April 1st on June 30th

Here's the latest from the April 1st Project:

Verbally Grateful

I end this day with gratitude.

It didn’t start that way. Instead of opening my eyes and thanking God for another day, I cursed that it was later than I had anticipated and jumped out of bed. I’m trying to finalize two drafts of short texts – monographs – related to my work, and I’m blocked and just can’t seem to add the final words, make the last edits, finish. It’s making me nuts, and I was avoiding it by literally putting my head under the covers.

But the day progressed, as it always does, and at around six I decided to change venue and move into the kitchen. I opened the blinds in time to see a redheaded woodpecker on the neighbor's house. It was vivid crimson and really lovely with its white and black body. For these close encounters with nature I am truly grateful and for the home that offers the view of the birds, turtles, snakes, rabbits, and dragonflies.

And as I sit here and look out into the backyard and across the pond, I realize that the entire day (aside from kick-off) has been filled with gratitude.

I reached out and thanked a stranger for her continued creative inspiration (again thanks Teesha), and I visited the thxthxthx blog to see to whom or what Leah was expressing appreciation. I was grateful to discover some new authors and smiled as I jotted their names and their books into the April 1^st Project. I was also appreciative of the images and ideas that a spin around the web produced. And, in the end I was inspired to work on my monographs. A true blessing.

As I’ve mentioned in a prior post, I keep a gratitude journal in which I count my blessings each day. Today just seemed like a good day to be publicly thankful, to really wear my appreciation for life – my life – and the ability to create it each and every moment. The struggles that cause me to curse never equal the power of the miracles that spring from awareness and gratitude. Life is so much more rich when you enumerate your assets – a really comfortable blanket, organic strawberries, a good book, a caring and supportive husband, my health.

When I read Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project, one of the many take-aways was that she realized that she should be grateful for the things she didn’t have as much as for the things she had. Meaning, grateful that she didn’t have cancer, that she didn’t have financial problems, etc. Ever since I read her book, I keep this in the front of my mind and at the top of my list. I don’t suffer what many do, and I realize how fortunate I am.

As dusk pushes the sun below the horizon to make way for night, I will take the advice of Gladys Brown Stern and verbally count my blessings. It's going to take a while.

Zazen

I didn’t know about his wife. I really didn’t know anything about him either. I saw his book ‘Everyday Matters’ on Amazon when I was on a trail of drawing books. It intrigued me because it was a memoir and it had drawings. I had recently contracted a fever about drawing and had been hunting for inspiration and resources to help me along.

I ordered it used and anticipated delivery.

It’s a small book, nice size, colorful drawing on cover. I opened it up and was swallowed whole. When I emerged an hour or so later, I realized that it really had nothing to do with drawing and everything to do with living.

I’ve witnessed a great collision lately, my own big bang. The creation of my creation. Or the further clarity of my creative efforts.

Danny Gregory. Natalie Goldberg. Frederick Franck. They have the same message. No matter if you draw, write, or whatever your craft, use it as a practice. Use it as a meditation. Allow it to take you through yourself and beyond, to a place where you really are connected with the world – not the world around you, the world that envelops you. And there, you will create.

I liken it to Betty Edward’s exercise in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – turn the picture upside down so that your brain doesn’t put logical parameters on what you see. This way, it won’t know.

Danny Gregory used drawing to help him reach a painful and pained inner part of himself after his wife’s accident. He began to connect the lines of his life and the lines of his surroundings, and he used them to heal and grown and live.

He lived by drawing.

Natalie Goldberg wrote down the bones twenty years ago. And she kept going. She writes without lifting her pen off of the page, allowing her words and her thoughts to flow through her and onto the page. She does it every day. She has mounds of writing journals. She lives by writing. She learns about her life and her self by writing. She practices through writing.

She sits zazen through writing.

Frederick Franck also meditates through drawing, openly admitting that he can’t sit still for long in a lotus pose and instead chooses to practice through illustration. His book, The Zen of Seeing, is hand written and illustrated. It’s the second of his books that I’ve enjoyed as much for the subject matter as for the illustrations.

He creates through his pen.

When I was in high school, I took Mrs. Hutchison’s creative writing class. She instructed us to write about how things tasted, what things smelled like, and how we felt. She asked us to write about the scary events of our lives. I wrote about my family, wracked by mental illness and a lack of coping skills. I remember that it was freeing. I wrote through the pain. I let it flow from my pen.

They call it a practice for a reason, and like everything else in life, it requires that you attend to it daily. What I like about writing and drawing is that there is a visible result – words on a page, a sketch of a mockingbird.

Freeing yourself of your thoughts and emotions and allowing yourself to follow the curve of a leaf, smell the cumin in the stew, articulate the emotion of regret, and connect. Wow, that’s powerful. As Kung Fu Panda would say, it’s about recognizing your awesomeness.

And I mean that.

I continue to browse through Everyday Matters because it does. His story matters to me. His drawings matter to me. Every day matters to me. I also continue to draw and am practicing writing in a way that I haven’t before. I have tried to sit and meditate before, and I will again. For now, I am letting my creativity flow through me. Unencumbered. My hand open.

