Tag: San Diego

Celebrate the Mundane

Every 3 months or so me and my hubby sit down to have a ‘check in.’ We usually chat about what is going on mentally and emotionally in our lives. But instead of it just being a bitch sess, we each take a turn discussing where we are and where we would like to be. We ask each other questions about how we feel, and which relationships in our lives need a little extra work. It’s our time to fully connect with each other like the best friends that we are.

On Tuesday, we both knew we needed a check in. It’s been a very emotionally full year so far, and we were both craving connection.

However. Instead of sitting on the couch in the darkened family room like we usually do for our deep chat, my man suggested we sit at the beach and watch the sun go down while we talk.

Ah!!

This is one of the (many many) reasons that I love him so much. He knows just what will excite me and just what will spice up our everyday.

We stopped and bought some delicious Whole Foods salads, poured wine into a thermos, and headed out to the beach.

Oh my gosh I can’t tell you how amazing it was to be curled up in our beach chairs side by side gazing out at the ocean and sharing our feelings. Ahhhh!!!!

It was such a great reminder that life does go fast. There is always something more to handle or feel or take care of. But if we want to not just survive it, but ENJOY it, we need to celebrate all the small parts. We could have just stayed home, had a nice chat and watched a show, but instead we transformed our entire week. This will probably be remembered as one of my favorite evenings ever with my man.

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Where’s the PASSION

I was talking to my hubby this morning. We have both been in the middle of an emotional upheaval and have felt so drained. I was telling him that lately I’ve just felt so tired, just longing to be back in bed, curled up.

I really dislike this feeling. Now I know when life is emotionally and mentally exhausting, it’s important to sleep. I got it. But I’ve had ENOUGH of that.

What I’ve realized about myself, is that if I’m not in a place of passion, I tend to get tired more quickly.

When I’m MAKING ART, and WRITING BLOGS and bubbling over with enthusiasm, I don’t need so much sleep. I jump out of bed at 4:30am, buzzing to create. My day is full of visions of what to make next, or the waves of paint swelling on my paper. I spend my time relishing what I’m grateful for and knowing that life is bringing me what is best for me. I am kind, I am fun, I am playful and silly and feel beautiful.

It’s not MORE sleep that I need, it’s taking a huge messy bite out of PASSION. Ah!

How can I get back to passion when I’ve been handling life stuff for so many days?

  1. Name off what I am grateful for. Set alarms if I need to.
  2. Meditate more often than I think necessary.
  3. Draw everything
  4. Release emotions (I work best if I cry at least every other day)
  5. Start something new
  6. Get my paints ready, and work on one of my pieces. Everything else can wait!
  7. Dump paint into my art journal and PLAY! The less thinking the better.

 

BURN

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I’m back

I’m finally sitting here at my little laptop ready to WRITE. Finally. It’s been so long! And actually it’s felt like forever since

I’ve MADE ART.

I went from driving many hours to a wonderful party in Los Angeles to a couple of days back home sorting through life stuff. Sometimes this happens, right? Days go in ways we don’t expect, and routine gets flipped around. But I have so missed writing my daily posts.

I think what I’m recognizing is that I am so much better at being easy on myself. It’s been an excruciatingly long month with so many stressful things happening, and lots of gory feelings exploding all over the place, and lots of places where cobwebs are literally falling out of the shadows.

When I’d go through things like this in the past, I’d feel so much SHAME and wonder WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??

I should be able to handle this! I should be STRONGER BETTER FASTER more amazing than I am.

I  SHOULD BE DIFFERENT.

Through the years, through the work I’ve been doing on myself, those voices still come up but they are softer, and they are way more in the background then they used to be. In fact, I can point them out! I can call them to the  front of the classroom and tell them their help is no longer needed.

Now, I am in charge.

Because the last week has been again so much learning and growing and aching and changing,…

What is the most loving thing I can do for myself?

I can make art.

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Girls Girls Girls

I was chilling on my yoga mat on Saturday morning, right before class started. Heat began flooding into the room, and it was filling up with lots of fellow yogis.

There was a girl next to me minding her own business, like most of us. But something about her made me realize something.

Girls are so funny. I mean not all of them, but a good portion of us are. We tend to be so competitive. I know I have been. Wanting to be acknowledged by them, maybe seen as the best or better, wanting to prove something.

And yet, in this crazy world right now, with all these women’s marches, etc. it’s obvious we are craving more women connection.

