Thursday Thought: Self-Help: Make Your Creative Dreams Real

For several years, I was “into” SARK. Believe it or not, Positivity is one of my strengths, and SARK is very much into being positive. I love her bright colors and creative drawings.

When I saw her book Make Your Creative Dreams REAL in a bookstore I naturally had to purchase it. Like the more popular The Artists Way, the book is broken into twelve parts–in this case, months, not weeks. When I decided to follow the outline, I broke each month into weeks.

Unlike TAW, there is a lot of external reading involved.  Fortunately, my local library system had most of the books. I even purchased at least three that I loved so much I knew I would want to read them again. Since SARK’s book is copyrighted 2004, many of the books are no longer in the library. Many aren’t even available (except as used) on Amazon.  But I learned a lot from the books. It’s funny now, because I belong to a “reading club” and many of the books we’re supposed to read are either books from SARK’s reading list or rehashes of same.

There are also a lot of Internet links in the book. Many of the urls were no long active even when I did the year of introspection.

But the book is more than a reading list and websites. There’s a ton of introspection involved. I journaled my way through the book.

SARK is also a proponent of what she calls “micromovements.” I call them chunks. I call it eating a whole bear by myself–one bite at a time (thank you Julie Garwood). Don’t look at the whole picture at once, but break it down into do-able pieces. I live by this philosophy.

So even though the reading list is outdated and the website links are history, I still recommend this book for anyone wanting to define what it is they want from life and how to make that dream happen.

In

MJ Monday-Motivation: Lightning Bugs

Once again, my schedule–writing and day job–prevented me from getting to my patio/garden/back yard in a timely manner. It doesn’t help that the person who had all these grandiose plans for the space disappeared on me last year.

The first year of my garden was the best. It looked amazing. I had fresh herbs. I had colorful coleus, and planters of other beautiful things.

Since then, the space has become more of a jungle. I still love sitting out there, especially at night.

I love watching the lightning bugs. (Yes, I am born and raised in upstate NY, and we always called them lightning bugs. I never heard of a fire fly until I started school.) This year they start flashing early and continue to flash often.

No wonder summer is my favorite season.

Thursday Thought: Typewriters

The other day I recaptured a memory from when I was very, very young.

My aunts and uncles and cousins always got together with extended family, so I knew my cousins’ aunts from the other side of their family.  This memory comes before I went to school, so I couldn’t have been much older than three or four, but it is very vivid.

My cousins’ aunt, a teenager at the time, had a toy typewriter. It was red. It typed purple, like the dittos I would later receive in school for classwork. I was obsessed with the typewriter. I remember wanting desperately to play with it. Longing to use it.

Even then, I knew I was a writer.

My Boy is 30

Yes, my first-born, a/k/a Y-Chromo, is thirty years old today.

I never knew unqualified love until I met him.

He was 5 weeks premature. He couldn’t wait to get out and meet the world. When he was in day care, other parents would tell me he would be a politician or a cruise ship activity director.  Within a week of being in daycare, he knew the name of every child in the center. That hasn’t changed.

He decided what he wanted to be when he grew up when he was in middle school, and except for one brief diversion, he became exactly what he said he would be.  His 7th grade math teacher told me Y-Chromo had a mathematical mind. I laughed. I stopped laughing the day he received his BS in Mathematics summa cum laude.  The next year, he received his MS in secondary education: he was all set to become a math teacher. His dream. He got his first teaching job right out of college.

One of my most memorable moments with him was when he was an infant. I was rocking him in the middle of the night after feeding him, and I felt him grow. Babies grow at some point. We see it when their clothes become too small. But that night, I literally felt him grow in my arms as I rocked him. A miracle.

Happy birthday, baby!