The Art of Non-Conformity

One of my favorite people is Chris Guillebeau. Though we've never met, I love his stories about traveling the globe, his passion for adding value to the world, and just his general attitude about living life on your own terms.

He inspires me.

Thanks to Chris, I've been asking myself all of those big questions. Well, I asked them before, but the need for an answer has been heightened because I don't want to be rude and not respond.

One of the things I like about Chris is his honesty (you'll note that I usually mention honesty as something I really admire in a person). He's great about sharing his success, talking about what has worked, and providing suggestions and recommendations. What he's not good at is feeding you a line of bull about how you can work four hours a day and make a mint. Thank you, Chris.

He's honest. He works hard and he says so. And he tells you that you will have to do the same. He works more than a 40-hour workweek to write, market, and respond. That's another thing I really dig about him. He answers his own email, tweets his own thoughts, and gets back to people.

He's a traveler. That's another of his passions, and it's one of his major goals - to visit every country. Love that. But his travels aren't fluffy white robes and cushy slippers. He works while he's traveling, and he has figured out a way to do it that makes it affordable and doable. And then he shares all of that with the world.

Aren't you loving him too?

I've learned a lot from Chris (and am still learning), so I thought I'd share some of my insights since I've come to know him.

• Know your audience - Okay, so I knew that one. But I had only put it into practice when I was guiding my clients. Duh! I have to be specific about who I am talking to. Who?
• Why should they care? - And they have to care every day. Every day.
• You don't have to live your life the way other people expect you to - Okay, so I just learned this last year. Tough lesson. Totally shattered my world, and there are still a few pieces to pick up - but oh so true. I'm still working on defining and living my life the way I want to, but I have to keep reminding myself of this. My life doesn't have to look like everybody else's. It never has, so why start now?
• Prioritize your art - This is another one of those items that I get intellectually but don't put into practice. Better at it, but still need to prioritize. Another example of his honesty is when he says that he writes on a schedule and doesn't miss the schedule because of his own weakness. If he misses once it'll make it easy and justifiable to miss again. And so on.
• You must have your elevator speech ready - Another no brainer, but I have a brain and no excuse.
• Know how you add value - This isn't as easy as it sounds. It's one thing to 'help people and organizations succeed' but you really have to define what that means. As I reshape my business, how I answer this question becomes the strategy. It's all about impact, remember.

I think the biggest, greatest, most profound thing I've learned from Chris is that I don't have a good measure for success. It's the money thing. It's not about money. My success is not about money. I do great work, love to help people, thoroughly enjoy communications and strategy and creativity and generating ideas and guiding people to success. How rich is that?! But no, I have to get uptight because of money. What? Get a grip Maria.

When Chris talks about what he does, he shares how much time he spends 'earning' an income and then quickly and enthusiastically goes into how he connects with cool people and enjoys drinking coffee and traveling and... You can hear it in his voice. He is measuring his success by what he does all day. And what he does all day is connect with cool people, write, and make the world a better place by sharing and encouraging others. How rich is that?!

To clarify, I'm an advocate for making money, and I want to make lots of it. My work has value, and I want to be compensated for it. What I've learned is that there are occasions when my equation can become success = money. And frankly that devalues my work. There are right reasons to worry about money and earnings, and there are right reasons to worry about success. Sometimes those two lines don't cross. Okay, so I was never good at math.

The most important things to learn are the things we already know. And the truth is that I know a lot of what Chris teaches. I just don't put it into practice. Or at least, I don't put it into practice every day. Every day is the real key. To be what you want, you have to do it every day. Live by your principles every day. Do what you love every day. Remind yourself of your goals every day. Every day.

On November 18th, I'll get to meet Chris. He's coming to Houston on his Unconventional Book Tour, hitting all 50 states, and he will be hosting meet ups to talk about the book, blogging, and anything else the community wants to discuss.

You can learn more about what Chris does here. And you can pre-order his book "The Art of Non-Conformity" below. Join me on November 18th. I'm really looking forward to meeting Chris, and I'd love to meet you too.

Happy Father's Day

More April 1st

An April 1st Update.

The Price of Silence and Other Videos

Sometimes I just trip over things. Surfing today on the National Geographic site, I came across the following:

Amnesty International: 'The Price of Silence'

In case you can't view it below, you can go directly to it here.


And an animated U2 video of 'I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight'
Again, direct link here if needed.


Cuba: A brief inside look at the country and its people.
Direct link here.


Galapagos (A place that fascinates me)
Direct link here.

Draw Thy Self

Here are two more of the self portraits on my quest to improve my drawing.

RSA & Cognitive Media Present The Empathic Civilisation, Drive, and The Secret Powers of Time

The Empathic Civisation



Drive



The Secret Powers of Time



RSA can be found here.
Cognitive Media can be found here.

Applause to both and also to the authors and oral presenters.

