Day 89, 100 Happy Days: Breakfast with a View

What a lovely morning. I'm staying at very comfortable hotel, so my sleep has been amazing!

This morning I went downstairs for the complimentary continental breakfast. Breakfast at this place isn't nearly as good as the comfy beds, but it was nice anyway.

Being a late riser, the place cleared out shortly after I arrived, and I was able to get a seat by the window. I had a beautiful view, and was able to sit and write my morning pages and drink my coffee in peace.

Day 75, 100 Happy Days: My Work!

Photo Haiku

With my schedule being the hot mess that it's been lately, I double booked my studio for Sunday.
Which means I had to push my Artist's Way group an hour later. A few people couldn't make the new time, so I split the group. Half were scheduled for today, and half for tomorrow.

Having ten people in a 2-hour discussion group can be challenging; too much to say, not enough time. So it was really nice to have a smaller group today. And it WAS small - three of the five ladies showed up. It felt like we were able to dive deeper into topics, and everyone got a chance to be heard.

What I love about leading these groups is that it keeps me on task. Not only do I have to do the chapters and the work with the group, but I'm forever searching for new information and new ways to look at the old information. New creativity exercises and games to play. I'm always learning.

Today was Photo Haiku day - always a good time. Each of the ladies took three photos from a pile (old pictures of mine that I was going to throw out), and wrote a haiku about the picture, on the picture. It's like giving new life to and old piece of history - my history. So I get the added bonus of seeing bits of my life re-imagined. (No pictures of people, however. Just things.)
Once we've written our haikus, we go around and read them - with feeling. So much fun!!

I'm lucky to be able to do this work.

Also - it's incredible to know the history of the people in the group, and watch them grow. And to feel like I've not only witnessed, but also had a small part in the transformation.

Happy!

Day 69, 100 Happy Days: Transformative Power of Art

"Wash Away The Pain"Acrylic on Canvas ©Tabetha Hastings

Painting is amazing. It can help us get in touch with who we are, and what we need to change in our life. It can bring out our insecurities, or it can soothe us. (I think all of this can be said of viewing art as well as creating it.)

People who come to my classes are often very brave. In my Artist Way classes we talk about fear and insecurities that we have surrounding creating art.
It's very common in our culture.

We are all born artists; it's true. But then we grow up, and somehow life beats it out of us. Puberty beats it out of us. Well-meaning - or not so well meaning - teachers, family members, and friends beat it out of us.

So yes, coming to a painting class like mine can be a brave act.
Some people handle it by having the attitude of I'm just there to have a good time and it doesn't matter what my painting looks like. Others either don't have the fear, or are willing to explore anyway. And then there are others who are just so fearful and beaten-down that they criticize their work and themselves the entire time that they're painting. That's hard to watch, and I try my best to get them through to the other side feeling better. Sometimes my job is 90% cheer leader.

So to have one of those people leave my studio either happy with the painting that they created, or happy with the experience, is a wonderful thing. It is why I do what I do. It's beautiful to witness those breakthroughs.

Day 49, 100 Happy Days: Facilitating Creative Healing

No pics of the class, but here is the cute kitty I'm sitting.

Today was the first Artist's Way class of the new session (first of 13 classes), and it was just amazing.
I had a hunch it was going to be a really good, cohesive group, and it seems I was right. This group feels like it was meant to be together.

It's a privilege to be able to facilitate the creative healing for these women (this class happens to be all women).

Today was a meet-and- greet, plus an overview of the class. Each person introduced herself and stated where she is creatively, and what she hopes to get out of the course.

I've been holding this class for several years now, and it is really wonderful to watch people progress over the weeks. Today I got to hear about where people are creatively, and sometimes where they are generally in life. It's great to hear that and to have some idea of where they will be at the end of the thirteen weeks. It's like having foresight; I know that if they put the work in - even minimally - that they will be a better place than when they started.

It's exciting to watch happen.

Happy!

Happiness Project Day 85: Artist Date at the Park

This evening I took my artist to the park. We romped and played... no.. no we didn't. But we did sit in the cool air and and the warm sun and read and write and sketch. It was really lovely.
(More info on Artist Dates for interested parties...)

The picture to the left is my morning pages journal, where I was rambling about my dream house (as per one of this week's Artist Way assignments). My dream house apparently includes a lot of trees, since it turned into tree sketch. But then, my mind does tend to drift even when day dreaming about dream houses.

