The funky orange jeep that I’ve posted a picture of here was on a different side street, but this time was filled with red flowers (I assume for Valentine’s Day). This made me smile.

Two different photographers were roaming about the street with really long lenses on their cameras, capturing the water and sun and clouds, all mingling together.

Half of the sky over the ocean was covered with dense clouds, the other half was clear. Sun was streaming through right at the dividing line and shone down in rays visible against the clouds, leaving patches of sparkling light on the surface of the water.

The post office was full of people, some of whom were speaking various different languages.  This town, as small as it is, seems to contain a high percentage of people from Europe and the UK. It’s fun to live somewhere that has both a sense of community and a cosmopolitan feel.

Rediscovery of an old book and record shop that I had forgotten about led me to some additional books for my art supplies. The $1 a book shelf out front was cheaper than books from the thrift stores, where they cost $2 or $3 a piece. Now I have somewhere small and local to support when I need more books.

The view at the top of the hill on the way back allows you to see the ocean and the houses leading down to it. I passed it just as the sky was starting to turn orange and the clouds were lighting up in different hues.

A chat with the owner of a local mini market a few blocks from home about how cold it had been today (yes, my friends from elsewhere, it did get cold today :) left me appreciating familiarity. Recognition of faces is nice in this day and age of living anonymously.

So, as small as each of these observations was on its own, taken together, they left me with a fuller heart. Gratitude seems to work that way, huh. It seems to have a cumulative effect…like, the more you allow it in, the more it grows.

Jacob was born on Christmas day (fitting, given that my whole family was together this Christmas, celebrating the holiday and having no idea that a child was being born who was about to become a part of our future). He was born to parents who were dealing with pretty difficult and extreme circumstances, as is true for many children given up for adoption. So I am all the more glad that he’ll be taken into my brother and sister-in-law’s home, a big step in improving his quality of life. He now has a chance to thrive, not just survive (as would most likely have been the case if he was not adopted). How can you not feel excited about that? (And as a side note, I wish adoption was on more people’s radar…there are so many adults out there who desire children and so many children who need a home. Seems like a win-win option that is too often overlooked).

But, I’m not writing this post to talk about the benefits of adoption so much as I am writing it to celebrate Jacob’s birth, to celebrate his arrival into our family, and to say that I am so, so glad that I will get to be his aunt. He will be a precious nephew to me, deeply loved and deeply wanted. Welcome Jacob.

I find I can experience more joy in receiving good things in my life when I have surrendered my own desires. Now, surrender can be a dirty word for some, so to clarify, I’m not talking about giving up desires, becoming desire-less, or any distorted thinking like that. I’m talking about a surrender of desires that leads to freedom. Not a burying of them in the sand, but a holding of them loosely so that they don’t control so easily. (Because is it not true that anything we desire strongly has the propensity to control us?) So, we don’t become free from desire, we become free from its control.

Once this has happened (an often circuitous and arduous process for sure), I find I can more happily receive the gifts that come into my life. I am less likely to overlook them or take them for granted when they appear. I walk more easily into gratitude.

On the way out, customers will most likely pass the 99 cent store, which is located next door in the same shopping plaza. This immediately brings you back down to planet earth, even if you are still feeling good about your organic produce in your reusable hemp shopping bags. Nothing like two extremes to balance one another out. And actually, this is one of my favorite parts about urban life…a variety of people living in very close proximity. The jazz musicians and models and organic produce, and the bargain hunters and 99 cent merchandise, mixing and mingling, all forming a strange composite which I find fascinating.

I recently came across this anonymous person’s response to the question, “What is your most profound regret in life?”, and thought his insight was worth posting…

“Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I’ve ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing… Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.”

And yet, there must be a reason that we rush, besides the fact that society encourages it. On some level, it must meet a need somewhere within us, otherwise we wouldn’t give in to the compulsion to move at breakneck speed. Maybe we rush to avoid discomfort or pain. Or we rush to forget. Or to fill a hole that won’t go away. Regardless of what it appears to satiate, rushing will only ever serve a function on the surface of our lives and will never manage to penetrate what is going on beneath. And more than that, it will keep us from every really experiencing life. And if we never truly experience life, think of all that we miss. To live in the unrushed moment and let it be enough…that is a difficult, but worthy pursuit.

In any occupation, no one else quite understands what you do as much as those who are doing the same thing. So, no matter how different your art may look from someone else’s expression, artists always share the commonality of birthing something and offering it up to the world in some capacity. This never fails to produce a feeling of camaraderie.

Words are indeed powerful, but it is kind of funny that we forget this, given that we live with an abundance of words and information on a regular basis. Perhaps this is why we do forget. I think that living in the information age numbs us to the power of words. We hear them too frequently. And it is human nature to tune out anything that enters our life with too great a frequency. It is the things that happen less frequently that we notice (if we are still paying attention).

So we grow numb to words because we hear them too often, usually large masses grouped together in some sort of meaningless jumble. And then we forget how to use them as well. Or maybe we forget to use them. We forget the power of delivering even one or two well-timed, well-thought out words. And we often miss hearing them when they come our way, because we’re too busy defending ourselves from the rest of the onslaught.

I guess I’d like to become better at tuning out more of the words that literally are just that – information, mindless stuff, neither good nor bad. And spend more time and energy tuning into the less frequent, but life-giving ones. They are like drops of gold to watch for and cherish.

Being an artist who is trying to promote yourself means endless hours of searching for and contacting new locations (whether those are galleries, stores, online competitions, art fairs, blog/article write-ups, juried shows, etc., etc.). It means 98% of the time hearing nothing back after contacting these places, 1.5% of the time being graced with a “no,” and .5% of the time maybe hearing a “yes.” It means believing in your work when there is no external feedback. It means believing in your work when there is negative feedback. It means working in isolation every day. It means having to fuel everything you do with your own drive. (No boss or coworkers to prod you along when you are unmotivated. No regular paycheck to incentivize you. No health benefits. No bonuses.) It means overcoming creative blocks. It means navigating your own path with few guidelines as to “how to do it.” It means learning how to nurture the creative fuel you were born with (which usually ends up being a self-learned skill, as 9 to 5 jobs cannot prepare you for that). It means having to self-learn most things. It means telling people repeatedly that you really are “working,” even though they think this means you are sitting around drinking coffee. It means believing that what you do has value and that the world is better off for it (despite most of the world not understanding this).

Of course, it also means experiencing tremendous fulfillment from using the gifts you were born with and satisfaction from building something from nothing. Yes, there are many enjoyable things about creating, too. But too often, the onlooking world observes artists from afar with a bit of a sigh and a “I wish I could just sit around and paint all day” mentality. Ha. Only other artists (add writers, musicians, actors, name-your-creative profession) can fully understand the all too often non-dreamy reality.