Create.A good friend of mine recently confided that she was giving up on her dream. Her creative love. This hurt to hear as she is incredibly talented and leaves you in awe when she shares. She said it was too expensive and that she was starting to think it wasn't worth going after. She believed she would never be famous or ever be good enough to receive a profit from it. Her face filled with sadness and defeat as she told me. Her heart crushed. I didn’t accept this conclusion. I told her I didn’t agree. We don’t create because we want to be the best or because we want to be rich and famous. We create because it’s what we love to do! Because it makes our souls happy. Who cares if you have one fan or twenty million. It doesn’t matter. We live for ourselves period. I told her a story from the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert about a forty year old woman who had reached a moment where she couldn't remember the last time she was truly happy. After thinking on it and playing through her years she found that it was when she was in her youth and was figure skating. So, she started again. Not with the intention of going to the Olympics but with the intention of doing what she loved. To be happy and find peace again. We hold ourselves back because we think we’re not good enough or we think someone will laugh at us and an endless amount of other reasons. I say again. WHO CARES. Do what you love and do it for yourselves. As for the book... I can't recommend it enough. It left me feeling excited about what I could do. Excited to try again. It made me realize all the ways I hold myself back because of my own assumptions of how it will end or how it will be received. I'm a work in progress and Elizabeth Gilbert felt like that always supportive friend telling you to go for it. To be better and at least try. To which the nerd in me responds wholeheartedly with "Do. Or do not. There is no try." But it's the same thing. Just do it and feel better, rather than dwelling on the shoulds, coulds, and what ifs. My great grandmother used to say... "Take all those what ifs and bury them in the back yard. You don't need them." So get your shovels. I might need a field though. - N shop this post
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Let it snowHow do you classify a snowy day? Does it register with you as an inconvenience or a gift? Growing up I was an only child. What that means is I have no siblings and lived alone with my mother and step-father. It does not mean I was lonely as I’ve been asked many times before both as a joke or as a serious inquiry into my personal psyche. At least no more lonely than you. A snowy day as a child meant a group snowball fight on the way home. Maybe an angry mother when you told her you lost your glasses somewhere between the school and your house. A twenty minute walk. It also meant a family effort to shovel the driveway and playing with the dogs until you couldn’t feel your finger or toes. Or whipping down the local toboggan hill on your awe inspiring GT racer. A snowy day as an adult means something different. Maybe there’s still a snowball fight, being a single adult, it’s not likely for me. Shoveling the driveway becomes a chore you do alone and sometimes leaves you aggravated as you watch your neighbour snow blow his driveway in minutes while your standing there with snot dripping from your red nose as you adjust your toque. It also means driving. UGH. Blessedly I have upgraded to a vehicle with four wheel drive but with my old truck I was lucky if I made it off my street. The frustration! GAWD. Then sitting there yelling and eventually crying as you give up and struggle your way back into the driveway and make the ‘I’m not coming to work because SNOW!’ phone call. Being an adult doesn’t always have to mean things are worse though. We don’t always have to end up frustrated with our responsibilities. A snowy day to me is a lot of things. Yes sometimes I do bitch face my neighbour hard for his cursed snow blower. Although, there are some days when I actually like shoveling. Yea you heard me. I often count it as the only work out I need for the next few days because my driveway is massive and at least I have a driveway to shovel in the first place. Being an adult does come with a hell of a lot more responsibilities than we were lead to believe, however, it also grants us the maturity and clarity to look at things from different perspectives and see them in a lighter way. As a child everything was life or death. Go big or go home. As an adult there are so many more shades to choose from. You can still choose to be angry at everything one day and then be as calm and blessed as the Dalai Lama the next. Maybe even shine that light at that neighbour and wave to him, say ‘Good Morning’. Life is what you choose it to be. Yes that is much simpler said than done. It’s a struggle, but if you’re struggling then you’re halfway there. It means you’re no longer just giving in and instead, are trying to be conscious of yourself and the way you think. Every day that struggle will get a little less. Life has a way of leaving you more than bruised and broken but you can decide how deep those bruises go. I’ll leave you with this. Next time you find yourself on a snowy day, look up. Look up. *Insert Meryl Streep shouting at the SAG Awards* Feel the stillness