Month: January 2016

My three words

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LiveI’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions, I’m too busy writing new goals every week or month during the year, I save new year’s for reflection.  It’s my moment to look back at the prior year with gratitude. My favorite tradition is to write New Year’s cards to those who had an impact on my life.  There are always so many, I’m sure I leave someone out.  I have so much to be thankful for, the new year is a good time to share that.

So, no New Year’s Resolutions for me, instead I am following a number of writers who suggest identifying three words that carry you through your year.  Three words that help me to focus, to stay on track, to get things done.  It took a week, but finally the three words just ran in to my head and they simply won’t leave.

Really, I’ve tried, but those same three words keep assaulting me, every where I go, I see an application.  In the morning when I wake, at least one of the words jumps up to say “look at me!”  I’m excited for the year ahead, just having identified my words will help me to stay on track.

My three words are:

Abundance • Energy • Intention

My life has so much good in it, I am incredibly blessed.  It is filled with wonderous abundance in so many ways.

Energy comes in so many forms, I find that if I remind myself how much energy I have to tackle all my tasks, it helps me to stay positive and upbeat through even the most droll tasks.

I refuse to just let life pass me by, every day, I live with Intention.  I face the world with intention, each day I know exactly what I want to accomplish, some days it doesn’t all get done, but there is always a goal.

What are your three words?

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Meeting my Art Goals

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artjournalLast year at this time, I set a goal for myself, I do that a lot!  But this one was completely different than most of them.  My goal was to complete the Documented Life Project 2015.  DLP is an art journal prompt, one each week for a year.  Art, really? What do I know about art?

Turns out, I know a lot more now than I did a year ago.  I have always been a crafter, I can copy what others do pretty easily, but designing things myself is a whole other story.  Fortunately, the Art to the 5th ladies and their guest artists provided a ton of inspiration each week. Each week, they gave a prompt, some photos and a theme.  My job was to incorporate these things in to a double page each week.

There were times during the year that I was severely behind, up to 10 weeks, quite often due to our schedule.  But I never gave up.  I would choose a day and tell Rich, “I’m going to art today.”  And break out my supplies.  A little paint here, some colored pencils, stencils, stamps, inks and paper.  It all came together to record my year.  I documented my life.  Each page includes a little bit of a planner, some recording as to where we were, what we were doing, who we were doing it with.  And now that I’ve come to the end of the year, I added some photos to the back.  It truly is a representation of what we did all year long.  My daughter has asked that I pass it down to her when I’m done with it.  It’s kind of like a scrapbook of our year.  I always had good intentions of scrapbooking, but could never pull it off.  It feels good to have this done.

Most of the pages can be found here – CLICK NOW

So here it is, a good representation of the art I created.  I learned a lot this year, but these were the most important lessons:

  • Color is my friend
  • Anything can inspire you
  • Pages don’t have to be perfect
  • That if I commit, I can do anything
  • Just because I get behind, I can catch up
  • That I am thankful for all the communities I belong to

If you are wondering what I’m up to that’s new, check out my new website

 

In Review

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I think that title might describe my life…in review.  I am always looking in the rear view mirror to see if I’m measuring up to some ideal I have about who I am.  I spend a lot of time reviewing my actions, my travels, my words.  Those are but a memory, I should probably be focused on the future.  But it’s hard to leave behind the past…in so many ways.

I feel compelled to take a look at 2015 to see how it stacked up.  In the travel department, it was awesome.  We did our usual traipsing around the US throughout the year – from California to Florida to Maine, and a ton of states in between.  We ventured up to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick after a rousing 4th of July spent in Boston.  We saw our Nation’s Capital in the spring, we hit Disney World in January, and Australia in October.  I love the travel, it is one of my greatest joys, to experience other cultures and ways of life.

Our family is good, everyone seems to be making their way in the world without too much interference from us.  The grandchildren are awesome and growing like weeds, the boys think Grandpa is awesome, the girls are still deciding, but seem to be coming around.

We had a tragedy strike our business early in the season, and although we recovered to be able to continue, it still weighs heavy on our thoughts. Safety continues to be our primary concern.

Our friends were, once again, awesome, throughout the year.  So many that reached out to us on so many occasions to make us welcome in their worlds.  We are so fortunate.  The people we meet and spend time with provide context to all the travel, they are the reason we enjoy our time on the road so much.

Each year I work towards something new and different, I set aside things that aren’t working as I want to so that I can re-work them until they make sense.  Two years ago, I launched All Terrain Hero – the concept made sense to me, we already had a race track, why wouldn’t we put runners on the same course and give it double duty (on different days, of course).  Things I hadn’t considered were – how remote our tracks are; how exhausted my team is after a real race day; that I don’t know how to break in to the running community.  Some locations did ok, some not so much.  So, while we will continue to support The Gwendolyn Strong Foundation through other fundraising, I’m going to shelve All Terrain Hero for a bit.

This year, my launch is something online that I’ve been doing for a long time, but had been doing individually instead of to the masses.  I launched a new website on the 1st and will be sharing more of that as we move along.  If you want a sneak peek (it’s anything but perfect right now) – go ahead and take a look at www.UnscriptYourLife.com It will improve with age, but the concepts are all there.

Thank you for a great and powerful year, it truly was awesome, 2016 is going to be even more so, more good things are coming our way.  We truly are living in a time of blessed abundance.

And now I'll doJoin me won’t you?