Monthly Archives: August 2012

30 Day Challenge: Day 26 – fast and fun

03 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in 30 Day Challenge, creativity, managing time

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Three fast and fun things today:

1. A quick Yogurtland visit with a friend – the second in two days – I’m so pampered!

2. A very quick dip in the pool just minutes before it closed – I think I got in six laps and it was well worth it – channelled my inner Olympian – except I can’t do anything resembling Olympic swimming – not even a flip turn!

3. 20 minutes on a quick New Orleans house sketch.

It is such a lie to say we don’t have time.  There is plenty of time for whatever we want to have time for!  Including grass time with the cats.

What kinds of fun do you realize you can always have time for?

30 Day Challenge: Day 25 – room for everything

02 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in 30 Day Challenge, making change, nature

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How is it that I never had room before for 30 minutes of drawing?  Have I really created a habit?  Can I keep this up when my schedule becomes fuller during the school year?  Can I become braver about not over-scheduling? Can I keep prioritizing what really matters to me?

These are the kinds of questions my clients begin to ask themselves when they start making changes, and the answers are, of course, up to them.   And for my challenge, the answers are totally up to me.

I’m getting excited about taking one more deliberate step toward having a life I love.  Things have been fantastic overall for years and years, but the time piece and the over-scheduling piece and the paper clutter piece have been tougher nuts to crack for me, unless I do something completely different from the regular routine, like go hike on the Appalachian Trail for 6 months.

I can really feel the space opening.  I can see that there is room for everything I love, if I’m more thoughtful about what decisions I make.

Have you started your own 30 Day Challenge?  If not, is it time to begin?  What might shift for you in 30 days?

And speaking of shifting, did you know that I loved my Clarity and Connection retreat so much that I’m offering it again in September?  The early bird special ends August 7, so click here to see if it’s right for you.  I just checked in with a retreat participant today and she’s still feeling the positive effects four days later – she’s incorporating what she gained from the retreat into her daily life, and that makes me SOOO excited!

Today I came close to finishing up my turtle drawing- just a little bit more detail and cleaning up to do -here’s the current drawing:

and here’s the photo that inspired it:

And best of all, I spent the morning in the swamp with a couple visiting from Italy – we host international visitors through an organization called SERVAS – so cool! Here’s one of four alligators we saw this morning:

Yeah – wow – there’s room for everything!

What are you doing differently to make room for what you love?

30 Day Challenge – day 24 – filling the space

02 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in 30 Day Challenge, change

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Ok – this is interesting.   I don’t have paper piles anymore.  And that means I can fill the space.  Not the physical space – I don’t need anything in the place where the paper piles were!  I mean the mental space – the emotional space- the “worrying about what’s in the pile that I haven’t dealt with” space.

I can fill that new beautiful empty space with relaxing, with reading, with coaching, with drawing, with writing, with hanging out with the cats in the grass, or enjoying wine and cheese with friends on the back deck.

Granted, I did these things when I had the paper piles too, but there was a corner of my mind taken up with thinking about the un-done stuff – a little messy stressy place in my mind to match the disordered places in the house.

Sometimes opening up space like that is scary.  What’s going to go in that new space? It’s like when you quit smoking, or quit bingeing, or quit hanging out with those toxic people, or quit your all night Netflix marathons – what are you supposed to do in place of that thing you used to do?  How will you spend that free time/space/money/energy?

I’m still amazed that I’ve made space for drawing every day but one for the past 24 days.  That’s pretty cool.  Here’s the progress on my turtle:

And here’s a beautiful treat – the Queen of the Night bloomed last night.  Each flower only lasts one night – so lovely and fragrant! The flowers are the size of softballs.

What are you doing with newfound space?  Or what to you need to change to make space for what you love?  What will you be able to do, without any excuses in your way, once you make space?