But can we do it?

Maybe I’m speaking only for myself. I am very aware that some of my girlfriends (especially my sister in law) meet other women with a pure open heart. She’s warm and makes eye contact and is truly waiting to connect.

I say I want the same thing as well, and yet if I’m totally honest about myself right now, I don’t really put it out there to women I don’t already know. I think I probably still operate out of the fear of not being enough, so I don’t always make eye contact, or smile the way that I could. It hasn’t been my intention to put other people at ease. It’s not that I don’t care, but it’s just not on my mind. I have been more concerned with HOW I AM PERCEIVED.

Now that I really look at it, it makes me sad to be that way.

I know I can change this, but it makes me curious, where did it start?

I have heard that women have been competitive with other women since the beginning of time. When we were a bunch of hulking cave women and needed to make sure no other burly cave woman was going to steal our caveman. Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s just been learned through society.

We all know the mean girls in school.

I was never one of those. In fact, I was the girl that would take a scared newbie under my wing, and invite them to sit with me. But I certainly had felt like I wasn’t good enough for certain girl groups, and that made me steer clear of many of them. Don’t girls gossip and one up each other? At least that was what I was used to, and I did attract some really mean ones for a long time.

I am sure many of you may have also gone through a bitchy gossipy stage like I did as well. It felt better (at the time) to put down other women then actually feel my own feelings about my inadequacies. That didn’t last long, and I’m definitely not there now.

Also, for some reason if I saw a girl that I thought was prettier than me or more talented, I have assumed that she was a snob or that she was really better than me. So I wouldn’t go out of my way to connect. This isn’t fair to her at all, and I want to change it.

What I would prefer is to NOT jump into a place of being competitive, or assuming that I’m not on someone’s level.

I want to be MORE open and loving, and ready to connect with all women, recognizing that no matter what someone looks like, they are still going through difficult things in their life that they don’t have answers to.

I want to remember that we aren’t all that different.

I want to fully invest in being a really awesome friend to all women, even ones that I will never be close to.

It’s my goal starting today to make eye contact with everyone, everywhere I go, and send them all love. I am going to be the one that smiles and says ‘hello’ first, and has compassion when someone doesn’t say it back. Because I get it. Females can be strange, but we have protected ourselves long enough. It’s time to have each other’s back.

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Schedule Emotional Drains?

Wow! What a weekend! This is the first one in a long time that actually FELT like a weekend. Know what I mean?

Sometimes we have these ridiculously stressful weeks and then convince ourselves that the weekend will be the time to finally really relax, and yet it becomes just another couple of days where we are running around stressed out chasing the feeling of relief.

This has been a huge part of my life lately. My hubby and I have had some pretty stressful, exhausting things going on with the kids and his ex-wife. So we have done what any concerned, aware, loving parents would do,..

we’ve talked about it obsessively.

I think in my head, I felt that if we aren’t talking about the issues over and over and over again until they are SOLVED, then we must be:

Living under a rock

Hiding

Avoiding

Afraid.

So,.. I pushed it. All the time, with no break. Anytime we saw each other we would start talking about these extremely heavy, exhausting PROBLEMS, ISSUES.

Isn’t that what we are supposed to do? 

But they didn’t get any better. I realized that I was so drained, emotionally, mentally and physically, but

THE ISSUES STILL REMAINED. 

I started to not feel particularly close to my hubby. I didn’t feel at all at peace. I didn’t feel full of energy, and I wasn’t noticing things I am grateful for.

Once we both discussed our feelings about all of this,

something magical happened.

We got a fuckin’ BRILLIANT idea. I think it’s the best we have had all year.

If talking about certain things is exhausting, and yet to some extent we still need to do it, why not create a schedule where it’s okay to do it in?

So here’s the deal: We decided that Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 5pm -6pm is our talk time about the difficult stuff.

NO MORE THAN THAT. 

Can I even tell you what this has done to our lives! We have only been doing it for 5 days, and all ready I feel like a completely different person. I am lighter and happier and more joyful and so so grateful! I feel like I have my wonderful relationship back to where it was.

And I realized something else.

Before, I felt like if I WASN’T talking about the difficult stuff 24/7, then I was avoiding. But now, since there is a PLAN, a SYSTEM, I don’t feel that way at all!

I feel in control of my life.

So this situation reminded me that I am in control. It’s MY happiness, it’s MY joy, it’s MY life. I can make choices on when and who I want to discuss personal stuff with. And so far, I must say our schedule is

LIFE CHANGING.

