Saturday, January 26, 2013

Focus on Life - Catching Up - Week 2: Your Word

Still catching up with the Focus on Life challenge as I'm on week 2.  Sally's prompt for this week was to choose a work that will serve as "your word” or “your resolution” for 2013.  The word I've chosen is "overcome".


I'm often amused when reflecting on my life -- in some areas I have it more together than others.

In Business:

Want me to give a speech to 200 people?  No sweat.  Need it in 30 minutes?  Even better.  What's the topic?

Unravel a difficult, complex problem?  Absolutely.  I'm the right person for the job.

Do the impossible with no money and no people?  Wow, I love a challenge.  Let's get to it.  Thursday soon enough for the impossible?

However,

Want me to ride the metro in my adopted city of Washington, DC?  Oh no, I'm from Colorado, we drive.  I'll get lost.  I'm afraid to be with all those people in a confined space.  The train will break down and I'll be stuck.......Excuses, fears, status quo.

Take care of myself and my health?  Hmmm..... I'm really, really tired so can't exercise (by the way the last time I went to the gym I was surrounded by hot bodies, ugh, and when did treadmills require an advanced degree to operate?).  It's really late and I can't prepare a healthy meal.  I don't have time to - go to the doctor, dentist, acupuncturist, get a massage, whatever.  Excuses, fears, status quo.

Create?  No.  I'm away from home for an extended period of time so don't have all the stuff in my studio so couldn't possibly create art the way I'm used to.  Excuses, fears, status quo.

You get the picture (do you Maria?).  So, "overcome" is my word for the year.  What small steps can I take to overcome excuses, fears and the status quo?  Well, this challenge is one of them.  I've also joined Tracy Statler's Wellness Words Jewelry Challenge for next week.  So, I'm making small steps.  Maybe soon I'll ride the metro.  :)


Sunday, January 20, 2013

Catching Up - Focus on LIfe

I came across Sally Russick's Focusing on Life - 52 Photos challenge through some of the blogs I follow.  Each week Sally sends a prompt to the participants and we all take a photo based on the prompt.  The challenge fit in with my New Years resolution to post more, explore more, make art more and live more.  I'm catching up since I joined the challenge a few weeks late.  Week one's task was to take a self portrait.  I decided to photograph my hands as they are the instruments that I use to create art and my most trusted tools.  I'm setting up a new laptop so, while I'm transferring all of my software, I'm using Picasa (free Google software) to edit my photos.  You can see that I got a bit artistic and used some of the filters and features of Picasa to stylize my photo.  That's what fun about the challenge; trying new things.