Day 106: Four.TwentyOne.13

It’s Earth Day.

I’m ashamed to say I forgot for most of it.

I did do this in advance, knowing that I would be celebrating the accomplishments of some of my most cherished women, on their college graduation day:

I am in the middle of the woods with the kind of people that are changing the world through their every fiber. Their fingertips and neurons spark deep connections in this earth. They are healing our world. A slow, sometimes lonely process. Without a guarantee that others will join. They continue forward anyway, knowing there is no other choice.

Here’s to another day of creativity…

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Day 83: Three.TwentyNine.13

My phenomenal friend shared her art supplies with me. In the time it took me to create these doodlings – my first attempt with these materials and techniques – she had created a beautiful piece of artwork. There was no way I could help my comparing, and judging (myself), but the fact that I didn’t rip mine up is progress. It was also a strangely soothing way to spend a Friday night; after a good meal, great company, and lovely scenery, coloring your heart out may indeed be the way to go.

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 7: One.Twelve.13

Yesterday I read about the record number of background checks (the kind you get when you want to buy a gun) and gun sales that took place in December. Today I watched James Yaeger’s response to gun control reform. I then proceeded to watch a Huffington Post clip about a school board in Ohio that has approved an asinine policy to arm janitors in schools, as if that is the answer to making our kids safer.

I am horrified. Saddened. Wanting so much to SPEAK. Say something artistically that can, in some small way, add weight to the other side, to balance the scales even just a miniscule amount. To counterattack all of the hate, negativity, violence with hope, positivity, kindness. Instead, this is all I could manage to get out. Maybe tomorrow I will have more to SAY.

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 2: One.Seven.13

What Would I Say, If I Wasn’t Afraid of My Own VOICE?

SPEAK

Over the past year or so, I have been confronted by this idea that I am stifling my own creativity. Most recently, the feeling that I am not creating truthful, thought-provoking art has been causing me great distress. The root, it seems, is that I am afraid to SPEAK. my ideas. my truth. my fears, hopes, and needs. And for what? For fear of being wrong. judged. misinformed. called out as a fraud. By others? Or by myself?

In a place and time where I have the ability, the freedom, to speak my mind, how am I not shouting from the rooftops? What is it that has instead made me self-sensor my creative forms of expression?

Perhaps this whole project is an attempt to reclaim my voice. Or rather to find it, for the very first time.

I don’t know yet how this idea, SPEAK, will fully manifest itself – whether it will become dance, writing, visual displays, or a combination thereof – but I suspect it will weave itself in and out of this year full of discovering.

Here’s to another day of creativity…