On The Happiness Project and Why Sometimes You Just Have to Smile

Yesterday, I finished reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. I learned about it on one of my trails, and it sounded like it would be interesting, at a minimum worth a glance.

The book (and a blog) essentially arose from a question she asked herself one day on the subway about how happy she was and how she could be happier. And being an avid reader, writer, researcher, and information junkie, she set down the path of figuring out what happiness means to her (and generally to everyone) and how to get more of it.

She read piles of books, immersed herself in innumerable yawn-drawing studies, and queried lots of people about happiness. Frankly, she did far more than I would do, but I loved her exercise. I think she almost drove her family and friends crazy, but really that’s what happens when you become passionate about something – and she was so about happiness.

What I really and truly enjoyed about this book was Gretchen. I think it takes great courage to be honest on the public stage, and she was just that. She openly admitted to what you may call faults but that she recognized as inherent traits that are less than flattering. She boldly proclaimed that she’s not interested in things that should interest her, that she needs gold stars, that she doesn’t err on the side of thinking of others first. But don’t get me wrong, she has some wonderful traits to go along with the ones just mentioned. And, she demonstrated (or at least wrote about) transformation, sometimes painful, sometimes not. She learned a lot. And I learned a lot as a result.

She generated a list of commandments. I won’t be a spoiler because I think it’s worth a read, but I will say that ‘act the way I want to feel’ is something that I think about daily. She came up with her list of life lessons and she named them Secrets of Adulthood. Again, not to dilute the experience should you have it, but a reaffirmation that ‘what you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while’ was much needed.

I realized that some of the things she learned that she wanted / needed / should do were things that I already do. This doesn’t make me a saint, it just means that it’s in my nature. Like sending birthday cards, leaving love notes for my husband, and making gifts. It’s about making other people happy. When others are happy, I’m happy. When I’m happy, others are happy. But…I also learned how to reciprocate those little acts, something that I think I sometimes do but sometimes miss.

I’m guilty of some of the things she wanted to overcome. I know that if I think I’m happy, I will be – power of positive thinking and all that. I do believe in it. I also believe that you have to rid yourself of the negative, and she agreed. Over the past year or so, I have eliminated the stress and distress in my life, and I’m practically giddy as a result.

I also realize that creativity is so important to my day. I write a great deal as part of my work and have many performing arts clients which help fill my creative well. I write for pleasure, and I keep the April 1^st Project, which to me is a collage of my path. I make things – books, drawings, etc. And I cook like a fiend.

Little things she did and recognized resonated with me – working / writing in 90 minute blocks of time, letting things go, taking time to be silly. I loved that she loves children’s literature and that she kept a blank book (so me). I really liked that she looked at advice in the form of quotes and saw how she could go down the path of the advice and then sometimes acknowledged that it wasn’t for her – so she would find her own way. She didn’t discard, she re-imagined. Great lesson. Do what’s right for you and be honest about it.

She talked a great deal about friendship and how it leads to happiness. Again, she read lots of studies and provided factual information to support this. Strong relationships lengthen life, boost immunity, and cut the risk of depression. And in the spirit of not gossiping and cutting people slack, she shared this quote from Flannery O’Connor:

From 15 to 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don’t look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.

As she put it, finding explanations in charity is a more holy way of saying cut people slack. Either way, it’s good advice.

She keeps journals and takes notes like crazy – how can I not like this woman?! But what she did that most helped her and could help all of us was a trick she learned from good ole Ben Franklin – she created a resolutions chart. My husband would be thrilled to know that an Excel spreadsheet is in the making. She approached her Happiness Project by determining her truths and outlining areas of focus. She broke those into bite-size chunks and fit them into months. Then each month she dug deeper and created specific resolutions to support what she was trying to achieve. This is so much like my ‘line of work.’

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, captured many quotes that Gretchen shared so that they can help me along, and I created my own commandments. Next up, a resolutions chart. Perhaps I’ll share it here.

Sharing the Latest: Drawing, April 1st, etc.

I'm working to improve my drawing. So taking a cue from Betty Edwards, I decided to draw self portraits, to improve my perceptions of edges, spaces, relationships, light and shadows, and the whole image. So, I did what I do best -- started a journal. My goal is to draw a self portrait every day until the journal is full. That's about 23 more pages. Here's the first one:

No laughing. And for the record, I'm not quite as porky as I appear. The nose is the hard part.

Anyway, speaking of journals. The April 1st Project is coming along, and frankly I find that it makes me happy to catalog my cyber trails and to collage images and quotes and stuff that simply suit my fancy.

Here are some of the latest images:

Below, I've pulled quotes out of the pages and scribbled them on a yellow legal pad. It's a different way to share them:

And finally, to paraphrase Pink Floyd:

     Hello,

     Is there anybody out there?

     Just comment if you read me

     Is there anyone online?

Do drop a note.

Swedish Sub/Way Cool

I came across some images of a Swedish subway on Accidental Mysteries via Leenks. I wanted to share them. Way cool. We don't have a subway, but if we did...