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.

You can watch Paula create this page in the video below!

Hearts,love
Originally uploaded by DesertNana aka majamom

Really love the look of that air mail hand carved stamp. I love carving my own stamps.

The recent trolling has given me pause and forced me to think about how I spend my time and what the benefits are from my activities. I wrote previously about how I was burning the candle at both ends and that it was simply not sustainable. It was a great thought, but I never followed through with trimming my activities. It’s become apparent that I simply must trim some activities for my own health and sanity.

I’ve started to make a list of what is important to me and what is less so. Clearly there are things that I can put off until I am able to give them the time that they deserve. My list of important items is short, necessarily so, and to the point. They are as follows:

• Family
• Art,
• AJ Ning
• Writing

That’s it. I can live without twitter, facebook, ustream and a host of other things. I’ve been splitting my attention from the top 4 things too much and I feel it shows in the quality of stuff I’ve been producing or rather, haven’t been. My drawing practice that I worked so hard on last year has deteriorated because I’m not giving it the time it needs.

One of the things I’m giving up is UStream. I had scaled back and taken a break and I was hoping that when I came back to it I would find that same excitement I had when I first streamed. I didn’t. I totally fell out of love with UStream. Add to that the malicious troll attacks and well… Yeah. Giving it up. What I DO plan on doing is some special event UStreams. I’ll advertise them well here. You can think of what I plan on doing as a free or low cost mini class. I’ll put up the items you’ll need with perhaps an instructional PDF and the demo it during the show. I don’t know how many of these I’ll do, but it will be on a whim sort of thing.

I gave up TV to make more time for art but I’ve replaced that void with watching UStream. I plan on watching SOME shows but just not the amount I’ve been watching lately. I love the interactive shows but I get sucked in. I used to watch while I arted along, I’ve stopped arting along. I need to focus on art while watching the shows. I’m going to focus on those shows that I really enjoy. (Not telling which) Obviously I am not able to make many due to my work schedule that won’t change.

I’ll be cutting back on twitter and facebook. I’ve been using them as distractions to feed my procrastination. I’ve got 10,000 words of my book written and I’ve hit a rut and I’m doing everything I can to avoid thinking about the rut, how to get out of the rut , and worst of all not doing anything about but avoiding the topic.

I’m strongly considering downloading one of those internet timers that will lock me out of the internet for periods of time. Alternatively I could show some willpower… Right.

I’m looking at some of the other things I’m involved in and seeing how I can free up more of my time to devote to the top 4. You can expect more posts on this topic.

Live and Let Live
Originally uploaded by lessherger

Not a lot to say about this one. 2 inks on watercolor paper, writing done with a Noodler’s Flexible Nib Pen.

As many of you may know my blog was trolled last night due to a blog post I wrote about trollz. My point was immediately made and I really feel I don’t have a lot more to add to the conversation. Read it and you’ll understand what today is about.

Today it’s time for the art journaling community (and anyone else) to circle the wagons around the campfire, put on some good eats, and a pot of coffee and talk about love, forgiveness and community.

If you would like to contribute a design to the cause, let me know and I’ll load the image up to zazzle and you’ll be able to buy a shirt with your design on it. I’m going to play around with some sketches and upload some images. The consensus seems to be that we should go with pink butterflies on chocolate brown.

There will be a stream-a-thon as well. If you are planning on streaming today; post a link and time in the comments so everyone knows when you’ll be streaming. I’m flexible in when I stream but I’ll stream after 2pm.

 (For peolpe interested in zazzle, the image needs to be 150ppi, and for a small image 600x600pixels wide, if interested in other sizes, or a full image on a shirt message me and I'll get you the zazzle info.)