A Visual Journal Page

I've had many beneficial things converge in my life over the last couple of months. One outcome is that I now paint daily before I go to work. This isn't painting to be "artistic" or produce things to show others--its purely to paint. I look forward to it. I don't procrastinate over it. It starts my day like nothing else can.

The output is starting to take the form of a journal because I now overlay my thoughts in with the images. This is something covered by Lisa Sonora Beam in her work (which I highly recommend you check out).

I woke up feeling a little anxious this morning and started working with images to see if I could parse out where my feelings were coming from. It was a combination of anticipating stress at work, worrying about my own position, a messy desk and having eaten a overly large, spicy dinner the night before. From that I was able to extract a few remedies:

Eat a light meal and drink some water
Get a little exercise in
Tidy up your desk
See how you can help at work to reduce the stress going on without getting sucked in yourself

(my remedies almost always include the above plus the situational thing--in this case work being stressful/chaotic right now)

I ended up my painting musings with this page. Thought I would share it with you here.

As I've gone over with Coach Max, as well as in my own coach training, work has far more room for choice than we often think it does.

However, its really easy to think otherwise, especially when others are affirming the opposite.

What Else Is Up?
I took the summer off from blogging to follow some other things. The visual journalling opened me up in a number of ways so projects that seemed far off or hard to complete all of a sudden became in reach.

Instead of beating my head over being a runner (injured) or surfer (nearly drowned) I decided to find other ways to get my nature/water fix in. Using a windfall from a work project, I treated myself to a stand up paddle board. All I knew is that every time I found myself passing a body of water be it the reservoir or the harbor, I found myself longing to be out there. Instead of waiting to have the flexibility to master surfing I'm going out RIGHT NOW to be on the water. I'm getting all the pleasure of being outside, the smell of open water and the sweet peace of just paddling and exploring.

Its amazing what opens up in the Now when you discard beliefs about how things should be. 

I have a few other items of note to share but I will save them for a separate post. Cheers.