Changing profile pictures

Many social media sites have the capacity to display a photo of you so that people can see who you are.  My photo for all of the social media sites that I'm on (Facebook, Ning, Betterfly, etc.) hasn't changed since I started the whole social media thing, even though many people I know change their photo on a regular basis.

Lately, I decided I wanted a change, so I uploaded an image that I've had on my computer for a long while.  It has a story behind it (doesn't everything?) and when someone asked about it, I decided to write a blog post about it.  So here's the story:

Around the Millennium (end of 2000, beginning of 2001) four powerful women met with an indigenous Hawai'ian elder, named Hale Makua, at the Volcano House near the Kilauea Volcano in Hawai'i.  I was one of the four women who participated in a very powerful meditation at the edge of the Kilauea crater (yep, literally right at the edge, with a thousand foot drop right before us - gave me a serious case of the heebie geebies, for sure!) with the elder as he chanted in his native language.  During the meditation, all five of us had the same vision, with some variations.  Each of us told their version of the vision with our interpretation of it.  The story of the vision below is the combined story of everyone's vision put together.

In the vision, the Sun cracked open like an egg and a lizard climbed out and descended to the Earth.  The lizard turned into a mountain covered in lush greenery.  The power of the feminine was reignited by this descent of the lizard to Earth and many souls who were waiting for this event began to descend and take form as powerful women who healed the Earth.  Places on Earth that had suffered from fire, drought, famine, or other disasters began to bloom and be productive again.

Each one of us felt it to be a very powerful calling and we worked together for a while trying to figure out ways to make the vision become reality.  While we were working together, I commissioned a graphic artist to create a painting of our vision.  The image below is the result of his efforts.  There is only so much that you can do to turn a whole vision into a single image that represents it, but I think that he did a very good job of it.  I actually made up T-shirts for all 5 of us with the image on it, and still have 2 of mine which I wear now and then.

So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Visioning

Vision board background - click to enlargeI've been meaning to make a vision board for quite a while now.  I have quite a few images and words that I've collected to put on it.  Unfortunately, because I haven't been feeling too creative and I haven't made time to work on many projects since completing my ARTbundance certification, I really haven't done much to advance it.

Today I was finally feeling a creative urge and that was the first project that sprang to mind.  I've had this background in mind for a while now, but just hadn't gotten around to doing it.  In the spirit of this week's class from SARK's Dream Boogie teleclass series, I decided to "just do it," like the Nike commercial says.

I used a prepared canvas board that is 18" by 24" and sprayed it with various colors of Radiant Rain shimmering mists.  I don't know how well it shows up in the photograph, but it is very iridescent.  For those of you who have the mists and are curious, I used 8 colors: Copper, Jasper Red, Rosebud, Just Peachy, Sky Blue, Celadon, Key Lime, and Solar Gold.

Side note: The sad thing is that the company that makes these sprays and Twinkling H2O pots of iridescent watercolors went out of business a while back.  They were a great company to work with back when I was in the retail craft supply business.  They were very generous with volume discounts when a set of new colors came out and they did great demos at every CHA I attended.

Anyway, today I used SARK's micromovents to get the background done, so the next micromovement is to find all of the clippings that I had collected for my vision board collage.  Once I find them, I need to go through them to see whether I have everything I need and, if not, collect the rest of the images for the collage.  The last step is the easiest - lay them out on the board in a pleasing way and glue them down with matte medium.  Easy peasy!  We'll see how it turns out...

Dreaming Boogie dreams...

SARK - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy - is conducting a teleclass again this summer and my stepmom asked me to sign up again.  We had both signed up for in the inaugural session of the class 2 months ago and not only participated in the class, but also got in the habit of calling one another after each week's class to chat.  Being that one of my intentions lately has been to reconnect with my family in ways that work for us, it seemed like a good thing to continue, so I decided to sign up again.  Besides, even if I didn't achieve my dreams from the last session of this class, I did very much enjoy it and the support of the community that SARK created around the class.

One of the things that I keep hearing over and over again - not just in this class, but also in other places lately - is that you need to name, define, and refine your dreams in order to attract them closer to you.  So, in that spirit, I thought I would put them out into the grand Universe by stating them again here on my blog.  So, without further ado, here they are:

My dreams are to make time to create every day, to find my perfect partner for play, and to decide what I most want to do for my 50th birthday coming up this September and make it happen.

While I can be incredibly creative when I actually take the time to sit down and make something, I have been in a dark place for a while now as I deal with some major problems that made themselves known back in the fall.  As a result, I haven't been sleeping well, I haven't been feeling creative, and I haven't been keeping up with my emails, my friends, or my blog on a regular basis.  I have time to create, but not much energy.  Since one of the things that makes me happy is creating, I want to use SARK's micromovements to make sure that I make at least a little time each day to do something creative to raise my happiness threshold as I deal with this ongoing mess.

It's been over ten years since my last relationship and I'd like someone in my life to play with, to take my mind off of my troubles, to travel with, to explore with, and to laugh with.  Sometimes dealing with this mess seems so much harder just because I feel as though I'm going through it alone.  That really isn't true, since I have good friends and family that I can lean on and talk to about everything, but that isn't the same as having a partner that's around all of the time.  So, I'm looking for ways to expand my love for myself and my service to others so that I can attract the perfect playmate for me.

And as for my birthday, I have a habit of not celebrating my birthday unless invited to do so by others, so I want to take the initiative this time to be sure to create something special for this milestone.  Right now, I have no idea what I want to create - whether I want to travel somewhere I've long been wanting to go, whether I want to take a class somewhere to learn a new creative technique,  if I want to be with family, or if I just want to throw a great party for everyone I know.  Or something else that I haven't even considered yet...  If anyone wants to leave comments giving me ideas, I'd welcome them!