Category Archives: Creativity

Arts and Crafts, Creativity, Intentionality, Mental Health, Mindset, Positivity, Words, Writing

Re-Re-Re: Post Number 4 on St. Patrick’s Day

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The word I’m feeling right now that begins with my favorite prefix, “re”, is “reframe”. It means a couple of different things to me. One is that it’s a mental health trick that I’ve used to my benefit over the years. It’s when you hear yourself lamenting about something, (which is perfectly human and normal and acceptable), but you know you don’t want to get stuck in it. It’s a way to readjust your attitude.

An example could be if you’re thinking “I don’t wanna work, I wanna play on the drums all day“. You turn that off and allow yourself a deep breath and then do a little reframe. Like, perhaps, “I get to go to work. I get to see other people who I care about and have conversations and make a little money to spend when I’m not working”.

This trick ‘o mine (hey it is St. Patrick’s Day today after all. I might even share an original limerick at the end of this post) may seem oversimplistic. It might be, but it helps me when I am stressing or feeling crummy towards whatever the thing is that I don’t want to but must face that day. You should give it a try!

The other meaning of the word “reframe” for me is about pictures and art. Repurposing things I see and putting them in frames is the most recent creative instinct pulling at me. I even bought picture frames at Goodwill the other day. One is for a specific person that I will pick just the right photo for as a gift for an upcoming summer holiday. The other frames-well, I’m choosing to trust that the universe will point my eyes towards the images that belong inside of them. It wouldn’t hurt to revisit (ha ha but seriously I’m by no means done with revisiting things) the old gray plastic tub ‘o photos in the basement laundry room space I just finished reorganizing.

I think the commonality between these two things, reframing art and reframing our thoughts, is that they change the way we see things. They are about vision and forward motion through an intentional lens.

Now I told you all that I was going to share an original limerick in this blog post and in the process of google-searching all about limericks, I learned that May 12 is National Limerick Day. That’s because the person who invented limericks, Edward Lear, was born on that day. Bet you didn’t know that!

Here goes nothing:

There was an old crone who called herself Polly

who tried to always keep things jolly

One day she wrote her first limerick

and hoped with her readers it would stick

and delight with her in that folly

What might you endeavor to reframe in your life? Maybe something simple like a picture, or an attitude towards someone or something?

Now, as a lifelong fan of the Beatles, I can’t pick a favorite. I resist any silly quizzes online that demand I do so. But, I can say for certain that Ringo is in my top 4. Ha ha! Here’s a tune from Ringo (who just turned 85 and actually released a new album if you can believe it) that I’ve always found to be such a bittersweet, yet catchy, little ditty.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Creativity, Grandparenting, Humor, Intentionality, Lifestyle, Reading, Self Improvement, Time

Re-Re-Re: Post Number Three

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Historically, I’ve been more of an anti-revisiting stuff type of person. My time and energy are valuable. On many fronts, I’m just not interested in rehashing what was. Most of the time, I’m interested in moving on to the next right thing in my life. While of course doing my best to remain present in the present.

How about you?

There are exceptions, however. Some things, experiences, and places are worth a revisit now and again.

Maybe for you it’s an old sweater from your college days, or your 8th grade journals. Or an album you loved that you played on repeat in your room while deeply appreciating the artwork or lyrics on that album’s cover.

Maybe it was a food you used to love making when you came home from that soul-depleting job you had when you were 31. Mine was elbow macaroni swimming in a sea of melted Velveeta and chopped up hot dogs(in my defense, I did have small kids at the time). Maybe it’s a place, like that dive bar you and your sister went to on your first night in Wichita or that one shady little spot on your favorite lake that used to be full of walleye.

What sorts of things or experiences would you want to revisit in your life? For personal growth, or even just for fun?

When it comes to things I find value in revisiting, I instantly think of books.

As I’m currently at the tail end of a breath-of-fresh-air, collaborative, and inspirational self-help/memoir, The Book of Alchemy, by Suleika Jaouad, I’ve started to consider what to read next.