I loved the colors at the park today. The sun was low in the sky, causing the blades of grass to look a vibrant green at the tips, and a deep, lush green at the roots.

Oh yeah - two things made me happy on my way to the park today:

1) I saw that a branch of my bank is being built smack dab in the middle of my drive from home to my studio. Yay!! (I have to drive completely out of my way to get to my bank now.)
2) I heard one of my favorite Diana Krall songs on the radio. A rare thing. Gotta love the KUVO pledge drive!

Happiness Project Day 82: Morning Pages in My Studio, Pink Trees and John Muir Quote

Studio Window

Yesterday I inadvertently left my Artist's Way book and my Morning Pages notebook at my studio.

If you're not familiar with the Artist's Way, Morning Pages are three pages of long-hand stream of consciousness writing. It's like a brain dump, and it's done every day, preferably in the morning. The Morning Pages are a basic tool in the Artist Way, and I have found them to be a great way to free up my mind for the important things in life. Like creativity.

Anyway, I had plenty of paper at home, but I like to keep my Morning Pages together. So after my acupuncture appointment (which of course left me blissful), And before my weekly dog walk, I got myself to my studio for the sole purpose of writing my pages.

Impossibly Pink Blossoms

It was really nice hanging out in my studio without the intention of working in any way, shape or form. I pulled a chair up to a sunny window, and let my brain pour onto the page.
It was a tiny bit of my day - just a half hour - and it was lovely.

Then I went for a walk with Twiggy the Wonder Boxer in Infinity Park, where I had to stop to take in the beauty of this pink blooming tree. Gorgeous on it's own, and made all the more rich and powerful against the lush green grass.

We walked a little farther, and a plaque caught my eye. I must have walked past it dozens of times and never noticed it, but for some reason I looked at it today. At the bottom of the plaque was a quote that provided food for thought for the rest of the walk:

Happiness Project Day 67: Slaying Creative Monsters

Creative Monster

My latest Artist's Way class is only in it's second week, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a good strong group and everyone is already gelling. Great to watch happen, even better to be a part of it. I feel really blessed to be able to facilitate and hold space for creative healing. 

Today we did exquisite corpse drawings of our creative monsters. You can read more about exquisite corpse here, if you like. It's a fun exercise that I've adapted for my Artist's Way class.

Here's how it works: Each person folds a piece of paper into three sections and draws a monster head in the top section. Then she or he folds it over to conceal the drawing, and trades with someone else, who then draws a torso and arms, and again folds the paper to conceal the drawing and trades with someone else to draw the bottom third of the creature.

What we end up with is (often) a hilarious mish-mash monster - although the one pictured above looks surprisingly cohesive.

By the way, a creative monster is anyone in your life who has squelched your creative growth; often a teacher, parent or spouse. They may ridicule you for being artistic, or laugh at your art, or they may not even believe that you did it because it was too good. Most everybody has creative monsters, and they are often the reason that people stop creating at a young age.

By making these silly exquisite corpse drawings, we're attempting to exorcise our monsters, and see them for what they are: ridiculous little creatures who don't know jack about art. 

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the other ones we did today, but here are some from a class from last year:

We collected the 3 sections of drawings that one person did, and put them together to see if there was any similarity. Not too much in this one but....

...this person ended up drawing a whole person (a sketch of her actual creative monster, I believe), on the three different drawings. And interestingly, the all line up together. For the record, he's saying "Blah blah blah, bs" and wearing a name tag that reads "Hi! My name is Jackass." I love it!

Happiness Project Day 61: Artist's Way Artist Date at The Bookies

Shelf label says "Enduring Books" Glad to see they've endured.

In the Artist Way program, one of the things that we're supposed to do every week is to go on an artist's date. No, this is not a date that with another artist. This is me taking my artist out on a date. The idea is to look at my creative self as a separate person. And this person needs to be wooed. She needs color and fun and imagery in order to be her best creative self. Artist dates shoud be something one wouldn't normally do, and they are to be without a third party involved; just a person and her or his artist.

Having been through The Artist's Way with several groups, I can tell you that the artist date is the one task that people have the most trouble with - myself included. We get busy, and the temptation is to call something that is in our normal routine an artist date. Or to call something that had already been planned with a friend, an artist date. We don't seem to want to go out of our way to do something that is not only good for us, but fun! Crazy, I know.

We are in Week One of The Artist's Way, and I decided to start out right and get the artist date out of the way immediately. And of course it was so nice to carve out some time, and go out of my way to do something new that I wondered why I don't do it all the time.

