Knowing where you're going

It's okay to not know where you're going. 

Sometimes you just have a direction to head in, and it takes a bit of faith to just keep going. It's okay to not have a step-by-step plan for achieving a goal - the way you get there may not be the same as the path as someone else takes. The thing is to keep going, even if the steps are small. 

 

Happiness

"Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens." Andy Rooney.

Attitude is so important. It doesn't mean that we don't take things seriously, but that we have a mindset that means our joy is not dependent on our circumstances. 

Adjusting

Trying to adjust to the changes.

When anything in life changes, we have to adjust, and that can be difficult. As a woman, I had to adjust to a 'new' body at puberty, when I was pregnant, as a new mother, and now in menopause. I'm hoping to settle in to the 'new normal' eventually. In the meantime, I'll struggle a bit, just as we all do when we face changes, but I'll also try to be gentle with myself. 

Perspectives

 

"Be a tourist in other perspectives." Questlove

I'm reading Creative Quest by Questlove at the moment and this line stuck in my head. We can look at perspectives - or opinions - other than our own and try them on for size without packing up all our belongings and moving there. But if we don't 'visit' in them, how will we expand our understanding or change our minds?

Yes, I suggested we might sometimes change our minds. It's not a sign of weakness to change your mind or your thinking. Only fools hold on to views and opinions that have been shown to be on very shaky ground without at least considering a different way. If we 'tourist' in varying perspectives we can round out our thinking and make considered decisions. We may end up back where we started, but at least we've looked at other ways of thinking and made a choice rather than just landing somewhere by default. Plus we grow in empathy if we look at other perspectives. 

More play

 

I'm having so much fun playing in this slim hardback altered book. It only has 13 spreads, but I can see myself returning to it when I want inspiration in terms of palette but also composition. I don't love every page, but even if you don't like something, you can learn from it, even if it's 'never put those colours together again!'

I love the simplicity of the heart page above. The layout of nine hearts in a square is so pleasing to me. These are the endpapers, so were black rather than creamy, making the gesso work as one of the colours. 

The colours above are unusual for me in that they are all fairly dull colours, but I'm happy with how they look together. It's fun to try things you wouldn't usually do and opens up new opportunities.

These are more like my usual palette. Both have bits that I like. As you can see, I'm loving doing dots at the moment, especially of different sizes all mixed together. They just give a bit more depth to the page. 

What season?

 

It's important to know what season you're in.

I'm not talking about the weather/climate/time of year. I'm talking about your life season. And that's not your age but which part of the undulating timeline of life that you're in. We all go through springs where we seem to sprout up in all directions. Summers, where the growth continues steadily and fruit starts to set. Autumns where we harvest, followed by winters where we rest and prepare for new growth. 

It's important to know what season you're in because if you're expecting to gather fruit, but really you're in winter, it can feel like you're doing something wrong, that you're missing something. You're not. It's just that your expectations are misplaced. If you know that you're in winter then you're not expecting growth, because winter is the time to replenish reserves and prepare.

So check what season you're in and take stock.

And here are some more of my limited colour palette experiments.

Limited colour palettes

 

I found this slim A4 size book on my shelf, just ready to be altered. The pages are a bit thin, so I've glued pairs of them together to make them more usable. Now I'm just playing, using a small palette on each pair of pages. This one is Payne's grey, quinacridone magenta, and golden yellow.

There is no agenda, no idea of outcome, just play. And I'm enjoying it immensely. The left hand page of this pair is my favourite, and I particularly like the black dots. Must do more of that :)

Catacosmesis

 

Catacosmesis - stacking the tasks at hand in whatever order best suits us.

Originally this word applied to rhetoric, and stacking a speech in such a way that it flows and is easily remembered, a bit like using a mnemonic. But it can be applied to any list of tasks we must work our way through. 

Take a moment to think it through and work out the best order to do things in. Picking off the easy things and leaving the difficult ones until later is not necessarily the best option. Catacosmesis is about organising, and there is more than one way to do that.

This is my last January 'words' post. Taking a break from doing more complex journal pages has been fun, and helped me to bump up out of a rut - a bit of an expergefactor, perhaps? I am looking forward to getting back to a more colourful way of working.

Sockdolager

 

Sockdolager - the winning point in an argument.

It can feel good to win the argument, to have the sockdolager. But do you win the argument at the expense of the relationship? 

Sometimes it is better to seek compromise, common ground, and reconciliation, rather than seeking to win.

Ultracrepidarianism

 

Ultracrepidarianism - giving opinions on subjects you know nothing about.

We all know people who are ultracrepidarians. It doesn't matter what the subject under discussion is, they weigh in as if they are an expert. 

The word in more literal translation from the Latin is 'beyond the shoe'. According to Mark Forsyth in The Horologicon, it comes from a story where a painter made a painting and left it on display, hiding so that he could hear opinions on it. A cobbler made comment on the way a shoe had been wrongly painted. The painter took the painting away and corrected the shoe. The cobbler saw that the painter had changed the shoe, and became so proud of it that he started to comment on how the leg wasn't right. The painter jumped out from where he was hiding and yelled that the cobbler should go no further than the shoe. 

We are allowed opinions, but is it wise to voice them? Let us be careful not to go 'beyond the shoe.'