Lifeprints

Ah, yes, I dreamed the packing was done!  And it will be, I know.  As with all onerous tasks, one can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The surprising thing is that it is taking so long, and that summer is at its mid-point now.  My midsummer night's dreams are usually about what methods I might use in order to finish moving my belongings from Blue Heron Lane to Clarendon Hills where we now reside.  I awaken and mentally walk through all the rooms in the "old house", assessing what is left to pack, what will go to an estate sale, etc.

Some things are continuing as usual . . . my latest journal class has wonderful participants, eager to enhance their journal-keeping skills. Time goes so quickly I can hardly catch my breath some days.  Friends call, we have coffee or invite them for dinner.

Other things are temporarily different . . . Our dogs hover at our ankles as we unpack boxes, wondering whether we're coming or going, wondering whether we will take them with us (of course we will!.  We've been tempted to put in a revolving front door for the Comcast technicians as they continue to create new possible fixes for our waxing and waning internet service at our new house.  Perhaps Qwest wasn't so bad after all.  Direct TV was a blessing this past nine years, I know.  Amazing how dependent we get on our internet services.

And still other things won't ever be the same again.  The loss of my long-time friend Marcia in May is still a shock.  Every time I start to call her to see if she's still at her office, ready for a spur-of-the-moment dinner, the shock of her death, peacefully in her sleep, hits me again.  A punch to the heart and stomach that will take a long time to fade. 

I hope things will go more smoothly during the second half of the summer, that the sea of boxes full of our belongings will diminish with each day . . . five boxes a day is do-able and makes a tremendous difference in my sense of accomplishment.  I'm turning my thoughts toward the continuation of my writing projects, and those projects are my highest priority during the last quarter of 2010.

What are your midsummer night's dreams?  Are they the same all the time, or do you complete or discard some of them and move on regularly?  If you could complete one dream this summer, what would it be?  What steps might you take to begin or make more progress?  What is stopping you?  What can you do RIGHT NOW?

I'll check back at the end of July . . . surely there will only be a FEW boxes by then!

And I do mean "moving".  After much planning, hedging, sorrow and acceptance, we have moved from Blue Heron House to a house in a neighborhood . . . a nice neighborhood, but a neighborhood nonetheless . . . away from the lake, the studio, the labyrinth and the ten acres which was both a blessing and a curse.

The dogs are trying to acclimate themselves to their new dog door, their tiny back yard, and leash walking, something they've almost never done.  They were six months old when we moved to Blue Heron Lane, and we are all adjusting.

Change can be good, and of course purging belongings and junk is always good.  So we're purging, sorting, donating, selling, and settling into the new house, recreating the bedrooms, office, home theater, creativity rooms with a lot less space in each place.  But we are not living in Haiti, and we're not pelicans with oil-drenched wings, struggling to survive.  So I am grateful.

I hope to find a new home for my round journal table within the next couple of months, but in the meantime, I'll be roaming a bit.  If you are someone with an office and an empty "conference room", I'd love to settle in with my table.  If you are someone who would love to HAVE a seminar room or training room for small groups, please let me know that, too, and perhaps we could share some space.

I hope we will feel fairly well settled by the end of the summer, and I'm very much looking forward to my France In The Fall:  Provence and Paris  adventure this fall with some wonderful women, and perhaps one or two couples.  It will be a beautiful season to explore Provence, and walking throughout Paris streets is magical in any season.

Check out the details on my "Journeys" section, or on my blog, http://woodswomanabroad.blogspot.com   And perhaps you would like to fill one of the last two spaces in my Journal To The Self workshop beginning July 13, 5:30-7:30 p.m.  Check out the details in the Workshops section of this website.

Now I have to go back to packing and unpacking, packing and unpacking . . . 

Well, the 5th Annual Northern Colorado Writers' Conference was a great success!  Thanks to Kerrie Flanagan and her dedicated group of people, 160 writers were able to benefit from workshops, pitch sessions, slush pile session, agents, editors, and other accomplished authors at the two-day event.

The Hilton Hotel was an excellent venue, with more than adequate facilities, great room rates, good food and even decent wine!  I forget how much these types of events energize the writer in me (and in everyone in attendance, I would imagine).  

What makes us want to write?  And if we are driven to do so, why don't we do it on a more regular basis?  Fear?  Time?  Inexperience? I will guess the bottom line is always fear.  If we weren't afraid that our writing aspirations were laughable, we would make time to do what we MUST do, and that is to write.

When we are writing, writers are happiest, even when the writing product itself is less than stellar.  That may not hold true across the board, but generally speaking, we long to sit down for hours, uninterrupted, and play with the words that have been burning stories in our heads for days, weeks, months, years.

If you are one of  those wanna-be writers who could use a gentle nudge, perhaps you'll check out some of the workshops offered on my site.  Writing only happens when we sit down and put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboards.  Nothing happens when we refuse to allow ourselves to get something DOWN.  

So muse about your potential stories all you want . . . but finally, it's "butt in chair time", as Bret Anthony Johnston says, that matters more than inspiration or talent.   You can be a brilliant writer, or at least have that potential, but if you don't actually WRITE, it doesn't matter, does it?

Don't feel too guilty if this sounds like you.  It often sounds like ME as well!  But I return to the keyboard and the journal page again and again, as I've been doing in some form for over a half century, and I will never be sick of words on the page, mine or someone elses.  Being an aspiring writer requires that we read good books as well.  A bit of reading, a bit of writing, a bit of walking, and perhaps a class, a writer's group, a conference such as the one I attended this past weekend . . . all are ingredients that make an exciting writing soup!

You can begin now . . . 

Well, I see it has been two months since I last posted here, which indicates, at least to me, what a hectic time it has been.  That's no excuse for not sharing the ups and downs of my life since the fire of December 12, which I mentioned in that long-ago post of December 19, 2009.

It's been two months of living with the wonderful restoration people at CoCat, a Denver company which has been a lifesaver, tackling the tedious, detailed task of getting our house back in order, sending multi-person crews of cleaners, drywall people, painters, etc., while trying to give us at least some semblance of our normal lives in the midst of it.  A very big task indeed.

But after nearly nine weeks of waking up each morning to unlock the front door for Rosie and her amazing team of cleaning people, they began to feel like family.  And now the house is quiet, our shy cat, Heathcliffe, can roam the rooms without the threat of being surprised by yet another workman or workwoman, and we can sleep in if we don't have an early appointment somewhere. 

I'll bet our dogs are a bit lonely, however, because they too began to see Rosie, Chris, Jody and Joan as four more playmates, four more loving foster-parents, and I think Luna and Marley sort of miss the activity!

Spring is within striking distance, though the labyrinth paths still have some snow on them.  What do you think will sprout in your actual and metaphoric gardens in the next few months?  Is there anything you are anticipating that might show up in the next two months?

