Quotes I am pondering this day...

This is a summer of reflection and (hopefully) reconnection.  Using an assortment of methods, including online journaling classes, summer writing courses, and a myriad of spiritual writing books, I am slowly rediscovering life.

And while I have no earth-shattering experiences to share today, I thought it might be beneficial to record some thought-provoking quotes I have read while working my way through The Artist's Way.  Perhaps you might enjoy them as well.

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other peoples' models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open up.   --- Shakti Gawain

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.  --- Albert Camus

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.  --- Martha Graham

Look and you will find it --- what is unsought will go undetected.  --- Sophocles

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards:  they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier.  The way it actually works is the reverse.  You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.  --- Margaret Young

Soul-Searching

I have updated the blog just a bit to include a list of the online courses I have taken over the past couple of years.  Obviously there is a theme here.... either the courses have aided me in writing about the past in order to understand my present... and/or the courses have taught me how to use photography as a way of slowing down and appreciating the beauty in the ordinary.  I have provided links to all these courses and I highly recommend each and every one, if you are interested in this kind of soul-searching exercise.

I am currently enrolled in Susannah Conway's Journal Your Life and I love her idea of developing a separate journal for Creative Exploration.  For at least the past decade, I feel as though I have ignored the right side of my brain in favor of working harder, smarter, and more efficiently.  But I have come to realize that all that productivity has come at a price.  I no longer know how to have 'fun' - and I have lost sight of my passions.  My perfectionism has cost me joy in life.  I no longer find the journey of exploration fun; it is only the finished product that counts.  And of course, that final product is never good enough for my high expectations.

It is my hope and fervent desire that I leave these unrealistic expectations behind this summer as I embark on a new way to journal, using not only words but images, collages, colored pens and fancy lettering.  It will not be perfect, but hopefully, it will reconnect me to the joy of artistic self-expression.

In addition to this online class, which includes daily emails and a facebook group... I am also conducting a self-study using Julia Cameron's books, The Artist's Way and The Vein of Gold.  I have skimmed through both of these books in the past, but I am determined to complete all the exercises this summer in an attempt to reconnect to the artist child within.  This intense exploration will be the subject of many more future posts.

In the meantime, here's to fresh new beginnings and a summer of self-exploration.