You're probably figuring out that the most productive things you need to do in life, you cannot do alone. Yet at this moment, you may not see how you can collaborate, nor can you sense how that might affect you. Indeed, your focus is still decidedly inward, where it belongs. But time is moving, and with it, your sense of identity. A variety of factors will help you shift the energy in your life and help you go a long way toward both developing and focusing your mission. You don't have to do much - just do what feels right every day, give the planets a chance to work their odd little miracles.

Jonathan Cainer this morning for virgos ... I had to smile almost completely chimes in with advice given to proponents of The Artists Way. At the moment I'm trying to institute a new regime of self care. Proper home cooked meals, vegetables, adequate sleep etc. Its a slow movement towards my goal of taking better care of myself.

Jory Des Jardins

great blog with even better blog roll.

make your own traditions

have a Buy Nothing Christmas

the barfy postcard project

hop over to visual chronicles to join in!

Life lessons

~ Life can be one big "do over" if we want it to be. It's never too late to make a dream come true, if even just a small piece of the dream.

~ The most powerful transformations can begin by doing just one kind or compassionate thing a day. Do one nice thing today for someone you really dislike...not for them, for you.

~ An attitude of gratitude will lead to plenitude.

~ Fear is a great motivator...if I get up off the couch long enough to allow it to be.

~ Pity parties don't get the credit they deserve. I think of them as a celebration of bottom dwelling. If I've reached the point where I'm throwing myself a pity party, there's nowhere to go but up.

~ Once I stopped thinking of depression as the enemy, it began to lose its power over me. That doesn't mean I stopped getting depressed--it just means I reframed it. Now I'm able to experience it without the accompanying fear. I've lived with depressive cycles long enough to understand that they're just that--cycles. I'll tumble down again...but I'll rise again, too.


from Life lessons

save the cameo

Our second last traditional purpose built cinema has its owners just put an application in to turn it into a superpub. Go here to get involved in saving the Cameo.

I've been going to the Cameo for over 10 years to see films, meet friends in the bar, go to film-makers events, and even meet and knit with my Stitch & Bitch group. Its a total part of my life. I love the atmostphere in the Cameo. Every person who works there loves film. It exudes film culture from every brick. If it goes our lives will be pulled even more into the banal, top down corporate life. The range of films we will be able to see in this city will be more narrow. Our cultural life will be definately poorer. Please sign the petition and write to the planning department if you live in Edinburgh. Please circulate the link to any people you know with Edinburgh connections.

i love this country sometimes

land of eccentrics - meet Rob the Rubbish

Hugh's

sex and cash theory

or grow your own trust fund.

cats in sinks because its monday

Selftaughtgirl's

good karma birthday

the craft

MANIFESTO!

via caterina

notes on surviving creatively a job for money

1. Use the commute for thinking time.
2. Stay in the present don't put everything onto 'when this job is over'. Keep seeing friends. Take pleasure in what you can even if its reduced to shocking pink post-it notes.
3. Do something creative everyday even if tiny. Phone someones or email someone about your project. Knit at lunchtime. Do post-it sized drawings.
4. If you can't get out at lunchtime - take a stack of postcards with you to the canteen and catch up on correspondence with friends.
5. Journal or do 'morning pages' its an exercise in saying 'Here I am' 'this is who I am' an affirmation of self when most work does the opposite.
6. Try and stand outside during your breaks to get natural light on your face even if for a few minutes to ward of SAD.
7. A nice pen always cheers me up.
8. Eat as well as you can. Double your cooking amounts and take in left overs. Almost always more nutrious than bought in a canteen and cheaper.
9. Invest in a treat for yourself. During one henious job in the docks (in the payments dept!) I would leap onto the first bus every Monday night and go to a cinema which had a half price ticket deal and see two films one after the other. It was indulgent. Indulge. Think of what that would be for you. A double cream hot chocolate... a bubble bath?
10. A warm cozy scarf and pair of gloves for waiting at bus stops.

away....

in Galway visiting friends. I love travel - the getting of distance from where you are to where you are going. Taking yourself along for the ride. I find my perspective on the life I've just left crystalises. I start to think the unthinkable. The truths I've been talking myself out of.

Hummmm travel isn't always comfortable.

Meanwhile the joy of catching up with friends, making new ones with adorable red haired toddlers, slowly browsing in superb secondhand bookshops, slowly sipping tea and writing postcards.

Here's where I visted yesterday

Retreat to Advance

I've been on a retreat these past two days - an enforced retreat. I was so tired on Monday evening I stayed home the day following and went to the doctors.

I closed the shutters lay down in my 'retreat space' futon and pile of blankets. Turned on the heating and shuffled out every now and again to reheat sausage casserole and read a bit of an Ian Rankin novel I'd borrowed from the library. The cats made themselves at home on top of me. Last night I stuck on a chicken to roast which I picked up on the way back from the doctors. Heaven ... comfort food. Watched a bit of TV. Today the cats had retreat cabin feaver and fought with each other over my innert body. I then graduated to women's magazines on the sofa. Luckily I'd had a shower and got dressed when I heard a banging at the door. It was a policeman making enquiries as my neighbour had died 'in suspicious' circumstances. Ian Rankin comes to my door. Yikkes and as a friend kindly pointed out I have no alibi...

However I feel SO much better. I was at the so tired I could weap stage on Monday night. Sometimes to STOP just everything is what is needed. Leaving our life for a bit helps us to pick up the thread again.

Serendipitously info came from Dhanakosa who offer buddist retreats and of course the Arvon Foundation have wonderful courses for writers.

Lorraines' blog about

tackling National Novel Writing Month - Get It Written

the relaxed urbanite...

more soon....

Goths

knit?

Interview with Jeffrey Yamaguchi

Lux Lotus: What inspired 52 Projects?

Jeffrey Yamaguchi: I would have to say my love of projects. While this is definitely about the actual process of making a creative project, it is also very much about how project-making fits into my life -- how making a concerted effort to make something unleashes my creativity. Everything that goes into a project, no matter how exhausted or frustrating it might get, deep down, where it counts, I feel energized, and I can tell my creative impulses and desire to make stuff just gets stronger. And this energy - I truly feel it course into all areas of my life. This idea of project-making, this is the underlying inspiration behind 52 Projects. The perhaps more straightforward answer would be that I have had some terrible jobs in the past, like pretty much everyone, you know, and being creative on my own terms through my own project-making efforts, that really provided me with an important outlet - I actually felt like I was accomplishing something of worth, and that feeling in turn helped me get through the day to day, and in the long run, sort of bend and twist and churn out a situation that was more ideal, closer to what I wanted to do with my life. This is an ongoing thing, of course. It will always be "ongoing."


more here

I'm currently waiting for my copy of the book which is on order at wordpower.

I nearly forgot

its National Novel Writing Month. It isn't too late to sign up!

More about it at the Guardian Blog

article about Sark

aka Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy

Happy Samhain!