Everything Changes.

“Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing and changing. You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant.” – Steve Maraboli

A Time For Change.

Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change. It’s the realization that we can. -Shawn Achor

Yes. 2011 is over. Did you celebrate?

I did, in my own special kind of way. I didn’t mourn losses or think about regrets. I did reflect on how amazing and wonderful 2011 did turn out to be.

It was a beautiful year. And now, I’m ready for 2012 to be even more amazing.

Spectacular even. I figure there will be some pain, some suffering and a lot of change, but it will all be worth it. Whatever it is.

Here’s some reading for you.  Considering how many changes I went through and made personally last year in 2011, I think it’s appropriate to mention it here:

The Art of Change

Happy New Year!

Dry Spells & Catalysts.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. – Viktor Frankl ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’

Inspiration can drown you in a flood. So many ideas, rushing through your head at once, there never seems like enough time to record or play with everything that you are imagining. You struggle to grab and hold on to just one thought and see it through to some physical, fleshed out idea. Something you can show to someone else and say, “see this? I had this crazy idea!” A thing you can proceed to rant and gesture wildly about with much enthusiasm. It’s always a wonderful feeling to be driven by thoughts on this one, great, thing.

Then again…

Inspiration sucks the very life from you. It is that unspoken oasis in the desert, sometimes only an illusion, a thing that drives you on, relentlessly through creative brain fever. You question yourself, you doubt yourself, you ask yourself, “why?!?” Inspiration can lead you out to the middle of nowhere without a compass, map, or breadcrumb trail. You can push yourself so hard that when you finally come out, you realize there’s nothing.

The inspiration, the creative process, has stopped.

You are dry.

Thirsting in the desert of idea, with no imagined oasis.

Chock ©ChossyGrl

It’s easy to suffocate during periods of creative “dryness.” Other things fill time, but always, thoughts about making, playing, and experimenting with creative ideas are in the back of the head. Reminding you that you haven’t done anything. It’s easy to stay in this holding pattern. Mostly because getting started again is harder that just continuing without the “flood” of inspiration mentioned before.

I haven’t painted in two weeks. I have ideas, but they are mostly just noise, nothing shouts at me and says, “see me? I’m awesome! You NEED to actualize me….”

This is a hard place to be in right now. On one hand, the physical & mental rest is nice. But emotionally, I feel as though I should be making things, exploring, playing….not just wandering around in my imagined oasis.

I do not want to become rooted….not yet.

To help with my own inspiration I’ve started yoga, I’m walking/riding more, playing around with photography again, and I dyed my hair (blonde.) Coincidently, I’m also going back to college next week.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. –Viktor Frankl ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’