This week's artist date - and my happy thing for today - was at a little place in Glendale called The Bookies. I've driven past it a thousand times, and have always wanted to go in. I thought it was a used book store, but no, there were no used books. It was more of an independent book store that's got mostly kids books and fun toys and educational toys and stuff for teachers. It was a very good place for an artist date!

Just one of the many book covers that made me smile.

Fish eye mirror selfie.

Who doesn't need Yoda earbuds?

Happiness Project Day 60: People Creating in my Space

Focused at Paint Club

Oh, what a great day in the studio! First class of the new Artist's Way session, followed Paint Club.

People come to my studio all of the time to create. I think that I usually take it for granted, but once in awhile I have to stand back and just wonder at the thought of all of the art that has come out of that place.

Normally we're a pretty chatty bunch at Paint Club, but for a few minutes today the only sound was the music playing. I stopped painting and took in the sight of everyone being fully engrossed in their work. It was a really satisfying sight, and a sense of well being came over me.

Many people have said that my space has good energy, and it must be because it's filled with creative energy.  I love my studio, and I love the wonderful creative people who come out to get lost - and find themselves - in art.


I told the Artist's Way group to feel free to doodle as we discuss the book, and this is what happened to yesterday's fresh paper. I love it!

Striving for Balance

Balance

Balance is not something I've ever been good at, and it's particularly challenging at this point in my life.
Running a small business and trying to have a life is difficult. I'm lucky that parts of my business are fairly social (teaching and hosting art openings), so I get that need for social interaction met. However... I'm pretty much an introvert. To me this means that people (although I am a "people person" to a certain extent) exhaust me, and I need time to recharge alone. And that is where it gets dicey.

My alone time is filled with things that don't recharge me: bookwork, marketing, accounting, laundry... tasks. Although I know I need to take time for myself, until recently I just couldn't ever seem to fit it in.


Life Pie

One of the tasks in Artist's Way is to draw a life pie (see my most current one above). The life pie helps you see where you are out of balance in your life. It helps you to see where you need help.
Here's how you do it:

• Draw a circle and divide it into six sections: six pieces of pie.
• Label one piece spirituality, another exercise, another play, and so on with work, friends, and romance/adventure. 
• Place a dot in each slice at the degree to which you are fulfilled in that area (outer rim means you are happy and fulfilled, inner circle means you're not doing so well).
• Connect the dots. This will show you where you are out of balance. 

Clearly I need to make some changes in the romance/adventure work departments. Spirituality, exercise and play, are holding steady, while I am very happy with my friends.
Now, I sort of new this already, but something about charting it out really brings it into focus. It also gives me something I can post up to remind me what I need to work on. 
My life pie looks a bit lop-sided, but it's an improvement over the one I did a few months ago. Baby steps.

Boundries
Lately I've found boundaries to be very helpful. Of course I've always heard the phrase "you've got to set boundaries", but... I've never been good at it. Or perhaps I didn't believe that it really worked or perhaps I didn't have enough respect for myself to set them. Whatever the case, I'm getting better at it. Taking baby steps seems to be the key.

In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron says that treating yourself like a precious object will make you strong. That's counter to what we're taught, but I'm starting to believe it to be true. How would you treat a precious object? With care. Getting enough sleep, exercise, nutrition, water, fun and quiet time will do one wonders.

Boundaries are key to doing this. You must set boundaries with other people, and with yourself (limiting your tv, facebook, gaming... whatever is eating your time. Here are some things that I've found helpful.

Got a smart phone that feels like an appendage?
iPhone "Do Not Disturb" feature
Smart phones have made life easier in some ways, and much more difficult in others. One of the best features that iPhone has come up with is the 'do not disturb' setting. Brilliant. I have my phone set to automatically go to do not disturb mode between 10pm and noon. The thing that makes do not disturb even better, is that you can set it so that certain phone numbers ring through. So I know that if my mom needs me, she can reach me.

Checking facebook and whatever else on your phone
I know someone that had great results limiting her Facebook time by setting her phone to not remember her log in information. So every time she wants to check Facebook, she has to type all of her log in information. I haven't been that bold, but I did bury my Facebook app on the very last page of my apps, and it's in a group with other apps; now I have to scroll and then click twice to get to it.

I've lots more tips, but they'll have to wait until another time; right now my body is screaming for some exercise. Must stay balanced, you know.
I'd love to hear your tips for drawing boundaries and staying balanced - please share!