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Planning for a productive 2017

December 27, 2016

planning productive 2017

2016 and the Six of Swords

Like many people, I’m reflecting on 2016 and planning for a more productive year in 2017.

This year has not been the easiest of years. It’s been something of a threshold year, a year of transition as the Six of Swords has continued to pop its head up to remind me. There’s been a series of shocks, wake up calls and disappointments. There’s also been some very proud moments and shining lights pointing the way ahead. And recent times have been full of quiet intuitive work that is laying deep foundations for a different future.

The Six of Swords image of traversing water with a whole bunch of cargo in tow speaks volumes. As Monicka Clio Sakki explains in Playing with Symbols:

The Six of Swords can also mean that you will go through a period of evaluating your past, putting aside any stress, anger, resentment and pain you may have experienced. You will come to realize that because of those painful experiences you can now advance. Gather what is most important to you, and make the choice to flow into the passage that is now in front of you. The wind is in your favour, and original thinking will take you far.

six of swords

A different future

The phrase ‘a different future’ keeps coming to mind suggesting that I need to make change to get the outcomes I am seeking. For too long, I keep doing the same thing and expecting that things will change. It’s clear that the work needs to start from deep within. Another card that keeps stopping by is the beautiful Sacred Pool from The Enchanted Map deck. It seems to often arrive reversed, in what Colette Baron-Reid calls ‘the protection position’, reminding me:

Dimming your light serves no one. Turning away from the truth that is reflected in the stillness of the Sacred Pool keeps you in denial, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

sacred pool

There’s no denying there’s been a sameness to my goals year after year for a while now. However 2016 has been a year of finally breaking through and beginning the crossing that is taking me to a different place. This heralds an exciting year in 2017 where real change takes place and that original thinking bears fruit.

Planning for a productive 2017

I’ve been preparing for a while now but the next period into early January offer a perfect opportunity to reflect on 2016 and to plan for 2017. Mercury Retrograde currently also favours this period of reflection. I’m keen to learn from the past to create this different future, gathering together the critical pieces to take forward. The spirit of Quiet Writing and its various aspects of writing, introvert strengths, process, connection and intuition is the heartbeat of the future. It is the summary of my passions and Core Desired Feelings I wish to share from my corner of the world to yours:

creative, intuitive, flowing, poetic and connected

My ways of planning a productive 2017 will focus on 4 key interlinked tools and strategies:

1 Reflecting on 2016 learnings and mapping the landscape for 2017

There’s great power in reviewing the learnings from the past and working out what to take forward. We can easily forget some key happenings and focus on the negatives. We need to step back and look at what we have learnt over the experience of the whole year, not just more recent events. Taking a special day or a few hours to dive deep, reflect and consider future plans is exceptionally valuable as we transit the line between years.

I highly recommend Unravel your Year 2017, a free annual workbook, developed by Susannah Conway that guides you through reflections on 2016 and planning for 2017. This will be my fourth year of working through this process. So it will be great to see where I have made progress and where I am setting the same goals over time and not getting anywhere (cf above Sacred Pool). Time for some breakthroughs this year I believe.

planning

2 Setting a Word for the Year

There’s also positive and quite enigmatic energy to be drawn from setting a ‘Word for the Year’. Again, this will be my fourth year in finding a word that acts as an intention for the year’s focus. This year’s word was WRITE and here I am writing now and focusing on writing, my life’s passion, as a central tenet of the way forward.

I’m still reflecting on my word for 2017 though I have an inkling of what it might be – more on that and reflections of my previous words’ impacts in a future post. Finding a guiding word for 2017 is covered in part in the above workbook. I also recommend Find Your Word for 2017 – also developed by Susannah Conway – as a way to work through this. It comes via a free 5 day email class you can do at your own pace with excellent resources. There’s also a private Facebook group where you can connect with others working through their word-finding processes. There’s fabulous energy engaging with others on their word journeys.

3 Seeking a Goddess to guide you in 2017

Having a goddess to guide you through the year is also a powerful experience. Amy Palko is offering 2017 My Word Goddess Readings for the 6th year running. This is the second year I’ve chosen to work intuitively with an accompanying goddess. My first year has been full of insights and connections to word of the year and overall planning around theme and intention.

Amy creates the goddess readings through a special intuitive reading also helping to choose possible words as a touchstone for the year.  The goddess guiding me in 2016 has been the Lady of Beasts with a focus on what I want to nurture in my life. Creativity, writing, introvert strengths – these have all risen to the fore as productive areas to invest time and energy. This is all in line with my word of the year and plans.

