Paul wrote about his (anti)business plan over here.

Dale wrote about negativity over here.

I’ve been feeling the negativity. It’s a scary time. The US is at war, again. Japan is a disaster zone. US politics is a god awful mess. Then I’ve got the personal is political thing going on with my old HS deliberating a GSA group. Add to that my 2 recent car accidents and my sewing machine being FUBAR, and well, you can see a recipe for disaster.

Sometimes I get sucked into it.

But I look at the whole of my life and realize, I’ve got it pretty darn good. Sure, I need another $500 that will need to materialize, but I’ll get a new sewing machine eventually and the car will get repaired.

I think to next month and I’ve got an art show coming up and should have another during the summer.

I have to think that’s pretty darn sweet.

Paul’s thought’s ring true. I do the blog for free, yeah there are ads but they don’t bring in much and I’ve gone over why I have them here before so I’ll avoid talking about that again. When I started to screen my adds so that only comics, Etsy shops and a select few make it through, things got better. It makes sense for me to allow Etsy and artfire sellers to advertise here. ArtJournaling.ning.com is free. It will be free for as long as I’m in  charge of it. Why? Because I want it to remain being the best place for people to learn about Art Journaling.

And #10 on his list rings true. I’ve noticed that some of the blogs that I’ve loved and some of the other stuff have boiled down to schtick and are no long honest representations of the person behind the scenes. When I STOP being me on my blog, I hope someone will call me out on it. Point it out to me and tell me I’m not being me.

On her blog, Dale, wrote about unfollowing negativity. This is something I’ve put into practice. On facebook I went through a culled out the most negative people. People I no longer wished to read their hate and vitriolic posts. People with whom I felt only negativity. They seemed to respond to only stuff they didn’t like and sent out barbed comments. Unfollow. Unfriend.

Who needs that?

I realized a few months ago that I can invite negativity into my life or I can close the door on it. I’ve chosen to close the door on it.