Tag Archives: habit

Wordy Monday Evening: Snake Oil, Sharks, Resonate

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Lisa over at LifeUnity put up this post earlier and it resonated with me, in part because I’m going through some of the same balance issues but also because it’s a very real post and that is something I feel like the blog-o-sphere has been lacking.

Today Connie over at DirtyFootPrints posted this, and it also resonated with me. It’s also a place I’ve been in my head lately, thinking of what is “enough.” What is good enough? (more on this later.)

Aggression  and sharks.

Or as my Dad used to say, “There are assholes everywhere and some of ‘em, most of ‘em, are out to get you.” Often times my Dad meant this about boys (ha!) trying to get in my pants and people trying to take my money, but this applies to the wild internets*.

Let me back up here.

A few weeks back I decided I was going to cut back on what I allow into my internet and life. Every time someone put up a post on facebook or twitter that made me feel icky I unfollowed or hid them from my view. After another week went past I’d go back and check and see if their tweets or posts still made me uncomfortable, if they did, I unfollowed, blocked, and or unfriended them. It’s been about 3 or 4 weeks since I've been doing this and frankly the quality of my twitter feed has gone up, I’m genuinely interested in what people I’m following and I’m not burdened by reading stuff that offends me.**

Why do I do this? No one has the right to make me feel bad, When I allowed people to suck up MY time with their drama I was giving them power over my life and allowing them to waste MY time. Additionally I can't worry that I'm going to offend them, clearly they don't care if they offend me, so why am I concerned about offending them? 

It’s as if I gave them permission to crap on my good time.

So I’m done with it. The drama and the snake oil sales, done.

That’s another thing that is getting to me lately, the snake oil sales. If someone is selling you a promise to unlock your deepest inner power, it’s most likely snake oil. The only person who can do that is you. I’m  wary of someone who wants to whisper into my ear and ask me to do stuff that makes me feel icky. I’m not talking legit life coaches, teachers, licensed therapists and social workers who have been to school and trained to make you push your boundaries. I’m talking about the arm chair quarterbacks that want to tell me what to do when they haven’t put in the hard work themselves, the do as I say not as I do crowd.

I have made my way so far by listening to myself, going with what I feel is right. It’s why Art Journaling Ning is free and will always be free to join and enjoy with paid classes for those who are interested. I see this whole thing as living real.     

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Art Habit part 1

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I’m making a commitment to write more. Partially so my writing gets better but also because I’m working on a book. I’ve mentioned Art Habit once or twice before but this is my first public commitment to making it work. InkyGirl.com has 3 challenges on her blog, one of them is a challenge to write 500 words a day. When I’m focused on writing I can easily churn out 1500 words in an evening. When I’m not focused I write nothing. Goal setting is supposed to be good for success so I’m setting a 500 words  a day goal. Will I keep it? Who knows. I hope so. I suspect it’ll be an easy goal as 500 words is just a few paragraphs and about a decent blog post.

I can never keep to NaNoWriMo as it’s the busiest month of the year in my retail job. I’ve signed up nearly every year and failed every year. This year was no exception. I started and I’ve got about 10 to 15,000 words of Art Habit written. I’ve got another 10,000 or so stewing in my head and in various manners in various journals and I’ve given myself a commitment that in 2011 I WILL finish Art Habit. It WILL go into publication in 2012. That is my commitment to myself. This is something I’ve been working on for years, it’s been stewing in the back of my mind since 1998. Every year I’ve given up on it, put it further and further to the back of my mind and told myself that it can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t happen.

This is the effing year I MAKE it happen. This is the year I’m taking a sabbatical from my DayJob, working on an art show, a book, my blog and all the stuff that is important to me.

So let me tell you a little bit about Art Habit. It’s about making and keeping an Art Habit, how I’ve managed the screw up my Art Habit over the years, how I’ve shot myself in the foot, repeatedly year after year, and how I finally found my niche, my place and the ability to keep my Art Habit alive and strong. It’s my story, with some questions in there for the journaler and artist. It’s an exploration and I’m inviting you along to see what has worked and what hasn’t worked. It’s poignant and heartfelt. I’m going to let it all hang out and see what happens. Honesty is good. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the story.

I plan on sharing excerpts as I write here on my blog, I invite you to share with me, in the comments, your thoughts, feelings and stories. I invite you to share with your friends my words via your blog. I want you to muse on my writing in your journal. This is a personal journey I’m sharing but I’m inviting you along.

I can tell 2011 is going to be a spectacular year.

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Directive Journaling: Art Habit

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The first class in the Art Habit program will be focused around journaling, written as well as art journaling. Most of you know I’m an avid journaler and have been since I received my first diary at age 10. I’ve written almost every day since then. (We won’t talk about college, m’kay?) I think that written journaling goes hand in hand with art journaling. When you can’t find the words art helps and when you can’t find the right shape or color writing helps. So this class is more of a self paced workshop, set 4 weeks long, featuring 4 mid-sized PDF of prompts, questions and text. The goal is to take the PDF, read it, mull it over and start to use it as a guide for directed journaling.

What I mean by directed journaling is when you focus on one particular word, or question while you write or make art; or you ask yourself a series of questions as you write or create art. Some of the questions are designed to get you thinking about the world around you others are designed to make you look within yourself.

This may look like the easiest art journaling course created but it’s probably the most difficult I’ve written. The questions are hard, they make you think and explore your thoughts and feelings on a subject.

These are questions that I use in my written journaling on a daily basis. This course comes from YEARS of journaling.

I have not decided if I’m going to do a video component to the class or not. We’ll see.

I’m very excited about this particular workshop and its implications for each person’s journaling. I know that when I use these directive questions my journaling becomes much more productive and useful.

Like I said, I’m very very excited.