My guiding goddess for 2017 is Pele – Goddess of Irrepressible Passion and Hawaiian volcano goddess of fire, so watch out! I’ll be looking for a bit more fire, energy and action in 2017 and my word of the year and plans will reflect this. I’ll be excited to dive into this exploration and reflection in more detail in the coming days. Amy’s goddess readings are available until January 31st (Cost 25 GBP) at the above link.

4 Intuitive Tarot and Oracle work

And there will definitely be some intuitive tarot and oracle work over the next days to usher in the new year as positively and wisely as possible! The Ace of Wands has been making striking appearances already, echoing that sense of beginnings, initiation, ignition and creation.

The next posts will feature reflections on 2016, plans for 2017, my word of the year and goddess and oracle/tarot work as it unfolds and how it all fits together into an exciting and productive year ahead for Quiet Writing. And of course there’s a year-long journey of opportunity ahead to weave word, spirit and intention together.

Would love to hear about any special ways you are reflecting on 2016 and planning for 2017 or any plans you already have underway! Do share your thoughts in the comments.

Thought pieces

The labyrinth symbol: I was drawn to this labyrinth symbol, chosen at random from a page of planning images. I’ve always loved a labyrinth symbol but it was great to cross check to find that it is the perfect image for this planning journey:

A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. It represents a journey to our own center and back again out into the world. (from Crystallinks.com)

This spiralling into our centre and then channelling this light forward into our work in the world in new ways is the essence of planning. I like that it is ‘a meandering and purposeful path’ not necessarily a straight line.

Labyrinth photo via rzwo via Visual Hunt

start up

 

creativity writing

Weaving spirit into words

November 22, 2016

There’s spirit to be woven into words and creativity to be channelled naturally. It’s time to listen, feel and write.

natural creativity

I’ve realised recently that my writing and creativity practice is a natural one, weaving spirit into words. It came to my attention via the gorgeous ‘natural creativity’ card (above) from the Plant Ally Cards deck created by Lisa McLoughlin. I’d long been wanting this deck. When Lisa put out a call recently to say there were only a few precious ones left, I made the leap. And so did this card, jumping out and calling out for my attention with my first touch of the deck.

With its plant connection being Hogweed (or heracleum), the message of this card is:

Living in the moment allows the gift for personal expression and exploration.

Take the time to manifest your own natural creative path.

These words and thoughts are so welcome and calming at this time. I especially love the encouragement to live in the moment and to take time.

The concept of ‘natural creativity’  has made me realise afresh just how organic this work really is.

It’s about weaving spirit into words. It’s intuitive and poetic, a textual knitting of thoughts and influences into something I can wear into the world. It’s listening to lines that arrive in the night and nudge me. It’s hearing gentle voices narrating an auditory headline as I walk by the ocean. It’s sitting and staring out under a tree, my feet in the sand, writing down what comes like I’m channelling something as natural as the breeze. It’s knowing that my practice of drawing an oracle or tarot card and reflecting on it is a way of tapping into something higher to guide me. Even though it still feels like a strange thing to do sometimes.

Working intuitively with the symbolism of cards has become core and is surprisingly natural to me. I’m finding that my daily cards link to become a narrative that supports me in my associative way of looking at the world. And it’s also helping to anchor me as I process my changing identity and roles when they were so completely different only a few months ago. One of the few consistent variables in all this is my natural creativity and it’s a touchstone in a swirling time of uncertainty.

Uniqueness of voice and vision are critical for me and something of a personal battleground at present. With so many influences, it’s sometimes hard to see your own vision and hear your own voice.

I need to find my footing, my grounded sense of creativity, my own song and weaving of influences. I need to not pine for the past, for what I haven’t done creatively. I need to do what I can, here and now in the flow of the moment and ink on the page.

The sense is also not to rush, just to take the time to listen, to be instinctive and intuitive, manifesting my voice and path in the way that only I can.

The other words that also landed the same day and in the same way as ‘natural creativity’ from the Sacred Rebels Oracle deck were:

What you want, wants you.

There’s an aligning of symbols I need to notice more. There’s energy to be conducted like a lightning rod connected between earth and sky. There’s spirit to be woven into words and creativity to be channelled naturally. It’s time to listen, feel and write.

what-you-want-wants-you

Thought pieces

Plant Ally Cards – At the time of writing, there are still a few of these fabulous decks left at Lisa McLoughlin’s Etsy shop Whimsy of Nature. My thanks to Lisa for creating such an inspiring resource for connecting with nature and creativity.