I know I am anticipating moving away from Blue Heron House and the Studio, the labyrinth, the lake and mountain views, and while I am not looking forward to any of it, it is what it is, and I have to remind myself that I am grateful not to live in Haiti at the moment.  We are slowly packing up our belongings, sorting out the ones we don't need or can't use in our next house, about eight miles down the road from where we are now.

I hope many of you will visit The Studio on Wednesdays, noon-2:00 p.m., walk the labyrinth by yourself, with friends, or in our Full Moon Labyrinth Walk events, or take a short class from me through Lifeprints sometime in the next few months.

Our France 2010 Women's Adventure is in place, and I would love to have some of you accompany our group to Provence and Paris (for info, see this website, and go to the "Journeys" section).

As for my own upcoming activities, I'm hoping to settle into our next house and begin a disciplined practice of working on my four book drafts (one at a time, of course), especially Windflowers:  Fragments of a Life, which I will complete for my M.A. in English/Communication Development.

What are your goals, shoulds, wants, wishes, dreams for the next few months?  Sit down, pen in hand, and make a quick list.  What shows up on your pages after five minutes?  After ten minutes?

Are there any surprises?  Are there some things on your list that have been on every list you have made for the past five years?  These might be things to focus on.  Explore the surprises, and as for those tedious repeats . . . ask yourself if you still REALLY want to accomplish those things.  Give yourself a break.  Choose.  Wisely.  Peacefully.  Now.

Take care.

Joannah

I cannot believe it is less than a week before Christmas.  Snow is still on the ground from two weeks ago, and the temperatures have made me think I am still living in Ohio, where I grew up.

Our Colorado sunny skies haven't been quite enough to melt the snow and ice surrounding our homes and on the edges of our streets, but cold snowy days are also wonderful reasons to stay inside, stay warm, make soup, write in our journals, work on a project that requires a few hours of our uninterrupted time.

What are your plans for the next ten days, the last ten days of 2009? Are some of your family members coming in to celebrate with you?  Are you going out of town to see loved ones?  Or have you decided to just stay home in the solitude surrounding yourself.  

We had a fire in our house last Saturday, and though it could have been much worse, though the animals are all safe, though there was only a concentrated area of fire damage, the whole house is full of oily soot and smoke residue.  The restoration company and the insurance company are working together to put the house back together, clean every inch of every room, remove all fabric furniture, bedding, clothing, stuffed animals, decorative pillows, etc. for decontamination.  But in the meantime, our home (one's personal world) is quite disrupted.

To me this is a metaphor for my internal life.  What smoke and soot must I remove in order to restore my equilibrium after such an invasive event as a fire?  How do I best capitalize on the good fortune of having a fire that only destroys an electronic piano and one part of one room of a large house?  And how do I set my priorities so I don't get bogged down in the mess of this event?

These are questions any of you could ask yourselves at the end of any year, whether you had a fire or not.  What might you plan for 2010 that will restore your energy, your creativity, your attitude, something that needs uplifting, examining, reconstructing?

Spend ten minutes with your journal and a comforting pen and write about the things you hope to plan, do, look forward to, in the first few months of 2010.  This isn't like making New Year's Eve resolutions.  It's more like a thoughtful assessment of what you hope will be your daily life.

Have a calm and peaceful holiday, surrounded by the things and people you love most!

"if you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears"-Glenn Clark

Wow!  That's quite a tall order, isn't it, when you think about it?  But essential if we want to live a peaceful life, as well as travellihg far and fast.

This quote came from a LinkedIn discussion about favorite quotes.  I don't have any idea who Glenn Clark is, but the quote struck me as especially timely as the holidays approach, as the new year approaches, and as we end another year of economic upheaval.

I suspect there have been many opportunities to feel fear, envy, jealousy, and great difficulty forgiving a former boss, a relative, a friend, a stranger for some of what might be happening in your life right now.

Try this:  Make a list of the things Mr. Clark asks you to "take off".  Envies.  Jealousies.  Unforgiveness.  Selfishness.  Fear.  

Now scribble.  Do a flow write about anything that comes to mind when you read those words.  Maybe all your thoughts are around fear.  Or maybe you are jealous of something or someone, but haven't been selfish.  Whatever gets your attention, explore it.

What do you need to do, to take off, so you can travel lighter, farther, faster?  

Perhaps this can be a daily exercise for a week.  Notice any changes at the end of the week.  Evaluate whether it would be worth your while to repeat the exercise for a second week.

You might be breathing more easily by the time the New Year wave is cresting.

Happy traveling . . . 

 . . . since my last post.  Just over a month, and saying "where does the time go" seems like old hat.  So does that phrase, "old hat".  Do we just wander through our lives, clocking the time, waking up each Monday morning groaning, "Another week . . . Gee, where did the time go?"  

Perhaps that's just part of living our lives these days, when we are either so busy or so bored (I can truly say I can't remember a time I felt bored) that we don't have time to actually pay attention to the moments in every day.  With economic woes, scrambling to hold on to half of the stability we thought we had, watching our children grow up, our parents grow ill, the wars in the world continue without skipping a beat, almost no matter what our world leaders do, perhaps sometimes we just want to keep our heads down and get through each day safely.

I'm on several LInkedIn groups, one of the  titled LinkEds and Writers, and someone threw out a discussion question asking for members' favorite literary quote.  While some of the responses weren't actually literary, each had a message many might find appealing.  One of them just showed up on my screen from Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Magical Child, The Crack In The Cosmicc Egg and many other books for parents and educators, dealing with creativity, spirituality and imagination in children.

His quote is not reserved only for children, however.  "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”   Now how powerful is that. I believe one of our biggest fears is looking foolisn, being wrong, and it prevents us from stepping out of that safe "head down" cocoon we've woven.  Think about your own days, your own dreams, your own life, just for a few minutes. 

If you are one of the busy ones, is any of your busyness directed toward  living a creative life?  If you are struggling financially, is any of your effort for a new, different, additional job focused on your own creative dreams?  If you HAVE to have a job that just puts food on the table, where do you make room for something that fills your heart-cup?  How much of your resistence to these activities has to do with fear of being wrong?  

Try this:  If I didn't have to worry at all about doing it wrong, what would I do right now?  What would I do in the next six months?  In the next year?

Write down everything that comes to your mind, scribbling, not worried about sentences or content. Only pay attention to honesty in your words.  If   when you're finished, you find the whole list too scary, put it away for a week or a month.  Get it out again and revisit what you wrote.

If TIME is flying by so quickly, be aware that you will be ten years older, twenty years older, and still may not have tried one thing on that list.  Perhaps just the very notion of your own self-deprivation will spur you on to take the least scary and most scary items you've written about, and drop-kick yourself into an attempt to do both of those things.

After all, what's scarier than leading that life of "quiet desperation"  Thoreau wrote about in Walden in 1864?

Even the old rock song asks, "If lovin' you is wrong, I don't want to be right."  Try something new today or next week.  Dare to risk being wrong for the reward of doing something you really want to do!

