The 2019 January Art Journaling/Blogging Challenge is Here!

Join me on Tuesday, January 1st 2019 for my third January Art Journal Challenge!

I am thrilled to be offering my Third January Art Journal Challenge. This creative challenge combines Art Journaling and Blogging. Meaning, if you choose to join this challenge, you can pick one of these daily practices, or both—alternating between the two, however you feel inclined to do it. In some cases your art journaling practice might become a digitized blog post. 

If you do not have a blog, but have always wanted to start one, this is a great opportunity for you to get your blog jump started. In fact, this challenge was inspired by my first blogging project, ZOELAB 365, where I committed to blogging every day for a year in order to lift myself out of postpartum depression. And let me tell you, it worked. That year was the most creatively fulfilling of my life, and planted the seeds for the many inspiring projects I am now doing out in the world.

This year, I am offering the challenge as a pay to play. For only $1 A Day, $31 in total, you will receive:

1) Access to the private Facebook Group only for the Challenge Participants

2) Daily journal/blog prompts or creative assignments designed to help deepen your connection to your intuition & creative flow

3) Daily inspiration

4) Daily Support from Zoë - you will get feedback from your posts, answers to your questions and other forms of guidance

5) Support form the community of people also doing this challenge

6) A chance to win a free 90 minute coaching discovery session with Zoë! For all who complete the challenge, send Zoë an email by February 2 stating that you completed all 31 days of the challenge. The winner will be chosen at random on February 3rd.

How does the 31 Day Art Journal Challenge work?

1) Sign up here. It’s $31 for the month of January.

2) Once you have signed up, you will receive an email from me with a link to the private Facebook Group.

3) Starting on January 1st, 2019! You will receive a prompt and/or creative assignment every day in the Facebook Group. If you are not a Facebook user, you can still do the challenge. The prompts & assignments can be emailed to you. However, you will not be able to participate in the group experience or receive feedback.

4) Complete the prompts either in your journal or on your computer (if you are blogging) or alternate between the digital and analogue. I recommend an 8.5 x 11 blank journal. You can order a journal like the one you see on the right, here. Use whatever supplies appeal to you. For some prompts certain supplies may be suggested.

5) Another exciting option is that you can participate in the Sketchbook Project at the Brooklyn Art Library in conjunction with this challenge. Sign up for the Sketchbook Project by January 9th, by buying a sketch book from them, which you can complete as part of this challenge. After you are done, mail your filled sketchbook for them to keep in their library, which features the largest collection of sketchbooks in the world!

5) Feel free to post your art journal pages, blog posts (from the challenge), questions, process, or anything that relates the topic of art journaling and blogging in the Facebook group. That is your space to connect with others as well as with me.

6) If you enjoy posting your pages on social media, please use the hashtag: #31dayjournalblogchallengejan19

I imagine everyone's reasons for joining this challenge will be varied. It may be because you want to get back into your writing and/or your art again in a daily way. You may just be to learn about art journaling. For some, it may be an opportunity to have a quiet moment to connect with yourself. And for others, it might a wild time to experiment, with no goal other than to unleash your creativity. And for all of us, hopefully, it is simply a way to practice and increase self connection and love! You may discover some new reasons along the way.

For me, this year's challenge is about three things:

1) To promote the inspiring, creative & healthy practice of art journaling and blogging

2) To build online community through creativity and authentic connection

3) To promote the practice of self connection

What is art journaling?

Art Journaling is a process that combines visual art (drawing, painting, collage, or photography) and words. Art Journaling can consist of intimate journal entries, poetry, doodling, hand lettering, free associative writing, list-making, goal-setting and planning. Putting those two aspects of our experience together on the same page: visual and verbal is the common ground for all art journaling.

My version of art journaling is unique in that it combines techniques, theories, and assignments from my work as an expressive arts therapist and creativity coach. For the past six years, I have been teaching Art Journal Lab, a class that combines these techniques, in Todos Santos, Mexico, near where I live. I teach people the tools, philosophy and basic skills they need to interact with the different parts of self, which I refer to as the inner family of self. I create a structure that makes it possible to connect to the invisible parts that we feel, but don’t always acknowledge or express.

