November's Challenge

The November challenge initiated by my pen pal and sistah friend, turned out to be a fabulous adventure in self and other discovery.  For the thirty days of November we each posted a haiku we created that reflected some aspect of our inner child along with an explanation/story. At the end of the month, we presented photos of the inner child dolls that we created and the above photo is mine.  

November Challenge- Inner Child Doll

October was so chalked full of activity that I am just now slowing down to do my blog post. First off the 10 day wellness challenge initiated by one of my facebook friends was wonderful. It was all about total wellness and for me that meant mind, body and spirit.  I worked my body  by doing a lot of walking and a little pilates.  I meditated everyday, this has been going on for almost two years now, and I did morning affirmations and of course as part of my October challenge, I got back to journaling. Another thing  that I did for my body was was  the tea infusions that I consumed each day. My diet was a lot better for those ten days as I tried, did not always succeed, in getting more green stuff into my body.  The one feature of the Wellness Challenge that I really enjoyed when I expected not to was, the daily vlog post as a way to check in and let others know what you did that day and if you reached your personal goals. You can tell a lot by hearing a persons voice and observing their energy as opposed to, just reading their words on a blog.  

So let's move on to the November challenge which is another challenge that my friend and pen pal came up with and we are already eight days into it. Each of us is creating a doll that represents our inner child, wow!!  Her challenge is that we journal each day about our inner child and that we create a haiku which we share with one another, accompanied by a little or long explanation/examination about the haiku.  When she first mentioned haiku, I almost backed out but it has become the most enjoyable feature of this challenge.  At the end of the month, we will each have, thirty haikus, thirty journal entries and one fantastic magical inner child doll, wow, I am excited to see what we create.

October is My Favorite Month for New Beginnings

Wow, September was a crazy month filled with out of the ordinary things happening in my life, the summer went out with a bang.  I am looking forward to settling into fall. With all of the nice weather in September, I seemed to still be in full summer mode and it was hard for me to slow down long enough to paint but, I did take a lot of photos.  My guitar practice and spanish lessons were kind of spotty.  Charlie and I finally finished reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and now have moved on to reading(re-reading for me), The Celestine Prophesy and The Art of Dreaming. This month I am excited to add a couple of new ventures, one is making herbal salves which I learned to do from attending a Herbal 101 workshop.  The second venture is joining in on a ten day wellness challenge which will give me incentive to exercise and eat well.  It also involves meditation which I have been doing for the last 20 months without missing a day, so I have that on lock!  My personal challenge for October is to write everyday because when it comes to writing, this year has been the longest dry spell in my writing life and as a result, I feel antsy and off balance.  So it is back to doing my morning pages right after my meditation and affirmations and in the   afternoon, writing in my journal at the local cafe. This will also help me to get back to posting on my blogs which have been neglected for far too long.  Happy October, heres to slowing down and taking root! 

September Challenge-Get Back on Track

It is time for me to jump back into the game after taking a two month break from everything. It was the first time in seven years that I didn't pick up my guitar and that was strange but I really wasn't making much progress and I was just ready for a break from my routine so perhaps I could breathe some new life into my pursuit of being a renaissance woman.  So now I am ready to ride that wave again.  I will return to my studies and my painting and mixed media art.  I did do a lot of reading over the summer and I took long breaks from watching my movies and series on netflix because I realized that it was eating up too much of my time.  I also spent a lot of time in my garden and recreating my home by adding new sitting areas and redoing my library so now I can find the books that I have spent years looking for.  There is so much that I want to do and I am looking for ways to slow down time as I mentioned earlier this year and recently I found a book called Making Time by Steve Taylor which presents some pretty cool ideas on what causes time to speed up in your life and ways in which you can add more time to your life.   This month I plan to check in one a week because I am trying to do so much.  Have a spectacular September!

Still On Break

                                                                         

I am still on break from coming up with a new challenge and that is okay.  I am doing some new things like starting a new dance class this week and walking the lake in the evening but most of all, I am enjoying my summer by letting go and relaxing.