 . . . well, not stormy, but certainly WINDY at this point.  I began the evening out on my back deck, with Luna and Marley, my Golden Retrievers (and no, I didn't name Marley after the book.  He was born long before the book was published . . . ), and my dinner.  Soup, Caesar salad, foccacia bread, mango iced tea and half a molasses cookie.  A relaxing evening, and it wasn't even 5:30 yet.

The breeze was cool and gentle out there, the dogs were lounging in the wild grasses, occasionally getting up to wrestle with one another.  Reading my book, I felt the wind begin to kick up, flapping the pages I was attempting to read, and finally breeze turned to wind.  I picked up my dinner tray, book, called to the dogs and went inside.  After cleaning up the kitchen, I glanced at the clock and walked into my home library, settled on the aubergine couch with the dogs and one cat and promised myself two hours of uninterrupted reading.

But for one phone call from my daughter, I accomplished just that, and by 8:15, the wind had worked itself up to a howl, the dog door was flapping angrily in the lower hallway, and the windows were shaking mightily.  These are the nights I am grateful for a solid roof over my head, warm soup in my midsection, a good book and an evening by myself.

I returned from my most recent Italy Women trip in the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning and still feel the effects of the time travel over the water to my beloved heart country and back.  So my late-night forays into the cyber world are curtailed, it's 9:05 p.m. and I'm ready for bed.  Another reason to be grateful . . . a warm bed, protected from the elements.

So for tonight, how about writing a bit of this:  What does a howling wind do for or to you?  Is it frightening, soothing, exhilarating?  When you were a child, did the wind wake you up?  Who comforted you when you were afraid?

And in this darkest of economic times for many many people, do you have a warm home, soup or other nourishing food to keep you well-fed and healthy?  If not, what is your circumstance right now?  

Write about what you have, what you don't have, that brings you comfort, makes you feel safe in your universe.  What do you need for a feeling of well-being?

Sleep well.  See you next time.

Joannah

Today I returned from a two-day camping trip with my long-time friend, Marcia.  We've been talking about doing this for the past three or four years, perhaps, but the summers come and go, we are busy people, and we just never quite get (or take) the opportunity to block out just ONE weekend for the two of us to pack up a tent, sleeping bags and all the accompanying paraphernalia and head for the hills.

Over 25 years ago, my father came out to Colorado to visit me and my children, and he went down to Old Town to visit a favorite leather store.  The owner of the store began to talk with my dad about wildlife, about the woods, and their shared love of nature and the wild.  The owner showed Dad some photos of his property west of Fort Collins, and casually mentioned that the adjoining 40 acres was for sale.

That very afternoon, Dad urgently coaxed me into being his chauffeur.  We headed for the property, then back to town to meet with my attorneys, and before I knew it, he had purchased the piece of land in Paradise Park!  There were huge outcroppings of moss rock and beautiful views among the pine trees.  He went back to Chicago, but my kids and my then-husband began to go up to the land often for picnics.  

Marcia and I were Lamaze teachers at the time, and our families had a few camping adventures up on "the land", some of the only really great family times either one of us had in those tumultuous years.

These days, our kids are grown, the property belongs to my children, those marriages are long over, and we finally, two days ago, gathered our gear, food, and my Golden Retriever, Luna, and fulfilled our long-postponed plan.

The tent went up easily, the camp stove worked perfectly (until this morning, but that's another story), and Luna was an ecstatic, well-behaved companion for both of us.  The matching turquoise canvas sling chairs sat by the fire pit, often with Marcia and me settled in them, books in hand.  

The moon was full this weekend, and rose orange out of the hilly horizon, offering a natural night-light.  The skies were blue, the occasional threat of thunder and rain blew over (until this morning) and our little camping weekend was all we hoped it might be.

It was short and sweet, but we promised one another that we won't wait another three or four years for the next round of sleeping on the ground!  And I already miss that exquisite pine scent surrounding me on the Paradise Park hillside.

And for your writing prompt, ala Abigail Thomas (though these questions are mine), think about this:

When was the last time you were in the dark in the woods?

What would it take to coax you to the wilderness as your primary residence?

If the whole notion of this woodswoman stuff isn't appealing to you, where would your fantasy home be?  On a sandy beach?  In a castle?  In a highrise apartment with a rooftop garden, overlooking all of Manhatten? Paris? London? Bangkok?

Get out your journal and a favorite pen and write for 20 minutes.  Go!

 . . . and I'm so glad I do, because I've been teaching more and more of it.  It's a circular thing, I think.  I write memory scraps and they come alive.  I teach others how to write them, and THEY (both the writing and the students) come alive!  And then I take a break and read one or two of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of memoirs I have on my shelves, occasionally reserving one at the library, and my enthusiasm for writing, my admiration for the authors I read, and my dedication to help others turn their memory scraps into memoir are stirred again, and I'm off.  Writing, teaching, reading.

Last week I was holed up in the San Juan mountains above Ouray, Colorado, for a much needed break from everything, everything but writing and reading.  I had brought six memoirs and three book group books, hoping to make a dent in my pile.

Abigail Thomas is the author of a couple of books on writing memoir and I've been recommending her in my classes.  But I have never read one of HER memoirs, so now was the time.  First, A Three Dog LIfe and then Safekeeping.  Without going into great detail, I encourage you to take a glimpse at both of them, especially if you still believe that a memoir has to start at the beginning of your life and continue until you die, which means you couldn't possibly finish it because you are still alive.

Thomas writes delicious, poignant, starkly honest memory scraps, about short or long sections of her life.  Both of these books are excellent illustrations of the fact that you don't have to include EVERYTHING about your life, or even about a particular incident in your life, in order for the reader to understand what you were experiencing, to put the pieces together, so to speak.

I highly recommend both of these books.  They are short reads, and might be just the inspiration you need in order to stop thinking you have nothing to say about your life.

Thomas teaches writing here and there, in workshops and in an MFA program at The New School in New York.  Here are a few of her writing prompts. 

Try them:

     Two pages that contain a kitchen table, a slammed door, a dead cat.
     Two pages that take place in water
     Two pages of apologies

Now, don't say you have nothing to write about . . .   pen to paper . . . go!

I just returned from teaching two workshops at ArtUnraveled, an incredible week of creativity in Phoenix (yes, I know it's hot, but the Embassy Suites are very well air-conditioned, and well located for this wonderful event!).

The women in my workshops were phenomenal, willing to write honestly, share in safety, and sit quietly listening while teach took her turn reading parts of her memory scraps, either from photos or from the many prompts they created from my handouts.

Memoir seems like such a scary thing, though many of us do want to write down pieces of our lives for posterity, for our families, for ourselves.  But I have learned for myself that memory scraps are easier to do, and they ARE parts of memoir, just as the fabric scraps in a sewing room become a beautiful quilt, no matter what the colors or sizes of the scraps or the finished product.  