Daily Divine e-course – I recommend Victoria Smith’s The Daily Divine e-course  if you are interested in developing knowledge of oracle cards and your intuitive practice. This course on oracle cards was a great complement to my burgeoning knowledge of tarot cards. It set me off on an adventure of connecting with intuition more deeply via oracle and tarot. It has especially encouraged what has become a daily practice of reflection and journalling based on card wisdom.

Natural creativity quote – from current read, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America by David Whyte:

The sudden and intuitive capacity to feel deep emotion, what the romantic poets called sensibility, is the power of appreciation for things as they are.

 

weaving spirit into words

 

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creativity writing

Creativity and connection via Instagram

November 9, 2016

stretch-marks-soul

Instagram is an excellent source of creativity, inspiration and connection with kindred community. One of the key ways people link up is via daily prompts. The beauty and benefits of such prompt journeys are myriad but the main ones are creativity and connection.

Stretching your creativity

Firstly, creativity: you are given a word or phrase to make with what you will. It can be just noticing details in your everyday routine or remembering something from a past time. It can encourage you to dig out material that you wish to refocus on. You can recognise new patterns as the word triggers associations that relate to current experiences. And you can also bounce off others for your own creative boost enjoying their related journeys.

As Instagram is primarily a visual medium, you have the challenge of representing the word associations visually. Or you can start with an image and connect the word, visual and thoughts together. Each day is different.

Practically, I keep an eye on next day’s prompt or at least check on it early in the day. I sometimes respond quickly if there’s something immediate that comes to mind. Other times, it’s a slow touchpoint I come back to, thinking of it as I go about my day.

On some occasions, there’s a bit more brain racking and research. The prompt ‘unicorn’ from Susannah Conway’s August Break this year had me going through cupboards and pulling books off the shelves looking for unicorns. The prompts that resulted were fantastic and sometimes hilarious as people found or rediscovered unicorns in their environment.(I eventually uncovered them in ‘The Book of Symbols’ – I knew they were around somewhere!) People also improvised, including the memorable ‘be your own unicorn’ from the fabulous Kylie McDonnell.

And some prompts lead to a deep reflection and engagement. Experience October 2016 led by Rae Ritchie inspired my last post, connecting the word for the day, ‘sapphire’, with a poem I wrote many years ago and finally put out there into the light. Navigating through November led by India Ross aka @ofearthandstars has inspired new thoughts via the prompt, ‘stretch’ and I share the writing from this below: ‘Stretch marks on the soul.’

Fostering connection and community

Many in my Instagram sphere have connected over time via Susannah Conway’s brilliant community prompt initiatives The August Break and April Love. Clearly there is a need for continuing connection in this way. It takes people to step up, lead and put in the work to create online communities whether it be for the long or the short term. And it takes a creative community to keep the momentum going.

The current round of prompts mentioned above builds on links from these initiatives. Another key one has been #taleswithfriends, led by the wonderful Tori, ‘curatrix of the everyday’ aka @unfoldtheday.  I have been a keen and appreciative participant of these various initiatives and help to spread the word and build connection.

The kindred creative connection established via Instagram, and these prompt quests especially, runs very deep. As an INTJ, with an emphasis on the introvert and writing and reading as my ways to engage with the world, the camaraderie and connection of my IG friends has become core to my day and world. Last year, I was away from home working for eight months and on my own most of the time. My IG buddies kept me connected, inspired and supported each day, alongside my family, friends and local networks. And this continues. There’s support there when you are feeling low or on your own and also when there’s good news to share. There’s cheering, encouragement and practical suggestions like what to read and how to ignite joy and celebrate life in the every day.

And you can enjoy the balance of day and night and the seasons as they inversely change across the hemispheres. It’s been lovely watching the first snow elsewhere in the world as our days warm up and we have our first swims of the season here.

The thread of creativity helps me to get up and walk and take photographs, to really notice the flowers in the gardens around me and to share what I am reading and thinking about. Likewise the celebration of quiet and the beautiful place where I live has been a mainstay of my IG experiences. Seeing it through others’ eyes has made me remember just how special it is. You can forget this at times, being so close.

