:)

on tuesday, i burned through my remaining pencils in a hot and dedicated round of drawing. yesterday, the fire was still burning high and i (painfully) managed to make a drawing using the pencil stubs- whittling them down until they were ridiculously short and impossible to control. ha! but the gnarly hand cramp that resulted was entirely worth it. not only because the drawing i made is really cool (pics soon), but also because it taught me something about dedication and perseverance. two things i really need and deeply prize.

growing up, the only thing that was consistent was instability and chaos. problems were solved by moving. and we moved a lot. the longest span of time i've spent under one roof is 4 years. and that particular roof is a fluke in the group. 2 years seems to be the average when i look back. and that's even been the case since i moved out on my own. not a lot of stability there. and, more and more, i recognize that stability is a necessity when working toward goals that require a tremendous amount of dedication and focus. daily focus, daily dedication, daily effort in a single direction. persistence and commitment become near-impossible without some sense of stability or confidence that world will not fall apart later this afternoon.

and so i've been supplying stability and consistency to myself. it isn't easy and, some days, it isn't fun either, to tell you the truth. but the benefits are fun. and i'm becoming completely focused on maintaining a deep consistency within myself from here on out, to the absolute best of my ability. it is the only thing i know will get me to where i want to go.

i want to experience positive, joyful, lasting changes in my life and the only way to achieve that is with hard work. dedication and unshakable confidence in the value of art and its governance of my life. i'll get where i'm going one day. i can't really control how much time it takes or how long i might walk down a particular road. but i can control my own levels of dedication to the work. practice. practice. practice. and to truly make a deep, 7 day a week, commitment to art-making, learning, reading, writing, struggling, etc, etc, etc. and to a very large extent, i've already done that... but there's been a lot of second-guessing myself along the way. lots of waiting for the other shoe to drop... because, growing up, there always was another shoe and it always did drop.

but i don't live there anymore and all the shoes here are my own. i know nothing is going to fall apart later this afternoon and that it is entirely logical for me to trust the safety and security of my life at the present moment. i'm the one in charge and i supply my own level of encouragement, safety, and stability. and looking at my life from the outside, i can see i'm pretty good at that stuff. :)

the daily run, especially, has become a very active metaphor for how i want to live my life in general. with faith in The Practice. total trust in its Goodness. some days i catch myself trying to make excuses about why it might be alright to take the day off and just laze around. i'll tell myself oh, i did so much great work yesterday. i deserve to take it easy today and just clown around. it's a cutesy way of living in the past. yesterday is a wonderful memory. nothing more. if it does anything for Today, it lets me know that Today i can accomplish a great deal. but it isn't an excuse to take the day off. it's a brick to build with. today, i can keep building.

aren't i sickening!!!!! hahaha! but i tell ya, my winding daily affirmations are working for me! working wonders! i'm trying for tunnel vision these days. :)

BURN, BABY, BURN!