It’s amazing all the shit that can happen. And it’s so fucking stupid that here I am again…still with an aching heart and a confused soul. It all really does happen all at once and in a mean fury. Or maybe I just refused to recognize the warning signs so the universe needed to slap me in the face. And the punchline is that I just need to focus on myself.

It’s so interesting how you can be living life thinking that you are supporting yourself and living for yourself and then to all of a sudden realize you have no idea who you are or what you need and that you’ve just been barely surviving and not actually nurturing your soul. I’ve been doing and accomplishing so much over the years. I have been forging an amazing life and feel pretty damn successful for my age in a variety of areas. And don’t get me wrong, I feel great about it and know that they are all steps to living the life I dream of. My life is still all about art, yoga and music. But despite the fact that those are really the only three things in my life (outside of friends and family) I am stressed the fuck out, sleeping all the time, not working out and eating like shit.

It’s like a whirlwind has picked me up and is swinging me around and around and around and I have no idea how to find a dristi, a focal point, and yet I keep going. And it’s sad, I’m not too sure when this whirlwind came. I’m not sure how long I’ve been picked up into it. I realize that I could easily say it was a few months ago, back in September, when I had car problems, I was the sole designer for my job, all of my freelance clients needed something, blah blah blah. I think it’s been longer than a few months.  I think I haven’t been cultivating a calming energy…probably since I graduated college. Damn. Seven fucking years.

Feeling a bit crazy

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve done a lot in those seven years and it has been amazing. I was focused on building the life I wanted and of which I dreamed (yes, I just redid that sentence so I didn’t end on a preposition.) But now it may be time to cultivate a space for myself so I have time to fucking enjoy what I’ve been building. I am tired. I need to now slow down and enjoy it all. That’s not at all to say I’m going to stop progressing, but I think for a moment, I can slow down and just spend time loving…loving myself, loving my art, loving my family and friends, loving my job, loving my cats, fuck, just loving life. I can take a moment to rest and relax. Maybe read a few of the hundreds of books I own (I literally have purchased probably 25-50 new books and have had the time to read not even one of them.)

I do work a lot. And that’s good and fine. But I need to find the time to curl up on the floor in my 10lb blanket (Love love love and love to my Mom for making it!! Here’s the concept behind it.), cuddling with my cats, enjoying their company. Or even getting back to my personal art and enjoying what I with that. I probably could be an amazing artist. Some of my recent work is pretty damn good. I surprised myself anyway…and I do want to play the violin…just for myself. I basically love to express myself and I have given myself little time to explore my self-expression. And that is central to my life.

I have a pretty awesome life. I’ve been moving so fast I didn’t even realize it. I mean, I “knew” it but now it’s time I fucking slow down, rest up and enjoy it!

The heart. It is not to be taken lightly. It is a motivator, an inventor, an artist, a lover. It’s said that people can discern your state of being by the energy pouring forth from your heart. The quality of the energy is essential. It’s difficult to add a happy veneer to such energy when you are heartbroken. It’s difficult to tame the enthusiasm when you are happy. The heart opens up to the vast, infinite possibilities of the universe. The expanse that we wake up to every day, and influences the decisions we make. My heart aches. I feel the heaviness, the constriction, the knowledge of what has been lost and never will be again.

My heart cries the tears feeding into the River Styx.

I bend, I bow, I love, I hurt. Always I hurt. The sadness begins with the first alarm, permeates by day, marinates by night and infiltrates my dreams. It fuels my subconscious, I never want to think. Trying to wrap my head around my heart is futile, is disturbing, is depressing. Situations change, people change, this I know. My heart still beats to the melody of what was. For how do we let go, of the impressions that we’ve made, the pain that we’ve caused, the anger that we feel? Fuck me, the stupidity, the tears and all of the drunken rages. Those spirits give life to the damaged soul.

The heart is a special part of me. It is not a plaything, or a toy…but I gave it away to a boy.

The energy from my heart is stained with desolation. Residue of pain. Vital energy gone, taken, and given to another, a shadow of me.

The energy of the heart is essential. It is the story of your being, writing the current page of your life. It is a guide, a friend, an enemy. It is the novel you read each day, the lens through which you see. The heart supports you, beats for you, is your lifeline, and yet can betray you. The heart can be your link to the world, the space from which you connect. It is your personal Grimmoire, the spell and curse you cast.

The heart is tremendous. It can weigh you down or lift you up. It can grace your lips with a smile or your cheek with tears. It creates and destroys, is precious and mundane. It is the place of emotions, the place of blood. Both pulsate life.

I gave part of my heart away. And he still has it. Toys with it. A friend with benefits nothing more. To be used and played with. Acknowledged when it suits the lover, discarded when there’s another.