A word, a rock, a thought

So in the end ~ a word, a rock, a thought ~ are what it took to create the piece below. That and walking and sitting down to connect it together whilst at the beach feeling it all. I share that creative connection with you here. And I thank those who support this journey via IG and other valued creative communities. We are all in this together: noticing, witnessing, sharing and quietly writing. You can connect with me on Instagram as @writingquietly

Stretch marks on the soul

Look back on your life and you find times when the universe expanded you. Maybe there was violence, maybe love, maybe conflict, disagreement, passion, disappointment, blood, elation, surprise.

Sometimes these are large public events, traumas witnessed, flowers sent, cards received, phone calls made, heads bowed. 

Other times, these are silent events, perhaps recorded in journals as cries for help, little cuts of disappointment, pieces of our hopes and souls shredded. Sometimes no one else even knows.

If you stopped and thought, you could perhaps count the stretch marks on your soul, the events that changed you forever – the birth, the rejection, the letter, the phone call, the knock on the door, the ring, the travel to be with someone, the news on the television, the sudden something that lurched you out of the everyday or changed your dreams. Or made ordinary life extraordinary or a twilight zone for a while.

You can feel as you remember: the stares at a wall seeking answers; the hair falling from your head into your fingers; the look on a loved one’s face as they arrive to tell you the terrible news you don’t as yet know; the peace of sleep after the journey of giving birth through the night.

The beautiful or agonising stretch marks on your soul. 

You can just witness them, know they are there but mostly ignore them. Or you can tend them, rub oil in, to promote healing so those stretch marks blend a little more into your being, your body and mind absorbing them.

These marks are signs of birth, and sadly also sometimes scars from the death of things longed for: love, connection, family, people to stay alive longer or forever, something to not stop or wanting that so desired and cherished thing to just finally happen.

These stigmata, these talismans, these shields, these signs: I bear them with grace, bending to their lessons, looking skyward through the leaves of spring for answers. I wrap their wisdom round me as I head for home.

fig-leaves

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You might also enjoy:

Practical tools to increase writing productivity

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Intuition, writing and work – eight ways intuition can guide your creativity

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creativity love, loss & longing poetry

Poetry into the light: Sapphire

October 25, 2016
sapphire_garie

Sapphire

Letting go the lovely images
I watch them slide
out to this sapphire stretch
of water, your eyes riding
sometimes between the waves,
grass catching in the dark
lines of your hair,
silver turning into grey,
translucent with the sun’s
invitation upon your warm skin.

Can you feel your body
superimposed here
upon the landscape,
your face,
the varied impressions
I study?

Sometimes between the sound
of the waves curling
and the calls
of birds catching in the wind,
I can almost hear your voice
inflecting the most
commonplace words,
marking my stare
as the blue of the ocean
intensifies.

Thought pieces:

Experience October 2016:

This post had its genesis in Experience October 2016, initiated by Rae Ritchie and mostly taking place on Instagram. Sapphire was the prompt for day 12. Some prompts take you to a moment in time on a given day; some take you much deeper as this one did, back to this poem written many years ago. It’s been good to brush it off and bring it into the light. Thanks Rae for a thought-provoking and inspiring October and for this creative nudge especially. You can go to #experienceoctober2016 on Instagram for more creative inspiration and connection.

Poetry into the Light:

A key focus in Quiet Writing is bringing poetry into the light: the writing of it, the celebration of it, the reading of it, the sharing of it. Poetry is often the quietest writing of all – unseen, unheard, but the lifeblood of so many of us especially at difficult and threshold times.  You can read more about my thoughts on this here: Poetry into the Light. I’m still working out how to do all that here but have shared quite a few of my poems here along the way. I am less inclined towards chasing the submission/rejection and formal publication process at present and leaning more to sharing here and self-publishing. With social media and online creative links, I think poetry has the opportunity to reach more people that way. I look forward to sharing more here and connecting with other poetry writers and lovers.

Recommended poetry blog:

On that note, I recommend Claireylove: a Poetry Shaped Life – the beautiful blog by my online creative buddy, Claireylove.  I love how she is sharing her poetic works and creative endeavours. Here’s a quote from Claireylove’s blog to round off our thoughts here:

Poetry is about connections and their ambiguity: how meaning, sounds and images create associations and how these associations are interpreted. Writing poetry can help us to make connections about the events and patterns in our lives. It strengthens our intuition and satisfies our souls’ deep need for spiritual meaning.

I so agree that poetry is about connections, intuition and spiritual meaning. One of my Core Desired Feelings  is ‘connected’; others are ‘poetic’ and ‘intuitive’…..all such lovely words that coalesce so well.

