I’m home sick, yet again. I’m attempting to avoid antibiotics for my poor sinuses. I’m drinking tea and doing neti pots and resting which is about the best I can hope for at this point.

I had a couple of conversations with a couple of different people and it set me right. Put me back on my path correctly. I have to get back to the heart of the matter and that is art and my art. I can’t make everyone happy all of the time and some of the time I’m going to make people unhappy. The important thing is that I do this thing that I’m doing and I do it authentically. I do it by being me, occasionally misguided and misconstrued, but me.

So I’m getting things ready for my art journaling class, Spring Alive and I started the Face Experiment up again. The Face Experiment really gets to the core of I want to do- paint and draw.

A guy I kinda knew from work passed away last weekend. He’d had a long battle with cancer. He was young and had made his way up the ranks of leadership with the company. Anytime someone passes away it leaves me with the thought, if I died tomorrow, or knew I was to die young what would I do differently? Would I change the course of my life? Make different decisions? It’s a thought process in futility. I can’t change the past all I can do is change my future.

I’m starting that process, today, but just going ahead and doing it, painting and drawing every day. Help me on my path, head over to the Face Experiment and load up a picture of your face.

Check out some of the pics from the project:

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I’ve had this crazy plan to do another prompt related workshop on ning but with a twist. The crazy idea I had is to make it more intense, directive, with questioning. When I journal I ask myself questions and really explore what’s going on in my head. I don’t just write and paint to not think about the stuff going on in my mind. Rather I look at my art journal as a place to walk up to the edge of my understanding and tip my toe just over that line, and then hopefully dive in and learn how to swim.

That is what art journaling is all about- an adventure in my mind. I want you to try this method out see what it’s like and see if it is something you’d like to put into your daily art journaling practice. Because I want as many people to try this out as possible I’m going with a “pay what you can” method of payment.  The group will be hosted on AJ Ning as all of my workshops are. You’ll need to request membership and once you’ve requested membership you’ll find buttons to pay. Suggest payment is $20, however if you can’t afford that, pay what you can. If you’d like to pay for a spot for someone else, pay more.

The class will run from March21st to April 17^th. That’s 4 weeks. Each week will feature a pdf with text, 7 simple prompts, 2 intense prompts and what I like to call 2 ideas. The simple prompts are words and phrases to get the ideas rolling, you can journal on them once per day but there are thematic and meant as more of a meditative prompt.  The 2 intense prompts ask you a question and you think on it and write. The text is some of my thoughts on art journaling, why to do it, how it can positively influence you in your everyday life and how it has influenced me.

Wordy Wednesday is a little late this week. No excuses other than laziness, lots of cooking and cleaning. No really I cleaned a bunch of stuff. I feel like such an adult!

I’ve written about copy right and the creative commons before. I moved my blog over to the creative commons as well as my entire flickr stream. It means you can share as long as you give attribution and your site is non-commercial. As long as I’m linked it’s good. Some people prefer that you never share their stuff or link to their blog only. To each their own.

I’ve also written previously about how I think copyright violations should be dealt with, and that is privately. First and foremost, you aren’t respected if you don’t give respect, even to those who do wrong. I see my job as to first try to educate. If I can’t educate, then I get defensive. People do the wrong thing all the time and they should be allowed to fix it, if they don’t then it’s time to get creative.

The other issue that I find is that I can only control my actions not those of others. I was told that a bunch of people on my ning gave another ning owner a hard time over the name of a workshop. I was accused to baiting the hook to incite this action. Though I had expressly and privately told the other person I felt the opposite. I can’t control other people. I’m insulted that someone would l think that others would do such a thing at my behest. Had the person told me as it was occuring I certainly would have written to those members and asked them to stop. Harassment of any kind isn’t cool especially when it’s being done in another person’s name. You can’t assume that the other person would want such a thing done. The best idea is to email the person you’re thinking of supporting or taking action for and let them know so they can deal with the situation. I appreciate support, but I like it best when the person knows for sure it’s what I believe.

I follow the golden rule here, I treat others the way I’d like to be treated.

I got an email a couple of days ago; it was one of those messages that made me think. First it really made me angry because of the context. Words I’d had with someone were taken out of their true context, warped and suddenly a molehill became a mountain. So it goes. The thing that came of this is that it made me think, and think long and hard.

I’m sarcastic. I’ve been sarcastic my whole life. I look for the humor in things to make it easier for me that often translate to sarcasm. It’s not something I am interested in changing.  Sometimes I try and mask my negative emotions- anger and sadness with sarcasm. It comes off as negativity, and yeah it is. I took a look at some of the stuff I’ve been taking part in and the people I’ve been talking to and realize I’ve been feeding into negativity. I’ve let people manipulate me into saying things I don’t necessarily want to share. In a way I’ve fed the internet trollz. I may have done it behind the scenes but I still fed the drama seekers.  I look back to the attack here on my blog and see that after that, it was as if I opened the door to the drama, and then forgot to close it when I started to get back to business as usual. I had a lot of people who rallied around me, and that was great but a few people who rallied around me used it as an opportunity to get past my usually high guard and then use what I say in private against me.

In the future I’ll certainly be more careful of whom I trust with conversations I intend to be a private.  I chalk this up to a lesson learned.

So I've been thinking that I should, as Connie says, Just Paint!

I'm really digging the rainbow of colors on these future journal covers by lootsvele. These could easily cover any journal but I love how these are personalized.

I generally leave the covers of my art journals plain and save the color for inside. I'm now starting to toy with the idea of decorating the outside. I used to do that with all my journals when I was a teen. Ideas…

Many of the friends I grew up with have moved all over the world, few of us remain in DownEast Maine or even the area of the country where we attended college. One is in Germany, another in Phoenix, AZ; still another is in Thailand, and others are scattered through out the US. My friends don’t seem to be as tied to place as I am.

I was reminded of this when a friend posted to FaceBook that she missed developing her own photos and was looking for a place where she could use the dark room. Well, I know a place and a person, not far from where she lives and gave her some contact info.

I lived in Maine and for the most part the same 300 mile radius for 24 years. Sometimes I miss it, intensely, deeply, and with longing. Some of the best moments of my life occurred in those 300 miles; my first kiss, college, painting the rugged coast, friendships that have lasted through years, and miles and miles of hiking.

Occasionally I have moment like tonight where all I want to do is sell my house, quit my job, and move back to that rugged coast, because, damn I miss it. The coast here in Massachusetts is just not the same. There is something to be said about the rugged and craggy coast of Maine and that something causes you to miss it intensely.

All that aside, finding a job is difficult so I stay here.