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Here are the sketches from last week: Sunday:
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday: (really dislike this one but alas didn’t have time to make another)
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 is a layout I made for My Mind’s Eye’s blog for February.
And the journaling says: details:
here are some great moments from this week: the boys playing “david ball” a game david invented and rigs to win each time.
david drawing everything he knows about science.
Nathaniel being goofy.
David holding his art.
and the back where he’s listed all he knows.
nathaniel goofier.
raisins were big this week. and so was this loud, noisy, annoying toy. It finally had to go in the garage before mommy lost her mind.
but the boy never stopped being goofy.
he’s such a joy!
he wanted me to photograph the top of his head.
David’s “what?” face.
more more and more science.
i love this boy.
nathaniel said he wanted to sit on daddy’s lap alllll day.
david’s classroom assistant from this year.
and his teacher. isn’t she awesome?
i love her.
david had a conference today where he explained his school year to us and all he learned.
and then it was family photos.
and tickle time.
i just love this family so much.
and here we go. i hope your week was wonderful, too. Weekly Diary is a project for 2012. You can read more about it here. Page twenty-one:
This week I felt like I had no ideas at all. I wanted to play with oil pastels so I made my background and then just randomly put stuff until I was done. The quote says: Stop trying to measure up, you’re perfect just the way you are. 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: be your own light. And here’s the next page:
The full text reads: be the change you wish to see in the world. it starts with you. 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 doing a lot of writing and thinking lately, partly thanks to the classes I’m taking. As well as Christy’s class that I mentioned yesterday, I’m also taking Ali’s 31 Things class this month, too. I debated a lot with myself over this class, partly cause I was planning on being gone for part of it and I didn’t want to do it halfway and I also wanted to make sure I could take my time with each of the pages. But, in the end, I decided to do it anyway. I did a whole lot of prep so now I feel more confident that I will be able to get through the whole class without stress. Anyhow, this class has a new “word” everyday to encourage you to write about that topic and yesterday’s topic was “you.” There were some prompts by Ali and as I was filling mine, some of the same thoughts that I’ve had for a few years came back to the surface. With my word, “savor,” this year, I’ve wanted to channel the feeling of calm. Awareness and leaning into the joy, too. But also the calm that comes from being at peace, from not letting things take over. This morning, I thought I had a meeting at David’s school, so I dropped Nathaniel early and we stopped to get a coffee and then I walked David into his classroom. I still had about 10 minutes before the meeting, so I sat outside in the sunshine and read my mail on my phone. I felt a deep sense of calm. I didn’t have anything I could get done in that ten minutes. I had given myself the time off and I just sat there, basked in the sun. I felt so calm and peaceful. After I found out the meeting had been cancelled, I drove home and told myself that I would do more of these stolen ten minutes in my day. It’s not good enough to let myself of the hook at home, I need to go out, be in the sun, and just be in that very moment. And I do think I can do that. But it’s not enough. What I want to know is how to be calm when everything is happening at once. When people from work are contacting me over IM and my kids are running around making a lot of noise and one of them starts crying and I spill my drink on myself all at the same time. Because these things happen. I seem to have at least four of these every day. Some are smaller moments and others are bigger. But each of them cause me to completely go over the edge. I scream, I feel instantly frustrated, I start seeing black and I lose all sense of reason. Not to mention calm. I want to get better at handling these moments. I have two young children. Two boys. I have a demanding job which I am proud of but working hard at. I choose to work from home. I am grateful to work from home. So, since I am marrying my two worlds, and since I love the advantages of that, I’m going to have to find a way to start becoming calmer in the face of chaos. It’s not even about taking a breath or two (or three). Though I know that helps. But I think I need a more fundamental shift in the way I look at things, in the way I handle things. A combination of changing some things and letting other things go. I haven’t figured out the magic yet. (Far from it.) But from what I felt of that sense of pure calm and peace today for those ten minutes, I know I want more of it. And even if I can’t be that great during those chaotic moments, I can at least not go to that “bad place.” Though I’m gonna aim for calm. Secretly, that’s what I truly want to be. And here’s the spread for week nineteen:
there’s a middle addition this week for some Mother’s Day stuff, so here’s the other side:
here’s a closer up of the left side:
The first story here is Nathaniel’s 3-year checkup. Then us going to the Pirates! movie. And then just one of how i am in so much awe of my kids and how much I love them.
