up in the air

Sometimes life is just up in the air...as soon as I want to nail something to the floor, gravity gives way and its space camp all over the place. Unfinished business is stressing me out lately. Speaking of that...
Here is a piece of unfinished business. I began this felt wallart a few months before E was born. I was going to put it in his nursery, I let K pick all the colors that she liked. But then her mother painted everything in primaries and it didn't match and I never finished it. EXCUSE ALERT! Oh man, I'm good at that. I just picked an excuse and ran with it to avoid finishing something that could've been amazing. So now I've lost the zest for that piece and I probably STILL won't finish it but maybe I can do SOMETHING with it. Make it into something new. I think I will cut it into 3 pieces and stretch them over frames. That would be cute and pass it onto my niece, Ayda.

In better news, here is something I did finish. Another blast from the past.
I thought about this and collected film strips for this for 4 years before I finally DID the lampshade. Sure it took a long time to conceive but I think it's one of my first actual finished products. Its been a learning process. I never had anyone to teach me how to start a project and finish it. Sometimes I still get overwhelmed by the process of taking the first step, having breaks in the middle and then accomplishing my goal. I think I also get caught up on the goal looking EXACTLY like what I had hoped, but little by little I am letting go of that. What goes up must come down, so hopefully things will come back to Earth soon and I'll be able to stand upright instead of feeling like a human cherry suspended in the gelatin of life. Oh! I also just realized I have this pre-concieved notion of Life Always Being Chaos! I'm going to leave that one in outer space so I can have a nice, quiet existence of making stuff and being happy.

Throwing myself

Leap and the net will appear.
Does this work? We’ll see, I suppose. I am trying to put my 2 weeks notice in at work. But my current supervisor (only of the past few months when my boss left for Atlanta) is never in his office. Monday, he was out all day “waiting for the contractor” who never showed up. Yesterday he was out for a dental appointment. Today, it’s a different contractor issue and 10 am and he’s still not in. BLARGH!

But I have gotten a part-time job with Trader Joe’s (free benefits, yo!) and I’ll have the freedom to do workshops with Youth Speaks Nashville. My first workshop was with middle-schoolers on Monday. Inspiring kids to love and be creative with language on a regular basis is heaven to me. I felt absolutely magical afterwards. The writing exercise I gave them was so fun to read.

I am thinking of doing some personal archeology, taking it on as a project, with interviews and everything. After the writing group last year about ‘firsts’ I’ve really been interested in writing a memoir. I don’t know if anyone would want to read it but I’m of the ilk that if you need to write something you should rather than writing for an audience. I had a wicked crazy childhood, no sense in letting that story be forgotten.

Success Terror Alert!

I meant to post more in August. I HAVE NOT BEEN WRITING MUCH. And this is a travesty. I felt empty inside, devoid of purpose. What is wrong with me? I KNOW I need to write to feel lively and part of the Universe but still I don’t find the time.

Can I be melodramatic for a moment, please? Yes? Ok - Work is KILLING me right now. KILLING ME. STAB TO THE EYE. Everyone is gone. Everyone that is cool awesome lovely has either been let go or let themselves go to a new job. Yay. Good for you. I hate it here. Ok, not everyone but ALMOST everyone.

Kat and I are working on a rock opera together and its going well. I am having trouble getting into it, feeling like a part of it because I’ve been avoiding doing the work. Listening to the music in the order I put it in, feeling the storyline, moving within the art. Why have I been avoiding it? FEAR OF SUCCESS. Totally immobilizing and terrifying fear of success. Scarier than Public Speaking and Death. In fact, I love public speaking and within the past 24 hours have actually wished for death but you know what goes bump in the night? You know what terrifies me beyond all recognition? *shivers*


The thought of succeeding and moving forward.
Must. Defeat. Success. Wait…what? No. Must Defeat Fear. (paralyzed)

Do you remember freeze tag from when you were a kid? I wish I were playing freeze tag with God (The Universe, Great Spirit, whatever you wanna call it) and God would just unfreeze me and I could run like the wind to my most productive and successful existance.

dragonfly unsettled

Today I went up to the roof to talk on the phone. On the roof a dragonfly was flitting around a rooftop puddle. Winding from back to front, back and forth, never landing anywhere. I’ve been looking for the messages in life lately and I love to see them in animals as noted in my last post.

Dragonfly medicine beckons you to seek out the parts of your habits which need changing.

Dragonflies are a better metaphor for me than a monkey-mind. I think of monkeys as diligent, balanced and relaxed. So maybe its the words I've been telling myself. I've said don't have a monkey mind but I thought that wouldn't be a terrible thing. What I need to avoid is dragonfly habits.

I am like a dragonfly, flitting from one thing to the next, never landing for long on one thing and never resting. This is the habit I want to change.

Nail----->head

Ever heard of free will astrology? These are silly flighty fancy horoscopes which too often (for me) hit the nail on the head. I check it about once a month to avoid these kinds of reality checks. This week I did and here's the zinger: It's an excellent time for you to give more of your passion to fewer causes.

Wow.

and

Duh.

I have too many hobbies and I like ALL OF THEM but I have to stop. I am never going to accomplish ANYTHING that I want to accomplish if I don't stop having a monkey mind.

My brain flits from thing to thing, researching, exploring, investigating in an endless quest for ____ - WHAT? What the hell am I gathering all this information for? For someone? For Jeopardy? For all these books I am "going to" write but have no credentials for? Am I so nervous of appearing stupid that I am constantly gathering useless snippets of info on EVERYTHING so I never falter for one second in not having some semblance of an answer to everything? Am I truely facinated by the world and many aspects of it? The truth is probably some bastard child of these last two.

What I realized while reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" is that the people who are really really GOOD at something have been doing it A LOT for A LONG TIME. 10,ooo hours to be exact. They are experts. And since I can't go back and DO something for 10K hours (except I have probably read that much and I am pretty damn good at that) I have to start to really group my shots.

What are the areas in my life where I want to excel? What do I feel passionate enough about to begin working on it for a theoretical 10K hour marathon? I am calling more focus into my life starting right this moment. I want to be an expert (if only to myself).