I chose Relic because of an online book club. I don’t usually read mysteries so it was a nice change of pace. And it was a quick, engrossing read most of the way through.
I cannot put my finger on why but it left me uninspired for some reason. I didn’t feel happy or clear when the ending came. There’s a big twist towards the end and I didn’t care for that either.
Having said that, I did enjoy reading the book while I was reading it so I don’t want it to sound all bad. It was a fast, interesting and engrossing read. I’d recommend it if that’s what you’re looking for.
Recently, I was thinking about my college days. One of the most magical things about being in college is that you’re surrounded by people who’re exactly your age and in the same stage of their life as you are. And you’re independent and making your own decisions. You get to stay up all night or ditch class or take extra classes or go dancing all night. The decisions are yours. It’s an extreme example of finding yourself and being given all the room to do so while others around you are doing exactly the same thing.
It’s intense.
You might not be surprised to find out that I worked pretty hard through college. In the four years I was there, I got both my undergraduate degree and my graduate one, and I had a minor in Art. I also couldn’t believe I could take any class I wanted so I took a lot of random courses. So college wasn’t all fun and games for me. But I still remember having so much time. Making so many friends.
Like anything else there, friendships in college were intense too. You meet someone, you talk for hours. And then the next day you talk all day again. About nothing. About everything. I remember meeting people and then just spending hours talking to them. Maybe this is why the friends you make there tend to stick with you.
I recently had coffee with someone I really liked. I’d never really talked to this person one on one before and during the coffee, it became really apparent to me that we could talk for a long long time before we ran out of things to share.
But, alas. She has kids, and so do I. Husbands. Job. Life. The chance that we will get to spend hours and hours to chat is pretty close to slim. This is why I thought about college. That period when I could really dive deep into my friendships with people. When it comes to connecting, I am not a breadth person. I might have a bunch of acquaintances but I really prefer to have few, deep friends. So having a large quantity of quality time together is essential.
And I am not sure exactly how to accomplish that in my current stage of life.
When I am chatting with someone and I can tell that if only we spent more time together, dove deeper, were less worried about being cordial, could get right to the authenticity, we could really connect. Then I feel this urge to do something about it. I wish I could just pause the clock and sit there with that person and chat. Like I used to in college. Where all the urgencies of everything else falls away. Where time feels infinite. (Even though it never is.)
But, instead, I give her a hug and tell her I hope we can have coffee again soon. (knowing full well it might be months before “soon” comes.)
I know it’s just a stage of life. There will be other periods when my kids are out of the house or when I am retired where I have more time to connect. And I know I am lucky to have a husband who is my best friend. But I still wish I could find a way to connect more deeply now.
I miss the intensity of college. But I don’t seem to have any ideas on how to make it happen. I just know I want it.
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 steps here.
This weekend I happened upon this old post and stopped to read all the things I’d promised to myself.
Even though I am definitely working on healing, I’ve still been having a real tough time recovering. So, looking at the list, these words struck me:
I will turn to good things when difficult things happen: Good things are there all the time. So many of them. Good things happen. Bad things happen. Neither lasts. Life is moving all the time. I will always choose to focus on the good. I will seek it and find it. I will.
I will forgive myself, no matter what: Yes. I am human. I mess up. I deserve to be forgiven. I will forgive fully. Fully.
I choose what is: Because it is what it is. I will choose it. It will empower me.
Here’s the thing: it’s easy to stick to all these promises, to be happy and to savor and to have a positive perspective when life is good. It’s easy to say I will forgive myself when I don’t have anything to forgive myself for. It’s during these tough times that all this gets put to the test. It’s during those times that I have to rise up to the challenge of keeping these promises.
But, yet, I’ve been having a hard time doing so. Having a hard time letting things go. Paying attention to the good and not letting the bad cast a shadow on my wonderful life.
And so I came back to these and read them again and again and again until they sunk in. I went through my lists here and picked a bunch of the good items. I put on some loud music. I kissed my kids. I took a walk with my family. I did art. And I worked. I got stuff done. I am trying to move forward. To go back to the promises I made myself. I still believe in every one of these promises. I want to go where the peace is.
I want to turn to good things. I want to pay extra attention to the good. There’s so much good in my life. My husband has been an angel through all this. I cannot even express the words of gratitude I feel for him. I didn’t think I could love him more but I was wrong. I love him so much more and feel so grateful that it hurts.