The heart can infuriate, the heart can soothe. The red cadence consumes.

Maybe it’s because I do yoga and that tends to influence the randomness I read on the internet, but most articles I read seem to suggest that meditation is the key. Everywhere I look there is new evidence on meditation and how wonderful it is.

For example, this article on Mind Body Green shows pictures of some people’s transformation at a month-long meditation retreat. And Tiny Buddha has an article dispelling meditation myths and telling everyone why they should start today.

To be that girl, I’ve been trying to meditate for a long time now. And let me tell you, it is freakin’ difficult. The actual meditating part isn’t so hard. I love just sitting down on my soft meditation pillow, putting on my over-sized headphones (yes, I normally listen to music), and settling in. I can normally get into those Delta waves pretty quickly and I am zoned in. Although I do appreciate the help of my Om Harmonics download. But once I’m there, I’m pretty good. Mind you, I think 15 minutes of meditation is awesome, it’s not like I’m sitting there for hours.

However, finding my way to my meditation cushion is a challenge. I only try for 15 minutes and yet I still haven’t been able to find a consistent time that works (my schedule is pretty inconsistent). I should probably just start out slowly and meditate one day a week or something, until I can work it in as a habit. And I really really want to. All of the articles describing the benefits of meditating scream out to me to sit my ass down and meditate. It would be so beneficial in every area of my life. It’s amazing that it is so beneficial and should be essential to my lifestyle, and I yet in my social media, technology-tapped world, I feel like it is a luxury.

It’s amazing that I can know how beneficial meditating is and yet can’t seem to find the time to sit my ass down to do it.

How do you find the time? What tips do you have that have helped you make meditating a habit? Or are you in the same Paripurna Navasana asana I’m in and haven’t been able to cultivate the meditation habit?

Sometimes I forget.

To listen. To actually shut my mouth and quiet my thoughts and listen. My shallow desire to connect, to share, to be seen as someone who knows has left me as someone waiting to speak.

It has left me inauthentic.

Sometimes I forget, that it’s not about me. That though I am the center of my world, that so is everyone else.

I forget that we are all connected. That we share in the universal energy.

Sometimes I forget.
To appreciate the silence.

Something I find interesting about my job, and really any job in marketing or where you have to plan far ahead, is that I am designing for events in December. It’s May and I’m sitting behind my desk trying to brand Snow Fun Blood Drives. What’s ironic is that the weather has been moody each time I’ve worked on this project. The weather wants to be sympathetic.

These are the options I am sending to the client. A decent variety. This client is particularly difficult and I am providing so many options to hopefully satiate their need for ownership. Which they should feel. It makes sense. So hopefully they are satisfied with at least one of these options.

It’s interesting that this morning I deleted Option 4 and then decided to throw it back in just because. And every person on my team really like it. Made it to the final round. Interesting how that works. I may have just deleted it because it was the first one I designed. Who knows. I actually presented 17 options to my team and they narrowed them down to 6. Kind of sucked that my art director thought I grabbed images from the Internet to make up the last two options. She suggested I illustrate them all, which is what I did. I put a lot of time into drawing those images, scanning them, and then penning them in Illustrator. They are all original vectors. Can’t always satisfy everyone though. She only slightly contributes to my misanthropy.

At any rate, I’m super glad to have had so much time to work on this, and even though I just planted my garden I think head Snow Fun graphics turned out pretty damn good. I’m excited to hear what the clients think! Wish me luck!

I posted previously on usable art. That my man and I were trying to turn out personal art into usable, everyday items. I may still be our number one customer, mainly because it takes time to get products published let alone marketing them. It’s all a process, but we are taking the first step and that’s still exciting. And I have to say, I love being surrounded by our wonderful art.

My wall calendar. A brilliant splash of color on my otherwise dull grey cubicle wall.

My coffee/tea mug keeping me awake.

A print reminding me that there is life outside this cubey.

And my water bottle keeping me hydrated.

Such amazing art on things I use everyday. It really is genius and I hope more people will support these products. Support local artists, and the amazing talent that exists in side.

Please check out our Minaxus site. We aren’t nearly done uploading products. But hopefully you’ll see something you like. And if you let us know, we can change the colors or whatever you need to be happy.