July Break

• Here it is July 8th and I loaded this photo on the first,so, I guess I am taking a break for the month of July.  I need some time to just relax in my sunny garden and dream up some new challenges for myself.  So, I will be back on August first with a new fun challenge for myself oh and by the way, my June challenge on giving up gossiping and releasing the past is a challenging work in progress.  It was one of the hardest challenges that I have taken on and I was constantly catching myself in the act of failing at one or the other. 

June Challenge Remix

My June challenge has to be expanded, instead of it only being about releasing the past, I now realize that I have to include my original challenge to the mix.  I tried to leave it out because I felt as though it would be almost impossible for me to succeed in this challenge but after today, I know that I have to do it for my wellbeing.  I challenge myself to stop gossiping, and that includes listening to and passing on second hand information. So that means staying out of other people's drama, leaving my two cents out of the equation, minding my own business. Louise Hay said that when she decided to stop gossiping, lol, she didn't have anything to talk about for a month.  So here I go and I will check  in to let you know how it is going.  

June Challenge - Releasing the Past

This is probably going to be one of the most difficult challenges that I have attempted so far and it took me a few days to narrow it down actually I made my final choice about five minutes ago. I am going to release the past.  All last month I did affirmations where I stated over and over twice a day that I released the past and then blew my candles out and returned to talking about the past.  I am a storyteller and I always end up going into my past as a source for my stories well now I would like look forward instead of looking backwards. I would love to release traumatic stories, hurtful stories, sad stories from my childhood because they have been conjured up over and over again and every time I bring one of them forward, I subject my body to the physical and mental memories.  It is time to let those stories fall away, the past is over. "Hip hip hooray, there is joy in everyday," and that is what I plan to focus on for the month of June and beyond.

May Challenge-Daily Affirmations

So the month of May seemed to come to an end way too fast, I mean, the famous 2012 is already half over, how did that happen, I swear time is speeding up. I am so happy with the results of this challenge, I feel a lot more grounded and at peace.  I did affirmations every morning and at bedtime. The above photo is my new altar created for my morning and evening affirmation ritual.  This space is evolving and the poster represents my breaking out of the rut that I was in. I am continuing my affirmations because it really helps me to notice my mind/thoughts and to catch them before they get out of hand and end up creating dis-ease in my physical body.

May Challenge-Affirmations

May is already off and running and this new blogspot is getting on my nerves because I have already lost two posts trying to adjust and hitting the wrong things.  Anyway, this month is all about affirmations!!  I live in a living altar but last month thanks to the work I did with the book, "the Artist's Rule," by Christine v. Paintner, I felt I needed to create an altar for my morning rituals.  So, I started gathering sacred objects from the cottage and placing them on the little space in front of the fireplace.  This month I will do pre-selected affirmations after my morning and evening meditations. I have loaded myself down with all of these new activities so doing affirmations will be a lovely way to release, refresh, and heal myself.   

Week 4 Review

"I want to rise and fall like the ebb and flow of the ocean.  I want to shed parts of myself in the autumn,  to go deeply inward in the winter, to blossom into spring, and to shine forth and be radiant in summer.  I want to live my life in healing rhythms that honor the limits of my body, the pleasures of rest, and the delights of play."

This week was all about recognizes and embracing the seasons of life .  This chapter had a beautiful and sacred way of celebrating the four seasons everyday .   Dawn's direction is east and it is associated with spring, renewal, awakening,and with the breath/air.  Noon is associated with summer, fire and the direction is south if you are in the northern hemisphere and north if you are in the southern hemisphere. It is a time of fullness and the sun is at its peak, a time of illumination.  Anyway, you get the point and I am able to create rituals to honor the seasons in my life on a daily basis.    I already have rituals for dawn, the awakening and what the author refers to as the "hour of dark," which is associated with winter, the north in the northern hemisphere and the south if you are in the southern hemisphere, and with the element of earth.  It is the time of rest and stillness, a time to go inward, a time for grounding.  