And I owe it to him and to my kids and to my good life to pay attention. It is times like this that test my resolve. That really show me whether I can do it. And I want to prove to myself that I can. If it means I have to listen to loud music nonstop for a while, so be it!
As I was pondering all this last weekend, I was visiting one of my favorite art journalers, iHanna, and it was as if she was thinking of me when she shared this quote:
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yes.
Here’s to hoping I can truly be done with each day and can keep my promises and rise to meet my wonderful life.
This layout is for Write.Click.Scrapbook’s April Gallery. The theme is to scrap “I grateful for …”.
Journaling Reads:
There are many great things about being able to work at home. One of them is that I can take a fifteen minute break and set up a table full of stamps for you two to play with and then I can sit next to you and do my work while you create and play and giggle and if you need help i am right here. I am so grateful to get to work from home so I can see both of you growing up.
Details:
As I mentioned, I plan to keep this project simple and fun for both of us. So, I did the same thing with the letter G 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 big G and little g. Then we colored all the g’s.
Here he is gluing:
and coloring
Yey for week 7. Nathaniel seems to still be enjoying the process so I am grateful. He loves looking at it all week long!
Letters with Nathaniel is a weekly project for 2012. You can read more about it here.
This was my first week back home. I will admit that I am not back into the swing of things yet. Mentally, practically or emotionally. My routine is still out of sorts. And the next two weeks won’t help because the kids have back to back spring breaks. But I am getting slowly better each day and trying to give myself space and time to heal. I also want to say I have gotten so behind in emails and comments that it’s become embarrassing but I just cannot get myself to sit and go through. If you’ve emailed me, I want you to know I deeply appreciate your kind words and please don’t take my lack of response as a lack of care. I am just trying to take some space.
with that, here are some highlights from last week:
For about six minutes, the kids were allowed to play this game where they ran from the other room and fell on the couch. They loved it so much that I had to let them do it but just two times.
here’s the little boy imitating his brother.
David’s front teeth are all crooked because the big ones are coming but the baby teeth are still hanging on. It’s been this way for weeks now.
i love these photos of Jake and Nathaniel reading together.
and laughing.
Jake’s parents were here last weekend and brought David a Thomas puzzle. Which he loved.
And David got Monopoly.
which they sat down to play immediately.
while Nathaniel did and undid his puzzle.
he’s very into noises and makes this each time he hears an unexpected noise.
my beautiful boy.
There was some shooting.
Which came with a lot of noise.
David fell down.
But then rose to shoot right back.
There was also sticker-time.
which Nathaniel loves.
This is his “don’t take my picture” face.
He loves to play with tiny little things and I love how he smiles knowing I am taking his photo but won’t look at me.
but of course he can’t resist.
Then we had some fun with the bowls.
I just love these photos.
he kept telling me to take his picture. I love when he does that.
The boys went to the library with their daddy and checked out a bunch of books. Nathaniel wanted a Star Wars book just for himself.
Here he’s saying “tar wars” (that’s what he calls star wars).
Nathaniel had just woken up when we took our family photos.
he didn’t want to laugh during tickle-time.
but we got him to anyway.
which was the best way to end my week.
and here we go. Here’s to hoping things keep getting better.
Weekly Diary is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here.
Page thirteen:
This page is a bit odd, I know. I took a bunch of the leftover paper I had from my sketching pad and glued them down. Then I used pan pastels to make the hearts. Then I added a bunch of rubons. A little paint on the edges and I was done. I know it’s simple but that’s what I seem to like. No matter how much I tried, I just didn’t want to add any more to it.
Here’s another look:
more next week.
Journey into Collage is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here.
I think it’s fair to say that I am not a neat person.
(If my dad were here, he’d laugh at the understatement.)
Most of the time, this doesn’t bother me. I can go about my life and not have everything be super organized. I have my way of doing things and it works for me. For example, I am super-messy while I create but I always clean up between projects. I can’t start something new if my desk is a mess. I tend to let the dishes pile for a day but will almost always put them in the machine before I go to bed. And while the piles on the tables do sometimes bother me, they don’t upset me enough to actually use my time to clean up.
However.
I’ve noticed lately that there are a few exceptions. I have this teetering pile on my work desk and each time I touch it, I feel frustrated that it’s such a mess. I always tell myself I need to rearrange it and get a system, but I never do. And since it’s a pile right next to me while I work, I use and see it often and feel bad about myself and my lack of organization several times a day.
