Decision Time

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?

Wow... that's radical enough to scare even me. I'm a big fan of change, but this seems sort of crazy. I'm famous for flower beads, for goodnesssakes. Why would I want to mess with that? Then again, why wouldn't I? Well, for one thing, it could turn out to be business suicide. But really only if I intend it to be. Another option is to jump off that bridge on a foggy morning, totally trusting that the net is there, and just enjoying the flight.

Imagine what might come from pushing myself to do something new on a regular basis. I might come up with some fabulous new beads, for starters. I might have more fun doing it. I might sell more. Or I might alienate all my regular customers. Or I might find new ones. I might be surprised at the number of people who are willing to support the flow of creativity. I might be sad at the number of people who want to control it. I might even bump beads back to hobby status and do something entirely different for a living... I mean really, with one little shift in direction, absolutely everything can, and probably would, change.

I'm starting to see this Idea (which has just this moment been promoted to capital "I" status) as a whole project, more than just the beads. A year-long creativity experiment lends itself so nicely to writing as well as beadmaking. And while I'm not at all inclined to write an actual book, I do see it as a way of reviving a flabby blog. After all, it's all part of this Long Way Home we've all signed up for here in the Earth life we're currently living. Hmmm... yes indeed, the wheels are turning now.

Will I do it? Not sure yet. But as I talk about it here, I'm doing a lot of internal processing. And the more I think about it, the better I like the Idea. A Year Without Flowers. A grand experiment in creativity. It sounds like fun. It sounds scary. It sounds challenging. It even sounds like work. And certainly, it sounds like a huge commitment, to you, yes, but mostly to myself. Will I do it? I'm literally deciding as I'm writing this this morning.

What Happens Next might surprise all of us. I'll certainly keep you posted...