You do not have to be a trained artist or serious writer to do art journaling. Anyone who can pick up a pen or pencil and has a blank book can do art journaling. There are no special supplies that are necessary, though I will be sharing some of my favorite tools during the challenge. One of my life's missions is to show how everyone is creative, and that the arts were meant to be used by all of humanity as a tool to discover the soul, and to engage in life in a more balanced, compassionate way. Through our engagement with the arts, we are able to make space for expressing the darkness, the unconscious parts of the Self, instead of acting those parts out on others. It is particularly this, this engagement with the shadow (the parts of us we do not see or do now want to see, or feel) that is the creative gold of this work. When we have the courage to bring our light of consciousness to our own shadow, we are able to unearth our previously buried psychic energy so we can make use of even our darkest pain.

What is blogging?

As many of us know, the reasons and ways to blog can vary greatly. It can be a tool to promote business, a way to keep track of your travels or other kinds of adventures, or a way to promote and share your creative work, political ideas, or simply to connect with your inner life. Whether it is for your business, for personal, or political expression, I believe a successful blog always stems from personal truth. If your business or your politics has no degree of personal connection for you, then perhaps you already have a great topic to or journal or blog about why this is so.

The most difficult and most important part of what it means to blog, or even journal, is that it is regular. It is also, as many bloggers will attest, the key to success. (Success = getting readers to read your blog.) From my experiences with daily practices, which is something I promote in my art journal lab class, as well as personally, I have come to believe in the amazing power of creating a daily practice, especially something that helps you connect with yourself, with the invisible world, feelings and other parts of us that we usually work hard to avoid, push down or unconsciously act out on others. These types of inward-directed daily practices keep us holistically healthy because they keep us connected to something true and deep in us.  These kinds of daily practices have helped me out depression, anxiety, a sense of loss, relationship issues, and more. They have helped me enormously with my creativity as an artist and as a mom and human being—when you do something daily, it forces you to be more creative with it—otherwise you get bored. We tend to look for new ways, new approaches when we know we have to do it everyday. 

So, use the term blogging however you feel connected to it—my definition is as follows:

To share words and images (hopefully self-generated) online about any topic, as long as it has has meaning or importance to you personally. One additional other feature: it must be dated for it to be a blog post, otherwise it is just a webpage. The date makes it time-connected, and therefore, applicable to a certain moment of time for you. This is the same for art journaling.

I love blogging because it delivers a sense of immediacy that appeals to the performer in me. Blogging is a digital performance—the act of baring a personal truth, an art piece, or just a slice of life, with others, sometimes strangers, sometimes not, brings me a certain thrill. If it doesn’t feel thrilling, a tiny bit risky, I usually don’t blog about it. For each of us the thrill will come for different reasons, in different areas. What is risky for me may not feel risky for you. And so it is very much up to you to come up with your own topics to write about. A blog post can be very simple or complex. There is no rule in this department. A blog post might simply be sharing a photograph you took that day and sharing a little caption or small story or sentence that explains it. Other times a blog post might be a highly informative piece that is designed to help and/or inside others learn a specific skill (EG: this post you are reading now.) Some blog posts have taken me 15 minutes to create, others have taken many hours. Neither is better than the other—the beauty of blogging is that it keeps going. We can’t get to hung up on our last blog post, because we are already thinking about our next one! This represents the natural flow of life. We cannot afford to get perfectionistic about our daily practices, they are designed for us to make mistakes, and to learn and grow from them, that is why they are practices. If you think of your blog or your art journaling as a practice and it will help you let go of the inner critic.

The reasons I host creative challenges it to help connect people to their creativity, passion and personal truth. Doing something every day creates a new habit that is affirming and helps you grow--expanding your sense of authentic self that you bring into the world. It is most certainly a challenge to do something everyday with out fail. But it is also very rewarding, and the sense of accomplishment from completing a whole month with a daily creative practice is a real thrill.

I can't wait to see what it might do for you!

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

Breaking The Rules + The Routine

I am a daily practice pusher. A creative crusader, challenger.

