Whoohooo! Technically the first day of spring is this Thursday, March 20, 2014. I am so ready. While cabin fever has not got the best of me, I was certainly ready for the sunshine and warmer temps we've been having lately. The dog and I have been getting out every day we can. We are both ready to get "On the Road Again", which is the name of this little collage I did yesterday.
I love taking walks with Daisy and taking lots of photos. I used to do that before mom passed away and would load all the pictures on the computer for her to enjoy, too. That was the only way mom was getting out into the sunshine, especially towards the end. This little past time helped us both. Mom got to see the world through my eyes, which was a whole lot different than hers. I'm known for taking closeups of lots of things, be they normal or 'weird' and Mom found herself liking a lot of my odd photos. You just never know what might become the idea for a picture or collage. I'm always looking for inspiration.
For this collage I used some leftover map scraps and found that cute little silhouette car graphic in my graphics program. I looked up the lyrics to Willie Nelson's 'On the Road Again'. It stilled needed a little something so I outlined everything with black sharpie marker and voile—a painting!! I just love it when a plan comes together.
Be here now. I've been telling myself that for several years now. Pay attention to what is happening right now for 'now' is when and where life is lived and felt.
Emotions only happen in the now. When we think of past events, we often relive the emotions we felt back then, but those emotions are based on a thought, a memory. The event is in the past, not the present. We can choose to change the emotions that went with a past event. Or not.
Instead of reliving the past like an old rerun we can choose to 'catch the moment' and live in the present. We can choose to make this moment all that it can be. We can be all that we can be right now. Life is lived in the moment. Period. One moment at a time. We can choose to pour our emotion, our passion, into getting the most out of this very moment. And we can live that way every moment of our lives. Wow! Amazing!
You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.
So I suppose the best piece of advice I could give anyone is pretty simple: get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so very much about those things if you developed an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast while in the shower?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over the dunes, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over a pond and a stand of pines. Get a life in which you pay attention to the baby as she scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.
Turn off your cell phone. Turn off your regular phone, for that matter. Keep still. Be present.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work.
Get a life in which you are generous. Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take the money you would have spent on beers in a bar and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Tutor a seventh-grader.
All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.
- Anna Quindlen
I want to give a shout out to Patricia Allingham Carlson whose art is really amazing!!!
