet so it's great that I make myself go walking. Even though my parents bug the shit out of me, I know my mom likes to "do things" with me. So I asked her to go. It was only 45 minutes around our boring as hell subdivision. (Yes, can you tell I'm not for the suburbs...chuckle, chuckle)

Wow. Amazing that my mother is 65 and she still cares about what you say out loud when people are walking by instead of not giving a rip. What a crock of hooey! My request: "Can ah have a diff-er-ent muther pulease?" No? Okay, then I'll the next best thing: retrain myself not to care. And get on with my life so I can do what I'm meant to do. I know it's generational for her. It's just the way she is: she cares more about what the Jones' think. Sigh. Boring life.

People who know me absolutely know I'd rather have a different mom. I grapple with the spiritual fact that I chose her. I seem to have chosen the need to learn either to have skin so tough I don't let others affect me as I move through life attempting to do my work (this hasn't worked so far, at best it's off and on). Or I've been chosen to be an eternal teacher to her. And it's funny when she gets mad at me saying I'm the child and I'm not supposed to be teaching her how to treat me. Pfft!!!

It is most definitely my job to stand up for myself! Yes, it's been such a long road. Yes, fun and beautiful and breathtaking at times. For moments, anyways. I've been truly blessed in so many different ways. One thing I can do is take the good and keep the gratefulness of those good things in my heart in order to keep working on having a better life. And keep doing my art, my craft.

Last night I was journaling and realized I have some more tools for turning myself and my life around. I blog occasionally and I journal about the same. To journal I do three pages of writing what has been on my heart lately. I make myself write three pages. I get into good stuff. Stuff that turns me around and helps me begin on my healing path and the path to a much better life. Yes, you've read here life hasn't been the best lately since choosing to live in my parent's house (albeit in our own space). Thank goodness it's summer. Isn't everything better in the summer in Minnesota! :)

I recently had some major dental work done, and have more to go. Yes, it's painful. At the same time, I'm incredibly blessed to be a superfast healer! In being able to eat next to nothing, I immediately had to give up my sugar crutches. Hooray! And I journaled about how it's difficult when we are so caught up in what we are caught up in to stop. To restart. This has been a good circumstance for me to give up some things that blocked more than healthy eating. Clutching onto food, as in at night when I have down time from being a single mom, keeps me attached to the fear of never succeeding in all my fabulous ideas.

It's so good to figure out what exactly I can do to shift my energy so life keeps getting better and back to what I truly desire (living by the ocean and having enough money to take care of us to stay there!!). So hooray for realizations and hooray for what I am doing to keep moving forward. And pfft to naysayers! In some ways it makes me a tad sad I have to be my own cheerleader but that is my life right now. If you have a fabulous mom, you are blessed!

I'll keep you posted on how I'm moving forward and the fun projects I'm working on. The first one is getting my fabulous children's book out the door!

I love it when you shift your energy and, in your mind at least, you are so unstoppingly positive and see only success for yourself! I want more of that life!

Bad Boys Finish Last Too...Eventually

An old time family friend posted as his fb status "nice guys finish last". I didn't know if he was referring to himself or his situation of detangling from a marriage with two small girls. Some thoughts came to mind since reading this from him - but first I must say obviously we can never ever truly know what another has lived. Immediately I wondered if he wasn't a bad boy. So perhaps people can change from what they used to be, if perhaps they grew up kind of wild.

This can a person change thing has got to be a home-grown Minnesota concept. Ha! Myself, I met my bad boy walking down Duval street in Key West on May 25, 2002. He had long, dark, curly hair and we talked for hours that first night. We're long divorced, although he still intrigues me.

I believe we have the capacity to let any situation or person change us into a better person. Reflecting just on a surface level, I think it could happen. Yet if one was wild and addicted in the first place, you're not going to be living a deep, spiritual, fulfilling life I would gather.

It's heartwrenching when you figure out you do have a bad boy and that's what he is. As for myself, I'm anxious to know why indeed we settle for these surfacey sexier-than-hell boys when we end up running like hell later on? Please share with me your thoughts on this! At least in this journey of the last eight years or so, I've allowed myself to turn inward and reflect good things. Yes, you could say it's all good or it simply is. Thank goodness I'm where I am now, with this man who'll stay in my life because of our daughter not being such a bad boy any more. Today I'm grateful for all the forgiveness work I've done and even moreso for all the learning and self-reflecting to know how I've gotten to this step.