So thank you, magical participants.  I wish you continued progress on your quilts of words, and hope to see some of you next year at AU.

If you are reading this, you might be ready for a prompt of your own . . . Write down the first thing you think of when you hear the words "house" or "family" or "childhood summers" or "scary dreams" or "family pets".  This "first thing" can either be a good memory or a bad one . . . all our lives are made up of both, albeit the proportions of good and bad are different in each of our lives.  No matter, we are all unique and we ALL have something important to say.

So . . . take that "first thing" you thought of and write it down.  Now write five more things that come to mind from that one thought.  Now write a paragraph about each, or do a 10-minute flow write, incorporating some or all of those five things.  Where does your memory and your pen and paper take you?

When you are finished with your 10-minute write, you have completed a memory scrap.  Can you do another one? You are on your way.

I'm sitting at a library table in the living room of Stone Walls, my retreat home near Cavendish, Vermont, typing this and listening to a compilation CD of some of my favorite "exercise paced" music, from Billy Joel to Todd Rundgren to the Doobies to a group from Italy called 883 (Otto, Otto, Tre) with an Italian soloist, Caterina Caselli as guest singer.

Perfect pacing for my workouts on the Gazelle, when I make time for them.  But now these same tunes are accompanying my exercising fingers, bringing words to all of you.  And I feel relaxed for the first time in months.

It has been raining daily, sometimes all day, here in Vermont, since just after Memorial Day.  Same stormy clouds as the ones hovering over our home in Colorado this past six weeks.  We are hoping for beautiful weather for the weekend of July 24-26 for Ashley's wedding, and since she and I are spending 10 days alone at Stone Walls before the rest of the family and friends descend, we've decided to blow wishes to the clouds, appealing to their romantic nature, and requesting some good weather building up to the wedding weekend. 

Today the prediction was for rain all day.  Instead the sun shone brightly in a completely clear sky until about noon, when white puffy clouds rolled in, threatening to darken, but never quite achieving that somber air.  

At each sunny hour's approach, we would say, "Well, if it's this sunny until 4:45, the wedding ceremony will have been completed in the gazebo. . . . well, now everyone will have been in the wedding tent beginning their dinners . . . well, now we don't have to worry about the bride and groom dancing to thunder booms . . . "  If it just does THIS on the wedding day, it will be spectacular. 

So we thank the sun today and the mix of benign clouds.  We will watch carefully and not mention bad weather . . . and perhaps the weather combination will be as perfect in two weeks as it was today!

WRITE:  What does today's weather remind you of?  What do you hope for when you look at the sky each morning or night?  Are you comforted by rain?  Snow? Burning, sunny heat? The breezes that come with cool fall weather? 

Write about your favorite weather and your least favorite weather.  How do these conditions impact your emotions?  Your activities?  Your motivation?  Do tell . . . 

and yes, first of all, I'll mention that my daughter is getting married July 25 at our retreat in Vermont.  I'm so excited for her and for her fiance, a wonderful man who has already been warmly welcomed into our family circle.

So instead of teaching classes this summer, I've been making a beautiful wedding quilt for them,  which has sparked (again) my love of fabric and sewing . . . that gentle hum of the sewing machine, creating more and more pieces of the cloth puzzle that is any quilt project.

I'm looking forward to teaching at ArtUnraveled in Phoenix in early August, a memoir workshop and a Writing From Pictures photo-journal workshop, each one a full day event.  Two of my favorite activities in the world, both allowing us to write about our lives in a multitude of ways.

The Wildflowers memoir group will continue to meet once a month beginning this fall, and I'll gather a new Luna/Crone group in January.  

I'm looking forward to getting busy again with my own writing, after putting it on the back burner in favor of the wedding quilt, and I'd like to write more about the process of creativity as it unfolded during that large project.

I hope your summer is filled with relaxation as well as with all those projects that weigh heavily on your days.  It's time to chill out a bit, in the midst of our economic woes, the international teeter-totter we hear about daily, and our ever present efforts to contribute to a better world, despite all its trials.

Try to watch the sunset at least a few times each week.  Tonight's view from my office was spectacular, filled with multi-shades of pinks, salmons and oranges streaked across the blue sky.  I am grateful for sunrises and sunsets every day.  Now it's time to sleep.

Back at you soon. 

The world hasn't imploded, and the economists say there are signs of some slow improvement, but for most of us, things still look fairly precarious when we poke our heads out of our newspapers, offices, bedrooms, cars, and we still feel hesitant, afraid, frustrated.  Maybe we're getting bored with all this talk about the "economic crisis" and job losses.  But our life-facts remain, and we know we need to shift our focus, find new ways of looking at our world.

If you've been using the writing prompt in my last post (Allow), you have a long list of feelings of chaos and the things that bring you some balance for even a short few minutes.  

Check your list again.  Is your list of chaos situations and responses the same as it was last time you looked at it?  Are there a few more or different things on that list?

Have you been able to allow yourself to do a few small things to bring you into better balance?   If so, excellent.  If you haven't taken the time to allow some comfort into your life, can you think about why that is so difficult?  Try at least one thing this week.

Now consider your talents, your experience, and some of your unsung desires?  If you could start now with work you find really stimulating, what might that be?  Stretch your imagination and play with the idea of injecting a beloved hobby with a bit more direction, perhaps allowing it to become an income producing activity.

Do you love to write?  How about offering your services to students for whom writing does not come easily.  Are you good at bridge, tennis, a craft, a foreign language?  Charging for your expertise in those areas might allow to reap financial benefits from your recreational skills.

Write down five talents you have.  Muse on paper about how one or more of those can take you in a new career direction, even part time.

Now . . . keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities in these areas.

See you again soon.

Process/Plan/Process/Plan

Allow

Yes, it's in the news, it's in our lives, it's everywhere, worldwide.  The "economic climate" seems to be wiggling its way into the "summer, fall, winter, spring" as a fifth season overshadowing all rain, hail, snow, sun forecasts.

Searches for "job loss", "grief stages", "job loss depression" and other related topics have increased by 70% over last year's search data.  While we'd rather not admit it, the challenges at home and in the world DO affect our emotional mental health, and the emotional effects of financial difficulties take a toll on our physical health as well.  

Grief stages must be acknowledged and there are ways to work through them.  Job loss affects self-esteem, relationships, and our hopes for the future, as well as our immediate ability to pay bills, feed our family, take much needed recreational breaks with loved ones.

It is not a weakness to acknowledge job loss depression and grief.  Grief stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance),  are familiar in theory and in our experience, but often we don't want to acknowledge them, needing to put on a tough facade instead.

In fact, it is healthy to acknowledge our grief stages.  It is normal, it is necessary.  Until we deal with our feelings of loss, we can't truly move through the grief and forward to new things, new possibilities, new employment opportunities.