Same thing goes with laundry. When there’s a pile of unfolded laundry sits in my room (which happens often with 2 kids under 7) each time I walk by it, I feel an overwhelming sense of defeat. And since this laundry is in my room, I see it several times a day. Especially, at night right before I go to bed, I look at it and feel sad that another day passed without my folding it.
As I pay attention to these little things that lower my spirit often, I’m learning that resolving them takes less time and energy then postponing them. When I do sit down and fold the laundry, it takes about 15-20 minutes and I am done. I feel uplifted and competent. There aren’t that many things that can give me a sense of accomplishment that quickly.
The best part isn’t even the sense of accomplishment. It’s getting rid of that “ugh I can’t believe I’m such a loser” feeling these little things give me throughout the day. Things that take away at my spirit little by little. Getting rid of these comes with a huge reward.
So I’ve decided to pay close attention to each little thing that makes me feel defeated next week. I will write it all down. And then I will go through my list and try to either them eliminate permanently or create a mini-routine around them to ensure they don’t get to the state where they bug me.
Let’s see if it works.
If you have things that get to you in your day, maybe you can do this exercise along with me.
Here are some more pages I did:
The full text reads: Just go for it.
And here’s the next page:
The full text reads: It’s time to bloom.
And here’s the next page:
The full text reads: Be your own advocate.
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 tend to be a stresser.
If you read here regularly, you’ll remember that I briefly mentioned that stress inhibits self-reflection and self-awareness. I might not have the details right but basically when you’re stressing out, your body kicks into the fight-or-flight response and that shuts down most everything else. Because at this point you’re in emergency mode where you’re worried about whether a tiger’s going to eat you and in those cases, thinking things through is not to your benefit. You want to just run.
But, in my life, I don’t tend to face tigers that often.
I noticed in the last few days that when things don’t go as expected, I tend to panic and stress. I’m a fixer. It’s what I do. So if I don’t know enough or I don’t have the power to fix it, I get more and more panicky. Which makes pretty much all of my higher-thinking shut down. And then I can’t even think so I panic more.
See where I’m going with this?
Yes, it’s not pretty.
I find that the less knowledgeable I am or the less power I have, the more this happens. And when I stress and can’t think, I panic and then I feel a sense of rush. I need to rush, rush, rush. Which then means I make more mistakes and get more frazzled.
And then I just want to curl up.
I noticed that when something goes wrong, I tend to elevate its urgency. When I am feeling weak, like I’ve been recently, I trust myself less in all areas of my life, and then I tend to make things even more important and urgent then they are. Which makes me behave in a way that leaves me feeling weak and small. And it just lives in that vicious cycle for a while.
So, instead of doing that again, I’ve been trying to pay attention to my impulses more. When things go wrong (which seems to be happening frequently, lately) I tell myself to take a break. I say it out loud. I get up and walk around for three minutes. I then sit back down and calm myself down so I can think. I figure out a list of things I will try next. And then I get to work.
The stepping back, walking, making a list, etc. all buy me some time. This way my fight-or-flight stops taking over and I can calm down and engage my higher thinking. So I can come up with some rational next steps. Creating an environment where I can think again is the most important crucial first step. Once I can think, logic comes in handy and almost always helps me solve my problem.
It’s getting access to the logical thinking that matters most.
If there’s a tiger in my living room, it’s ok to let stress take over. But in just about every other situation, I’ve come to believe that stress does not serve me.
And, remember, I’m all about getting rid of things that don’t serve me.
Just like Brene’s talks and books help me recognize the feeling of shame, I’m working to learn to recognize the feeling of stress. Because if I can recognize it, I can remember that this is not the time to make decisions.
And I can wait for it to go away.
It all starts with recognition.
And here’s the spread for week eleven (sorry photos are not great quality, haven’t figured out how to photograph these well yet.):
here’s a closer up of the left side:
The first story here is about work and then the Willpower class that ended last week. The next one is Nathaniel walking along the edge of the sidewalk and having fun (but also being cautious.)
And here’s the right side:
The first one is about david’s 4-page drawing and then Nathaniel watching movies while I work feverishly. And then the last one is about my boys and how they supported me and helped me while I was struggling so much.
Since I didn’t do so much art this week, I took some of our family photos and just added them along the bottom.
So there we go. So far, so good. Still enjoying this project a lot.
Happy Savoring.
The Savor Project was supposed to be a weekly project for 2012. You can read about my setup here.
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projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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