But... sometimes you need to break from the routine. Sometimes you need to break the rules and play hooky from your daily practices. Sometimes you need to “be bad” in order to find out the edges of your personality. Sometimes you have to try something different or just take the day off. 

Today has been that kind of day.

Instead of meditating, taking my mountain walk, writing and eating papaya (including the seeds). Instead of sticking to my no-wheat, no sugar, no red meat, (mostly) no dairy diet, I drove to Cabo and went to my favorite bakery to eat their chickpea pesto panini after six weeks with out bread. It was crunchy delicious. Then I wandered around the mall feeling like a tourist in a slick jungle.  When you live in the desert the mall feels you feel like a strange, dirty animal.

And then I decided it was time to change things up a bit with this Museletter. My original intention with this letter back in June was to motivate me to keep in touch with you and to hold myself accountable to communicate once a week. And when I first started, I wasn’t sure if I had anything to say, so I thought I could still stay in touch by sharing links to things to read, listen to and look at.

On the one hand, I have always loved the idea of being a tastemaker, a person who enthusiastically shares art forms that inspire me. I secretly believe I have excellent taste, and have worked for many years to cultivate my taste, so I thought why not? Why not me? I had once sent such a letter last year with links to the creative things my friends and family were doing. And I had so enjoyed it.

But now, I see how how that decision was fueled by an unconscious desire to hide my writing and hide from my writing. The links was my back up plan. I thought: "if I have nothing to say, I can just share some links." But I discovered, week after week, (it’s been 14 weeks to be exact) that I actually had a lot to say. And it seems that perhaps my readers are more interested in what I have been writing about more than what music I've been listening to (especially since I tend to hear about things a little later.)  

Also, I have been looking at the way I spend my time. Because I am a Mom and have so many projects I am currently working on, I realize that I need to be more efficient with how I choose to conduct these projects. I’ve spent many hours every week designing these emails. I realize it would be more efficient and more useful to put my recommendations on my blog with tags so that anyone can find them. My goal with my website has always been to make it a space for creative resources. The blog already is somewhat that way. But there is a lot more to add! 

From now on, I will still be sending you a weekly letter, with a few links at time, but not with the whole fancy sidebar thing. Eventually, these kinds of recommendations, things to read, listen to and look at, will make it up on the blog. If you have an opinion on this shift in format, I would love to hear it! 

Do hold yourself to rules or routines that sometimes need re-assessing or occasional breaking? Do you like to break your own rules just to know how it feels?

I would like to end this email with a poem I wrote last summer in response to my own assignment for the writing class I taught called breaking the rules. I wrote the poem on the back of a print out of an ee cummings poem. 

I said break the rules but what did I really mean?

Holding onto myself.

No more.

Being a good girl.

Fuck that.

Saying No

when I mean YESSSSSS inside.

Letting the exclamation points

pile up until they look like pick up sticks.

Letting the handwriting be as erratic as it needs to be.

Rhyming sometimes.

And then 

not.

Not practicing what I teach.

Like honesty, badness, goodness and not holding back.

Here’s another way we can do it.

Write on top of the holy words

of your favorite poet.

Get odd when it’s time to play doubles.

Brag about your high score and don't let someone shame your points.

Don't forget to be a social climber,

and a bad one too,

who drinks too much and doesn’t introduce herself.

This can be about anything

as long as you don’t follow my instructions.

Get wise when you feel the boldness coming.
Etch it out in clear plastic,

ink it out,

your story 

that used to rhyme.

Forgive your sentences for being sincere and seductive.

Forgive your boss for laying you off.

Don’t tell her off.

Tell her on—thank her

for pushing you towards destiny.

She might thank you some day too.

For igniting her last moment of history.

The rule breaking 

goes on and on.

Way beyond pen to paper. 

Pencil habits.

Backwards
Words back 

Back Woods

Dirt Circles

I know it’s okay to write beside you com ings.

Come in.

Into me. You 

taught me

how

to love the in-betweens

And the rules

 that are so beautiful 

when turned upside down.

That’s what we are doing with our pen hearts

our holdovers our chicken scratched fingers.

