Tag: Saturday Musings

  • Saturday Summary | Samhain Week Two

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    Work! No, Rest! No, Read! No, Make! Wait…

    It\’s Saturday, Dear Reader, and the end to a week in the life. The full moon was amazing this week; I tried to capture it on my phone\’s camera as it sat on some clouds but the picture didn\’t quite do it justice.

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    I\’m not even sure I actually managed to capture the moon, because she was really big over those clouds and I wonder if she\’s behind the greyish smokey stuff, or if I just pointed the camera in the wrong place.

    Which, when you think about it, might be an apt metaphor for some of this past week, Dear Reader. Ugh.

    On the other hand, there\’s a lot of growth and movement going on, and growing pains are called \”pains\” for a reason. So I\’m going to deliberately focus on the growing part of things, and the good, and the triumph statements, in order to train my brain what to look for.

    And do a lot of meditation. Anyone else tried Yoga Nidra yet? Love that stuff.

    Books, Books, and More Books

    I may be late to the bus, but have you been to your local library lately? Holy cats, they\’re amazing places. The one in Bellevue has a makerspace complete with 3-D printers and sewing machines! And you can check out ebooks. I knew that, but never really played with it much. But for some reason, I\’ve been going nuts at the library. I mean, come on: you\’ve gotta love a place that lets you walk in and walk out with seven or eight books without paying.

    Body – Adventures In Moving

    My husband and I went over to our local wildlands area, Mercer Slough, and had a wander. My gosh, this area is lovely – and it\’s hard to believe it\’s smack in the middle of the second-largest city in the state of Washington! The slough is a wetlands area, home to many species of animals and birds as well as an abundance of plant life. And, as we discovered this past summer, lots and lots of bugs.

    Luckily, bug-season is over so we were able to wander around unmolested this time and took pictures to our hearts\’ content.

    My swimming buddy is off to France for ten days, so I\’m left to my own devices as far as the gym goes. There\’s been a bug going around the office so I didn\’t swim yesterday, but I\’m determined to get outside and wander around today and get my butt to the gym next week. Anyone up for some accountability partnership? I mean, it\’s the week before American Thanksgiving (wait, what???), so I don\’t know about you, but my body sure could use some moving around.

    Mind – What I\’m Reading

    Craftfulness: Mend Yourself by Making Things*, by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin*

    The subtitle of this is what caught my eye – I have been fascinated by this aspect of maker culture since I first started knitting in Y2K. Julia Cameron, in The Artist\’s Way*, points out that art is therapeutic, not therapy. This book takes the idea further by blending current understanding of brain science and mindfulness with traditional approaches to craft. There\’s something magical that happens when we make things, and this book explores what that \”something\” is and how to encourage it to happen on purpose.

    Fire Cider! 101 Zesty Recipes for Health-Boosting Remedies Made with Apple Cider Vinegar*, by Rosemary Gladstar and Friends

    Did you know that herbalism is a radical act? Well, it turns out this is literally true as regards \”fire cider,\” and after a long court battle to protect the name from being trademarked by greedy corporate interests, this book celebrates the history and modern applications of traditional remedies and recipes. I have been studying herbalism for nearly forty years and this book makes my heart sing. Plus, it\’s got more than one recipe for toasted nuts that sounds amazeballs. (Yes, I\’ll post pics when I make it.) Definitely worth checking this one out.

    Spirit – Mindfulness Practice, or Where Does Writing Come From?

    Those of you who have been with me for a while know I\’m an adult survivor of child abuse. The journey to healing can be a long one and frustrating, but ultimately I can say that it\’s rewarding. I don\’t want to sound like the inside of a greeting card with syrupy prognostications of \”You\’ll get there, Little Birdie,\” but I have to believe that healing is possible because my personal survival depends on that sure and certain knowledge.

    I\’ve talked a lot about The Artist\’s Way and have done workshops with others since 2007, and used it personally since 1995, so it\’s pretty obvious that I think there\’s something to it. It works. So I use it. It\’s as simple as that. But in January of this year, I came across iRest Yoga Nidra with Molly Berkholm and it\’s quite honestly been life-changing. I\’ve meditated my whole life, but the protocols in the iRest method are easy to use and implement. I highly recommend it to everyone but particularly those of us recovering from trauma, of whatever source, and working to heal PTS.

    I\’ve been journaling all year like it\’s going out of style; I\’m averaging between 150 and 200 pages a month now. But Story has been slow to come. I\’m pleased to say that I sat down on Thursday and got some movement on Ambush, which is Book 4 in the Chicagoland Shifters series. I REALLY want to get this book done and out the door, but it\’s been a very slow process. So getting forward movement is so very exciting.

