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.
Read MoreDo you ever have the feeling that you’re doing something no one’s ever done before? It’s a frightening feeling, even though it's the mind thinks it’s impossible. It’s the feeling of falling. But it’s also a fast and low feeling, like driving a motor boat or a car. A feeling that splits open the ego and lets the heart shine. I have that feeling now. And then suddenly, it’s gone. I waver somewhere between velocity and fear.
Read MoreWe have reached the first quarter of the year, and every day I feel more and more inspired. I feel like I climbing slowly into the creative flow that I always dreamed of, but never had the discipline to make happen.
Read MoreI am sharing here, in honor of completing the 31 Day Art Journaling/Blogging Challenge, my second to last post from my first blog, ZOELAB 365, where I blogged every day for a year. This is the learning and meaning I made from that intense year, which catapulted me out of post-partem depression and into a highly-charged creative inner life that has informed me, and my professional work, ever since.
Read MoreHere is my list of blog post ideas (as well as longer essay pieces that I will eventually publish) that I want to write about. I am curious to hear what you think, which ones resonate with you or spark your curiosity.
Read MoreIt has never felt right to use traditional or singular words to describe myself: musician, artist, therapist, teacher, writer, coach. I can be all those things, but it's not just any one those things that I am trying to be in the world, but really a combination, a synthesis. An integration. I believe this is the new way to be in the world. I think specialization is becoming antiquated, and so are traditional career paths. The leaders and trailblazers of the new earth are pioneers, warriors, multi-passionates, transparent and vulnerable sharing their message through owning their personal story.
Read MoreI’ve been going through a thing. I don’t want to call it a block because it’s not a block, exactly. Block implies to me that you are blank, with no ideas or nowhere to go. What I am experiencing is just a different phase of the creative process. As Lena Dunham’s character Hannah, in Girls says in her unapologetic, yet defensive way, when she is struggling in grad school : “I’m more in a pre-writing phase.”
Read MoreLet’s change the world through our uncertain/heart-based faith in love and creativity. Together, let’s live in presence, imagining a future that lives up to our human potential as unique individuals and our interconnectedness humans living in a natural world. Let’s revive the dying living room arts of friendship, conversation, storytelling, letter writing. Let’s restore the arts to their proper place in culture—woven into the fabric of our everyday lives.
Read MoreWhat have I noticed from this practice? That fifteen minutes is enough time on the productivity side for me to create something valuable, and on the being side, it is enough to transform me from the state of sleepy avoidance to the state of inspired awakening.
Read MoreFor me, blogging is foremost about honesty--it's about revealing the little details of the clunky, messy, exuberant process of life. It is about developing a point of view, strengthening it daily, which includes sharing my point of view even when it is uncertain or has changed.
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"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Read MoreI trained myself to be more disciplined, I challenged myself to be more alive. I awoke myself to the mysteries of natural life. I dared myself to share what was shameful. I flirted with exposing parts of myself to the public eye. I got curious about what it was like to take my art more seriously and myself less seriously.
Read Morewhen will I return to blogging?
Read MoreMy brother has come from Amsterdam for a visit! I am very happy about it.
The past few weeks, I got a little knocked off my routine due to work. My work is fun, and enlivening, but it brings me away from the inner world. It is a saving grace to have ZOELAB to bring me back to that other, emotional and subtle world of experience and expression.
Read MoreIt’s a new month, (my favorite) and the beginning of a new season. The busy-ness is upon me. Weddings and such. I wish I had more time to commune, relax, create, share on here. But in the spirit of keeping up, and not letting perfection get in my way, here is a list that sums up last month for me:
Read MoreUsually my desire is to paint something abstract, with no plan at all. But pressured myself into painting something figurative so I painted a picture of a woman with my hairstyle. It was flat and lifeless. Then I let myself paint the painting I really wanted to make. This is improvisational painting, when I get to have fun with paint, experimenting with different layers of translucency and colors and forms. I layered and layered and layered and then I looked at my painting and I knew what I had painted. It was an image of the infestation of single celled organisms living in my intestine.
Read MoreWe survived the hurricane. It didn’t really hit us directly, it was a spin off storm that hit us. That’s what Part Two of that poem was about (in case it wasn’t clear). My desk and all my books had to be moved, and are still in disarray so I have became a bit disoriented, ungrounded. We had no internet, no cell service for a few days as well.
Read MoreThe impetus to do this project came a month ago while I was riding the Peter Pan bus from the Berkshires to New York City. I had just had a visit with my family, and my brother had lent me his copy of The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (which I’m not planning on returning to him).
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