Don’t have the poem hate the poet

who wants to alter you and marry and divorce you

until you are no longer who you used to be.

Until you are wholefingers 

growing out 

of your childhood gloves. 

Those don’t fit me anymore, you say,

and I believe you.

I believe your worthiness.
Your soul rise.

I’m a late bloomer too.

Born in the 70’s.It took me a while to

shine my sun on.

It too me a while to 

Rise on.

It took me a while to hear the true story

that was covered in dust.

It took me a while to reach conclusions.

wisdomwaiting

wholehearing

death becoming

random showing

old gloating

rhythm floating

Georgian Poet + Storyteller 

approaching

just when you thought you knew how to teach 

unteaching.

Never. Never. Never.

Say Never.

Unless you believe death has a say

in how your soul speaks.

Meta Lab: Definition

ZOELAB DAY 106

Date of Original Post: December 15, 2012

I’ve been working hard, staying up way too late, working on the new additions to the ZOELAB website experience. I’ve been excited about it, excited to share it. Just now, I hit publish. It’s uploading as I type this. Part of what I want to add to the new website is the ABOUT page. It’s really held me up because I’ve found it so difficult to describe what this project is because it’s so many things all at once.  Since the day I conceived this project, I have kept a giant and growing list of all the different titles and descriptions for what ZOELAB is. I couldn’t possibly fit everything into one title or description. My solution was to call it ZOELAB (Lucas’ idea) and then having a running list of alternate descriptions on the upper left hand corner of the masthead. However, I want to have something a little more descriptive on the ABOUT page. 

Inspired by yesterday’s post about both/and I have created a one sentence description of ZOELAB that includes pretty much everything that it needs to include.

I am considering swapping out what’s written on the about page for this. Or perhaps, I will just link to this page on the ABOUT page. I imagine this sentence will continue to be adjusted:

Does that about sum it up, or did I miss something? Let me know what you think.

A List of Future Blog Posts and Essay Topics

I have an opportunity to start blogging for a major website, yet I have hesitated to publish there. It's not fear exactly, that has kept me from taking that leap, but maybe a need for clarity, before I feel ready to put my voice out there in a bigger way.

Here is my list of blog post ideas (as well as longer essay pieces that I will eventually publish) that I have been mulling over.

• What is creativity?

• What is art journaling?

• How I lifted myself out of postpartum depression through art journaling, blogging and dancing

• How to use technology selectively

• How to be authentic on social media

• Phases of Creativity

• Is Our Obssession with Yoga is Killing Our Creativity?

• Art Advice in Opposites

• How to discover your soul’s code

• How to deal with the inner critic

• On being both an introvert and an extrovert

• What I love about living in Baja

• Narcissism, how to cure it and how it’s the last taboo

• How to be all your selves

• On death and the afterlife

• How you can bring more singing, dancing, writing, drawing & acting into your life

• Why I think Buddhism is sexist

• Why it’s important to be in love with yourself

• Love is the antidote for shame

• I am not an expat, I am an immigrant

• Creative Motherhood

• My philosophy: Living Life as Art

• A personal history of spirituality

• On Being In-Between: Androgyny, bisexuality, bilingualism, biculturalism and multi-identity

• How to create a class from a place of complete selfishness

• The paradox of parenthood and childhood

• How to slow down

• How to live your dreams after 40

• How to be a bad off-the-gridder, but an off-the-gridder all the same

• Why I want to be the voice of my (very small) generation

I am curious to hear what you think, which ones resonate with you or spark your curiosity? 

Start From Where You Are For Blogging and Art Journaling

This is not the first time I have titled a blog post with this title. And it won't be the last either. 

Start from where you are.

It's the best advice I can give anyone looking to explore their creativity, find truth, or get started on a project that feels daunting.  For this advice, I am thinking of the bloggers and art journalers who have joined me on this month-long challenge to blog or art journal every day. I am thinking of my commitment to this practice, and the inspiration that I want to offer people.

I love this advice so much that I even teamed up with my friend/collaborator/colleague Holly Mae Haddock, and together, we wrote a song about it when I told her how I was going through a stuck period with songwriting, singing and guitar playing. It's called: Where I Am.