I know I didn't really touch on how they do get theirs, but even when all seems unfair and perhaps your whole world has topped momentarily, everything does get evened out. You only need to wait and the tears will dry.

Inspiration All Around Me

Wow. I'm astounded by the creative, beautiful minds I've surrounded myself with. Amongst the many ways to receive inspiration, books and movies seem perhaps not true sources yet they are really stories. They can be fleeting but are inspirational at the same time for me. For such a long time I've been a lover of books and also the stories movies briefly wrap us up in. (I must confess in the last few years with no real romance and sometimes not even much "of a life" while I work/take care of my six year old, I am periodically drawn to fluffy things that make me feel good for the moment.) Even the fluff can have its benefits. I love when you shift your energy, and sometimes the fluffiest fluff does that for me.

These days I am staying at home with my daughter, choosing not to work out in the world. Whenever I've chosen not to work conventionally in the past, I tend to get squirrelly. I need stimulation and contact with others. I'm quite the extrovert. I can also honestly admit living in Key West and Miami Beach has given me the gift of thinking I need more stimulation, that my life and all surrounding me needs to be like a comedic sitcom. It's fun when it is, yet I do see it for what it is and how I've changed.

What I love these days about staying home and recreating my space and, at the same time, my life, is going within. I feel more vibrant and more alive when I take time for me by journaling my three pages, by blogging, by connecting with like-minded souls. I had the most wonderful life before my daughter was born. I did a lot of work on myself, becoming more spiritual, releasing qualities I no longer needed from the world at large and my family of origin in specific. I wouldn't trade those times for anything. I also love how what we've lived allows us to be who we are at this moment. Even the hard stuff. It's so difficult when we're going through the low moments, and yet we know we'll end up learning much from it.

What I truly appreciate is those who inspire me with their tales of how they live their creative lives. I read mildlycreative.com and blackinkpad.blogspot.com frequently. I have loved reading the words of SARK, Geneen Roth, Nathalie Goldberg, Anne Lammott, yet the blogs are right there, so easy to read the honest words, take it into my heart, and pick myself up if needed. Or to go create some art. Or room for making art.

For the millions of reasons doing your art is good for your soul, the one I love best is that it allows you to sink into yourself. To get to know yourself (again perhaps if you've gotten caught up in life), to allow yourself to actually like yourself again. Yay! Isn't that a valid yet great goal in life? To do what you love so you learn to love yourself or if you already do, keep loving yourself? Seems to me it's a grand life if you can do this. Thanks to my creative mentors for encouraging me!

These have been full days, yet...

As my friend Barb says, Create! So here I am.

Life has been so very full lately, but not really at the same time. Many, many familial disappointments, but could I ever expect anything less with the disappointment I grew up with? At the same time, my life has been so hushed here in this place I semi-choose to call home at present, so I welcome the sitcom dramas that come into my life. It makes me wonder where I picked this up? So long ago I was a peaceful, purposeful spiritual being. Now I am so vastly opposite of that being.

Now I am a single mom. My daughter is six. I love her dearly. I'm better when I use my brakes and say no to the evils of the world influencing her. (Evils of the world: some television, her grandparents, born-agains, what else? Judgement, anything that crushes her almighty character...as I know it takes a lllllooooonnnnnggggg time to rebuild yourself.) I love watching icarly and hannah montana with her, yet once upon a time for three whole years i owned no television set. people used to ask me what in the world i did. many great writers have taken to nature to discover their interiors.

So I lost my job in May. Yes, my day job. I thought I loved it. Now that I'm exceedingly happy it was disappeared, it is humorous that through this first again horrendous Minnesota winter I lived through after pretty much not being able to stay living in south Florida, I saw my job as the one thing keeping me here. I came back here to make some good money, pay things off, to help my parents out a little, and mostly, so my daughter could hang out with her grandparents. Not hard, as we live in the same house, different floors. I can only laugh loudly that I ever expect anything different from my nutty mom. I'm appreciative of most that she does, but I am the different one in this family. No, I'm not "successful" or "happily married". Yet I'm truly happy with much of the life I've lived. I'm truly blessed to have my daughter, have forgiveness in my heart (an an open eye) as she, her dad and I reconnect.

It's time to enjoy these full days. And also to work on my own creating again. Thanks to all of you who inspire me and push me! These wondrous things we achieve happen baby step by baby step! I'm ready for more! That's what I love about summer - it's brings such beauty and joy internally and externally in our lives.