this is the little mat Nathaniel made for me for the mothers’ tea at his school.
and this is the picture David colored for me in Spanish class. And, finally, here’s the right side:
The first two here the supermoon and my being on paperclipping roundtable. then the one about the kids watching the spider on the couch and finally flowers from my flower-arranging class. I am trying to remember to include more of my own stories, too. My art and our family photo along the bottom as usual. 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.
I’ll admit I read Moneyball (or more like listened to it) because Jake forced me to. HE really wanted me to read it before we saw the movie so I pretty much listened 24-7 until I was done and that night we went to see the movie. In the end, I am glad I read it. It’s a spectacular story even if you’re not into baseball. And while the movie was different in some ways, it was also good. In the end, the book was much better. Of course.
At some point, very early on in my life, I decided that I didn’t belong. I was different from just about everyone around me. Different from the rest of my family members and different from all the kids I was surrounded by. (Which sort of makes sense since they were the kids of my parents’ friends. Not a direct indicator but there’s probably correlation there.) Remember how I talked about stories yesterday? I created this story about not belonging way back then and I just fed it pretty much my whole life. This morning, while I was exercising and listening to Christy’s words in her new class, it sort of came to me that I had never managed to shed this particular story. Even though my whole life has centered around trying to get rid of it. Thanks to the initial seeds of this idea of being different, I decided pretty early on that I would not stay in Turkey. I would grow up and go to America where I could be anything and anyone I wanted and it would be ok. I was in elementary school when I first decided to leave home for college. And I stuck with it all the way through middle and high school. I left as soon as I graduated and I never looked back. While there are many reasons why I am grateful to be here in the U.S. and why it was the best choice for me, the one reason that I think originally propelled me to it didn’t actually get resolved. Yes, it’s true that you can be anyone you want to be here. And it’s true that there are parts of me that are more accepted. But the fact remains that I still feel on the outside. Every step of my life, I’ve found a reason to think that I didn’t belong where I was. When I got into college, I got in through the wait-list. So when I got there, I had the nagging feeling that I just didn’t deserve it and had gotten lucky. Even as I graduated with honors, made a lot of good friends, had several great positions, the nagging feeling stayed there. As I went to Wall Street, the feeling continued. I always felt like everyone around me knew what they were doing except for me. And that I would just get caught at any moment and it would all be over. I didn’t really belong there. I better not get comfortable. Of course same for being in the U.S. Until I got my green card, I worried about not getting it. When I got it, I worried about not getting citizenship. Being deported. Mind you, there never was any reason for anything to fear, but I did. It’s what I do best. I worried all through Goldman. Even through promotions and special work arrangements to make me happier. All through it. When I quit that and did Teach For America, I worried about not belonging there. Being too old. Not good enough. That I got in by chance. Not hard work. And, of course, when I quit that before my term was up, it was a clear sign of what I knew all along: I didn’t belong. I couldn’t cut it. And then through the next job and even now at Google, I always think of myself as an outsider. The outlier who got lucky. It’s not just work, of course. My son changed schools at the beginning of this year. So we came in at first grade and I’ve spent the whole year thinking I don’t belong. I am the outsider there. The latecomer. I didn’t go to most of the events, and if I did, I sat on the corner, quiet, and like I didn’t belong. Same for my reading groups. Even as I talk (i am very talkative in person so not talking, especially about books, is not an option) I feel like I am on the outside. Like I am observing, being a guest. Not one of them. It probably doesn’t look like that to the people around me because I do talk and I do participate. But the constant feeling I have inside is of not belonging. I noticed this morning that I do this all the time. I am not in the “in crowd.” Ever. And I always assume there is one. Everyone is friends with each other but me. This is how the tape in my brain goes. But what I also realized this morning is that this very story is what stops me from being able to belong. This very story causes me to play it safe, to sit on the sidelines, to not try. A part