random.on purpose.

Listen to Your Muse

Faced a dilemma last week:  I had so many things that I wanted to do, that I was stuck in a funk of not knowing where to start.  This usually happens when the clutter in a particular room is out of control, or I'm moving again and have to pack up my life, or other equally truly mind-boggling situations.  This was more of a kid-in-a-candy-store type of dilemma, but I was stuck nonetheless.  What to do?  Call my best friend Sherry and explain my problem.  Her solution?  Do SOMETHING!  Didn't really matter which thing (although she did suggest which one I might want to start with, too), just GET MOVING!  Good advice, that!

I remember back in my church-going days I had to teach the teenage girls about finding their purpose in life (which I still haven't figured out for myself!), and part of the lesson was to just move down a path, and you would find out fairly quickly if it was the right one or the wrong one for you - "Don't expect the Lord to direct your path if you're not willing to move your feet".  (No, I don't know who said it - I remember the what, but not the who.)  I guess I have a path or two more to wander down, since I still haven't found anything that fits in the long term.  (Did I mention my short attention span?)

Paula Poundstone (one of my all-time favorite comediennes) was quizzing one of her audience members about her plans after college.  The young girl had no clue what she wanted to do with her education.  Paula then asked the entire audience how many people were doing what they really wanted to do.  Not many hands went up.  She quipped, "You know how grown-ups are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up?  They're looking for IDEAS!"  Probably some truth to that...

I'm not really going anywhere with all of this, I guess - just throwing it out there for  you to mull over along with me.  I heard somewhere that you should try to make a career out of whatever it is you do that, when you are doing it, you are absorbed and happy enough not to notice the passing of time.  What does that for you?  Could you make it a lifelong pursuit?

Phrases like "Follow your bliss" and "Listen to your muse" and similar set my imagination going and fill me with a certain feeling that I would love to maintain all the time.  Unfortunately, the daily-ness of life intrudes and I get sidetracked.  Also, I still have the ongoing dilemma of too many options.  What absorbs me today may make me yawn tomorrow.

Maybe the truest thing for me - maybe for you, too - is to listen ALL THE TIME, and if the muse (or spirit or inner knowing or whatever label you care to place on it) calls for a change in direction, even in midstream, then so be it!

Spiderwebs

So, a few days ago Sherry calls me with a question:  What does it mean when there are spiders literally EVERYWHERE in your space?  (Sherry is my best friend and I will refer to her often, as we interact in some way pretty much every day, and her name is bound to come up from time to time as a result of my relating daily experiences now and then...)

Anyway - the reason she asks me questions like this is because she knows I collect books (and quotes and music and...) on a WIDE variety of subjects although, in my opinion, everything is interconnected to everything else, so it's all really sort of the same subject if you think about it long enough to find the connection.  But, I digress.

One of the books is Animal Speakby Ted Andrews. It is very much based on Native American tradition and lore, and has to do with animal totems.  The thought is that all animals, including birds and insects, provide messages to us from the Universe (or God or Holy Spirit or whatever label you're comfortable with).  You are ABSOLUTELY free to disagree with me, but to me it just makes sense.

Every living, breathing organism on this planet is interconnected with every other, and comes from the same source.  Why would we not be able to give and receive information?  Why would we choose to limit the information we're willing to accept?  Wouldn't we want to gather all the information we could, regardless of the source?  I know I'm all about expanding my knowledge base, and I'll take it any way you care to dish it up, thank you!

Please understand that I'm not suggesting that you adopt, or even necessarily believe, all of the information, just that you open yourself up to receiving it and mulling it over to see what you really do think and what really does fit.

So, back to the spiders:  If spiders show up in your space in greater than normal numbers or with more persistence (I once had a spider follow me around - literally - for a whole morning before I said, "Okay!  I GET it!", whereupon he went on about his spider-y business elsewhere), then you are supposed to pay attention to things represented by the spiders.  They are all about being creative, especially where alphabets and the written word are concerned.  Are you supposed to be writing?  Are you stifling creativity in some other way?  Are you "stuck" anywhere in your life (job, relationship, thought process, etc.)?  Look around and see where you could be more creative and/or what you need to do to get un-stuck.

