Wednesday, April 30, 2003

hot and cold This morning I got really excited about my work again. So much is coming together. I'm seeing relationships among ideas and pieces that I didn't see before. My mind got very heated up! It was a delicious feeling. Made a decision (or the decision made me) to go ahead and buy the scanner I've been wanting. My plan is to go get it in the morning. All the obstacles have fallen away - including my reluctance. I've been bumping into "but I'd have to have the scanner" so many times recently. Now instead of bumping into that little wall, I'll just open the scanner and use it. After lunch I decided to do some computer work to earn the last April money. It's the last day of the month. I worked all afternoon, got absorbed in it, had a reasonably good time, but found afterward that I was kind of sucked dry. My artmaking excitement, my wild mind, had all gone flat. Gradually this evening, after a nap, my art energy has come back. It's a good lesson to use that heat, that morning creative energy, when I have it. Ooh, I can feel it now, even at almost midnight. Life is SO good! 11:56:39 PM    comment []

more on "flowing energy" I want to say a bit more about the Lynn Grabhorn book, Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting. This is where I got the idea to ask myself "What thought would make me happy right now?" (See the April 4 entry.) Her basic idea is that how we are "flowing energy" is the only thing that's really important. If we're flowing energy toward happiness, joy, ecstasy - then we create what we want to create. If we're flowing energy toward anything less - then we create things we say we don't want. She suggests that a "to do" list be replaced by a "to feel" list. This sounds a bit simplistic, even preposterous, but it does seem to work well. Also I want to note that the customer reviews at amazon.com are very mixed. Some people really liked the book, others scorned it completely. It reminds me of the reviews I read of Depression is a Choice. There were lots of reviews of that book that berated it even though the readers had just seen the title. Boy, did a lot of people get angry when they saw that title! I liked the book, myself. Once, after reading it, I pulled myself out of a major upset by remembering a sentence from it: "All my suffering now is self inflicted." There's a sort of intermediate step between utter despair and "flowing energy of happiness" that the author of Depression is a Choice suggests. If you can't think of a single thought that could possibly make you happy, just focus your mind on something completely neutral. Choose something that seems to rouse a zero emotional response. For the author, it was thinking of "green frogs." (Now, just thinking about "green frogs" makes me smile.) 11:41:19 PM    comment []