In the next few posts, I'll be giving you some writing prompts that will help deal with the emotional effects of the financial challenges we are all facing in one form or another.  You don't have to be living under a bridge to experience these grief stages.  

If you are interested in working through your symptoms of loss on a longer-term, more structured basis, you might find my new course, Writing Through Tough Times:  Finding Balance In An Unbalanced World helpful.  A short 3-week introduction will be offered by Northern Colorado Writers on June 11, 18, and 25 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. (www.ncwc.biz).

Now for the first of the writing prompts?  Try this:

Allow - allow yourself to feel the effects of any new chaos in your life.  Job loss, home mortgage difficulties, more hours for less pay, forced days off without pay, health issues, loss of insurance, anything.  Now remember that on paper, it's okay, even necessary, to confront your fears, spell them out, honor them.

Write down everything you can think of about how your current losses make you feel.  Angry, humiliated, scared, useless, hopeless, scared, angry, depressed, outraged, defeated, angry (notice . . . it's okay to repeat, repeat, repeat).  Write without pause until you begin to run out of energy.  Acknowledging these emotions and allowing yourself to experience them without pushing them aside is valuable.  It lets you know where you're beginning, rather than hiding those feelings, stuffing them away in a closet until they begin to get moldy!

Now:  Allow a short list of things that calm you, that can center you even for five minutes.  An ice cream cone.  Loading up the bird feeders and watching those birds come to your seed restaurant.  Lighting a candle.  Taking a ten-minute walk.  A 20-minute power nap.  A kiss for your beloved companion or child.

Next:  Back to the loss/grief stages list.  Write it again until you run out of steam.

Now:  Back to the "calm list".  Do one of those things.  Right now.  Yes you DO have time.  Some of these things take ten minutes, some take less than a minute.  Do it. 

Work with your symptoms of loss every day.  Write them down.  No, you are NOT whining.  You are allowing those feelings to be acknowledged in a private place where you can see them.  You are allowing yourself to get some perspective, day by day, to track the shifts in your perspective as you move through this difficult time.

Do this for a week.  I'll be back soon.

 . . . that life is supposed to be serious. - Joseph Campbell

Well, Joe baby, maybe it's not SUPPOSED to be serious, but lately, it IS, for many of us.  Whether it's financial, family-related, physical, emptional, or crisis-ridden in some other way, much of the world is having a very hard time.  Starvation in third-world countries, terrorist activities, homelessness in the richest of nations (yes, the old U.S. of A), cancer, suicide, outrageous unemployment, murders more prevalent than we have ever seen in this country.

Sound depressing, defeating, debilitating?  You are right . . . these things can be the true kill-joys of our days.  And we can scoff at old Joseph Campbell.  We have a right to do that.

However . . . we can also do other things.  We can first acknowledge our troubles and those of the world in writing, to document them, have our say, by putting our pain on the page.  We can do it over and over and over again until the expression of our woes softens them.   Perhaps a tiny voice over our shoulders is heard to say, "But wait . . . there is the sunshine, there is the unconditional love of my dog (cat, goat, bird), and I know at least one person who loves me." . . . "oh yeah, and I had a delicious glass of orange juice this morning!'"

I'm not trying to pull a Pollyanna, believe me.  That has been my bent in days gone by, but I can't avoid what's going on in the world, the country, and in our own community, in my own household.  And in the aftermath of the murder of one of my daughter's lifelong friends and intended bridesmaid, a lot of the world makes no sense right now.

But we can either come out of the snail shell and look around for some reason to move slowly ahead, or just tuck ourselves all the way back into the shell and give up.

So . . . what happened yesterday that was NOT serious?  What can you do today to give yourself (or someone else) hope? How can you contribute your one grain of sand, your one candle, to something good in your world?

Make a short list . . . five tiny things.  Make another one . . . five tiny things.  And another . . . five tiny things.  They might be the same things, or others may occur to you.

Try it.  Believe me, sometimes it is ALL we can do.

My list today, right now:  Yesterday, we ate a lovely lunch in a place I've never been.  Today, I can do the following:

1. Breathe deeply with my face to the sun.

2.  Be thankful I can go out for breakfast without breaking the bank.

3.  Wish my partner a very happy 68th birthday, grateful that we are both fairly healthy.

4.  Read part of a good book.

5.  Sip on a cup of hot coffee with pleasure.

What are your five?

Well, my apologies for a month-long absence, especially after I said I would write a response to "Can loss be gain or only sorrow?" but instead of doing it the next day or the day after, something occurred that made me change my response teo the question.

Before April 1, I think I would have written that there is always some gain in loss, not just sorrow.  But then it was April 1.  And then I got a call from Ashley, my daughter, telling me that Katie, one of her bridesmaids and a lifelong friend,  was murdered in Boulder by her ex-husband, who then shot himself.  They had two small children, ages 3 and 6, who will now be raised by extended family, not their parents. According to police evidence, Rob had been planning this for awhile, and lured Katie to the house, a place she had not gone by herself for over a year.

Many of you already know this story and I use it as an example because I cannot find any gain, no justification, no comfort in a senseless event like this.  Even with a drunk driving accident, in which the driver is killed, for as horrid as that is for the family, we read about it in the paper and might say, "Well, that's horrible, but at least he didn't take out a family driving in the other direction . . . " or some such thing.

So what is the gain when a bright, loving 30-year old mother, daughter, sister, friend is murdered by someone who once loved her, who had children with her, who was too selfish and angry and depressed to care about the consequences of his actions.

NOTHING.  No gain at all.  Simply loss and sorrow.  And since it is what it is, there is no way to make anyone feel better.  I have been geting a few attempts to make things better, and other than "He could have taken the kids out with him" or "I still have my daughter alive", there is nothing comforting to be said.

I guess the point of this depressing little write is this:  When there is nothing to be gained, you don't need to scrounge around to try to find something.  When there is nothing to be gained, take care not to insult someone's sorrow by using ineffective phrases suggesting "heaven" or "God's plan".  Even spiritual or religious paople don't need to hear these simplistic references during a time like this.  If the family and friends of a violence victim do have a belief, they'll use it in their own way, at the right time.  They don't need someone to pat them on the head and tell them there was a plan for all of this.

My thoughts were going to be different . . . I had been thinking about my father and my two best dogs, whose deaths were on my mind.  My father's loss was a gain because he had been encased in his dementia for five years, and hadn't spoken or opened his eyes for over a year.  He chose to close down, and finally his body cooperated with his decision.  That was a gain.

As for Chaucer and Barrett, there was no gain in their deaths, but that given their cancer diagnoses, they didn't die in pain.  WE had terrific emotional pain when we lost each one of these precious animals, but they had only those last hours of such deterioration and discomfort that we were grateful we had a method of helping them die.

So what is your perspective on loss and gain, sorrow and recovery?  