It’s probably going to be this:

Yet, as I donated a trash bag full of books to our local thrift store last week (and there’s more where that came from), it occurred to me that taking stock of the books left behind is not an unwise use of my time.

Some of the books I own are bona fide keepers. These are the ones I’m compelled to return to when I’m feeling uninspired or bothered by something. The ones that contain wisdom and inspire me as a woman and a creative being. The books that I can pick up and learn something new from every time, or at the very least, remind myself of a passage that struck me on the first (or even second or third) pass.

Like this bunch of mine:

Top to bottom: Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, Atomic Habits, by James Clear, The Crystal Bible by Judy Hall, You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero, Atlas of the Heart, by Brene Brown, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, and When We Were Invincible by Becky Kliss. A host of reasons why these are such keepers.

I’m curious: do you have books like that? Ones you can’t bear to part with because you know you’ll revisit them someday?

One experience I would like to revisit is making pottery. I recently did this for the first time, as an “experience” gift for Christmas from and with my SIL. This was a prime example of me embracing trying something new that I might suck at. I absolutely did both the embracing and the sucking. But…I enjoyed the experience. I created one potentially usable small bowl that day. Usable for what remains to be seen, but we’ll see when we go back in another few weeks for the painting portion of this experience. It turns out that one can rent the potter’s wheel. I’m thinking without any strangers around for me to compare myself to, I could eventually improve my form and create a cool, absolutely usable piece.

What experience might you want to revisit? Is there something that you’d like to have another go at?

As far as places to revisit, for me it’s Washington, D.C. This should come as no surprise to any readers of this blog who’ve been around for awhile. The thing about revisiting our nation’s capital is that there is such a vast array of things to do, see, and experience there. Only when I do revisit Washington, D.C., it’ll (hopefully) be with a grandson or two in tow. That way, I can revisit it with at least one extra pair of new, curious eyes.

I’m going to cap this blog post off with a song from The Little River Band’s Greatest Hits album, an album I played frequently as a teen in the 80’s. An album I’ll be hunting for next time I’m in a thrift store. It’s worth a revisit.

Adventure, Creative Pursuits, Creative Writing, Creativity, Dance, Imagination, Intentionality, Overthinking, Personal Growth, Positivity

New Year, New Project? Perhaps.

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Have you ever heard of this thing called the “100-day project”?

I hadn’t either, until recently. It was an idea sprung from Yale graphics design professor, Michael Bierut, who randomly decided to embark on a quest to draw one thing each day inspired by a photo in the New York Times. I believe he ended up doing it for a year. As a result, he decided to task his students with doing one personally fulfilling, creative project every day. To pick just one thing and take maybe 10 minutes every day to work on it for 100 consecutive days. His students by and large embraced it and during the Covid-19 pandemic it became quite the phenomenon (one which apparently passed me by).

Ever since learning about this, I’ve been toying with doing it myself. I’m non-commital about the whole endeavor, but I do think it’s a fun idea to play with, don’t you?

My first 100-day project idea: find every single intact greeting card (including envelopes) in this house. This can include postcards. Write and send one every single day for 100 days. Figure out a way to make it happen. Answer the following question: what’s my response to a potential time within these 100 days in which major obstacles could arrive, unbidden? Do I have the option of doubling or tripling up the next day? So it “averages out” to be 100 times? But is that not killing the spirit of this thing? To do it daily? I think I’d have to be quite stringent about this. Unless I’m totally incapacitated, I’d do it every single day. To address the possibility that I could become totally incapacitated once I started this project, I could write extra letters ahead of time, so I’ve got a stash ready to go for someone in my life who understands they need to be mailed every day.

