Taking The Long Way Home

Inspiration is like water. It flows all on its own, and while it's possible to dam it up and slow it down, it's better to let it do what it does. Flow. I know that if I use it as it comes along, there will always be more right behind it. There always has been. In an Inspirational Rainy Season, it might be hard to keep up with the floods that sometimes happen, and now and then there will come a drought, when I wonder if I'll ever see another drop of Inspiration again. I always do though. Always. I know I can rest in the dry seasons, trusting that the Flow will return. When it does, and I use it, it just keeps coming. If I don't use it, it diverts itself to some other outlet, because it depends on us, all of us, for expression. There's an endless supply, so the best thing is to just turn on the Inspirational Faucet, and leave it running. Today is Tuesday. I'm leaving for Mexico on Thursday. I have a million things to do, but on Sunday I was swept away by a new be...

We have a winner!  Bella Chic aka Gina ! " Bella Chic aka Gina has left a new comment on your post " Here's to Creative Maladjustment ": Very awesome quote! Thanks for the chance to win your giveaway :) " Please email your address to me so I can send you your bead! I'm leaving for Mexico early Thursday morning, so might have to send this to you when I get back. If you see this and get right back to me, I'll send it off before I leave. Congratulations! And thanks everyone for participating! We'll do it again in February. Every blog comment and every new mailing list subscriber will be added to the drawing. Starting... now! ~~~ Update - this winner did not claim her prize, so I drew a new winner on Feb.11... "Anonymous  ✆   to  kim show details   Jan 16 Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Here's to Creative Maladjustment ": Kim, artists and thinkers who are not joiners and who don't have a polit...

This is what's caught my attention today. I have several more in the kiln, and might share some of them in a day or two, but the one on the right is mine ... It will remind me to get out of the way, stop complicating things, and keep it simple. The simpler the better when it comes to beads like these. Enough is just right. The Official 2012 Bead Project turns out to be nothing like I had first imagined. The only rule is No Rules, and in fact, it isn't even a project. By the powers vested in me, I hereby give myself permission to make whatever I want to, even if it's flowers, and even if it's not. I also agree to consult the Divine Universe on a regular basis, to be sure I'm listening with my eyes and hands and heart more than with my mind and bank account. And, furthermore, I promise only to make beads when making beads makes me happy, so you'll always feel the love when they come to live with you. Happy New Year. Hallelujah. Let's make beads. The countdo...

I think we all go through periods of struggle. Maybe it comes from thinking too much. Maybe it comes from doing too much. For me, sometimes I just hit overload, and have to shut everything down and restart after a bit, just like my computer. If I force it, everything gets glitchier and glitchier, until nothing at all works. Eventually, the shut down and restart is no longer an option, but a necessity. There's always a tipping point. For me, this time, it was that miserable failure of a meal I cooked last night that sent me over the edge, and shut me down. (You can read about it on PositivelyVegan .) Suddenly, everything I've been doing lately seemed like one big mess to me. And I know it was because I've been over-thinking all of it. This thing with the beads... to make flowers or to not make flowers, to commit to a project or abandon all goals. The need to figure it all out made it impossible to figure any of it out. And in the over-thinking of something so simple as din...

“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”  ~ Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr ~ I love that quote. I find it comforting. I'm sure he didn't mean it to apply specifically to artists and vegans, but I imagine we're included, because the Reverend Doctor was a most inclusive sort of guy. I'm taking his words in today, and feeling the love. I'm letting it be okay, and even preferable to be my creatively maladjusted self. What a relief. From here I can do my job. From a place of trying to fit in with what's "normal"... well, nothing gets done. I still have no definitive decision regarding the Flower Beads. As much as I want to turn the idea of A Year Without Flowers into a project, I'm not sure I have the stamina, or the passion it takes to do, or not do, something for an entire year. Anything less seems... we...

A comment from my CyberFriend Zoe yesterday suggested that I might do only custom orders for flower beads. It reminded me that I haven't really talked about the custom order thing in a long time, and there are probably quite a few of you who wonder why I won't do custom work. So many topics are blog-worthy, and I think this is one of them. So here's my story... Since very early in my beadmaking life, I've had a couple of rules that have kept me (relatively) sane. "No Schools or Churches" is the first one. It became clear very quickly that I would not find my customers in these shows, surrounded by plastic canvas kleenex box covers, painted ceramic angels, and crocheted pot holders. Rule Number 2 is "No Custom Orders," and while it's every bit as important as the first Rule, it's the one I tend to break every now and then, just to test it... or myself. My first custom order came from a friend of my sister's, many years ago. She was a b...

Change one thing, and you change everything. Move a rock and energetically, the entire world ripples and shifts in response. Shift your thinking, and your whole life changes with it. I'm doing a lot of thinking these days, a lot of changing. Nothing big. Just little adjustments in trajectory. And each one leads to another, so I'm finding myself surprised on a daily basis at What Happens Next. The bead thing is insistently in the center of my focus. I have choices. Always have. I can keep doing it the same way I've always done it, or... I can move a rock. Or maybe even a boulder. I had this idea yesterday, that appeared out of Nowhere. I love that place, Nowhere, where so many cool things are just waiting to be discovered. If ideas had titles, like books, and maybe they do, this one would be, A Year Without Flowers . And the premise would be: What would happen if I spent a whole year making only beads I've never made before, with not a single flower in the bunch? W...

It's been an interesting couple of weeks in my own personal CyberLand. I joined the mass exodus from GoDaddy, moving all my domain names to another server. It's a long story. Not important to my story here. You can research all the hubbub if you want. Anyway, I moved 5 domains successfully, I thought, and then a week later, something glitched in the transfer, and nobody, including me could get to this blog. I read the instructions over and over, did what they said, contacted tech support with my "urgent" message, and three days later... finally got an answer. I changed one little thing, and a few minutes later, magically, miraculously, I was back. While all this was going on, I got numerous emails from friends/customers/readers who were concerned not only about the whereabouts of my site, but touchingly, about my well-being. Without them, I might have seriously considered closing the blog all together. I mean, really, how important is it? Just another blog in an oce...

I just love a new year. It's like meeting a new friend - someone I'm excited to see every day, someone who offers new experiences in my life, someone who seems happy to see me too. It's kind of like new love. Anything can happen, all possibilities are open, and there's that little twinkle that makes me sort of giddy. I don't like New Year's Resolutions though. I think they're something that sets us up for failure, because they're usually too big and ambitious to ever be realistic. We jump in with all our energy and enthusiasm, and then burn out quickly, like a long distance runner who bursts out at top speed, rather than pacing herself. Many times in the past, I've made long lists of resolutions, and managed to overwhelm myself and give up before I even got started.  These day I take a different approach. While a new year is a lovely fresh start, as the first few weeks go by, and the freshness fades, it helps me to remember to see every single da...