My apologies to Mr. Andrews if I've oversimplified or misquoted (the book is in storage right now because I recently moved and haven't unpacked everything yet), but you get the idea.  If you're really interested, I suggest you get the book for yourself.

I further suggest that you take another look around the big, wide wonderful world around you and see what else you've been missing.  There's LOTS of stuff out there!  How much of it do you (or I) really pay attention to, think about in any depth, or have any interaction with whatsoever?  I have to go walk around and look at my neighborhood now - lots of stuff just around the corner, even! 

 

The Present

Okay, let's start with true confessions:  I have a short attention span.  I mean, REALLY short!  They say that the sign of a creative mind is several unfinished projects lying around, and I'm going to go with that thought.  I'd hate to think that it's just because I'm...hmm, what's the word...can't come up with a term, but it relates to failure-to-follow through.  Nah - I'll go with creative.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Having said that, I'll also say this:  Maybe it's not so much a creative thing as it is a level of interest thing.  There are so many things out there that interest me, and I feel like I have to at least TRY them all (or as many as possible)!  Then, sometimes I lose interest along the way and move on to the next thing.  We can't love everything all the time, can we?

Ultimately my point is this:  Life is way too short to waste my time with things that don't interest me, even if once upon a time they did.  If I lose interest, rather than flog a dead horse, I merely move on to the next point of interest.  Hey - a weird analogy just popped into my head!  Let's say that you're on a sightseeing trip across America (you can see where this is going, can't you?)  You wouldn't just stand and stare at Old Faithful for the whole trip - you'd get back in your car and head out to the Grand Canyon and over to Venice Beach to see the freaks and up to San Francisco to Fisherman's Wharf and all the rest of it!  Similarly, I'm a firm believer in pursuing your interests, but when interest wanes, move on...  There's a BILLION things out there (and no, I don't think I'm exaggerating) to see and do and try!

So, that's the rest of my little introduction.  Not that you cared so much, but introductions are a good thing, I think - makes it friendlier.  What I'll post on here is whatever enters my head and/or whatever I create with my hands or whatever wonderful things that I come across to share.  As with other areas of my life, it could be a daily thing, or a weekly thing, or some of each.  Depends on what life presents me with that particular day.  Speaking of presents, this is one of my favorite quotes:

    "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery.  Today is a gift - that's why we call it the present."  ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

That is my gift today - a nudge to you to go and do something with your ever-new, ever-PRESENT!  I'm off to do the same!

Introduction

I was originally going to title this blog "Random Girl", because that's how I feel a good deal of the time, but then I began reevaluating.  One of my deeply held beliefs is that there are no accidents, and that the reason things happen, or get said, or whatever, serves a purpose. If I truly believe that (which I do), then how could my thoughts and writings and such be truly random?

It's been my experience to this point in my life that even the weirdest, worst things that happen take a logical place in the big picture, but generally not until some time (sometimes a LOT of time) has gone by.

Most often something that happened to me, or that I heard or read somewhere, comes in handy when one of my children is faced with an issue of some sort.   Sometimes it's a friend who's having a trouble.  Sometimes it's an idea that turns into a business or that gets expanded into a bigger, better idea.

Following that train of thought, I mulled over some of the things brewing in my brain to write about here, and realized that IT WAS MAKING ME MORE AWARE, more fully present in my daily life.  It was also crystalizing thoughts and beliefs and information that I've been incubating for quite some time now.  That, I decided, was a VERY worthwhile thing (for me, at least), and obviously served a purpose.

The question then becomes:  If I realize, as I now do, that "random" isn't really a concept I believe, why would I include it at all?  The answer to this is that, at the moment that things are happening, or being said, or thought, or whatever, they may seem completely random.  It takes the context of time and further experience to see how it all holds together.

Hence, the title of this little blog:  I'm being Random on Purpose.  Some of my best insights and actions have followed stream-of-consciousness thought flow.  My train of thought derails frequently, and takes me where I wasn't planning to go, but the destination is usually better than the one I'd planned on...