I'm thinking a bit about loss this week.  My father died one year ago, March 22, and one of my best dogs, Barrett, died on the same date three years ago.  It seems so strange to have noticed that the dates are the same.  It must be a very special day in the universe for both Barrett and my father to have chosen it as their exit date from our planet.

Since I'm not a religious person, I don't think about heaven or the eternal reward or anything like that.  A spiritual atheist . . . that's my label if I have to have one.  And both Barrett and Dad were cremated, so we've scattered their ashes in special places, while saving some for ourselves.  Dad wants most of his ashes to be spread at the base of Pompey's Pillar in Montana, at one of Lewis and Clark's stopping places.  Those two explorers were hignest on my father's list of those adventurers he admired, and they reflected his own sense of adventure, whether in business or in the wilderness.

So I have been aware of two big losses in my life, and it brings another to mind.  Barrett's brother, Chaucer, my "best boy", died mid-July last year, and though we still have four animals, there is a huge hole where Chaucer used to be.  I am filled with sorrow, but have I gained something as well?  Now there's a writing prompt . . .  what have I gained by the loss of these three spirits in my life?  I'll do a write in the morning and post it here.  Perhaps you could each do that as well.  

What have you lost that brings you sorrow?  Has that same experienced brought you any gain?  If so what?  If you think this is a ridiculous question, write THAT out.

Water . . . Lake Como, Venice, LeMarche, Lake Orta . . . Picture yourself in a gondola, the gondola captain dressed in the traditional black and white costume from Venice's days of old . . . picture yourself traveling from the Guggenheim Museum to the Piazza San Marco, either on foot between the many canals, or on the canal itself, using a vaparetto  (Venice's version of public transportation).  A day-trip to Murano brings you to the origins of the famous Venetian glass factories, and Burano is full of ladies making lace.

Imagine that everywhere you go in the northeast part of bella Italia, there is water . . . water outside your hotel room, water next to every restaurant, accompanying your every cup of espresso or cappuccino.  You travel next to a villa between the Sibbillini Mountains and the Adriatic Coast, near towns like Jesi, Cupramontana, Macerata, Treia.  You visit Urbino, a university hill town, Assisi and Gubbio, beautiful communities in the neighboring region of Umbria.

You eat delicious pasta daily, walk it off as you explore town and countryside, allow your palate to clear with a delicious glass of the local wine . . . and you write . . . write your experiences, write impressions, write the details of your trip, though it will be unforgettable in any event.

Are you with us yet?  Some of you ARE, and I'm very excited to welcome you.  We are about half-way to our full group, and I welcome the addition of new travelers, or those who have previously experienced this amazing country, with or without me!

The Euro is holding nicely at this point, and if we can gather our group soon, we have a better opportunity to get reasonable airfares, good rental car rates, and the best of our villa choices.  If the values hold through September, we can add a wonderful gondola ride, day or night, for our group.

The two villas that are at the top of my list are Il Manso di Teo, near Treia,  and Collegrato, in the heart of Castelli di Jesi.  The latter would allow all but the last registrant to have a private room.  Both villas are very well equipped for twin-bedded occupancy.

You've got the details, the deposit is $500, and if you happen to have a good friend who wants to go as well, you can get a $300 discount of the price of your trip.

Questions, please call or e-mail me.
Thanks and take care.

Ciao . . .

Joannah

 . . . that my last post here was nearly a month ago?  Is it too late to wail the words of that oh-so-overused phrase, "Time goes so quickly these days . . . !!"?  Well, I won't use that one, but as I sit here in my office AGAIN, listening to the terrific wind outside, I'll just say that I do have thoughts to write on this site, daily, even more often than that, but the gales over here at Blue Heron House have been blowing me away!

Now is the time for real re-evaluation, if you haven't begun to do it yet.  The economic crisis is constant, overwhelming, like tsunami waves sometimes.  Every morning, NPR wakes me with its bad news before it gives me something interesting to distract me.  And the fallout of this economy doesn't seem to stop.  More jobs lots (which means more people who live in fear that though they still HAVE a job, they might not have one next week), more houses empty, more stock market losses.  Loss, loss loss, and the stress levels rise.

I've just been reading some about stress, its positive and negative aspects.  Yes, there is some good in stress, as long as it is addressed, and doesn't hang on too long.  Stress can help us re-evaluate our goals, our desires, help us look at reality NOW, not as it used to be.  It can also be the path to turning our eyes toward new possibilities, toward scaling back on some things and enhancing other parts of our lives.

If stress levels get too high, we are saddled with depression, anger, ill health, and perhaps some of those bad habits that we use to try to drown out our awareness of worry and stress . . . like alcohol, drugs, abusive behavior toward our loved ones.  

How about using a few simple assessment tools daily, just as a check-in?  Try . . . the three best things that happened today, and the three worst things.  They can be tiny or huge.  Perhaps the a "best thing" is that I didn't get a speeding ticket today.  Perhaps it is that I got a letter from a long-lost friend.  Perhaps it's just that I got some sleep last night.

"Worst things" might be that I DID get that speeding ticket, or that I didn't win the lottery, or that I just felt pretty down when I've been trying so hard to be "up".

No matter what your little lists look like, one day at a time, they will give you perspective about your week, your month, and might measure a bit of progress.  Try it.

The other exercise that is short and sweet is this:  Write down three successes I had today.  Be sure to be generous.  Some days it's a success just to get out of bed.  Some days, your success is that you still have your job and feel good about it.  Some days it's that you remembered to spend a bit of special time with your spouse or partner after a hectic day.

Let the little things count for something.  There are days when that's all you've got.  And those little things mount up, like the change you throw in a jar each night, change that adds up to a weekend of vacation before you know it!

Breathe deeply and enjoy the cusp weekend of February and March, where winter begins to meet spring.

Joannah

 . . . for groundhogs, Valentines, my daughter's birthday, and the promise that spring might be closing in on winter.  But there is still much opportunity for snow and cold winds before this season is over.

The same can be said for our country's economic crisis.  More cold financial winds before we begin to recover, according to all the experts.  Given the varied "take" and advice from all those "experts", perhaps you have come to the conclusion that the only advice you can really listen to is that from your own head and heart.  

And sometimes the only way to really listen to one's own thoughts and feelings is . . . of course, to write them down.  Flow writing allows writing without judging, without having to think out proper sentence structure, without the fear of anyone else reading your words.

Take a few minutes, perhaps only five minutes, each day and ask yourself on paper:  What's Going On?  Right now or this week or in the world or whatever and wherever that question takes you.  If you would scribble about that question every day for just a few sentences, you will create a ritual, taking the pulse of your personal life on whatever level shows up on the page each day.

Sometimes that ritual, that pulse, is the only documentation we have for the progress of our lives, for the pathways of our individual journey.  Whether it is health-related, financial, career oriented, or part of a spiritual or relationship path, those few words each day capture the essence of our experience, especially when stress drains us of the energy to remember, to reflect on what has brought us to this place, what will guide us out.

