Beauty

Time flying once again

It’s been a year and two days since I started this blog. A year and two days.

I’m happy to say I have achieved some of the goals from a year (and two days) ago. More importantly, I’ve faced up to the fact that I tend to spread myself too thin and have taken steps to correct this. Realizing the fact of this was one thing, doing something about it has been something else. So, I’ve given up a bit of work in a county far, far away in order to have more time for the pursuits I love, but I still have the problem of loving many, many pursuits. I realized I needed to make some decisions about those as well. I’ve narrowed the long and winding list down to two desires to which I can surrender.

Creating and writing. Writing and creating.

Creating in the sense of being an artist and creating 3-dimensional objects. The objects tend to be figures, dressed with small accessories. Since I love stories, my 3-dimensional creations often have names and always have their own little tales. They always, always make me smile.

Writing is also, of course, creating, and I love telling stories, but writing is more than that. Even more than when I’m creating something 3-dimensional, writing allows me to be in charge. If I can’t make the face out of paper clay for the figure quite the way I’d first envisioned it, I change the fabrics or the pose or the items they hold until I see before me something that pleases me. In writing, I can describe the face (or the fabrics or the pose) and draw a word picture that is precisely what I want. It may or may not be true, but I feel I have more freedom when I’m writing.

I had some help in figuring out that I would not be as likely to achieve those things I want until I freaking figured out which things I want the most. I recently read a book called, the Magic of Thinking Big, by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D. Here is my favorite bit.

Failure to follow desire, to do what you want to do most, paves the way to mediocrity. the only way to get full power, to develop full go force, is to do what you want to do. Surrender to desire. Surrender to the goal. Really surrender. Let it obsess you and give you the automatic instrumentation you need to reach that goal.

So, surrender already.

Photo finish(ed)

Yikes! I wish my picture taking abilities were a bit better for Nicholas & Marley’s laboratory entrance. The sign looks very good on the door, but my picture of the sign on the door, not so good. Seeing it in person makes me smile and hurry through the door and down the stairs to my studio. Seeing it on the blog makes me sigh, but I wanted it out there so I posted it. Hmmm, I’m going to be practicing my photo taking skills big time before I post any creations.

Laboratory entrance

Enter at your own risk

I’ve always wanted a sign on the door to my studio warning potential intruders to stay away while I worked. I spent a long time wanting a studio, too, so long that I had a name for my business/studio before I had the space in which to work. The name I use is Nicholas & Marley. Now I have a large room where I can spread things out and leave everything without worrying that the cats will make their own playground in the glitter and paper clay. I even have a comfortable chair and ottoman where I can sit flipping through magazines for ideas or making sketches or falling asleep dreaming of new whimsies to create.

The only problem I’ve had during the year since my studio came into being is a lack of time. This is what I tell myself because I’ve only completed a handful of the ideas I started. I have several pieces nearly finished, but they’ve been nearly finished now for six months. Maybe “enter at your own risk” isn’t the sign I need on the door of Nicholas & Marley. Perhaps I shouldn’t remind myself right at the threshold of the risk in creating items I hope to show the world, but of the joy in creating, the excitement of trying something new, of experimenting. I know I never have trouble finding the time to play.

My studio is the place where I turn bits and pieces of this and that into figures that make me smile. And if they first make me smile, there is a very good chance they will do the same for others. So I’m thinking a different sign on the door will help me remember this.

Nicholas & Marley’s Laboratory - Welcome

The first step is admitting you have a problem

I’m a girl who likes affirmative and empowering sayings. There, I’ve said it. It’s out there in the ether, even worse, it’s out there on the Internet.

I’m such a sucker for the pithy to the point one or two lines that sum up things. Every once in a while a saying will hit me right in the chest and make me sit up and say, “Wow, that’s exactly it.” We all sometimes think we’ve got it wrong and seeing words we may never have been able to put together ourselves hit the mark and tell us something we recognize as the truth can take away our breath.

Here are a few of my favorites.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Elliot

There is NO reason good enough to give up your throne.
Unknown

Five frogs were sitting on a log. Four frogs decided to jump off. How many were left?
Five. That’s the difference between deciding and doing.
Unknown

Now, a drum roll, please, for my all time favorite.

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
Ana Quindlen

And just for fun........

As much as I try to be an easygoing, stretch your wings and fly type...I just can’t stop trying to burst people into flames with my mind.
Unknown

The Best of Summer

If it is possible to look forward to remembering a season, then that is the way I best like to enjoy my summers. I don’t tend to appreciate summer as it is happening since I don’t like the heat, the humidity, the bugs and the too long hours of daylight. I do, however, like the memories. Campfires, for instance. There have been many campfires in my past and I hope there will be many more to come, but it is only in memory that I truly savor them. The biting bugs and the humidity are non-existent and the t-shirt doesn’t hurt against my sunburned back. I recall sitting around campfires until the rising sun streaked the sky, popped corn only slightly scorched, endless s’mores, stories, wishes made on shooting stars.

I remember once when I was about twelve having another twelve year old girl stay the night from one of the houses down the way at the lake where we had a cottage. We had a very large screened porch with a full bed at one end, some redwood stained wooden chairs and a metal glider smaller than a loveseat at the other end. Naturally, or so it seemed at the time, we chose to sleep on the glider. Each in our own sleeping bag. My head at one end, hers at the other so that once we were settled, we could talk. I think this incident and our attempts to not only fit into the space, but stay fitted into it, hold my life record for longest sustained laughter.

So, in memory of how my sides ached the following day here’s a toast to the best of summer and to those of us who enjoy it most only after it has passed.