On to another Creative Month

 

 

 

I have to tell you., I am sooo tired of Steampunk and Grunge.  I felt my soul kernelizing somewhere deep within.  I was not having my Say, not clarifying the thoughts that come up to me, that I am trying to work through.  That is what this blog always had been, a place to put down my main thoughts of a day.  I either spring-boarded off a painting I had done or I did a painting for a topic.  I am grateful to move into The Bohemian and play without fitting in to the structured lines of ‘either’/’or’.   In fact, it is quite Bohemian for me to veer off and return to a place that I am most comfortable; a place where I have no rules, no design, necessarily, to follow, a mish mash of things I think about, research, and have an epiphany about...  So bohemian of me.

I have begun to change things up in the blog.  I have gone back to posting empowerment pieces and I hope it instigates thoughts of your own.  I will, of course, be adding in mini challenges, and I will be back to painting portraits that are my first love.

Follow along and enjoy the processes.  Much love and light!

©Carol Desjarlais 5.31.21

 

You are the Melody That Surrounds You

 

 

 

This is a painting I did for my granddaughter, PJ, for her 'big girl's" bedroom.  She turned 13 and time to put away her older stuffies and little girl stuff.  Her mother made her a beautiful bedroom using an old wood kitchen table top for a headboard and it fits the theme of the house that has barn door slides for doors of her closet.  She is a little bit country tomboy and beginning to like to wear dresses and look a bit 'girlie'.  She loves country music and is learning to play the guitar.  So, I did this painting on a 24" x 30" canvas.  It is such a delight to see her becoming the woman she will eventually be.

I am making memories with my grandchildren.  I have the kid's messenger and zoom and I find ways to connect with those that live in different provinces, and in the USA.  

She keeps me young.  I am hoping to live long enough to see her become a real mother to someone more than her gorilla baby named Annabelle.  

Restriction Resentment

 

 

 

There will always be times when we feel ‘STUCK’, that we are just not walking forward, that we seem to be, if anything, walking backwards in life.  It seems to release but then cage us again and we know there is a way out, but we do not have the energy to walk away from the feeling and seem to let it reside within as long as it wants.  Yes, aging has something to do with it and is compounded buy the fact that we want to do all we can in the time we have left.

As we age, and are retired, we have no real deadlines to spur us onward.    It is not a miserable space, but it is niggling.  It is just Bleh!  Perhaps, whether aging or not, we have some anxiety or some fear that triggers the feeling.  At times, we can distract ourselves, but it seems to return.  Is it the covid restrictions and reactions within?  Sometimes it feels like a never-ending cycle of thinking about how to change the feeling, to planning a way, to become determined to change the feeling, to taking action, to relapsing to… on and on around the cycle of Bleh!  It is bouncing around across and beyond the cycle, but it seems to return.

Life can get in our way, and yet, with being the age I am, there is not much pressure to do anything other than pay bills and buy groceries and the occasional foray out to get groceries.  Sometimes, I am just ‘off’:   my body is off (OK, most times) as I am clumsy and bumbly;  sometimes my mind is off and I think a lot but not always is my thinking clear;  sometimes my emotions can try to run rampant, although I can still rein in the negatives;  sometimes my spirit is low and I can feel it weak.  I can sometimes be running in circles at a slow steady ‘old-woman’ stroll. 

 I am also more prone to procrastination.  Things that will not bring instant gratification simply are not appealing.  Our Evil Inner witch (inner critical voice) has a field day with out changes and labels us lazy, lacking self-control, unmotivated, avoiding, and simply unmotivated.  And, it is true that we have changed, but it is not necessarily a negative thing.  It is time that we slow down.  It is time that we seek peace.  It is time that we learn self-comfort in more positive ways (pop[corn, making new recipes that make comfort food a new way, diets thrown out the window…)  Perhaps our new normal will be that we are more passive, more graceful, gentler us that does not need to evoke stress in order to be driven. 

We are made aware of how we were rushing through life and how our inner drive has been a slave-driver.  I know that my sleep patterns have changed and rather than lay there and rehash the same old, same old, I get up and do art, I go out into the night and listen to the birds sing morning into being.  It is so beautiful and I can nap later in the afternoon with no gilt, no shame, just simply a lovely rest.  We have learned a new way to be ‘fine’.

 Things we used to enjoy might just be ‘bleh” and offer no reward, no instant gratification from completing things we used to enjoy.  Perhaps we feel numb at times.  Just bleh-numb.  Our psyche is aware things have changed and we are discovering that gratification comes in layers through many mediums throughout a day.  Now most of those things are restricted; no tea with friends, no one over for dinner, no team meetings, no recreation…on and on.  Our psyche would like to blame someone rather than the logical idea that it is a long haul of restrictions we have been under.  It will start to pick on us and pout like a petulant child, because restrictions are…well…restrictive… and refuse to give us peace, a sense of calm, which is a far cry from lazy or frenetic as we ‘normally’ were.  Life has changed but, perhaps, our thinking/psyche has not. 