How’s this for ironic? As I was writing the above, the song that randomly came on was “Please Read the Letter I Wrote” from what I consider to be my all-time favorite album: Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Allison Krause. Is this perhaps a sign from the universe? Also ironically, just the other night I read something on Facebook about a country singer who was famous back in the late 80’s, before I really started paying attention to popular country music (that was a distinct era for me in the early 90’s). His name was Keith Whitley and he died when he was only 34 of acute alcohol poisoning. I did a little googling and learned he was a great songwriter as well. He wrote and was the first to perform the song “Nothing at all”, which I had assumed was originally done by Allison Krause, because that’s the version that came into my songbrain when I read the song’s title and the first couple of lines.

More than likely, I’ll be putting a pin in doing this 100-day project for now, but that doesn’t mean coming up with ideas for it and then overthinking each one of them ad naseum as I did in this post won’t be happening.

It’s possible, actually, as I read in an article about this project, that the 100 days could be spent coming up with and then writing down ideas for this project. And then, apparently, never picking just one idea and doing it. I think I’m too neurotic to actively come up with ideas for this project with no intention of following through with any of them as my actual project. It’s also true that as I hung in for 78 days total doing The Artist’s Way course last fall, I likely have the bandwidth for a 100-day project. I think the caveat for me would be to keep it to myself, not writing about it here or anywhere else, until the 100 days have passed. No sense in jinxing myself!

Time will tell, I suppose.

If you were to commit to a 100-day project of your own, what would it look like? I would love to know. Or, if you have done a 100-day project, how did that go for you? What did it consist of? I would also love to know that.

Here’s a video I found on YouTube of a young man, Ely Kim, who chose dance as his creative medium for his 100-day project. I love that he shared it on social media. So much joy!

    Aging, America, Creativity, Dogs, Grandparenting, Home, Intentionality, Self-Reflection

    8 Lessons from 2025

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    Well, here we are, at the end of another year. And what a year it was. It was chaotic, tumultuous, disappointing, and challenging. It was also inspiring, delightful, meaningful, and full of great lessons.

    Here are my top 8 insights from 2025:

    This is truly going to be a mish-mash, so bear with me, my friends.

    1. There’s nothing like the birth of a new baby to bring unbridled joy and hope into a family. The birth of our latest grandson in June was the highlight of my year.
    2. I have the right to invest in myself as a creative. In fact, I’ve learned (thanks to The Artist’s Way) that it is my duty. Yours too, by the way.
    3. I learned this year that America as a whole has the unfortunate ability to become severely morally injured. This, of course, is due to the rot in American politics and governance, which surely began decades ago. It is in 2025 that the cancer began to fully reveal its gory self to the masses. God help us.
    4. Adopting a second dog was an unexpected but wonderful development. Yes, it’s doubled the work for us, but more than doubled our daily joy factor. Worth it.
    5. Aging is a trip. It’s rough and humbling. Note to self: get that referral for a hearing test, STAT! My eyes are already going to hell, and I don’t want my hearing to follow. I know, I know, I know (and you might too if you read that post), I published an essay on this blog about how aging is RAD back in 2024. But suffice it to say, 2025 has altered my opinion on the matter (though from an emotional well-being standpoint, aging is indeed still RAD).
    6. 2025 readied me for moving from being intentional on an intellectual level to being intentional also on a physical level (see above: aging combined with being perhaps a wee bit exercise-averse has caught up with me).
    7. I am home. A quick Google search led me to this quote that enchants me, from T.S. Eliot: “Home is where one starts from”. What a gem.
    8. Going from 2025 to 2026, there are reasons to be hopeful, and there are reasons to freak out. Life is a continuous ebb and flow between unpleasantness/misfortune/disappointment and joy/connection/love. There are times when your cup is overflowing and times when it’s dry as a bone. If we could all get more comfortable with that reality and aim to be thoughtful with our responses to both the good and the bad, I think we might just come out ok on the other side.

    So, cheers to 2025 and a big, hearty welcome to 2026!!!

    The song I’m sharing today is a beautiful and bittersweet one that came out this year from an artist Mr. NOA and I will be seeing live this year.

    *Featured image from brainyquote.com*