    Space – or, They\’re Replacing Our Roof

    Ugh. I don\’t like strangers in my space. A couple months ago, they painted the exterior of our complex. While I like having fresh paint, it was a pain in the neck. We thought the fuss and bother was over but nope! Fresh joy awaits. We\’re now into week three of roof replacement, because they\’re doing three of the buildings, ours included. Last night, my husband and I went out for date night to a local drive-in eatery (if you\’re in the area, check it out, it\’s super fun and really yummy; Burgermaster). We came home to find that the ceiling had leaks in the bedroom (three last night plus a fourth that happened during the night) and one in the living room over the couch. Thankfully they didn\’t happen over the piano, any of the electronic equipment (computers and such) or art collections (like, say, my journals that are stored in one of the closets) or, gods forbid, the bed! (Blarg.) So all in all, the damage is relatively minor, but holy cats I\’m cranky. It\’s amazing how de-centering having things go wrong with one\’s home can be.

    The Week To Come

    This is the last full week before American Thanksgiving, and the last round of chelation therapy for my husband, (who has heavy metal poisoning with mercury, barium, and lead). Then comes Thanksgiving week which we had hoped to spend in Philadelphia, but due to price gouging by the airline industry tickets are over $750 USD – PER PERSON – for the holiday week, and that\’s not even the whole week. We\’d leave like Monday and come back Saturday, not the whole Saturday to following Sunday thing I\’d wanted to do.

    So, enter Plan B: we will go out to visit family in February/March, weather depending, when tickets are more reasonable – and it\’s my husband\’s birthday in February anyway, so there\’s that. We will still take the week off, as originally planned, only spend it doing an actual staycation – since we haven\’t had a vacation in three years, we\’ll spend it being tourists in Seattle. We\’re taking a friend from out of town to Bainbridge Island to explore the shops and have lunch – and ride the ferry, of course! – and then an underground tour of Seattle. We\’re planning a whale-watching ride and some other things as yet to be determined. But I plan to be a tourist the whole week – complete with camera and travelogue. I\’m so excited.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What\’s going on in your world?

    *Affiliate links.

  • Saturday Summary | Samhain Week One

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    NaNoWriMo* is in full swing and it\’s a chilly, rainy day in the Seattle area. I\’d say peaceful, but they\’re replacing the roof on my building and the roofers started at 08:30. That\’s in the ay-em. On a fucking Saturday.

    And I didn\’t kill \’em. Not even once.

    Happy Celtic New Year! I\’m so grateful that it\’s a new year and new beginnings, because it was past time to put the old year in the ground. Man, what a couple years it\’s been, huh? We live in a brave, new reality that bears very little resemblance to the one we were living in a few years ago. The world is waking, and it\’s a good thing, but chaotic, nu?

    As I\’m doing over on my Knoontime Knitting blog, I thought I\’d check in on the week and share a progress report. For one thing, I realized I REALLY miss blogging. I happened to look back at some posts that I wrote for a group blog \”back in the day,\” and realized there\’s some good stuff there! (Which, for those of you wondering, I will post here as throwback posts just as soon as I can get my fingers to type up the post links and things. Never fear, Dear Reader, I\’ve gotchoo.)

    But fallow periods are necessary. As Dr. Mia Rose points out, nothing blooms all the time. And so for us, we need to remember, and by \”we\” I mean \”I,\” that sometimes rest periods, fallow periods, dry spells happen. I am also learning that I need to celebrate the small steps I take in the direction of my goals/dreams/inspirations/squirrels. And as for squirrels, sometimes I just need to chase them because doing so brings me deep and abiding joy.

    Take this post, for instance. It\’s a bit of a squirrel. How I got there was, I met with my accountability partner this morning, had a fantastic meeting with her. Then I met with my web designer and technology advisor, and WE had a great discussion. As part of that discussion, I was trying to find a post written by a colleague on a group blog and poof – I found some posts I\’d written, one of which is still relevant today as it was five years ago. And poof, I said to my designer, I miss blogging, and she, very reasonably, pointed out, \”Well, you can blog now.\”

    Hmph. Way to puncture a really good pity party there, chica.

    Ergo, I\’m blogging. But about what?

    Ah. THAT, Dear Reader, is my inner critic, come out to play with me and interfere with me getting in a sentence edgewise. So I decided, I did, to come here and do a blog post for Saturday, a check-in of sorts, and voila. I\’m blogging again. Just like that.

    And sometimes, it really is just that meta.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What was your week like this week? What are you planning for the week to come?

    *NaNoWriMo – What Izzit?

