More bead experimentation

This is the other mixed media bead loom piece. I finished the edges with coils and beads. I love not having to weave in all the ends. I'm not sure what I'm doing with either piece. This may become a pin, or not. I liked leaving the space in the middle of the piece; I was thinking of my word, of OPEN, while I was working on it. Yet another visual reminder of my quest for this year.

I've been thinking quite a bit of OPEN this week. I've really felt closed down during this whole job hunting process. Working through the Pathfinder book is helping me see some potential reasons for feeling resistant and closed down. I may not be on quite the right path yet. It's closer than it has been, and working through the exercises in this book are helping me see where some course correction may be necessary. Instead of always trying to change my personality and way of thinking to fit a job, I want to find something that fits me, that's easy to love.

Part of being open is being able to admit to mistakes, errors in judgement, miscalculations. It's easy to fight against this, to try to make things fit. I've spent so much time in my life trying to fit myself to jobs that require hiding who I am in order to fit in. I know I've had that fear of having wasted time, of not being closer to some end product, of not accomplishing some sort of measurable goal. It's the outside pressure of having some kind of product to point to, something that proves my life is worthwhile.

Life isn't necessarily measurable, though. Some of use take a very winding path. More and more, I'm accepting the truth that life is a process, and that I don't have to reach some point where there's a product in order to prove my worth. Duh dum - look I'm a [fill in blank here]. I've reached my goal. I am SOMETHING and this shows that my life is worthy.

I've lived a lot of my life away from the present - in striving for future goals, in avoiding the past. I really want to be open to the process of living life day by day, of enjoying the process of living instead of always waiting for life to start someday. Someday, after I graduate, after I find a job, after ..... always after.... I've spent over half of my life trapped in this sort of thinking.

I'm not sure where my journey for openness will take me, but it's been nice to have this time, this little chunk of space to stop and think about it all. This feels right and necessary, instead of running headlong around a curve somewhere, chasing future's carrot.

Beads and Doodling

This is one of the pieces I played with on the bead loom. Instead of weaving the ends in, I could twist the wire together and shape it. I wasn't sure what it wanted to be at first, but it needed a loop on top. I think it will become a pendant, but that's not set in stone, either.

This is another view of the same piece, but on a lighter background.

Friday was so nice that I went for a walk with my mom. We walked a nature trail at a local lake. I loved this tree. It's a tangle of trees that sprawls out all over. It looks like it should be protecting a hobbit or two.
This is a photo of the lake ice. I liked the shading of whites, greys, blues. I'd like to use the colors for a bracelet. Now to find a place to buy beads - or I'll have to resort to ordering online.

This is a cuff bracelet I made as a gift. I'm thinking something similar to this, though, using the lake ice colors instead of the purples.

I've still been focused on the job search, and trying to find creative ways of approaching that task while keeping myself open. I was doodling, and wrote a piece of one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems around the page. The inside was empty, but I added the heart, and then found the letters for open on a paper bag. Gluing down the letters felt a little surreptitious, like I was creating a ransom note to my heart. I might have to prop it up somewhere, as a reminder.

Intentions

I've been poking around on the interwebs, looking to see how other people might cope with creating while transient. In my travels, I found the Creative Everyday Challenge, and spent some time looking at the blogs of people who are participating. It's wonderful to see so many people creating, to see all the beauty being added to the world. I'm debating joining the challenge. It would be nice to have a committment to something outside myself; that might keep me going at points where it would be easy enough to curl up around myself and shut down.

As with so many other things, though, looking at all the drawings and artistic things makes me feel a bit inadequate. This is one of the challenges I've faced over and over and over in my life - to be visible, to participate fully in my life, in life in general. Being visible is not just being seen, it's having the potential for being judged. And still, in some corner of my mind, being judged is not a positive thing. It's to be judged and condemned, judged and found lacking.

When I'm tired, when my energy is low, my brain resets to the default, which is to believe the negative voices from my childhood, the voices that still whisper, "fat, stupid, ugly." The positive voices are harder to hear. I have to keep myself healthy and strong and energized to keep the voices balanced. And it's hard to keep myself re-energized when I'm living in someone else's house.

On the Creative Everyday blog, I found an idea that's very interesting. Instead of New Year's resolutions (which I hate anyway), someone came up with the idea of setting an intention for the new year, and choosing a word to represent it. I thought about visible, but I've decided that open is a better choice for my situation for this point in my life. I need to keep myself open to possibility, keep my heart and brain and soul open. By being open to everything around me, I can find the path, the job, the place that I need to be.

To me, being open means being able to take risks, take chances, experiment with things that may not work out as planned. It's being open to playfulness and pain, to ups and downs, to the full specrum of life. It's being able to quiet the judging voices, not silence them. It's staying open to all the feelings and thoughts I have, both positive and negative, and accepting them as part of me. When I can do that, just be who I am at the moment, then life is good. So, OPEN is my word, my intention for this year of changes and challenges.