Give yourself a break enjoy this time that is less frantic.  Enjoy a nap, don’t read a book if you just cannot get into it, find something else to distract us.  Know we are not alone in this.  Retired people may be feeling the empty spaces more and since we have pared down our lives, to keep things simple, now there are not enough options to fill up spaces of time.  Ride it out, sisterfriends.  Ride it out!  Rock it out.  Dance with your broom under the moonlight.  Dream.  Imagine.  Fill spaces of time with something brand new that you never even thought you might enjoy doing.  We are lifetime learners.  Our brain needs fodder.  Research things you have wondered about.  Do not let your psyche rule you and take away whatever calm and peace and serenity that might come because we have time to sit and listen.  Blessed Be!

©Carol Desjarlais 5.29.21

Cage Door Has Always Been Open: What Is Your Story?

 

 

 

Sometimes we close down, as if we slammed a cage door and we feel blocked, or trapped, or without a way to get out of where we are…emotionally.  We get there because we have been defending ourselves to everyone else rather than take ownership; we have been putting up a resistance to change, too long; we got caught in a trap of judgment and our misled perceptions of what is real about everyone else and what is real about us.  But we are the one who closes the door.  We are the one who decides to stay in the cage of negativity and denial.  We are the ones who let our inner emotional maturity level stay put and defiantly so.  Yes, there are times when we are paralyzed with reality, but it does not mean we should stay there forever.  Yes, there are outer experiences that tinted the color of our emotional sky, but we can choose to stay under the grayness or we can step out and be who we meant to be.  We are not caged by anything other than our own choices.

Our emotional landscape can be as if set in stone because we tell ourselves inner stories until our psyche thinks that the reality is clear; life is awful, we are awful, we are too small in a big bad world, we are right to seek venge of some sort, and we forget to tell ourselves the story of our courage, of how we have things to be grateful for.  It is all a matter of the story we have been telling ourselves.  We are our ultimate storyteller. 

Positive storytellers live in a positive frame of mind.  They exude positivity in even the worst of circumstances.  They seek calm in a storm.  They seek a glimmer of light in a, seemingly, never-ending tunnel, they seek ways out of circumstances of their cage. In the end, we save our own lives.

When we denigrate ourselves, when we tell our woeful stories, when we judge ourselves unkindly, when we allow our evil inner witch to attack us, we are sending out energy into the ether… and it is not good energy, and like attacks like and we end up with judgemental people, we end p with people who will attack us, we end up with negative people sucking the life out of us.  We will feel powerless except that we are in total control of our power.  We choose to pace the inside of a cage, mumbling about how unfair, how useless, how despicable we are… or we can rattle the bars, try the doors, and find a way out. 

Look there is not one perfect person in the world or any other world.  We deserve the best in life and sometimes we need to check in on what is truly ‘best’ FOR us.  What we think, we are to only ourselves.  Other people have their own battles to battle.  Our battles are our own and not always do we need to announce we are on the battlefield.   We choose to make others treat us as they wish, as we script them to treat us.  If we were as good a friend to ourselves as we are to others, then others would value us, would see that we value ourselves. 

Being open-hearted about ourselves means we can be open-hearted about others in our life.  If we have trouble forgiving, it stems for our refusal to forgive ourselves.  The only way to heal is to heal ourselves.  We send out millions of vibrations every moment of every day and it is not hard to see how others feel about themselves when we see how they treat others.  How we treat our inner self is a mirror to how we treat our outside life and vice versa.  Our story is made up, totally, of how we interpret it.  We make up the parts of our story that is of importance to us and sometimes we give too much weight to the negative.  Those that are open-hearted will grasp all they can of all the ‘good stuff’ that we can, and good stuff comes because we set ourselves on a path where it can find us.    Or, vice versa.  Peace comes to those who seek it in honest, authentic ways.  We are living our own stories.  We are alive.  We are here.  We are able to change in a moment’s notice.  We rule our emotions they do not rule us.  We rule our thoughts they do not rule us.  Take your power by the hand and open the door to our self-imposed cage(s).  Be the reason that others can feel positive.  Be the reason that others can choose to be kind, forgiving, thoughtful, gracious, and be the dignity you are meant to be. Reach out to the door to your cage and walk ahead with love rather than condemnation.  

 How many times do we need to be told that Creator did not make garbage?  Why do we treat ourselves as if we were so?  You want JOY, be it!  You want freedom, be it!  You want peace?  Be it!  The stimulus to do so is within not without.  Be what you were meant to be, what you wished but forgot you were in charge of.  You are what you send out into the ether.  You choose.  You can.  The cage door has always been open.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.29.21