Here is the chorus:

I'm gonna start from where I am.  

With no memory or plan.                                                                                                                

I'm gonna offer who I am.                                                                                                                    

I'll be my own biggest fan.

How do you start from where you are? 

For me, it's always about looking within. Connecting within. It usually means closing the eyes. Slowing down the breath. Opening the imagination. It means turning on our awareness. What do we actually feel? It means noticing what kind of energy do we have right now in this moment, before we change it all with a thought, with a "should" or a "have to"?

And then, once we get a little taste of it, we create from that place. Maybe I notice I am feeling anxious and I focus on that feeling for a moment, and then draw that feeling. Or maybe it means I have an image of a little girl, and I want to create from the space that she occupies inside me, using crayons, or dancing to music she likes. 

For art journaling, it means capturing an essence of our experience, what is up for us, what feels important, juicy, or even scary. If you are art journaling, it is most likely private, and so the space of the journal page is a really safe place to let it all out. There are no limits to what you can create there--sometimes it's nice to start with something really simple. A feeling, an image, something that you are connecting with in this very moment. And then let it flow from that place.

Every blogger is different in terms of your goal, themes, styles, topics. My blogging sweet spot is about communicating something that usually stays inside. Sharing something that I would normally want to hide from people in everyday conversation. I like the feeling of the risk of sharing that kind of material on my blog. The shadow. It's what drives me. My shadow material might not look the same as yours--and it might not seem risky to you. But what's important is how it feels to you, the blogger. 

Morning Pages

One of the best, easiest and most rewarding practices for art journaling or blogging, is morning pages. For those who don't know, morning pages is an exercise that Julia Cameron invented in her book about the spirituality of creativity called The Artist's Way. It's basically the same thing as stream of consciousness writing. Her version is write 3 pages in a notebook with a pen or pencil with out stopping. I have adapted her exercise for my Art Journal Lab class, and set the timer for 15 minutes and do not limit the exercise to the morning (as our class meets in the afternoon.) Also, I am okay with doing the practice on a computer, though Julia insists on doing the morning pages with paper and pen. What matters most, in my opinion, is that you write with out editing, with out stopping, with out letting the critic get in your way. You write out the most mundane stuff in your mind, as well as the deepest stuff. It's a writing meditation, and it works. It allows us to get to know the contents of our mind before we block ourselves. The writing does not have to be good or even interesting. It's a process exercise designed to empty the chatter in our mind, and to let out the thoughts and feelings that are under that white noise. So on days you really don't know what to do with your blogging or your art journaling. Just write for 15 minutes with out stopping. If you are blogging, you might find something useful in there that you can edit or expand afterwards and turn into a blog post.

For the visual component, one thing you can do with your morning pages is scan the words after you are done to look for words that feel important to you. You can circle them with a colored pen (pen of color) and then choose one or a few to illustrate your blog post or your journal. Let yourself play--it's not about perfection but about exploring your visual senses in addition to your verbal expression.

In June 2015, I decided to quit Facebook because I was feeling frustrated by the lack of authentic expression on there--mine and others. I wanted to be real, but I didn't feel safe to be real, so I returned to my blog and committed to blogging daily for the month of June. I gave myself the parameter of writing daily for 15 minutes (morning pages on the computer). Then I gave myself another half hour to edit and expand, and add imagery and turn into a blog post. It was such a wonderful way to make my blog feel more alive, and I developed a more confessional style. I will be sharing some of those blog posts with you soon!

Let me know in the comments below how it goes for you to start from where you are.

Does any resistance come up?

If so, start from there. 

31 Day Art Journaling and Blogging Challenge

Join me on January 1st 2017 for my next 31 day challenge. I will be blogging and/or art journaling every day for the month of January in order to promote art journaling, return to my hiatus from blogging regularly, and to develop my art journal lab online course which I plan to release on my website in 2017. 

This creative challenge combines Art Journaling and Blogging. Meaning, if you choose to join this challenge, you can pick one of these daily practices, or both—alternating between the two, however you feel inclined to do it. In some cases your art journaling practice might become a digitized blog post. 