Start today, if you haven't started already . . . date your paper, and write the question "What's going on?"  Now go . . . 5 minutes, 10 if you can manage it.

And please check the Workshop pages for new offerings.  An intro, a one-day class or a short series might be just the thing to affordably add insight to these wintery days.

Take care.  

Joannah 

. . . and I've written about this several times in the last two months, ever since the November election which signified a changing of the guard.  It doesn't matter whether you were "for it or agin' it", the guard is changing.

So what changes do you anticipate making in the next few months?  Are there any you fear?  In this economic climate, that fear is something most of us can relate to.

What changes do you fear or hope for?  For yourself?  For your family?  Your community? Your country?  The world?

What is that saying?  BE the change you want to see in the world.

Is that possible?  How do we manage it?  Especially if things are strained for our personal environment?  

Perhaps you can make a list of changes you'd like to see.  Changes you hope will NOT happen.  Changes you can be a part of . . . 

Where do we start?  First one step, then another . . . with concern, apprehension,  downright fear.  With hope, conviction, confidence.

How do you make changes in your life?  Think about three important ones in the past five or ten years.  Think about five relatively minor changes in the same span of time.  How did you move through them?  How did you survive?  How long did it take for the change to become your reality, habit, comfort zone?

Watch the world, and your back yard.  Watch yourself in the mirror.  And I wish us all well.  We'll need all the hope, conviction, confidence we can get.  Stay in touch.

Joannah

 . . . and I'm preparing to take my first trip of the new year.  I haven't visited my youngest son in HIS digs (San Diego) for four years, so I'm headed there on Thursday for about a week, then on to Columbus, Ohio (this is a wildly disjointed thought . . . from bright sun to grey snow in the space of half a day) for the 70th birthday celebration of a lifelong friend.

Big changes are coming in my life and for the first time in a very long while, I'm facing being suspended in question marks, perhaps for much of this next year and beyond.

But the stability in my life is always the flow writing, my partner, my children and the animals who live with us.  I don't know what I'd do without them.

2009 promises to be challenging for all of us.  Whether you've been laid off, downsized, lost your fortune to Bernard Madoff, or are calmly meditating on your basement cushion, in two weeks we will have a new president, a new Congress has just seated itself, and the global ups and downs, from Washington to Mumbai are not going to settle themselves easily.

So perhaps you can do this exercise now, and check it occasionally as the weeks and months fly by.  Open your journal and date your paper.  Always date your paper.  Then start with:

My biggest challenges are:

My wishes for the country are:

My hopes for the world are:

Three things I will do to move toward solutions to my challenges:

Three things I can do for my community:

One thing I will do to keep in touch with the state of the world:

That should be enough for one day.  The exercise can be done in ten minutes.  Or if you get on a roll and have all day, that's fine, too. But ten minutes is all you need to commit to for now.

Check your list once a week.  How are you doing?  Check it once a month.  Any changes you want to make?  Check it on equinoxes and solstices.  Again, what's your progress?  Any adjustments to your challenges, wishes, hopes, and actions?  If so, write them down.  If not, keep on your path.

With only that first tiny ten-minute write and some regular observation, you might have set yourself and your portion of the universe spinning on a better course.

Good luck . . . we're all going to need it!  But remember that you are in good company.

Joannah

Dear all:

I do hope you are enjoying family, friends, and/or solitude during this last week of 2008.

Here is a bit of a gift from noted author Jeanette Winterson, who was "not encouraged to be clever".  Winterson has had a prolific and wide-ranging literary career, since winning the Whitbread first-novel award in 1985 for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. 

She was raised in a working-class Pentacostal household with only six books in the house (including the Bible, of course).  But she was persistent.  Her quote from last Sunday's New York Times Book Review is something most of us can identify with, and it really strikes a chord in those of us who grow up thinking we are "not artistic".  See if you find anything in her words:

"Art is central to all our lives, not just the better-off and educated.  I know that my own story, and from the evidence of every child ever born -- they all want to hear and to tell stories, to sing, to make music, to act out little dramas, to paint pictures, to make sculptures.  This is born in and we breed it out.  And then, when we have bred it out, we say that art is elitist, and at the same time we either fetishize art -- the high prices, the jargon, the inaccessibility -- or we ignore it.  The truth is, artist or not, we are all born on the creative continuum, and that is a heritage and a birthright of all of our lives."

Wow!  It is for this reason that I teach The Artist's Way every year . . . because I continue to meet men and women who have had creativity bred out of them, and who are longing, hungering, to re-ignite the creative flame in their inner beings.

Do something creative for yourself this week.  You know how to do it.  It IS something that is born in us, and it is NOT completely bred out.  It might just be frightened, or at least shy.  Open the door.  Let it out.  Sing.  Dance.  Scribble.  Make cookies.  Do something that makes you feel GREAT for at least five minutes.

And have a joyful last week of this year.

Take care.

Joannah

Of course, we're all busy . . . getting ready for the holidays, whether we love them or dread them, whether we're excited about seeing family or happy to be by ourselves.  No matter what OUR mood, the mood around us is all hustle and bustle . . . not exactly an atmosphere that keeps us "on center" with ourselves.. . .  getting ready for the holidays, whether we love them or dread them, whether we're excited about seeing family or happy to be by ourselves.  No matter what OUR mood, the mood around us is all hustle and bustle . . . not exactly an atmosphere that keeps us "on center" with ourselves.

So . . . STOP . . . sit down for five minutes and take your mind off your errands, chores, cleaning the house, wrapping presents, cooking, worrying about the future, stop everything for five minutes.

Find a place to sit that affords you a view of something calming, whether it's your shelf of favorite books, the couch with your  favorite afghan draped over the arm, the hearth by the lit firelight, or a chair near the window to watch the birds, the motion of the trees in this cold winter wind, or your child getting off the school bus, all smiles.

Just sit.  Pay attention.  What's going on?  Yes, right now.  Do you have the time to just let those thoughts float through you while you are sitting?

If you have a pen and paper nearby, let yourself scribble.  No, it's NOT whining!  It's like brushing your teeth or washing your face.  Let your thoughts flow for a moment, and give yourself the opportunity to make space for the next layer of brain images.

Now . . . if you can/will take five minutes to just sit down whenever you are feeling overwhelmed during the day, you will find it to be a cheap date, with more benefits than it costs.

The new year will be here before we know it, and that is the way our lives go . . . turning, turning the pages of the calendar, watching our children grow up, our parents grow old, ourselves grow into either more or less of what we hoped we would be.

Take time for quiet.  Take time to pay attention to yourself and to what is in front of your eyes, clouds, flowers, snow, water, a candle flame, a beloved pet's wagging tail.  Take time for yourself, no matter how long your list of "to do's"

Take time.  Take time.  Take time.

And have a more peaceful, joyous holiday week.  Look forward to 2009, no matter what the challenges.