I want to create rituals for noon time and also for  "dusk." Dusk is associated with autumn,  the west and with the element of water.
The chapter also dealt with monthly cycles, and yearly seasons and ways to use these sacred cycles/seasons, to deepen your creativity.

Week 2 Review

What if you cared less about achievements and being useful, and did more useless things? What would it mean for you to dance, make art, write poetry, and pray purely for the delight in the act of creation?" Amongst the many questions put forth in week two's chapter, these are the ones that resonated with me. Many people that I encounter would count their life as not worth anything unless they are doing something to benefit others because doing things simply for their individual joy is frowned upon. I am a woman of leisure and joy is my purpose in life and I want to create just for my own personal delight. It is useful to me and that is what matters.

"Awe, wonder and holy curiosity; visual explorations, poetry writing exploration," these are just a few of the topics/offerings in week two, but my favorite section is called, "Living in the Border Spaces." I love this section because it is all about living in the place that I call the fringes. The author refers to the border spaces as fertile ground that is filled with beauty and mystery. I am not interested in what the mainstream is doing in art or the ways in which they are choosing to be creative, I want my art to reflect my sense of life and not that of the status quo and by living on the fringes/border spaces, my mind becomes fertile ground.

My favorite quote from week two is:

"This border country is a place of intense vitality. It does not so much draw us away from the everyday world as it plunges us deeper into a reality of which the everyday world is like the surface....To live there for a while is like having the veils pulled away." So the border spaces are not necessarily a place(but they can be), as much as they are a state of being.

Have a wonder filled week.

Week 1 Review

Week one was a trip for me because I found myself dealing with a lot of fearful thoughts that threatened to over take me but I was able to get back on top by doing some spiritual reading. The lessons in the book had to do with finding the inner monastery, silence and solitude, walking meditation, sacred readings, visual art exploration, and some reflection questions. I am off to a shaky start but I did manage to do the visual art exploration and my own brand of sacred reading. I meditate twice a day everyday so in a sense, my mouth is silent even though my mind is full of thoughts rushing by and all too often, catching my attention. I do love spending my silent time in nature. I sat on the Tule Elk Reserve on the Point Reyes Seashore, in silence watching these beautiful beings and I was in total joy.

Each week, I will add a quote from the book that I enjoyed.

"Silence isn't something we do, although we can still ourselves to receive its gifts. It is not a personal capacity, although we can cultivate practices of becoming more present. Meister Eckhart described silence as 'the purest element of the soul, the soul's most exalted place, the core, the essence of the soul.' This is the inner monastery within each of our hearts, a place of absolute stillness, our soul's deep essence."

April Challenge-Monastic Wisdom?

Now, this is going to be a fun and unique challenge for me. This month's challenge will be to explore my creativity. I plan to have some fun by following the twelve week program in this book. Monastic wisdom as a path to my creative spirit seems like a pretty cool challenge. At the end of each week, I will do a post on what I actually did and what worked and didn't work for me, so, I am jumping right into this adventure! I will post my experiences on Sundays.

March Math Madness

I am so proud of myself for working on my math almost everyday this month, with a little time off for my spring equinox trip. I am actually enjoying the challenge of learning math from the ground up. I am a real beginner and I am going to continue learning math because my goal is to be a renaissance woman and in order to earn that title, I have to learn to do a lot things reasonably well. So as it stands, in the evening my honey and I now read together, do spanish lessons, guitar lessons, music theory. My husband is sketching on a regular basis but I have yet to really get into my art, I will need to make that a priority real soon, maybe I will have to make it a challenge in order to get something going. Be back tomorrow with a new challenge for April!!

Google Changes

Just in case I log out tonight and cannot get back on tomorrow due to some ridiculous intrusive change that Google has come up with, you can find me on Facebook for now. I hope that will not be the case but if it happens, the blog will exist in the blogosphere without me at the helm!! I hope to be here tomorrow!!

