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And here’s the spread for week thirty:
and
here’s a closer up of the left side:
This side is fully dedicated to The Color Run we did. And here’s the right side:
The first one here is Nathaniel’s new bike, and then David’s blog. And then one on why I like to be at home and finally a work-offsite to see Batman. Art along the bottom as usual. Another great week. Happy Savoring. The Savor Project was supposed to be a weekly project for 2012. You can read about my setup here.
I’ve read Jennifer Egan before and didn’t like her. So when book club picked A Visit from the Goon Squad I wasn’t looking forward to it. But it turned out that I loved it. This unusual way it was written in really spoke to me and I found myself getting more and more into it. I think this is a creative and interesting book and I can see why it got awards. I’m glad my club picked it because I don’t think I would have given her another chance if it wasn’t for the book club.
On October 2, I will have been working out every single day for two years. Two years. This means I’ve worked out for about 675 consecutive days already. That’s more than I’ve worked out in all of my 36 previous years combined. I started with going walking, fast walking, around my neighborhood. And then quickly decided it was time to buy a treadmill cause the weather was getting iffier and I didn’t want to have any excuse to skip a day. I bought it and have used it every single day I was home. When we took vacation, I made sure there was a gym nearby. When we flew to Turkey, I got off the 16-hour plane ride and went to the gym. I literally haven’t skipped one single day. But this post is not to tell you about how awesome I am. Back when I never exercised, people who exercised a lot always told me that once I started doing it, I’d get used to it and eventually I’d start craving it. I thought they were full of you know what. There was no way I would crave exercise. In fairness, I’d never put the idea to test so I couldn’t be sure but I felt pretty confident in my stance. And I am here to tell you that I was totally right. After 675 consecutive days, I still dread exercising. I still have to drag myself to the treadmill. Yes, the actual exercise is now easier but there’s no craving. There’s no part of me that’s dying to get up on that machine. Or lace up and run outside or whatever. Not an ounce. The only reason I am exercising every day is because I’ve made it a core part of my daily routine. I get up and exercise. I am not allowed to do anything else until I’ve done that. No sketching, no reading, nothing. So I get up and I do it. And then I am done with it. That’s still the best part. The being done with it. It hasn’t become a habit. It’s something I do cause I make myself do it. It’s hard. It takes some of my willpower (less since it’s scheduled but still…) and even when I am on the treadmill, it takes more willpower to not stop at one mile or two. Going all the way to 3 miles is hard many days. I want to stop, quit, give up. So if you’re like me and heard that you’ll grow to love it and crave it, I am here to tell you that’s not true for everyone. It wasn’t true for me and it might not be true for you. But don’t ever let that stop you. If I can do it, you can, too. Here are the sketches from last week: Sunday:
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:
Saturday:
that’s it for this week. Daily Sketching is a weekly project for 2012. You can see a detailed post on my sketching journey here.
If you’ve had enough of my zen podcast-related thoughts, you can skip today. I’ve been listening to them still and since I am working really long days lately, I am clinging to the peace they are bringing me. (My long hours of work and the lack of brain power I have leftover is the reason I’m behind in emails and comments, I apologize.) In one of the episodes I listened to yesterday, Tara said “pain is inevitable but suffering is optional” (I wrote it down so I think it’s accurate but if not it was something really similar.) She went on to explain that our resistance to pain is what causes the suffering. This made me think a lot. A lot of the meditation I’ve been learning in my class has been about raising awareness and not judging and not striving. For example, being aware that pain is there but not judging myself for it and not striving to make the pain go away. Ironically, I’ve had a lot of acute pain in my jaw in the last few weeks. So I’ve been thinking about the quote a lot and trying to figure out how it applies to me. I can see that in some cases, especially emotional ones, I can interpret it as, bad things can happen to me, around me, but I don’t have to suffer. I can be aware of them, I can accept them and possibly learn to live with them. I can also try to set a path for change or shift. And I can do all of this without suffering or resisting. I can see how this might work. I can see how it might be beneficial. I can also see how it might be very hard. Very, very hard. But then there’s physical pain. My jaw’s been hurting so much in the last few weeks that I’ve had to take a lot of Advil. I am not sure how suffering is optional there. Am I making the pain worse by resisting it? I do notice that when I am stressed it gets worse. But I still can’t really make the connection to suffering. Maybe it means that if I resist the pain more and push against it, it gets worse? Either way, I still felt an immediate connection with the emotional pain side of things. I tend to compound my pain by resisting it. Especially if it’s a loved one’s pain. If my kids or my husband is in pain, all I can think of is how to fix it. How to make them feel better. How to undo. How to just not have the pain be there. My instinct is to want to resist it with all my being. I don’t want them to have pain. Same goes for my pain. I don’t think “well ok, it’s here.” All I can think is “how can I make this go away?” Every part of my body wants to resist it. I only consider other options after fighting it for a long time and losing. After a lot of suffering. What if I didn’t fight it? What if I just accepted it and worked with it. Or even possibly around it. Instead of resisting so hard. Would that work better? Would I suffer less? I am intrigued by this idea. I feel tempted to try it. It somehow feels like it would work. I love the idea of not having to suffer along with every pain that comes my way. (And I LOVE the idea of not suffering from my jaw pain if only there was a way….) So next time something painful comes my way, I am going to step back and not resist. I will not try to solve it or fight it. I will acknowledge it and be aware of it. And then I will try to breathe and see if I can take a different path that doesn’t end in suffering. And maybe it works… Have you ever tried it? Did not resisting actually reduce suffering? I’d love to know. This is a layout I made for Maya Road for CHA.