So do please connect here and tell me your thoughts about poetry and bringing it into the light, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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creativity writing

The subtle art of not writing

September 27, 2016

pexels-photo_writing

It’s a subtle art, the art of not writing. I have not written now through many years, filling and part-filling many journals and notebooks, drafting hundreds of poems and compiling numerous blog posts over more than six years. I’ve not written in the workplace for over 30 years – including writing for and editing publications, writing a handbook of research and influencing many business outcomes with my writing skills. I’ve not written my way to publication in a few cases, so much so that the Australian National Library, a number of literary journals and the AustLit database of Australian literature know about me. And there’s so much not writing paraphernalia around me here as I sit, that I can hardly move.

It seems I am a master of not writing, spinning a myth about myself over the years that to this day can see me looking achingly at writing texts and courses as the cure to this ailment. It’s true, their balms and solutions may help me to move through this impasse. But to allow them to make me feel that I am a complete novice in this art and space, with no track record or prior experience, is all my own work.

It seems that just as I have tricked myself into the subtle art of not writing, I could just as easily trick myself into the art of writing. They seem to be transferable, almost the same skills, that could be shifted in focus. Perhaps I need to chunk it more, break it down into parts I can think of as projects, to make it easier to manage. Calling one focus something like ‘The Poetry Project’ would help make the work all the more tangible and achievable. Now I come to think of it, this blog is a little like that.

With a wry smile and a sense of humour, and by some gentle stealth, I could set a time-limited practice and tease a set number of pages or words from each day to get started and call it part of the subtle art of not writing.

I could get the best poems I have written over the years and put them into a small volume that is not really a publication, but just a collection of pieces of my heart in language I have shaped, uniquely my voice. I could craft these small multi-faceted jewels over time and work out how they can best be worn and integrated into a personal style I can step out in.

And I could turn this desire to write into something real that heartens each day, a deft trick of time that makes the minutes count. I could further inscribe the journey already started through miles of lines of ink into artefacts that might light the way ahead, little by little, much as novelist E L Doctorow reminds us:

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

That delicious journey, and then actually sitting down to (not) write.

Thought pieces:

Writing this piece made me think a whole raft of things: resistance, getting out of our own way, making things manageable, shifting our contexts, small tweaks, tricking ourselves, recognising our body of work over time and self-belief.

In related thoughts and connections:

Courteney E Martin’s article, Writing the Stepping Stone: why you haven’t written your book yet, has some excellent practical suggestions for getting your book written including: recognising that it might not actually be a book but something else; dealing with distractions such as the internet; and realising that the work you are doing actually might be a stepping stone. I love these final words about, yes, getting out of our own way:

If you have a book inside of you dying to come out, close this browser. Close this computer, or turn off this phone. Sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and write a letter to someone you know personally about the topic. The directness of the form will get you out of your own way and on your way to doing what you are meant to do.

How to Write a Novel in Thirty Minutes per day has many strategies for: getting into the habit of writing; controlling or removing interferences and distractions like the internet (including ‘put your mobile on aeroplane mode’ – there’s a thought!); building accountability; and promoting good practice planning, productivity and resilience. It’s a great roadmap for ‘driving at night in the fog’.

Sage Cohen in the wonderful Fierce on the Page (book review coming up here soon!) has a few tips on little shifts in attitude for overcoming resistance. In the chapter, ‘Change your context to regain your appetite’. Sage prompts us:

What if you found a new way to approach an old struggle or stuck place? How could you come at it sideways to find a new perspective? What if you were to make a small shift in attitude or practice – and then another – until you felt a bit more space or ease or fun?

And so many of Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast interviews touch on this theme of getting out of our own way with our creative ventures, realising we are actually already doing the work, not being so hard on ourselves and just getting on with it. Dive into any of these podcast pleasures but I have a special soft spot for the one with poets Cecilia and Mark Nepo, Who Gets to Decide Whether You’re a Legitimate Artist? It’s about who gets to decide who is a good poet and the value and legacy of poetry. Listening to this one was life changing for me!

Share your thought pieces:

I’d love to hear how you are breaking through any resistance with tricks or shifts in attitude. How are you getting out of your own way or valuing your creative work?

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creativity writing

Step by step: a narrative

September 24, 2016

I’m at the beach at my favourite spot looking out from the shade to the bluest and clearest of spring September days. It’s Monday, a day I’m normally at work but I recently started a job share arrangement. This means I work three days a week to free me up to work creatively, get some balance, be me and have ‘an actual life’ as my friend Will described it so accurately.

