An Explosion of Art

So, I'm gonna be 59 in a matter of weeks. It sounds OLD to me. There's no way you can make "almost 60" sound young! I can feel the changes in my body. I am slowing down. My arches and ankles hurt, which makes getting a decent cardio workout difficult. There have been changes in my work site and work responsibilities that make the job more demanding than it used to  be. I could stand to lose 40 lbs. My vision is blurry now, due to a cataract and high blood sugar.

But on the other hand, I have been practically prolific in creating art! I am doing it on an almost daily basis. I have found ways to work around the poor vision by using paper and ready-made images. They can be digital collage sheets or magazine images or just doodles and images from rubber stamps. Whatever, I just am not drawing and painting from life. My focus is now on making "pretty pages", art journal pages, a kind of collage.

I love this post card! Two weeks ago I went down to Ocean Grove, NJ. It's where I go when I need to rest and regroup and listen to myself think. I often do this when I attend an art retreat. That's what I did this month. It's been a whole year since I've been at Ocean Grove. The past 12 months have been an agony of stress related to my job, my money, my mother's health and recovery, her adjustment to being unable to live alone, struggling with my landlord, and having to find a lace to move into, being taken advantage of by the movers. It has all been overwhelming and seemed never-ending!

I was a basket case by the time I got to Ocean Grove!  The weather was blustery, damp, and gray. But it didn't matter to me. I was there! I saw some people who were former retreat guests, as well as seeing people that I really have developed relationships with. It felt embracing to be among people who valued my presence so much!

I spent 2 days immersed in art. I left my expectations of creating "perfect" art behind and devoted my energy to "playing" with art. And I came away with art that I actually enjoyed making and enjoyed looking at later.

Taking Stock

I've been overwhelmed by trying to stretch my paycheck twice as far as it can actually go. The stress of that has been driving me a little crazy. Every morning I wake up to questioning thoughts about how I will manage to pay all the blls. Well, yesterday we went to BJs. We stocked up on most staples and metas, the only "treats" were about $15' worth of cookies and an inkjet cartridge (not really a "treat"). I spent $350. This was with replacing things that we haven't bought since the summer because our trips to BJs have been limited to $100-150 a month. So, now we are set for a while. But I was not feeling satisfied as I usually do. We did not find many things that we usually look for and we had to substitute for what was available. And it didn't seem that there was enough "stuff" to be worth $350.But I know we did the best we could and that buying these things in a local supermarket would have been much more.

I have given myself permission to let goof things that weigh me down.  This morning I was thinking about the credit cards. I just can't afford to make the payments right now. And I can't afford to make the payment plus the late fee plus the now-due next payment. It boggles your mind how hard it is to catch up after just one missed payment. So, I decided that for now I have to just let go of worrying about the credit cards. Maybe some of them will get closed by the bank. But they have been maxxed out or close to maxxed for a while now, so I am not losing anything. I started thinking to myself "Well, there will be a day when I can write checks to pay off all of them"....Then I started thinking "I can't wait for the day to come that I can write a check to pay them all off and not have to worry about living with a credit card!" That was so empowering! It supports the letting go, it supports who I am as a person (I am not a bad or irresponsible person, just a "broke" person who is forced to do too much on one salary), and it promises a much better future.

From there I started thinking about how much I can't wait for us to move into our wonderful home in Detroit. And I realized that the house doesn't have a verandah, which is on my vision board. So, what did I do? I decided that we'll have to buy another house, the sumemr house with the verandah, so that I can lose track of the time while sitting on my verandah. It's a wonderful life to look forward to!

Being In Flow

There's such a flow of abundance coming in now!  At the end of last month we got a ruling from the rent control board deeming that we had indeed been overcharged rent for the past almost 5 years!  The correct rent is now less than we paid when we first moved in!  So now we are living rent-free until the excess is accounted for.  I've been able to catch up on the most pressing bills and have even planned some quickie weekend trips in April.  It's such a relief to be able to breathe again and I feel that my breathing is now at a deeper level than it has been in over a year.

We really like to take advantage of the huge savings at the big box food warehouse stores and we have been able to make a monthly trip there for the past 2 months.  Wow!  Loads of rolls of t.p. and paper towels, biggie sizes of laundry detergent and dish soap, huge rolls of aluminum foil!  All of the things that are over-priced in the neighborhood stores.  Plus, meats!  The quality of the meat and poultry is so much better.  I love not having to make a weekly trek out to the local store and then have to decide what I can manage to bring home in a shopping cart.

Tonight I went to Macy's for a One Day Sale.  I needed a wardrobe overhaul, so I decided to go just to see what was there.  I wasn't expecting to find as much as I did.  I bought $325' worth of tops and pants - 5 pants and 7 tops in all.  It was all on sale and I only paid $175 for the whole pile of clothes.  I haven't done that in a few years and I had been missing it.  There's nothing like finding a bargain that you like and that actually looks good on you!

I can't wait to see what's coming over the horizon!

Snowed In and Makin' Art!

I had 2 weeks of vacation to use by March 1 or I'd have to forfeit it. I couldn't afford to go anywhere that's warm and sunny. I didn't want to go anywhere that was grey, cloudy, and cold! As it turned out, I got to enjoy that right at home here in New York City! But I had my plan to make this a great vacation, no matter what. I'm always lamenting about not having enough time in the week for all the things that need to get done PLUS have time for art. Well, I've been noticing that the balance has been changing over the past 2 months or so. It's changing because I am making the choices that make it easier for me to do art. For this vacation I decided that I wanted to create a collage and make more greeting cards.

I planned out exactly what prep steps I needed to do in order to really make the collage. I chose the photos, got the copies made, bought my acrylic mediums and paint, consulted my art books. I was ready! That's more "ready" than I've been in a long time! It felt good. The act of just preparing to create was a release in itself. It counted as "being creative".



