January 22, 2009
NOTE:
I’m late! I’m late!
For a very important date!
The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women workshop
is already on Secret 3!
But Jamie says there’s no rush — she’s so cool.
And there’s no time limit for signing up, either.
So if you want to play along, get all the information
on Jamie’s site and come on down!
What you love is
a sign from your Higher Self
of what you are to do.
Sanaya Roman, writer
The book we’re working with is Gail McMeekin’s The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women.
Here’s a brief excerpt to give you an idea of what it’s all about (I took the liberty of presenting the information in bullet form for clarity):
- There are three major Gateways through which you are invited to enter on this journey:
Engaging Your Creativity;
Mastering Your Challenges as a Creative Woman;
Actualizing Creative Results: The Power of Positive Priorities.
- Within each Gateway, there are a series of Secrets — essentials for a successful transition to the next Gateway.
- Within each Secret, there are specific Keys that unlock its mystery and spur your mastery.
- By the end of the book, you will have compelling goals and a plan of action steps to guide you on your chosen path.
- There are 12 Secrets, one for each week or each month of the year. You set your own pace.
Evidently, I’ll have to quicken my pace if I want to catch up with the rest of the group. This is week number 3, and the reports are due on Friday. I’ll see if I can go through Secrets 1 and 2 between now and the end of the weekend. Then I’ll explore Secrets 3 and 4, and by the end of next week, I will have caught up with the rest of the gang — over 100 participants.
Well… here I go!
January 21, 2009
I think I’ve told you before how easily I get bored.
If not, I’m telling you now: boredom follows me
around like a shadow. As far back as I can recall,
I’ve always ended up in a rut.
And this explains why I haven’t been posting as often as I’d like to: I get weary of writing the same thing on both my English blog and my French blog.
Once my English article is ready to post, I don’t feel like reproducing it in French, and vice-versa; the thrill is gone — I want to move on to something new. And to tell you the truth, I hate to translate, so imagine the fun I’ve been having over the past thirteen months.
But yesterday, on my walk back from the library, I had an aha! moment: I suddenly felt liberated from this self-imposed obligation of having identical blogs. From now on, each blog will be distinct and have a life of its own. I will do what I want, when I want, in whatever language I want.
Yet another milestone reached
on my road trip to happiness.
How sweet it is!
Why, you may ask, did I wait so long before taking this rather simple decision? I’m sure I could find many reasons that would explain my neurotic behaviour, but now is not the time to dwell on the past. Now is the time to snap out of this boring pattern, this masochistic discipline, and start using the rerouting opportunities presented to me by the Rune Raido.
In other words, I must master the art of being a bum
in order to boost my creativity.
We’ll see how that works out…
December 30, 2008
About Santa Claus
He didn’t bring me what I asked for. Far from it.
Instead of a MacBook Pro and a ZOOM H4, I got a boil.
And the boil isn’t in any ol’ place either: it’s on my face, in the middle of my right cheek, right under my big brown beauty mark.
Arrrgh!
While I’m typing this blog post, my festive furuncle sleeps soundly under a heavy coat of aloe gel. Good boil. As the pus-filled lump sleeps, a thought gives me the creeps: if I don’t kick myself in the butt and move on with my life, I will continue to ROT.
Which brings us to my next topic…
This website turned one year old on December 18
I went back and read my my very first blog post. I remember how completely drained I was that day. Drained by the months of patience and hard work it had taken for the site to go up. I can’t begin to count the hours spent on Skype with Tina Stephen, my tech guru, probing and testing, day and night, to finally figure things out and make my dream come true.
So there I was, inaugurating my custom-designed site, at the start of what I believed would be a rockin’ road trip through the past.
When I clicked to publish that first post, I was excited — oh yes, very much so. But at the same time, I realized what HIGH expectations I held for this site and that I would have to work very hard in order to keep the dream alive. (DOUBLY hard since I had had the brilliant idea of managing a French version of this blog thus doubling the work… doubling the stress.)
Yes, I was stressed. The stress kept getting heavier and heavier, and things started to become more and more boring as the weeks and months went by. Where had all the excitement and adventure and music and laughter gone? Why was my magical van so slow? Why did I always end up spoiling my fun?
Many times, I wanted to quit and shut down the site. Other times, I wanted to at least drop one of the blogs. Of course, the French blog would have been the one to go because it has the least traffic. The thought of this made me feel bad: How could I abandon my heritage, my culture?
Damn guilt.
All this to say that I’m glad I pushed ahead and pulled through — in both English and French.
I’m now ready to raise the bar and make this place a reflection of who I truly am and of who I want to become. I’m already focusing on getting rid of the perfectionist devil, and I’ll be starting a creativity class soon, but that’s a topic for another post.
I hope you all have some kind of end-of-year ritual. Personally, I find it important to look at where I have come from; to make sure I know where I want to go; and to pack my mind, heart and soul with whatever I’ll need for the journey ahead.
More to come as I count down the hours
that will lead us to 2009…
**The Year of The Oza**
Everybody conga!
