Changes In Habits

I've decided to make some simple changes in my routine, mostly making time for things I need to prioritize to really seize every day and maximize my creativity, productivity, and overall health and happiness. I'm very happy as is, but I feel like a few changes in habits will better every day, so at the end of the day I will never look back and wonder what I did, and I will feel my best.

1) Actively work on art projects, and start new ones. Always be starting new things, exploring new mediums and ideas, but also finish everything you start--work consistantly, don't not work on a piece for a whole week. Work for longer stretches when you can, and for as many short periods of time in between things as possible so it will not take so long to finish everything. I need to be creating constantly if I want to grow as an artist. I have been working very hard lately, and I want to continue this, and improve on habits of taking breaks from pieces and then making it weeks before they're done. 

2) Stop wasting time on Facebook that I could spend doing something that makes me happy and is not so useless. I can check it once an evening from now on, no more.

3) Write more. Here to just get my thoughts out and feel motivated or feel whatever I am at the moment. And write more poetry, I haven't in a while and I miss it.

4) Do my knee exercises three times a day so I can recover quickly and be walking soon. I can control how fast I heal by speeding it up through strengthening, so I think that is something I should really prioritize.

5) Start yoga classes in a few weeks. It will be nice to do something active besides my exercises and it  helps my mind as well as my body. I don't have a lot of stress, but I think it will keep me very relaxed and help my knee as well. And I like to be a healthy person, but I don't exercise, and this is the one kind of physical activity I like, so I should do it. 

6) Eat more vegetables than I do now, and less junk.

7) Bring my eco water bottle to school everyday so I'm drinking enough water.

Window In the Sky

It's weird how the world can simultaneously seem strangely small, and at the same time awfully big.

And I think--What about the aliens that might come here someday?

What would they say to each other, hovering above us? 

I just had this thought about them seeing all the cars driving in lines in every direction, crisscrossing the globe. And being in wonderment at this meticulously coordinated parade for their welcome. And marveling how they kept going in different ways, but managing to not collide. 

Rain Rain Go Away

I put "Don't give up" on my to-do list today.

I think so far today I'm succeeding in that particular endeavor as  proceed to cross more measurable goals off my list. I'm working on my painting of my Patrick and there's always this point when I start on an important section, and what's more important than my task for today-his face, where I lay down the colours and as I start working them together and blending to have them form a whole, where they just won't play out how I want. I get incredibly frustrated because here I am, ruining something I've been working so hard on, so proud of, and I'm making a mess of it. However, after despairing for a while at my fiasco of jumbled colours, I keep going, keep putting down colours in each section, despite it not looking perfect right away. And, lo and behold, after labouring over it, redoing parts over and over, it looks just how I wanted it to, better than I would have settled for in my moment of hopeless resign. I just need to remember, the messay disorder of things half-done is impermanent and doesn't reflect the outcome. Great  concept to live by, I've always been told, like in "Rainbow", a song Patrick wrote for me--First comes the rain, then comes the rainbow--

You didn't get to see my rain of muddled colours, which is all well and good because it was pretty ugly, but when the painting is finished, I'll post a picture up here. 

Wonder Wonder Everywhere And Lotsa Drops To Spare

I used to always think of myself as a pessimistic idealist. Not so much the conundrum as it sounds. You see, despite being a very happy person, who had, and still has, a lot of ideas regarding perfection very highly, all but quixotic in my unrealistic ideals I had for how myself and life should go-- despite the idealist half there was that pessimism crashing down on it. But they weren't opposing forces so much as cause and effect. I wanted everything to be perfect, and seeing myself and life as it was, made me see everything negatively. My craving for the ideal life and world turned my rose-coloured glasses grey.

Now I took them off and I'm going to try re-teaching myself to really see. Instead of idealizing and over-thinking everything till the real beautiful things in life seem distorted and flawed, I'm going to really appreciate all I have and the life I live and the world I live in. It's not perfect, but seeing it as it is  reveals so much. There really is so much wonderful in everything.

This started as pondering optimism and whether it is something I need in my life. But seeing as I'm so lucky, I think I just need eyes to see it all. And a bad day is just a day before a good day, so seeing that will push me through the negative. I'm not sure what's optimism and what's just seeing anymore, I guess that shows what I wonderful life I lead.

Life in Colour

I've come to the conclusion that I have been living my life like it's a story book, and at no real fault of my own. It's very much an Alice in Wonderland sort of book, full of "and then for no apparent reason..."s, and plenty changes in my size (not literally, but it feels so). And so what other way could I go about opening each day besides turning a page of print and sliding down the words as I read my life unfolding? There's a new way of living besides being a storybook character I would like to try (all kindest respects to Lewis Caroll and his Alice, I'm currently reading that, and it's very delightful, I recommend reading it if you have not.) I'm going to paint each day in vivid living colour. Some days I will want to dip my hands in the paint and paint from my fingertips, feeling the colour seeping into my skin and then becoming the life I paint, instilling myself, fingerprints, into what I create. Some days, I'll just swirl my brushes in different colours, imagining possibilities. If I feel a grey day, I'll let myself see the grey but remember that it's only a colour on my ever-changing canvas, and will be painted over tomorrow by brighter hues.

"You whose day it is make it beautiful. Get out your rainbow colours so it will be beautiful" - Nootka Native American Chant