By day, I’m a graphic designer. And that is an applicable use of art these days. I design programs, invitations, email marketing, direct marketing, all sorts of stuff that is used. It’s not something that is hung up and looked at. Which also means it has an expiration date and is quite transient. I’m okay with that actually. But at night, I try to paint, and my SO is an AMAZING artist. You can visit his site here. Together, we are trying to work ourselves into the artistic community. But it’s so hard for us. In so many ways and in just as many ways I have no idea why. One of the things we are starting to do, is create products on our Zazzle site. Again, driving traffic to this site and getting people to buy is super hard and we still haven’t figured out how to be successful with it. But it’s such an amazing concept that allows our fine arts, to become useable products. We’ve created a few products and have tons more to create. And although I may be our biggest customer (I have our calendar, cards, a coffee mug, iPhone case and just ordered a water bottle), I have high hopes that people will latch on to this idea of art. Perhaps it is the 21st century idea of art. The idea that art doesn’t need to just hang on your wall, but can grace your water bottle as well. Yes, water bottles always have had designs on them. But they aren’t from a local artist who has a day job and stays up all night drawing/painting/etc. That’s what’s beautiful. It’s not a mass produced design, but one that maybe only you will own. So. Brilliant. I hope you will visit our store, and check back often as we will constantly be creating more products. Maybe something will jump out at you and you’ll fall in love with our art.

Local art graces a water bottle

I just read an article over on The Art of Non-Conformity about having something to say. Chris Guillebeau mainly talks about writing, but it applies to art as well. What is your art saying? What is my art saying? Do I even have something to say? And something quality at that?

I think this concept is why I struggle with art. I always want to express myself, to use my emotional content and portray it on canvas. To use art for catharsis. But it never seems to work out. Or at least the quality is rarely there. It’s almost like my emotions are so wild that I can’t seem to put the details into it. Or maybe emotions just are ugly.

Woman releasing anger

Energy - protecting oneself

Love and Death flourish

They all seem so out of control and I’m not sure that they portray my emotional intent as deeply as I want them to. Perhaps they are just so amateur and if I could just get better, than I would be able to exhibit emotions a bit more purely and intensely. Can you tell what it is I am trying to say? Do you feel the anger? The love? The Passion? I doubt it. But I feel with these paintings I had something I wanted to say…I’m just not that articulate I suppose. My default paintings are flowers. I feel like I have nothing to say when I paint flowers and that they are just kind of there and typical. Even my Ganesha is that way.

Purple flower on Green

Ganesha

Every human being must navigate between the inner life and the outside world, just as the artist must navigate between Poetry and Craft…

We are all artists, in our own ways. We have the same struggles, the same drives…sometimes, it seems, and I could be wrong here, that artists just feel it more. Want to express it more and try to help the world via their own personal expressions of that navigation between their inner selves and their outer selves.

And for some artists, the torment is romantic.

And for some artists, the torment is romantic.

It’s an element that denotes life allowing us to scream out, I AM ALIVE! To get caught up in the mundane necessities of life is to deny an entire human responsibility. Not every one can answer this call. And that’s fine. Each of us is on our own journey and each of us on our own path. I have a path of pain, of extreme human emotion-sometimes mine, sometimes not-that cries out for expression. It dwells so deep within that it hurts. Deep in my Manipura, my personal power and how I relate to the world. It is excruciating and sublime simultaneously. Beautiful and ugly. The polarity I feel towards art, and this deep-seated feeling of needing to express, scares and excites me.

It is a visceral experience that foments existential unrest at times.

Each day is an opportunity for art. Each day a time to succeed or fail. To sit with art, to live with art, to express in art, is a curse and a gift. One that encourages you to explore your soul, you inner deep being, and somehow connect that to the world. the challenge, to not get lost in your soul universe and to remember that there exists an external community to connect with. To be a hermit, is all to easy.

2011 was an interesting year. I made a lot of progress in art, mainly in setting it up on Etsy and Zazzle.. I even sold three paintings. That was encouraging.


So it’s amazing that here I am in 2012 feeling like nothing happened in 2011 and that so much more needs to be done. How many of you feel that way? Need to be more consistent in blogging, in joining etsy teams and forums, in uploading products to Zazzle, in gathering a following, in determining relevant content, updating my website…oh, and let’s not forget about doing art and growing as an artist.


I must say though, that as I look back on previous projects I have worked on, I do feel like I have made enormous strides in my art. What I once thought was amazing is now questionable, and what I am doing now seems superb!

These two are .pdf’s if you want to check them out:
Outside of a Program
Another event program

An inside page to another program. This will be printed on pearlescent paper to give it a wonderful shine.

It just never feels like enough though, does it? Always should be doing more, putting more time into things, life, art…It’s utterly exhausting so that by the time I am sitting down to do some art, I have no energy or brain power to do it. Everybody has to be in a similar situation though. So how do you do it? How do you maintain your life and still have the energy, will and brain power to improve yourself and your art. Create art. Explore your soul. Write music. How do you find the balance in your life, to live a life, and achieve all of your goals?