Watercolor Wednesday

Spent the day in our local park and learned how to paint "en plein air". It is quite a switch from painting indoors. First space and water are rare and being outdoors the paints and painting tends to dry very quickly. As a result one has to work quickly and learn to mix up good sized puddles of color before beginning.

My painting did not end up as I pictured mentally but after the class broke up my friend and I sat in the shade and sketched and painted on our own. THAT was more relaxing and somewhat more favorably productive.

Painting and sketching calm the dragon inside me and affords me moments of tranquility and peace. I wonder if all artists feel this way when they are in their "zone"? I imagine so and so that this is what drives their passion. Freeing one's creativity releases endorphins I think which is why we take such pleasure in it. I'll bet it is addictive though I am not there yet.

I am looking on the blogger blogs and wonder how can you create a second page or an additional catagory for your blog. Other blog worlds offer this and I cannot see it in my dashboard. I'll scan the help but it is very limiting if Bloger doesn't offer it. Guess you just create another blog at the dashboard and link to it. I must link to my second blog while I think of it.

Back again. I see that you do have a list of your blogs on the complete profile page. One can call that a link of sorts though rather clumsy. I am going to edit the template to add my own links.

Blog Stuff

I need a crash course on Technorati. Why use it? How will it improve my life? I can always read up on their website but I thought someone might have a simple answer.

I have seen the banner on several blogs and in a bid to lean all things blog I signed up too. Now let's see what I can do with it. Other resources I have found are Blogwise, Blogarama and BritBlogs all links on Lemmy's Log

New things exercise my mind and I DO love to learn. If you are reading this and have a few blog sites let me know about them.

Theft

Blogs, like diaries, keep track of events in our lives both good and bad. My bicycle was stolen out of my garage on Thursday night. It was a nice one (Norco Tundra) and I had fitted it out with a gel seat, extra handle grips, back rack and fender plus a nice pannier lock and kickstand. All my bike tools of course were in the panniers. All I have left now is my new helmet.

It funny but when something like this happens to you one takes it rather personally. What did I do to become a target? My neighbour had his new mulching lawn mower stolen out of his yard the same night. He is not feeling hurt - he is angry!

Today as I was sitting outside with my "boys" (cats) I was trying to read and get past thinking about my loss - our losses - when the young man directly next to me offered his commiserations and said he knew what it was like. He was at a football game a few weeks ago and came out after to find his $70,000 truck stolen. This man works two jobs to keep this vehicle. It is his pride and joy and he had just invested $1500 for a DVD drive to be fitted into it and had an x-box in the back. The police found his truck 4 days later with busted steering column and driver window and, of course the stereo , dvd, xbox all gone. He says he doesn't feel the same sitting in it anymore. The pride has been replaced by a feeling of violation. To add insult to injury the auto insurance will cover his losses only up to $1000.! (doesn't even cover the cost of the DVD drive).

Thieves don't take into account how hard some of us scrimp and save to get something nice when they steal it. Most times they simply strip and discard the item elsewhere. My bike will never be recovered, of course. Probably all they got out of it is a joy ride and now it is sitting somewhere abandoned. (Guess I should have fitted it out with a GPS so I could find it.) As badly as I feel, I have to say at least they didn't steal my computer or imagine losing a whole new vehicle. I know it is "just stuff" but theft leaves one feeling raped no matter what is taken from us.

They say there is a lesson in every tragedy but I am struggling to find the answer to this one unless it is to safeguard the rest of my stuff more seriously. When I think of it though - if thieves want something there is nothing 100% foolproof to repel them. Kinda makes one feel a little helpless, doesn't it?

Visit here more often

I REALLY need to get here more often. I always start out thinking I am going to be the best most consistant of bloggers and then life intervenes and I find myself wondering what has taken me so long to get back here.

Part of the problem is theat I have blogs elsewhere ( here and here )and tend to add to them first. I don't know yet where I want to live and today I found such a beautiful template for my blog here that I want to rejuvenate not only the look of the blog but also the content.

We all know it has been very hot around the world. Normally I don't take photos when it is so hot but this morning the sky was so blue and the leaves so green I had to snap a few shots. I have included one here for lovers of nature and especially clematis.

I am so lost - lost on this path to enlightenment. It is a fearful time and also one of personal courage. I found writing to be a calming means of discussing my confusion with myself. By taking pen and fresh paper and going through the mental gymnastics equired to harness my thoughts; place them in a logical, communicative order, I found I could make a semblance of reasoning for those chaotic thoughts.

Writing is not just for structure and communication, it also serves to purge my mind; release pent up thoughts. By committing them to paper I find a spot for them allowing them to be stored for the time being. My thoughts are not lost then, you see?
They are not discarded as without merit but also by purging so I allow for more new thoughts to take their place.

I worked through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. In her celebrated book she outlined her reasoning for the nessessity of morning pages. Practicing it answered a need in me. Having no one to talk to these pages became a way in which to tell me news without an interested ear. It calmed me in times of disorder and became a healing balm during times of woe.

I thought I had discovered a wonderful therapeutic tool but as you all know - journalling is a well documented tool for therapy as is visiting a therapist. I didn't discover it for the world, just on my own I found it.

I began working during this time away, on my website - a website that would reflect all my interests - computers, web, reading, gardening, alternative health, mediataion, journalling. I wanted to put all my thoughts up where anyone who cared could find them, benefit or at least feel a kinship.

Then I heard about blogging. Imagine my joy at finding a community already practicing that which I wanted yet hesitated to start up. I say hesitated because of course one feels that perhaps I am thinking too much about me. I mean, really, who really cares what I think - who did I think I was??!! I must be selfish, I concluded. Then I heard about blogging!

I cannot believe the synchronicity of it all. There is an old saying that "when the student is ready the teacher shall appear" and I certainly feel I found blogging right now for a reason. I feel so VALIDATED. I am not selfish or think to much of myself. This is a real concept with a real community of fellow writers - the modern day journallers! I still think - well who would read my stuff but you know what? It doesn't matter if no one does because I am getting the same feeling of communication and purging of my thoughts as journalling does.

This is just too cool. It truly blows me away. Everything DOES happen for a reason...