Reverb10: Day 2

Day #2: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? (Author: Leo Babauta)

(I am not particularly a writer, unless it be my blog, and even then, it is half pictures anyway. So, I am going to replace this with "creative", be it writing, photography, knitting, or making fabric gimpy bunnies)

Television. Watch less of it.
I don't consider myself to watch a lot of TV. Maybe 2-3 hours before bed of our current "show". This may seem like a lot to some people, and very little to others. In some ways TV contributes to my creativity because it gives me time to knit. I can knot away a nice portion of some knitted garment in 3 hours. However, I need to change this from a nightly routine, to a couple of nights a week.

REverb 10

I am a little late for the tea party, but I've decided to join the Reverb 10 for December. I am going to post a couple a day until I catch up with everyone else...so here goes.

Day #1: One Word

One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you? (Author: Gwen Bell)

2010; Exhausting

Everything this year has made me tired.
I think it started with my inner struggle around my future. I feel as though I inhabit two different worlds sometimes (let's just be really simple and call them The Scientist & The Hippy). On some level I am ok with this, because I really enjoy both of them. My biggest fear is having to give one of them up, or to be sucked so deeply into one of them that I forget the other one exists. I fear not living my dreams. Giving up their dreams is what killed my grandmother and mother. I fear the same thing...
This mental struggle about my future has taken a lot out of me this year. It has made existence in both my worlds harder, from fear of losing them to fear of them becoming everything that I am.
This summer I sorta gave up. I realized that I could do bare minimum and still get by. I am not sure this option of living had ever occurred to me before. Problem is, when I do nothing I get depressed. This seems so strange to me because I love anything under the heading "relaxing". Yet, if I do too much of it, I slide into a strange messed up world inside my head. This summer I wandered straight into that head space not even noticing the "wrong way" traffic signs along the way.
Then in the fall I had some serious stress fall into my lap. Normally I would be able to handle it, but with my mental self already semi-ignoring the world I ran for the hills. Enter anxiety, my old friend. Sometimes the only way to calm myself down these days is to ask myself "are you ok RIGHT NOW? not five minutes from now, not tomorrow, but right now? are you going to die? Right now?" The answer to this question is always no. Which calms me down...most of the time.

2011; Adventure

I realize that to move beyond this mental place I find myself in (and to manifest the life that I want) I need to view my life and future with a sense of adventure. When you are full of adventure you can't be scared of the future, you can only be really excited by it. I want next year to be full of adventure. The simple kind. The complex kind. The spontaneous kind. The every day kind. Adventure of all kinds...

Levitation

Sometimes...you've just got to fly to make it there...

mischievous

When I took this photo, I was not feeling all that mischievous. It was windy out and very cold. I was waiting for a friend who was late and a girl in the parking lot behind me would not stop staring at me while I took pictures of myself jumping and twirling around.

There is something about this photo though...
Yes, I have that smile. Yes, I am peeking around a rusted old pole. Yet, it is the eyes that get me. As though I have just come from some devious magic or crafty prank. There is a sense of waiting to this photo that I love...I am just waiting for the next outrageous opportunity to come around the corner...

Bear Ears

My tiredness shines through in the moments when I am not smiling...
A cold day in the snow wearing my bear ears.

Walk in the rain

Sunlight in the tentacles...

Yesterday I didn't take any photo's. I spent the day buried deep in boxes of paper, sorting and searching for a single piece of paper I haven't seen in eight years. It is not the proverbial needle in a haystack, it is the actually needle in the haystack. We should all have to do this kind of thing once in our lives, right? I still have not found it, but I have many many boxes to go...
Out of the habit, I did not pick up my camera immediately upon rising this morning, as I have done every other day this week. However, as I was waiting for someone to arrive at my house, I walked through the kitchen jellyfish (see this post) that was full of sunlight. The camera came out and this is what happened...