Putting it out there...

Messages. Messages? Messages! Email, the answering machine, okay I'm old school... we STILL use a landline WITH an answering machine!!!, facebook, post-its, etc. We are bombarded with MESSAGES every minute of the awakened part of our day. Even subliminally, we see the messages. For me it's the pile of dishes and laundry confiscating my self-worth, whispering to me what a disaster I am. It's the jewelry tree on my dresser filled with beautiful bling that I never wear because I haven't lost enough weight, my hair needs cut and who really cares what I look like? The pile of the kids school work and papers send me messages that I should be more organized and that I should head over to Pinterest and find unique and wonderful ways to memorialize my kid's childhood. My self-talk, the messages that I send to myself, need to improve. I've got to re-write them. Instead I need to think BELIEVE that "We had a healthy dinner and ate together as a family last night."  Warm fuzzies!!! "Girl... put that necklace on with those sweatpants! You look FABULOUS whatever you wear!" and smile at myself in the mirror. As for all those papers, "Before long the boys will be grown and I will have NO IDEA what is going on in their lives. I will covet this connection I have with them for right now, piles and all!"

The recent artwork that I've been working on has taken a fun new twist for me. It's happy and bright and playful, filled with vintage toys and positive messages like "Dream Big" and "Enjoy Life Sip by Sip Not Gulp by Gulp" and "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy". I am putting joy and good, clean fun out into the universe and I am finding myself engulfed in the process. The sanding, the painting, the cutting, the trimming, the gluing. Each step is infused with my well-wishes for the world. I dream of the new owner opening up their package filled with my art and smiling at it. It feels like MY ART is putting good into the world and hopefully negating maybe a tiny bit of those negative messages hanging out there, dragging us all down. It calms me and soothes me and makes me feel even more creative and more positive. My heart is opening and I'm learning to forgive myself a little more. Could my art do this for someone else? What a gift. For me. For them. It's a win/win. So today, I'm quieting the messages and being gentle with myself. I'm working hard and doing my best. I'm stopping to be grateful. I'm mindful of the messages I am sending MYSELF. For right now, at this moment, here with you, I am witty and fun and spunky and I am making you smile, because I'm smiling!

Writer's Block?

I am sitting here and then I am pacing and then I am outside and then I am looking at the mess surrounding me and then I am back again sitting here. I am limitless in my day (or at least until 3:00 when the boy gets home from school) and yet I am stuck. The piles of laundry and the piles of dishes and the piles of bills are sucking up the energy and greatness inside of me. I want to paint. I have ideas spilling out of my head. I want to tear the papers and layer them and paint over them and swirl colors around them. I want to feel that desire with the brush in my hand, the need to spill forth with the smoothness and the textures and the brush strokes. My body aches for it. But I am in stagnant staleness. I am morphing or at least trying to and yet I can't seem to oompf it out of me. I'm not sure what it is holding on to me, holding me back and away from what I WANT to do. I feel jittery and anxious and irritable and so instead of balance between house and home and art and freedom, I am chained to my environment and self. I MUST get out of my head. I must break out of it. The mess... I can't find my space. I can't breath. I am trapped here. I want to swoosh it all away and look at a blank canvas around me and under my hands. The balance is off. My head is off. Every little thing I touch is a challenge. My head and body are not in sync. Does it start with a simple unloading of the dishes? What if I pick up the clothes strewn across the floors? What would happen if I clean off my work space? Will that be enough? Will one action result in more? What is the worst case scenario? What am I afraid of? What is wrong with me? Why can I not push through this? Am I terrified of the greatness that I know that I have? Do I secretly know that I can have it all? Am I holding myself back? Am I sabotaging myself? The excuses that I lay out in front of me are not so huge, are they? Could it be as simple as the itchy shirt I'm wearing nagging me into submission? If I take it off will my outlook change? Why do I just sit here? I am overwhelmed. There is an elephant in my head... a HUGE mental block. I can't even identify it or describe it. It just sits in there like an iceberg. Cold and lifeless as big as a hell freezing me into submission and stillness. What in the hell is IT??? All this deepness and vastness and blankness and yearning lying within arms reach and I just can't get there. Why can't I break free, expunge myself, rise above it? What is IT? I don't think it is a simple as a "to do" list. I think it's uglier and smellier. I think it's rotten and ugly. I don't want to touch on it or be around it, but it is RIGHT THERE. Identify. Identify. Identify. Zone in on. Destroy. Obliterate. Explosive annihilation. Self doubt? It feels more sinister, buried deeper. WTF Are these my whispers? They just don't feel right. What to do? What to do? Pray? Bless the house? Therapy? Clean? Nothing seems to fit into the pigeon hole. I MUST PUSH PAST. I MUST PUSH PAST.

"Quiet down Sweet Child. All will be okay. Don't take this on. I am here with you."

I need to comfort her, that lost baby girl inside. She is capable and strong but she is so God damn fragile and she won't trust me. Why won't she come to me? Why can't I hold her?

Randomness. Clarity? Insanity? Thoughts expelled like vomit from a monster. It makes too much sense when I read it back. Writer's block?

Baby Me