and the quiet a fresh snow brings. See how softly it floats down in little wisps. Feel the way it melts on your warm skin and be grateful you’re alive. Take that little dog out and watch him leap and bound through the calm of that storm like a little tornado leaving chunks of snow flying in his wake. Be as happy as he is to be alive. Be as happy in that snow as 8 year old you was and let Meryl cheer you on while you do it! Love - N Things that make me happyHappiness seems to be the golden ticket everyone is searching for these days. We look to social media, to our favourite personalities to stalk to see what they do, what they like. Maybe that's what I'll do? Maybe I'll try that? Given that happiness is brought on by different feelings, different activities for everyone why do we all flock to the YouTube video with the highest views or the highest resolution for answers. Being a millennial I get the allure. I get that we live our lives through our phones. I'm guilty of it too. But maybe for our own sanity and our OWN happiness we should put the phone down and take an actual real life look at ourselves. Who are we? What makes us unique? What makes us happy? This doesn't have to be some substantial life altering question. Just what brings a smile to your lips or what quiets your mind and makes you forget to check how many likes you got on that picture of your dog sleeping. These are the thing that do it for me. And yea! Maybe watching my dog sleep is one of those things. He's just stinking cute! 1. Taking my dog for a walk. Maybe it's a hike or maybe it's just some quick little walk around the block because it's too cold out but someone *cough Bandit * refuses to wear his booties. Just spending that time outdoors and breathing in that fresh air is enough. Being in nature makes me feel at peace and reminds me that there's so much more than what a little screen can show me. Not to mention the smile my little guy gets when he's trudging along, ripping through a field or peeing on every little shrub or low hanging branch. Mind you he has terrible aim and never hits that low hanging branch. Maybe it's partially the happiness he gets that I get a secondary high from. So... GO OUTSIDE. Even if you don't have a munchkin sidekick to travel across the land with, maybe you'll meet one along the way! 2. Read. Reading for me has always been an intense form of escapism. Growing up I wasn't the happiest camper on the block so reading was one of the many ways I learned to shut everything off. Now I do have a short attention span and some books take me months to get through. But there are those one in a million books that just suck you right in and don't let go. You know which ones I'm talking about. Yea! That's right! Twilight! I was in high school when it came out so Twilight was lit. Man oh man. I powered through them like my life depended on it. Since becoming an adult my tastes in literature have become a little better. A little, but that's exactly it. If you're going to read for yourself then read something that makes you happy even if it's not what your friends or anyone else would choose. Go take a walk around Chapters, read the first few pages of a few books and find something that grabs you! Hell make an afternoon of it. Grab a coffee and settle in. 3. Make something! Creating something on your own takes you back to kindergarten when you'd make the crappiest little hand print dinosaur and then rush home to tell everyone about it and put it up on the fridge because you were so proud. Now you have your own fridge, and walls and rear view window to hang whatever off of. Write a poem, paint, pick up some clay and make a ring dish. Just walk into Michael's and pick something. By the way, you can totally bring your dog with you to Michael's. It's a thing. So go and cover your walls with some still life of your cat on a pillow or the plants your cat ate. 4. Go for a drive. I don't know if it's just the fact that I have my own car but I really love driving through the country side. I like to pull over and look at the cows and horses. Maybe pet them. If I'm lucky. I like taking new roads just to see where they go. Sometimes they're really long private driveways and you need to three point turn your way the hell outta there before someone sees you. Bandit loves the heated seats and his car pillow. He also loves the Starbucks drive though and barking his head off at the girl hanging out the window to pet him. Oh his goofy smile. I love him. 5. My Dog. I guess this all leads back to my dog. He makes me unfathomably happy. I love the sound of him snoring. I love the way he smells. If you have a pet you won't think that's weird. He always cheers me up. Even when I'm having a melt down sobbing, he'll come and give me a kiss and lay down on my lap. Then I usually cry more because I don't deserve his little heart. Sometimes all I have to do is look at him and I feel better. There are other things I do to make myself happy like yoga and meditation. I sometimes listen to podcasts or audio books while I cook or clean. Mostly you'll find me listening to music, vibing out. The point is to just do your own thing. Be yourself and be true to yourself and happiness will follow. Just like Bandit follows me when I have food. Love Always - N Brought to you by Coffee.
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