As I was driving to my sister’s house late this afternoon, to visit with her and her sons and grandkids, I turned over ideas for today’s blog post. Nothing really resonated. So I asked aloud, What should I write about tonight?, and let it go.
As I sat chatting with Linda’s boisterous bunch, my mom arrived, with a stack of magazines. “For you,” she said, handing them to me. I was excited. The magazines were Country Gardens editions. And…I now knew what I would be doing later when I got home and what I would be blogging about.
Recently I skipped an assignment in the Walking in This World book. Called You want to make something of it?, the task was to hold a thought or question in my mind, and then quickly scan through magazines, cutting out images or words that caught my attention. Next I was to arrange the cut outs on posterboard and glue them down. And lastly, I was allotted 20 minutes to write down what I discovered about myself and my question, based on the images and words I was drawn to.
I love this type of exercise, and I find collage making to be fun. However, at the time, I only had a few magazines on hand to browse through. I decided to do this assignment another time. That time came today. My mom unknowingly provided the answer to my question, What should I write about tonight? In my world, the Divine is very responsive!
I spent about 40 minutes rapidly flipping through magazines, only pausing when a picture, word or phrase jumped out at me. I would cut that part of the page out, and move on. That was an act of willpower, as I normally stop to read interesting articles! Not tonight. I was letting myself be responsive, on an intuitive level.
When I was finished with the last magazine, I sorted through my scraps of paper and glued them to the poster board. Anchoring my board was the first thing I cut out…Write anything, Publish everything, Market everywhere…a definite draw toward writing. And a quote by Liz Gilbert, “What if you agreed to believe that you have more power than you think you do? That quote gave me goosebumps.
This was a powerful and enlightening exercise. I was drawn to beauty, gardening, creativity, intimacy, travel and writing. I had one real estate magazine and I laid it aside without looking within it. That doesn’t mean I dislike being a realtor. It means I wasn’t drawn.
Scotland managed to grab me, through a single travel catalog I had. The words “Expand your horizons” can refer to travel and also to my heart, my life. “Healthy, healing and awakening” reflects my desire to be as fit and well as I can and to heal from chronic pain. Awakening is the state I choose to dwell in.
The thought I held as I did this assignment was, “Show me where I am…” This collage is a snapshot of my journey, at the halfway point of 2016. I am focused on creativity, in many forms, writing, and expanding my horizons.
The pictures on the board overlap and that is a perfect portrayal of me right now. My life is overlapping in several areas as I continue a real eatate practice and write, as I walk alongside others and explore on my own, and as I experiment with a variety of creative endeavors. Like the collage, my life fits together and makes sense, to me.
The time IS now. I do have power…to create, to dream, to grow, to be. More power and more possibilities than I ever thought possible.