And the journaling says: details:
As I mentioned, I plan to keep this project simple and fun for both of us. So, I did the same thing with this letter as I did for letter A and all the others. I cut them all up and then, Nathaniel and I glued them down together to create this simple page:
Like each time, we talked about each of the words and then differentiated between capitals and lowercase. Then we colored all the letters. Here he is gluing:
and coloring
Yey! Nathaniel is still loving this project! Letters with Nathaniel is a weekly project for 2012. You can read more about it here.
Another week light on photos, I’ve been working a lot and not snapping as much but alas such is life. Here are some snapshots from our week: Nathaniel watching his movie while David watches Harry Potter.
Checking out my collage journal, look how big it is.
And then some laughter.
and the beloved blankie.
he can’t help but laugh.
nor can David.
this week they both had stuffed friends. David decided he wanted a “Hobbes” so of course Nathaniel, too. He told me his friends are helping him eat.
then there was sandcastle making.
which meant good light for mommy.
so I snapped of course.
a few new legos for the boys for being so so nice to me while I had to work so hard.
and there’s david with his buddy.
the light here was really bad but i love how Nathaniel is sitting with his daddy, both on their phones.
then it was family photo time and tickle time, of course.
and here we go. i hope your week was lovely, too. Weekly Diary is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here. Page thirty-one:
This was all about washi tape fun and old old old rubons. The quote says: Nature makes me want to spread my wings and fly free. Here are some more shots of it:
Journey into Collage is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here. Here are some more pages I did:
The full text reads: take time to rest. your body and soul need it. And here’s the next page:
The full text reads: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. (i believe it’s a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt.) Well here we go. More coming next week. I am creating multiple art journaling pages a week for now. You can read more about this project here. This set uses the Fabriano Roma papers.
I’ve been listening to more and more meditation talks in the morning as I sketch. I find that they start my day in an optimistic and grateful mental state. In one of the talks I listened to today, Tara mentioned “intentionally looking to see the goodness” and it made me think a lot. She went on to say how we’re wired to see the bad. We’re wired to protect ourselves. To see danger. But it ends up getting to you. We don’t look to see the good around us. The good in others. The good in words said. I know that I have a tendency to hug the bad. I believe it more easily. I hold it closer to my heart. I think I have two reasons why I do this. One is because I think that if I can imagine the very worst, when the bad happens it won’t hurt as much. I’ve already imagined the worst, so how bad can it get, right? Except that it can get much worse. Cause imagining the worst doesn’t actually compare to having it happen. It doesn’t prepare you. If the worst doesn’t actually happen, you wasted all those minutes, days, months imagining something that never happens. And if it does happen, you’re totally blindsided any way. Your life is upside down and it’s terrible. Because even when you do imagine the very worst, there’s a little part of you that thinks it will never happen. So when it does happen, you’re still totally crushed and devastated. So there’s almost no upside and a huge downside to this way of thinking. The other reason I hold the bad stuff near is because I feel that remembering these will help me make decisions more carefully next time. It will prevent me from more bad stuff in the future. It’s like if I have a constant movie reel of my biggest mistakes in my head, I won’t make any more of them. We all know how that works right? Yep. When I think of all my mistakes, I get nervous all the time and I make even more mistakes. I am constantly scared and worried so I get stressed and the fight and flight response kicks in and takes all the blood away from my brain. Prefrontal cortex doesn’t work and I literally cannot think. So, clearly, the decisions I make in that state aren’t going anywhere productive. So neither of these reasons are useful. Holding the bad stuff near and dear isn’t really helping me. But even more importantly, there’s an incredible amount of data that says looking for the good in your life actually makes you happier. Creating a daily gratitude practice makes people more wholehearted. Intentionally looking for the good changes your life. What if we extended that to the people around you. What if we always looked for the good in others? Especially in those who annoy us. Especially in the people who try our nerves a bit. The ones for whom we hold anger. The ones that seem to always wrong us, etc. It’s easy to see the best in the ones we love. But if we just intentionally looked for the good in every single person around us, I bet it would completely change our life and our relationships. I love this idea and I want to give it a try. For the next few weeks, I will intentionally look for the good in everyone around me. I will assume the best but also really look to see what good I can see in each person I interact with. I will also look for the good in my day-to-day life. My gratitude practice has fallen sideways and I want to intentionally bring it back. Now that I am feeling a bit better, too, I want to hold on to this and not let it go. So here’s to a few weeks of intentionally looking for the good. Maybe you can join me?
I decided to take a small break from the dystopian craze and read The Prophecy of Days. Still Young Adult genre which I absolutely seem to be stuck on these days. But as with most things I expect this phase to pass and I am enjoying it for now. This novel is more of a mystery sort of like Incarceron but not dystopian at all. More ancient and related to the Mayans. It was quite a fast and interesting read and I enjoyed it a lot. She, too, has a sequel but it’s not out on the Kindle yet and like the others, I tend to like to put some time and space between my books so it will have to wait for now. |
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