And So It Goes...

Copyright Pilar Pollock 2009

So the magic mail box is filling up with birthday cards the last couple of days. This one is the work of my friend Pilar and as you can see, it's a riot of red. I just LOVE it. What made me laugh though was that when I opened it, it had "Happy Birthday Rockstar!" printed inside. That cracked me up. (It's a bit of an inside joke, but my girlfriends call me that.) I'm going to frame it and hang it in my studio-I know it's going to make me laugh every time I look at it.

I am madly preparing for AF, still. It's only 12 days away and I still have a ton of photocopying to do and I need to scare up some fabric. I am also finishing up a project I hosted for my Housemates. It's almost finished and I'll post about it when I get back from Artfest.

I gave the studio a good purging and it's much neater now. I have two boxes of goodies to share with my housemates. There's no Art Asylum happening this year at AF, so we decided we'd just have our own little one in our house and bring stuff to share. At first it was only one box, but then it morphed into two, which tells you how much cleaning and sorting I did.

I don't know why, but cleaning and organizing is hugely satisfying to me. I bought myself a book called "The Organized Life" by Stephanie Denton and I've found it had a ton of helpful ideas. I liked it so much I tabbed and made notes on post-it notes throughout the book. I am working my way through, room by room.

Speaking of cleaning up and simplifying, my friend Lisa got me turned on to Google Reader. It's the best little blog reading program ever! You just add the URLs of the blogs you like to read and then set Google Reader to be your browser's home page and every time you open your browser, you will see the latest blog update right there! You can even "star" posts you like and want to refer back to later and it will save them for you.

It's super simple to use and no more wasting time going from blog to blog seeing if there's been updates. As soon as you open your browser, the reader has them all right there for you! You can also customize your page to show things you will use and make it pretty. I love it and I wish I'd know about it sooner.

As for "being the leaf", I've had days where it's been easier than others to just relax and let life unfold, but I am committed to doing my best. If one day doesn't go as planned and I don't so so well with being Zen, then tomorrow is always another day. Each day is a clean slate. So far though, opportunities have come knocking and there will be more writing in my future. I am excited and happy about that.

I had a unique opportunity to do something altruistic the other day and help someone develop their empathy and compassion skills, as part of their education. It felt really good to be able to share my knowledge and experience and to know that in some small way I have influenced how this person will treat the people he encounters in his professional life. It reminded me that everything we do makes a difference. Even if we don't get to see the results, our interactions with other people affect how the world is. Our words and actions matter, sometimes more than we will ever know.