I imagine your reasons for joining this challenge will be varied. Some may use it as a way to get back into blogging or to start your first blog. For some, it may be a very private practice of meditative writing and drawing. And for others, it might a wild time to experiment, with no goal other than to unleash your creativity.

For me it is about four things: 1) To get back into blogging 2) To develop and my material for the upcoming art journal lab online course 3) To promote and teach art journaling 4) To attract new readers to my blog

What is art journaling?

Art Journaling is a process that combines visual art (drawing, painting, collage, or photography) and text. Art Journaling can consist of intimate journal entries, poetry, doodling, hand lettering, free associative writing, list-making. Putting those two aspects of our experience together on the same page: visual and verbal is the basis for all art journaling.

My version of art journaling combines techniques, theories, and assignments from my work as an expressive arts therapist and creativity coach. I also have been teaching Art Journal Lab, a class that combines these techniques, in Todos Santos for the past five years. I teach people the tools, philosophy and basic skills they need to interact with the different parts of self, which I refer to as the inner family of self. I create a structure that makes it possible to connect to the invisible parts that we feel, but don’t always acknowledge or express. I have a Masters’s in Counseling Psychology, with a focus on Expressive Arts Therapy, meaning I use drama, dance, music, writing and visual art as a form of therapeutic intervention with the goal of integrating the personality, healing trauma and practicing new ways of being. I also teach creativity, not only for all types of artists, but for anyone who wants to practice a more empowered, creative and compassionate way of being in the world. I believe the most important relationship we have is with ourselves, but this is often the relationship that gets shoved by the wayside as we tend to prioritize everything else: our spouse or partner, our children, our work, our home, our family of origin. I believe if we cannot engage in a creative, conscious, curious and compassionate way with ourselves, we are not living up to our full potential and cannot offer the full version of ourselves to anything we do. The more we know ourselves, and ultimately, accept and love ourselves, the more good we can do for our families, friends, communities and our world. It’s an inside out approach—which is the reverse of what we have been trained to do in our culture.

You do not have to be a trained artist or writer to do art journaling. Anyone who can pick up a pen or pencil and has a blank book can do art journaling. There are no special supplies that are necessary, though I will be sharing some of my favorite tools on the blog. My mission in life for a while now, has been to show how everyone is creative, and that the arts were meant to be used by all of humanity as a tool to discover the soul, and to engage in life in a more balanced, compassionate way. Through our engagement with the arts, we are able to make space for expressing the darkness, the unconscious parts of ourself, instead of acting those parts out on others. It is particularly this, this engagement with the shadow (the parts of us we do not see or do now want to see, or feel) that is the creative gold of this work. When we have the courage to bring our light of consciousness to our own shadow, we are able to unearth our previously buried psychic energy so we can make use of even our darkest pain.

I know this not only from the work I have done with my students and clients, but also from my own personal journey, which I recently shared in my talk at Women Awakening, the first women’s summit in Todos Santos. In my talk, I shared my philosophy, artwork, music and personal story, about what it means to be yourself, which is about being, and ultimately loving, all your selves. Sharing this talk was a personal revelation for me, as I discovered what it felt like to open myself up and share authentically, weaving my professional, personal, intellectual and artistic life in one space. My goal, recently, has been to integrate these disparate parts of myself. I have intuitively felt that this way we separate our different selves is not just a problem for me, but for many others, and especially for women, who struggle so much with disappearing into our roles. The goal is not to disappear into any one role, but to bring your whole self to every role you do, so you have access to all your selves whenever you need them. I believe this is the goal of human development. And through our working with what we are, in an honest way, we also access our spiritual power. It has been my experience that when we contact our soul, spirit arrives, aiding that process.

What is Blogging?

As many of us know, the reasons and ways to blog can vary greatly. It can be a tool to promote business, a way to keep track of your travels or other kinds of adventures, or a way to promote and share your creative work, political ideas, or simply to connect with your inner life. Whether it is for your business, for personal, or political expression, I believe a successful blog always stems from personal truth. If your business or your politics has no degree of personal connection for you, then perhaps you already have a great topic to or journal or blog about why this is so.