As the snow came down, and came down, and came down...I set to work last week. I was able to complete the collage if about 4 days. So, now I have a total of 3 collages that are all mine!

The past 3 days have been a total card-making extravaganza! I've been experimenting with stamping and embossing, blending colors, color compliments and color families, pushing my creative edge. I've had some ugly mistakes and some real beauties. There have been enough beauties for me to have incentive to make more and to use the same technique with different colors. I've been pushing myself to work with what I have on hand - which is quite a lot of paper and stamps, and a ton of reference books at hand.

The energy that this created has been awesome! It was enough for me to search online for card boxes and stretchy cords, and to list my cards on Etzy.com. I've had an inactive shop for months because everything seemed to be too complicated. Suddenly, it wasn't complicated today. The shop is open and there are 3 designs available. And I till have the entire weekend to do more cards!

I was an artist this week. I fed mt soul. I feel satisfied and abundant. Not everyone can be creative and they don't understand the healing power of art from a personal point of view. I wish they could. Creativity is inside all of us and it costs nothing. You can create on paper envelopes, shopping bags, napkins. You can use a simple pencil. A doodle is art. A bunch of doodles all together tell a story. The story can be told in words. Everything all comes together.

My Library!

Wow! The internet is turning into my personal library without walls. Each little experiment yields an amazing amount of information! Today I was just thinking about collage backgrounds and I decided to look up Google images of collages. It was like opening a door to infinite ideas! Through the images I discovered blogs written by other artists who are exploring using image transfers, just like me. It's amazing how you can reach out and touch someone far away and find a fellow traveler along your life path, so easily. I'm lovin' it!

Generosity, Need, and Having "Enough"

I did something unusual this month. It would not have been so unusual for someone else, but it was for me. Unfortunately, I don't really consider myself a very "generous" person. I've been too wrapped up in scrambling to get "mine", get more than "enough" and have something left over, have felt too independent and prideful, and too ashamed when I haven't had "enough" through my own efforts. 2009 has not really helped me to move beyond the "scarcity" mind set. But then again...I suppose it really has!

Money has been on the scarce end of things since last Christmas when my landlord decided to try to evict us. We've been fighting with him, paying past due rent, and withstanding the stress for 12 entire months. This included a few nasty little tricks pulled by the landlord, such as not cashing a check for 2 months and then filing another eviction order for non-payment of rent.

Nevertheless, we have prevailed and I have become a more spiritual person. I know take full advantage of angelic intervention, try to keep my personal vibrations high and positive, express my gratitude for all that I have been given already, made a vision board and communicated my intentions to make changes in my life and attitude. And it all has come together in such a rich way! A rich way as in manifesting an additional $10,000 this year to meet my financial obligations. And a rich way as in really feeling more positive about my life and my future.

What I didn't expect was that this richness would make me a more generous person,in ways beyond just money.

My long-term friend wrote me several letters this year and we both were deeply stressed by financial pressures. Her family house is at risk of foreclosure. She has grown up in that house! If that wasn't enough, in her last letter she told me that she had no heat and the upstairs family member's apartment had no gas. This, in December! I hated reading that letter! She didn't deserve to live like this! I used to think that I was the only one suffering under similar circumstances several years ago. I thought everyone else had an easier time of it. I thought that my trials were somehow related to my bad choices or my husband's bad choices and I was very depressed and hopeless. I hated to read the same thoughts coming from my friend.

She wrote me that she wanted to come to a holiday brunch that we were having to celebrate the abundance that we had come to appreciate in our lives in 2009. She needed to be around some positive people for a while. I decided that I would help her. I had just resolved our financial issues with the landlord and I felt good about how 2009 was ending.

So when she came to the party, I gave her a Christmas present. We don't usually exchange gifts, so she was surprised to get a git from me. Little did she know that the gift of a cat mug also had $100 tucked inside it. I figured she could either use it to treat herself or to pay a bill, or maybe even to help her to get her heat turned back on. My friend didn't open the gift then and there, so I had to wait for her reaction.

A day later she sent me an email thinking me for the gift. Then she sent me a letter where she thanked me some more and told me that her mouth had dropped open when she saw the money. She was thinking that there must have been some mistake! (So, I guess, in her world, nobody gives her $100...except now I've changed her world into one where someone certainly DOES give her $100!) And today I got another little note from her, still saying Thank You, Thank You.

I'm glad that I was able to give her the money. It wasn’t that I was so flush with bucks at Christmas time, but I remembered when another friend helped me earlier this year by providing money when I needed it, instantly, and with no questions or comments or suggestions about how to live my life better. I appreciated it then and I wanted to extend that gift further out into the world to help someone else. I'm glad to know that I have changed her world.

That's one incident. Now I've noticed that I am also changing into a person who is more generous in spirit, too. Another friend asked me to cat sit for her while she went to Mexico for a week. I wasn't really interested. She doesn't live close to me, I'd have to go after work and I'm tired enough at the end of the day to not want to add an extra task to my list. But she asked again when she couldn't find anyone else to help out for the last 2 days of her trip. So I agreed to do it, because i knew she really needed me to do it. So last night when it was 0 degrees and blustery outside, I went to her house and cared for her kitties. I did it again tonight, including cleaning the litter pan, wiping up vomited hairballs, and accidents outside of the litter pan. I know that the kitties appreciated it. They were so happy to see me! And I know that she will appreciate it as well.

I guess what I'm learning is that we really don't operate in a vacuum. We all need each other. My thinking is going beyond the whole nuclear family idea. My friends are becoming my family and we all try to treat each other well. I'm learning that it makes the world a better place and it makes me feel connected to the people that I care about and care about me. It's a good lesson to learn.