of me thinks that if I did belong it would just happen naturally. Automatically with no effort. But I realize now that it’s not true. There’s a difference between making an effort and faking it. I can make an effort to reach out to people more, to connect, to sign up for things, to show up more and I can do all of that while being the authentic version of me. Like I said yesterday, everything changes with perception so I can change my perception of who I am and where I belong. I can belong because I say I do. I can stop waiting for others to deem me worthy. And just deem myself so. I can stop feeling like I am on the outside of things. Give up that there’s something wrong with me. That I need permission from some person. Some undefined person. I can be the person who gives me permission. I can belong because I say so. And maybe by saying it I will finally realize that I do belong. I always have. 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, as I exercised, I watched a TED talk on perception and there are so many things I loved about it that I don’t even know where to start. The first thing that struck me as “good to remember” is a little similar to the bit I wrote about choice. He talked about how having control makes such a difference. More importantly, feeling like you have no say in how things work out is really really bad for humans. So it’s important that we think and reframe a situation where we feel like we’re in control of it. Like it was a choice. I had this experience quite a few years ago with someone I was close to. I felt like this person wasn’t behaving the way I wanted her to. After a lot of struggle and frustration (and anger towards her) I realized one day that she was just being who she was all along. I had unrealistic expectations of who she could be and if I wanted to continue to have her in my life, I was going to have to reframe my point of view. Suddenly, it felt so much easier to deal with the same problem because I felt like I was actively making a choice to have this person in my life despite her “faults.” The reigns were in my hand. And it, literally, changed our relationship in a fundamental way. So I’ve been thinking a lot about this since the talk. About how I should work on areas of frustration in my life and see if I can change my point of view so I feel more in control and not like it’s happening “to me.” I think this is one of the biggest keys to feeling more content in life. The other part of the talk that really resonated with me was how perception and reality are really intertwined and how our perception of something is sometimes even more powerful than the reality of it. This course I took a long time ago talked a lot about how facts happen and then we create stories around it. And the stories are never true because with stories there’s no “true or untrue” they are just made up. Facts are facts and everything else is a story. That’s how it is with perception. The perceptions of the events in our lives (the people in our lives) are what shape our stories about them. And then we feed those stories so they get bigger and deeper, until we can’t even see the facts anymore. Our perception becomes the truth. Since perception is leaky and tends to affect the way we live in the world, I think it’s really worth working on changing my perception on the things that I struggle with. Things that I have negative stories around. Had you told me in 2009 that I could run almost 3 miles a day, I would have laughed at you. My story was that I had never exercised and couldn’t run a block. My story was that it was too late. My story was that if I had to lose weight, the only option for me was dieting. I had a huge story around this. But seeing Donna and then Cathy do it changed my perception. I don’t know why that did it and other examples hadn’t done it but I do know that my perception is what changed first. It suddenly felt doable. And once it felt doable, I was willing to give it a try. And once I tried it, I was able to do it. And once I saw how much I could do, my perception of myself changed. And then I did it. I lost the weight almost totally due to exercise. The weight I’d been carrying around since 1993. 20 years of weight. My perception changed my reality. So it worked in what I considered to be the most unlikely part of my life. I could have believed many many other things before I believed I would be the kind of person who runs daily. And I know that if it worked for that, it can work for anything. Truly. Anything. So my goal is to make a list of the challenging areas of my life, the negative stories I have, the repeated frustrating conversations in my head and start tackling them. See if I can change my point of view. See if I can take charge. See if I can start by changing my perception. And then just let it leak into my reality. As part of my CHA work for Maya Road, I made two little tags using their butterfly stamps. Here they are:
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