The most difficult and most important part of what it means to blog, or even journal, is that it is regular, preferably daily. It is also, as many bloggers will attest, the key to success. (Getting readers to read your blog.) From my experiences with daily practices, which is something I promote in my art journal lab class, as well as personally, I have come to believe in the amazing power of creating a daily practice, especially something that helps you connect with yourself, with the invisible world, feelings and other parts of us that we usually work hard to avoid, push down or unconsciously act out on others. These types of inward-directed daily practices keep us holistically healthy because they keep us connected to something true and deep in us.  These kinds of daily practices have helped me out depression, anxiety, a sense of loss, relationship issues, and more. They have helped me enormously with my creativity as an artist and as a mom and human being—when you do something daily, it forces you to be more creative with it—otherwise you get bored. We tend to look for new ways, new approaches when we know we have to do it everyday. 

So, use the term blogging however you feel connected to it—my definition is as follows:

To share words and images (hopefully self-generated) online about any topic, as long as it has has meaning or importance to you personally. One additional other feature: it must be dated for it to be a blog post, otherwise it is just a webpage. The date makes it time-connected, and therefore, applicable to a certain moment of time for you. This is the same for art journaling.

I love blogging because it delivers a sense of immediacy that appeals to the performer in me. Blogging is a digital performance—the act of baring a personal truth, an art piece, or just a slice of life, with others, sometimes strangers, sometimes not, brings me a certain thrill. If it doesn’t feel thrilling, a tiny bit risky, I usually don’t blog about it. For each of us the thrill will come for different reasons, in different areas. What is risky for me may not feel risky for you. And so it is very much up to you to come up with your own topics to write about. A blog post can be very simple or complex. There is no rule in this department. A blog post might simply be sharing a photograph you took that day and sharing a little caption or small story or sentence that explains it. Other times a blog post might be a highly informative piece that is designed to help and/or inside others learn a specific skill (EG: this post you are reading now.) Some blog posts have taken me 15 minutes to create, others have taken four hours. Neither is better than the other—the beauty of blogging is that it keeps going. We can’t get to hung up on our last blog post, because we are already thinking about our next one! This represents the natural flow of life. We cannot afford to get perfectionistic about our daily practices, they are designed for us to make mistakes, and to learn and grow from them, that is why they are practices. If you think of your blog or your art journaling as a practice and it will help you let go of the inner critic.

Those are the reasons I create these challenges--creativity, connection, personal truth. It is most certainly a challenge to do something everyday with out fail. But it is also very rewarding. 

I can't wait to see what it might do for you!

STAY TUNED FOR JANUARY 2019 ART JOURNALING/BLOGGING CHALLENGE!

Blogging Out of A Block

It happened again. I created a challenge for myself to get myself out of a block, and then got blocked after the deadline came.

In this case, my challenge was creating a blog post with a 15 minute time limit for the month of June. It went off swimmingly. I dared myself to share myself more authentically. I did some writing that thrilled me with its honesty. I got over my perfectionism. I learned how to do more breezy, shorter posts.

But... what happened after June 30th?

A three week block of postlessness that's ending right now.

I am currently in Massachusetts, visiting my parents with Mio. I am off my routine and in the land of easy comfort. Mio is in day camp. And I find myself with some delicious bug-free free time. But then the pressure is on.

Here are some difficult questions I am considering that I thought I'd share as a way to make contact again.

    How do I share here when I am not sure what I have to say?

    How do I convey my story in a way that integrates all my contradicting selves yet communicates what I need to say in a relatively precise way? How do I weave my personal history into a story that people relate to both in its specificity and its universality? How can I use simplicity to express complexity?

    How do I stay connected to my authentic self while being away from my guitar, microphone, studio, husband, classes, therapist?

    How do I reach more people?

    How do I not spend all my money in the land of plenty?

    How do I get feedback about my art? Meaning, how do I know if I am really reaching people with my personal or universal streams of consciousness? And if not, how do I go about getting closer to that connection?

    How do I decide how transparent I am willing to be?

    How do I help my parents accept my choice to live in Mexico?

    A better question: how do I help myself accept their lack of acceptance?