March Math Madness Challenge

Well March Madness is finally here for me!! My challenge this month will be to begin to learn math. In school, I was always frightened by math. When I first entered college as a journalism major, one of my professors said, "I bet all of you suck at math!" He joked that we had all ended up as writers because we could not do math and for the most part, at least in that class, he was right, as we all nervously laughed at his observation. I have been putting this challenge off for a while but now is the time. I will use a video called "The Math Video Tutor, Fractions Thru Algebra, 10 Hour Video Course," which I purchased from amazon a few years ago. I plan to work for thirty minutes a day, because frankly, that is all I can handle right now. So for the month of March, let the madness begin!!!

February Challenge-Just Say No To Netflix

Even though February is the shortest month, for me, it was a very long enjoyable month due to the fact that I turned off the movies. I got so much reading done this month and I also had time to do my morning pages/journal writing. One thing that I did not achieve was limiting my computer time to two hours a day. I tried not to go over but,as the month drew to a close, I seemed to be spending more time on surfing the web. Stopping the noise from the box gave my thoughts a chance to be heard loud and clear without competing against the series, "The Event," for my undivided attention. If I lived alone, I would probably leave it off but my husband would like to check out a hockey game here and there or watch a movie on friday nights so, the noise and distraction will be returning to our lives on March 3rd(making it 31 days)but, with limitations. We will keep the house movie free from Sunday evening to Friday day and that way, I can continue to read all of my back logged books, and by the way, I am loving my Kindle.

February Challenge-Just Say No To Netflix

This is one of the places I sit to do my morning pages and as of Feb. 1st, it is so on!! I really fell off last year when it comes to my morning pages and as a result, my blogging fell off because if I don't "prime the pump" as Ms. Cameron says, my mind is too full of sludge and it is hard to get to the good stuff when it comes to writing. I gave up watching the idiot box a few months ago and this time I hope it is for good. When we stopped watching tv, we replaced it with streaming movies through netflix. Well, all of our time was being eaten up by watching movies and series so, our studies suffered. So, for the next month, we have given up netflix. The home entertainment system is shutdown and oh what a difference the last three days have been. We are finding that there actually are enough hours in the day to do the things that we want to do, we just needed to get rid of all of the distractions. I am reading like crazy, our studies are going well, guitar and spanish and we hope to get back to our art now that we have time. I am also limiting the time spent on sites like facebook and tumblr because they also consume large amounts of time. I have stacks of books to get to and hey who knows, I might even get back to sewing.

January 2012- Back To My Lessons Challenge

January, my birthday month, has been wonderful!! I managed to get myself back on track as far as my lessons are concerned, I am studying again. Now that I am back on my path, I plan to really push myself this year so that I can make some real gains. Before I go to bed this evening, I will meditate and I will have achieved my biggest challenge this year which was to meditate everyday for one year and, I did it. I am so proud of me and my body mind spirit, thanks me. I was able to save myself through daily meditation, because prior to starting this challenge last February 1st, my mind was so fractured and I was sure that something was terribly wrong. But, after just a week of meditating, after not doing it for years, I felt the brain fog lifting. It was then that I decided to challenge myself to doing this for a year but now I know that I will continue this practice for as long as I can. So all in all, January has been a very fruitful month and I am still celebrating my birthday for at least a couple of more months!!

January 2012- Back To My Lessons Challenge

Since 2005 my honey and I have tortured our children with our annual christmas performance. This performance is part of a larger program that we started called Annu University. We created Annu U. when our children moved out and we found that we had lots of time on our hands and we wanted to use it in an uplifting way. We didn't want to become couch potatoes, so we created our own curriculum and every night for two years we studied spanish, music, egyptology and twice a week we did art, usually painting. Gradually we slacked off and started doing the minimal, just enough not to lose everything that we learned but not enough to advance to the next level. So for the month of January(my birthday month), my husband and I are jumping back into our lessons. Today I went out and got my guitar restrung and wow, I had forgotten how good it sounds. Its full bodied sound got me so excited that I actually practiced for an hour and a half today. I am so excited to return to my studies.