From the fig tree

On this day that I’m writing, it’s the first day of this new sense of freedom and the waves are lapping quite loudly and incessantly, a restlessness and churning that I feel matched with. As I’ve shifted to this transition time, I’ve had a chest infection and asthma and I’ve been on steroids to open up my airways. The excitement of this time of transition and its opportunities, along with the medication, has made for some idea-filled attempts at sleep.

The ideas are so deep and complex and I keep a notebook beside the bed at night. I want to capture these thoughts; they are defining, connective and empowering. I know that if I let them float into sleep and try to remember their unique associations in the morning, it won’t happen. I need to capture them like precious butterflies and hold them gently with all their beauty before they fly away. They are the gateway to so much, gifts from another place, and to contemplate them, weave them and enact them is the richest of experiences. I work to coalesce them into a body of work I can take forward and lead to support and enrich my life and the lives of others. The dots are connecting and the planets are aligning and calling.

And to write. Writing here – the coolness of the sand against my feet, the cold brick wall behind my back – is like meditation. It’s my life’s breath over the years that I need to breathe deeper into and exhale through, finding and expressing the voice that is uniquely mine. I’m breathing so deeply now as my airwaves clear. My senses are coming alive: I’m seeing so sharply, noticing;  I catch the scent of salt and jasmine; and the waves are crashing like loud applause.

My beach walks always seem to have some form of narrative, thoughts shaping into a structure as I wander. Today’s is ‘step by step’.

As I walk on the hard sand, I feel the calm of each step, one grounded thing at a time, and the mindfulness of the moment. I’m wary and watchful of the pitfalls and traps as I step: the moss on the tidal rocks that can slip me up; the larger waves that can catch me unawares and wash me down.

I feel a stillness in each step. I’m walking tall, feeling the ground beneath, scanning the terrain and savouring being at home here on the beach and in myself, looking out.

It’s hard to believe it’s here – this opened out opportunity like this clear blue sky and all this water reaching out to the horizon. Everything is so sharp and clear though that it must be real and I’m breathing in its quiet strength, one breath at a time, one grounded step at a time.

 

gunyah-5sept

Thought pieces:

My mind is an associative one so I as I post, I plan to add some thought pieces, some creative connections, influences and resources.

For this post, ‘Step by Step: a narrative’, I offer the following thought pieces:

Beach walks as narratives:

I’ve written before about beach walks as narratives; here is a poem about that in a previous post, Poetry into the Light. There is nothing like walking on the beach to restore your mind and soul, ground you and help make connections. For me, there is something like a narrative that builds as I walk and I intend to capture my narratives more consciously as I move through this time.

Tarot card for the day and the times: Nine of Cups

The card that I drew on the first day of being at home at the start of these new work arrangements was the Nine of Cups. It’s a card I’ve also drawn again since so clearly a card for the times.

9-of-cups

The above Nine of Cups image is from the Sakki Sakki Tarot Deck.

And the message?

From Rachel Pollack’s Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom:

At times, especially after troubles or a period of long, hard work, nothing can serve us better than a simple good time.

And Brigit Esselmont (of Biddy Tarot) in The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Card Meanings has chosen this quote by Theodore I Rubin (Psychiatrist and Author) to illustrate the key meaning:

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes from the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.

It has certainly been a time of both troubles and hard work for a long while so the pleasure of  ‘a simple good time’ and ‘the afterglow of satisfaction’ are especially savoured and sweet.

The book of the moment: ‘The Heart Aroused’ by David Whyte

One of the simple pleasures of being at home during the week is being able to do everyday things like go to the post office. On my first day home, this gorgeous book arrived in the post and I had the pleasure of sitting to open it over a coffee in the local cafe.

the-heart-aroused3

I’ve had a number of David Whyte’s books sitting in my ‘thinking about it’ wish list for a while. After connecting with a lovely new friend Katherine recently, she wisely reminded me of David Whyte and how his work is potentially an important piece of this transition time. I ordered his books and these words in the frontispiece of ‘The Heart Aroused’ just sang to me as I opened it, :

Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being split asunder, the clarity of their vision alongside an ability to take their place in a materialistic world. They are the modern heroes…Artists at least have a form within which they can hold their own conflicting opposites together. But there are some who have no recognised art form to serve this purpose, they are the artists of the living. To my mind these last are the supreme heroes in our soulless society.

Irene Claremont de Castillejo

Here’s to ‘the artists of the living’ and the clarity of their vision.

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