Tag: The Artists Way

Worth the Risk

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Walking to the mailbox, notecards in hand, I slid them into the box. My hand reached over to the side, and pulled the red flag up so it’s standing straight up in the air. The mail lady will lower it when she replaces my mail with hers and I’ll know the mail has run for another day.

I sat at the kitchen table watching through the window as it rains, trying to focus on work but am soothed by the sound. When it was time for a break I snapped a photo of additional items used in letter writing. I’m mildly obsessed with this black tray with gold handles, so it worked well for photo purposes under cloudy skies and low light. Writing a letter goes back to what Dawn so eloquently stated in the first post.

We learn much about another person through a written letter. The penmanship, the color of the ink, type of writing instrument, stationary and even the stamp all are clues to the individuality of the writer.

Dawn from Aging With Grace

Find a piece of paper that feels good to write on, or make your own. One of my letters received was written on a piece of paper my friend turned into stationary using her artistic flair. Whatever type paper that feels good to you, choose it for your letter. Sometimes Dawn uses a fountain pen, but we’ve come to the conclusion I need more control than that offers. She uses a rubber stamp that imprints her address on the front of the envelope in a circle formation. We both write in cursive, but my choice of ink is purple, or teal. The majority of my writing papers, notecards and supplies come from a small, family owned company called Letter Seals.

Stamps for wax seals by Letter Seals.

We each have our own style and the fun part is finding it. Writing a letter is like having a one-sided conversation, but it feeds the heart like no other writing. For this writer it will always be worth the risk.

Previous posts in this little series:

  1. Write a Letter
  2. The Letter Opener
  3. Send Some Love

It’s Own Time

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I bought a flat of impatient’s for the flower cart. It surprised the cashier when I sat the entire tray on the counter, and it surprised me too. I didn’t plan on planting many flowers this year, but plans change. The flower cart can hold a flat, or full tray, and they’re beautiful to see, but now I have 48 little impatient’s, patiently waiting to be planted. 😍

My God is sneaky. He knew I wouldn’t be able to look at an empty flower cart for long.

This week, I rearranged my bedroom, and moving the bed is always an adventure. It was pretty dusty under there, and I’ve written about it here. My daughter and I each have a long, rolling storage container for off season clothing under the bed. They had sat side by side with a small gap in between and captured all of the cat’s jingle balls. That’s a score!

Once the bed was moved, I had a semi empty wall. The artwork looked scattered, so I moved two pieces to fill the empty spaces. It all lined up perfectly, so I could see that was not my doing. On my best day I couldn’t do that, without scattering holes over the wall. This was seamless and took no effort. It’s like they’re resting on an invisible wall length shelf.

Local artist Rachel Brown. 💖

The wall of art gives an immediate feeling of calm and centered. I could add more art above this row, but that’s how it is with me. God lays it out perfectly, and I want to tweak it, but this time there’s nothing to tweak. And Dawn, when you read this you’ll know, the wall of art we spoke about in our letters, fell into place all in it’s own time.

From the post, ‘Just Say Yes.‘ Artist ~ Mrs. M

Feel the Music

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Last week I saw Rascal Flatts in an old episode of CSI Las Vegas and wondered, “Where’d he go?”

This morning a fellow Blogger popped into my mind. I hadn’t read anything from them in a while, so I went to their page just to make sure I hadn’t missed a post. No, but I saw it’s been a couple of months since they’ve posted, so I filled in the online form letting them know they’re missed.

Every Writer hears the inner critic telling us to lay down the pen, and we justify it with, “Nobody will notice.” Oh my darling, I notice.

This Blogger has a page of quotes, and I copied the quote below to share. After reading it, I was going to post only the quote and title the Blog, “My Wish”. That reminded me of a song by Rascal Flatts which I’d sing for my daughter, so I Googled the song. Then I realized tomorrow is Sunday, and I hadn’t written a feel the music in a couple of weeks, so here we are!

You can see how this post fell together with a start of two thoughts colliding. This wish is for the upcoming year.

“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.” (Neil Gaiman)

And here’s another wish.

I hope you feel the love in both.

Space to Grow

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I’m reading The Artist’s Way for a second time. This year my Kindle died, but instead of replacing the device, I’m replacing digital books with real ones. Julia Cameron was first on the list for replacement, and I found a whole stack of her books at a second hand sale. đŸ„ł

The Morning pages and I have a longtime love/hate relationship. I still can’t write all three pages every morning, but one solid page is better than none. Maybe it’s something you have to build up to, like each stroke across the page is strengthening the muscle needed to go onto page 2 and then 3. I had to smile at Julia’s description of her Morning Pages in The Artist’s Way.

“In order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it. I ask you to do this by an apparently pointless process I call the Morning Pages,” says Julia. That’s one of the things I fancy most about these spaces I’ve shared with you this week. Only one has a valid reason, and that’s only temporary. The other two are pointless, and have no solid reason behind them, but when you have no particular reason you stand before the door of possibilities.

This morning my corner wasn’t comfortable to write the Morning Pages, so I moved to the kitchen table. The first sentence said, “I don’t have much to say today,” but before long I was filling in the last line of the page. What Julia describes as an apparently pointless process, is where the magic in this simple practice is revealed.

At this stage of my life there is not a lot of reasoning behind the majority of what takes place. It’s not so much the actual space as it is allowing time within that space to grow.