    National Novel Writing Month is every year in the month of November, and participants endeavor to write the draft of a novel, which is defined as 50,000 or more words written entirely during the month. I volunteered for several years to help out with the Chicago Region, which includes the third largest city in the country and over 5,000 participants every year. This is my first year not volunteering in a while and I confess to being a little bereft. The Seattle region is quite large but, though a logistical brain fart, I neglected to get tickets to today\’s train write in and by the time I realized I should do so, they were sold out. So THAT is a cautionary tale if I ever heard one – strike while the iron is hot, Dear Reader, and don\’t be left behind.

    But now, it\’s brunch time. Do tell me, though, in the comments what your week is like; I\’d love to know!

  • Buh-Bye May, Hallo June!

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    So, May sort of came, beat up everybody, and left. It feels like it should still be April 17th.

    But it\’s not. It\’s the first of June.

    In 2019.

    How\’d that happen?

    I didn\’t get as much done this year as I\’d hoped by now, certainly not bookwise – I know, I know, the books still aren\’t up. Good gravy, that\’s been a learning process. The two biggest things I learned are: stress interferes with our creative processes, and social media steals time.

    So rather than wax eloquent about writing, I figured I\’d write an update post to you, Dear Reader, and see where we go from here.

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    Our dog, Coyote, died on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Man, that\’s been hard. We had to take her to the vet to be put to sleep, because she was sick all weekend. I don\’t really want to talk about it, but I figured it\’s important news so I should share.

    My coauthor and partner Rachel came in for a visit earlier in May, but Murphy\’s Law prevailed and pretty much everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. That was the Vacation That Wasn\’t, and again, I don\’t really want to talk about it.

    But as it turns out, stress has an effect on creativity. In preparing some pictures for today, I noticed that I never finished the A to Z Challenge in April, and I still have pictures that I took for it. I\’m not sure if I have any wisdom to share about not posting them, other than to say, sometimes, life gets in the way of our creative plans and we need to honor that. The only way I\’ve found to get back on the page is to, well, get back on the page. Hence today\’s post.

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    Another thing I\’ve observed and talked about in the past is using other creative outlets when one is blocked in a particular one. For me, that\’s typically been knitting. Over the last few months of job upheaval, and particularly at the end of last year when I was in the thick of it, I wasn\’t able to even knit. I just didn\’t have the heart for it. In January and February, I was able to play with my pin loom and learn some pin loom weaving, but it wasn\’t \”real\” creative work. It was solely creative play. I finally got back to the semi-circular shawl I\’d started designing in January, and am now about half done.

    I think that\’s a critical distinction, this difference between creative work and creative play. I don\’t know that I have any answers yet, but I\’m learning there is definitely a difference for me. Creative work is goal oriented: \”get Burning Bright up on Draft2Digital and upload it to retailers and my website,\” which requires me to learn Draft2Digital, Amazon ebook and Amazon paper book uploads, Draft2Digital interface for the other retailers (non-Amazon), and learn MyBookTable, which is a WordPress widget that lets me build a bookstore on the website (I use WordPress to run this and my other sites). Creative play is also critical, to me being happy and contented as an artist. And in order to feel like working on any kind of play, I\’ve found I need to feel grounded, which is why the work-related bullshit was so disruptive to my life.

    On the other hand, my husband and I have had some true breakthroughs this last two or three months. We finally opened a local bank account (which is something on our task list since we moved here last year) at a local credit union, got our taxes sorted out (which is huge since we owe an arm and a leg to Uncle Sam from financing the move with premature retirement distributions). We\’ve been culling our stuff, still, which is honestly a little surprising because I thought we\’d done all that when we moved. Nope. We culled about 15 or 20 paper grocery bags of books, a portable heater, two bookcases, and a copper fire pit last weekend. We completely reconfigured our home office, which really opened up the space. It\’s startling how much of a difference that makes.

    My new employer allows me the privilege of working from home two days a week, and that\’s been a real adjustment. It took a while for me to settle into that new routine, but I\’m finding I really like it. I\’m an extrovert, and I thought I\’d hate it to pieces because it\’s just me and the animals at home. But in fact, I\’m really liking the peace and quiet, and it really lets me hear myself think in relation to my work and that\’s allowed me to be more strategic and intentional. And that\’s surprisingly fun.

    So like I said, May was a pretty intense month. I\’m looking forward to June. The weather is brightening up and we have some hiking planned and a weekend vacation to the Oregon coast later in the month. And yes, I promise, I\’m working on uploading the books. And finishing the knitting. And doing the weaving.

    In short, I\’m practicing being in the moment and following my bliss. And that is surprisingly easy and hard, all at the same time.

    I hope you have a lovely weekend, Dear Reader. And if you\’d like, I\’d love to hear about your Spring in the comments, and what excites you about Summer – or, if you\’re in the Southern Hemisphere, your Autumn and Winter.

    Big love,

    Noony