This weekend was unbelievably connecting and fun and playful and open and I am so in love. We gave ourselves a much needed EMOTIONAL BREAK! Yesssssssssssssss!!

Sooooo grateful for intuition!!

Happy Monday! xo

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Accidental Art

I used to think only specific things were art. They need to have

A PURPOSE!

A MESSAGE!

A POINT OF VIEW!

A REASON (at least)!

But now,… do I really believe that? There are many things that I notice every single day that are unique and fascinating maybe even grungy and raw and wild and full and explosive.

Why can’t they be art as well?

Maybe anything that stops you in your tracks, or causes you to feel, or take notice, or want to play or create is art….

Accidental Art. ahhh!

Here is a collection of some accidental art I found in Mexico about a month ago. Love the chipped paint, broken locks and old newspaper ads! Ahhhh

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Map It

I have this special thing with maps. I love the intricate lines and the way the streets overlap each other. I’ve been making these map drawings for quite awhile and now I’d really like to somehow base them on a city. Usually I just draw whatever my hand wants to draw, but I wonder if I were looking at a city map of San Diego, or LA, while I was doing this what would happen. Hmmm Maybe I’ll give it a try!

What do you think?

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Doin’ It Yoga Style

I have this extreme love/hate relationship with this hardcore yoga class called yoga sculpt. The temperature is turned up so high your body begins dripping with sweat, and then along with some yoga moves, you are pumping iron

WITH WEIGHTS.

The first time I did it I ended up stopping in the middle, totally done, gasping for breath on the floor and thought I was going to die. Seriously. I have worked out my entire life and yet this is the absolute hardest class I have ever done.

Now this is where things get interesting. Sure the class is hard, sure it’s like a fucking nightmare, lez be honest. But it does end! The intervals end, the downward dogs end, the horrible squats, all end.

It was a habit of mine for most of the time I was in this class to STOP when it got horrible. My chest starts burning, and my limbs shake so hard I think they will fall off, and there is so much sweat on my face that my contacts are swimming. So I would stop.

I started to believe that I COULDN’T go on.

Stopping became a habit.

 

And then I realized something.

I’m stopping before the miracle even happens. I’m stopping when it gets tough, when I feel super uncomfortable,..

I was outta there.

This didn’t just happen in yoga for me, it was like my whole life was laid out on the mat.

I’VE DONE THIS BEFORE IN SO MANY AREAS OF MY LIFE.

Life gets horrible, or feels nearly impossible and I checked out.

So what if I start to do things differently in this yoga class? Maybe there’s a chance that I start to become more aware of it in my life. What I have also realized is that it’s okay to slow down. What if instead of STOPPING, I get really present and breathe in compassion and MOVE SLOWER,

BUT DON’T STOP?

I’m not always perfect about this little tweak. Sometimes I still get so mind bobblingly ill that I have to stop, and that is okay. But I would say in general I push myself more.

Isn’t this true about LIFE? All parts of LIFE? Creating art or having relationships or finding a great job or doing really anything? If we QUIT when it hurts or feels yucky, what happens? We miss out. The art won’t get looked at, we won’t get that great job, we won’t work out relationship issues,

NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

I’m focusing on slowing down if I need to, but NOT STOPPING. I can do this, I can get through life (and HORRIBLY AMAZING yoga). There is always an ebb and flow, and it always gets better. I can do this, and so can you. We can move through even when it’s hard.

 

 

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Creativity Circle, uh yes please.

This morning while I was taking a shower, I was thinking about what to write today.

My love of almond butter?

My attempts at shutting up my super loud, (sorta cute) kitten from meowing me off a ledge?

My present situation with my step children?

My sudden 80’s ballad outbursts?

On one hand, I’m really enjoying getting down my thoughts about life and art and my kitten,.. hahah And yet on another hand, it feels really really yuckily self indulgent.

Normally, if you’d met me in real life, I would tell you less about myself, and I’d be asking a lot of questions. I am very fascinated by people and want to know ALL. OF. IT.

You know what I’d like to do? I’d really like to have a creativity circle where everyone comes, brings the thing they are working on, we each take turns discussing our FEELINGS and our FEARS and we RELISH in the fact that we GET TO CREATE. We can all hear and SUPPORT and VALIDATE each other. Ah!

Doesn’t that sound amazing?

 

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