home.

1. I am thankful for Doreen at the local RBC who was not able to directly assist me but was lovely just the same ! :) I am equally thankful for Jess, Rach, Joshua and Gail who helped me to understand and fill out a gosh darn lot of paper work this week.
2. I am thankful for finally letting myself ask someone if we could work together in a life coaching sense. Asking was the first step and usually helps heaps with my getting going.
3. I am thankful for letting myself use Flickr people as my reward for the close of at least one day! :) There are so many great photos with so many great stories to learn. I had been frustrated by my tendency to sort of ‘wander off’ for weeks at a time and then feeling bad about not having communicated with the cool people that come by to say howdy and whose photos and stories that I enjoy. Flickr is a community .. my sitting passively viewing (and being inspired by) people’s photos is not engaging in that community. This is me working to become actively involved in communities that inspire me to come more alive. Yes, I know it is generally wrong to use people but my intentions are good! :)
4. I am thankful for Daniel for letting me know that he has found the gratitude lists that I do to be helpful. His action has been a catalyst to a great deal of important inner work for me (that is why it takes me so much time to respond to comments sometimes). The important stuffs I am working on are how I seem to be able to hand that gratitude out but I could certainly use some practise in being a better receiver of gratitude. To receive gratitude gracefully is to honour the gift inside the person offering the gratitude. (I think) I think this means that to offer gratitude is to say, “your action has made something in me come alive and it caused this reaction/action”?
5. I am thankful for learning about Marshall B. Rosenberg’s writing because his books are helping me to learn to express and receive gratitude.
6. I am thankful to have been able to work with T because she helped me to be accountable for walking my talk and through her example I am learning that I have a lot to learn about celebrating my successes.
7. I am thankful for finishing a large artwork this week along with a couple of medium works. I am truly amazed how limiting the time I allow myself to do my work gets so much more done .. and it has me sneaking in work on my ‘bank day’ to do work simply because doing my work just feels good and right. I am thankful for the feeling I get when the artwork gets done before lunch, not only because I get to eat lunch on time but also because I feel like I have triumphed over something very difficult and I seem to fly through the rest of my work day! :)
8. I am thankful that my younger sister is speaking up for herself and self-directing her life more so. She is really fun and personable (IMO) and I wish for her new work that makes her come more alive and her eyes shine surrounded by more people who value her work! :) I am quite excited for the new opportunities this will bring into their lives! Now I am thinking of what present I can send to her?! :)
9. I am thankful for when I go to bed before 11:30 because then I am much more pleasant to be around! Since I must be around myself 24/7, the experience might just as well be pleasant! ;) I am thankful there is heat in my apartment, the 17 Celsius average was not particularly conducive to rest or thought.
10. I am thankful for putting more effort into understanding and connect with my mom better and differently. This is helping me to recognize more of the gazillion loving ways she is and has always been. This has also been a smidge humbling [*cough] because it has helped me to see how she always seems to go the extra mile but I haven’t always recognized this and am still practising recognizing this. For instance, she was at the store and sent me a text message asking if I would like her to pick up some things while she was in town. Yes, please! :) I asked for a certain cheese, she brought the certain cheese AND another type of cheese that I like! (this makes me feel more special) I asked her to bring some dry beans for protein .. she brought me some of the meat that I sometimes eat when I am with her. While meat doesn’t agree with my digestive tract so well I can see that she brought the meat because (I suspect) she believes that good meat is important to be healthy AND our family hasn’t always been able to afford nice things so to have good meat is a treat AND she knows that I am working on doing my artwork so this is her way of being supportive and cheering me on. She also brought me some black sharpie pens to help me do my work. I am thankful at how I am getting better at offering her the opportunity to either hear or read my gratitude list and how I am getting better at simply shutting up and listening for her to talk about what she wants to and leaving the rest alone. That has been a challenge for me in the past.
11. I am thankful for these materials I have been reading this week
* Dr. Seuss books are awesome with the sauce! It amazes me how much wisdom can be gained from reading some rhyming words of a children’s book. I don’t know that I have a favourite at the moment though. I hated reading as a kid because I couldn’t get the words to be still long enough to read the darned things - now I read as much as I can fit into my brain! I heart reading. :) I am so very thankful that I haveIrlen filters and some adaptive software now to access information that I always tried to get at. People will only put up with so many questions, believe it or not! ;)
* Letters to a young artist : building a life in art by Julia Cameron. Some of the back at forth defensiveness can be a little grating on the nerves but it still has some very useful kernels wisdom to impart, IMO.
12. I am thankful for Simon Sinek’s TED talk (that I have listened to at least five times so far!) It kind of haunts my thoughts on why/how/what I could do better.
13. I am thankful for allowing myself the time and space to think about what I want to communicate with people before interacting because it feels authentic and it certainly is good to know the world does not go all Wacky Wednesday when it takes me a bit longer to reply.
14. I am thankful for the window cleaning guy this morning who kindly washed the back of my inside kitchen windows this morning because it is the one that causes me much grief and cussing when I take it out and repeatedly attempt to put it back!
15. I am thankful for getting my butt in gear this morning to go for a short photo walk! I had not taken any photos this week, not even any documentary ones for my artwork. I have been taking my camera along, I just hadn’t taken any photos.
16. I am thankful for signing up for Tim Brownson’s newsletter because he is offering ”free” life coaching to the person that is able to communicate their commitment to making lasting changes. To answer the question of exactly how committed I am through my ability to make previous lasting change is an effective exercise for me because I have been able to see that I have already made several important life changes. When in the middle of changes I don’t always remember that.
17. I am thankful for composting because when I re-pot plants there are often volunteer plants that flower, like the little yellow flowers on the vines that are wrapping themselves around two of my impatiens. They might be cantaloupe or watermelon.
18. I am thankful for taking art history with Dr. Carmen Robertson because she was very encouraging and helpful to me to write my first essays in about a decade. Without her way of doing things I don’t think I would have written the essays for the class, passed the class or had the momentum to heave myself out of the belief that my writing is worthless. I highly recommend taking a class with her if you want to learn about art and art history because she is engaged and engaging in the work, has a sense of fun AND she marks with a green pen! :) I appreciated how she treated people like the adults that we are while introducing us to the subject matter leaving the deeper learning up to each learner. I read and learnt SO much!!
19. I am thankful that people are being very kind and gentle when trying to tell me about my Red Velvet Ropes. This is exciting because it is showing me how my work is becoming more focused and funneling people in their right directions - some toward me, some away! This has lead to several epiphanies about what my goal is by writing what I do. It does not matter how many people read these lists or look at my work. What matters to me is that the people that will come more alive by reading my writing or seeing my artwork can find it!! :) I want to poke my art’s right people in the brain and connect with them in the heart.
20. I am seriously thankful for going back to read Beth and Daniel’s encouraging words on the lemon stack gratitude list .. I feel so tired but .. Thank you, it has been a really long week.
21. Thank you for reading, that is what I had to give, see you next week.