Joannah

November is National Novel Writing Month, a month in which over 100,000 crazy dedicated word devotees sign up on the NaNoWriMo.org site and commit to writing 50,000 words of a novel.  Quantity is what counts in this challenge, not quality.  Why, you say?  Don't we want quality work when we write?

Yes, of course, eventually, but in order to get to the quality work, we need to have work at all.  In order to edit well, we need something to edit.  Like Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Draft" theory and practice.  So Chris Baty, San Francisco California (see his book No Plot?  No Problem!) began this challenge about ten years ago with twenty one blocked writers.  This year there are over 115,000.

Deadline is tonight at midnight, whatever your time zone.  Now I'm not a novel writer, generally.  My prose tends more toward essays, memoir, other creative non-fiction, an occasional poem.  But last year I really wanted to get my butt in gear in the writing direction, so I signed up.  And finished.  Five days before the final deadline.

I even liked my novel, though it is still in very, very shitty draft.  This year, I decided to do it again, but was hampered by the fact that I returned from France on November 1, and had lots of catching up to do in addition to beginning my NaNo for this year.  Finally, on November 7, I really got into gear, but unlike last year, I didn't seem to manage that 1667words per day on a consistent basis, the regimine that would bring me to my goal.

Last Saturday I had approximately 20,000 words.  Only half the quantity, I wasn't crazy about the quality, and I had half to go with only a day more than a week left!  So . . . I took my laptop to Starry Night Cafe, promising myself I would stay chained to my chair and laptop until I had written 5000 words.  Saturday night, I added another 1000.

Sunday I mapped out what I would have to do in order to finish on time.  A dedicated effort toward 3000 words per day.  It was choppy this week, the sea of words ebbing and flowing day by day, but by Friday midnight, i had banged out 45,082 words, and I could smell the finish line.  So yesterday, Saturday, November 29, sitting in my favorite old raggedy forest green nightshirt, I let my fingers fly and fly . . . 47,500, 48,321, 49,079, and finally, 50,482!  

I loaded my document in the NaNo Word Validator and got my purple bar proclaiming "Winner", next to my name on the site.  Then quickly downloaded my Winner's Certificate (I know, the prizes for this achievement are inexpensive but priceless . . . ) and ran for the shower in order to be in time to leave for the Lyric Cinema Cafe, where my partner Neil and I, along with a dear friend, allowed ourselves to be charmed and befuddled for two hours by the new Charlie Kaufman movie, Synecdoche, N.Y.

Last night, I added a few hundred words to my draft, printed the whole thing out and clipped it together so it can sleep in a drawer for a month or so before I pull it out and see whether it's worth anything.  But at the moment, the worth of it is that I stuck to my chair, stuck to the challenge, and met my commitment.

Will I do it again next year?  Ask me in August or September.  Better yet, check in with me November 1, 2009, to see whether my username is again on the rolls of the National Novel Writing Month Challenge.

What will make you write?  What is the challenge that will be effective enough to guarantee that you have "butt in chair" time, in the words of Bret Anthony Johnson.  A gifted writer, the director of the MFA program at Harvard University, he says there are no muses, there is no great talent, there is only "butt in chair time".  Check him out sometime.  Google him.  He's a kick and a motivating young man.

Sit down today.  Make a list of five things you think you want to write about. Now each day, take one of those five things, put it at the top of your page, and write 1000 words about that topic.  It can be brilliant or horrible, but it will BE 1000 words.

Good luck, writers!

Joannah

and though things haven't been so positive lately around the world, war, economic crisis in every western country (the Third-World countries have always been in economic crisis, it seems), it's time to tally up the things we're grateful for.

We don't have to ignore the difficulties, the challenges in our lives, but right now, just for this week, for this day, turn your attention to the things that are working.  I'll begin . . . 

My health.  I just got my cardiac calcium score from a CT scan, and my score is ZERO.  It's supposed to be zero, but I wanted to check again, four years after my first test.

My children.  My daughter, Ashley is engaged to a wonderful man, her partner of the past five years.  She and Justin will be getting married next summer at our long-time retreat in Vermont.  My son Tanner is working hard at the restaurant he began in Koh Tao, Thailand three years ago, my youngest son Morgan is finishing his last year in an Architecture program in San Diego.  They love one another, they love me, they love their father.  They recycle.  They vote and speak their consciences.  Who could ask for more than that from children?

My home in Vermont.  Twenty-two years of comfort and tranquility in southeastern Vermont, nestled in the Green Mountains, full of deciduous trees that light up the landscape every autumn, as well as all of those evergreens that keep the winter's looking fresh, that warm my house with burnable timber.

My dream home here in Colorado, the Studio where men and women gather for beauty and quiet, the labyrinth built by at least 30 friends, where we walk by the light of the moon, by the glow of the sun, in the snow and sprinkling rain, whenever we get a bit of time.

My animals.  Two remaining Golden Retrievers and two lovable cats who surround us everytime we sit down, and stand by our sides as we work or cook or clean up every day.

My partner.  Twenty years with the same wonderful man and I still get the chills when I look at him these days.  I know, that kind of long-term shiver has its ups and downs but these days, it's on the upswing!

The election is over.  No more ads, debates, high drama for awhile.  My team won this time, but even if yours didn't, see the previous line and wish for the best this new administration can offer all of us.

My sisters.  We all love one another and act like it.  We talk to one another's cell phone voice mails because if we really talked voice to voice, we'd have enough to say to take up the whole day.

Here is a prose poem my youngest sister just sent to me.  It can be your writing prompt after you make your list of things to be grateful for.  I know it will be the prompt for my write tonight before I go to sleep.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged.  I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it;  I will not entertain it.  It is not allowed to eat from my plate.  The reason is this:  In my uttermost bones I know something, as you do.  It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, and . . .  who sent you here.  I hope you will write this on your wall:  When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt.  But . . . that is not what great ships are built for. 

--excerpt from "A Letter to a Young Activist" by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

WRITE:  What is your great ship built for?  How will you launch it in this time of stormy seas?

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Joannah

I've been noticing that more and more of you are checking out the website, but I don't know who you are!  If you are visiting this page and would like to be added to my Lifeprints e-list, please go to "Contact" and send me an e-mail asking that your name and e-address be added.  I send out a mini-e-newsletter about every 10 days, letting you know of events, new classes, and other activities you might be interested in.  You will send your request to artword@lifeprintsjournal.com, but will get my response back from another address, jetlost@lamar.colostate.edu, for reasons that are too weird to explain here!

I would love to hear from you, or just have your info so I can include you in my correspondence with the rest of the heart-and-mind explorers in our area.  If you are in another state, and only want things that are more regional or national, like my LifeprintsJourneys trips for women, let me know that, too.

I never give out or sell your names to anyone.  You will not get junk mail from this point of origin.  EVER.

Thank you for your interest.

Joannah

has arrived for many of us.  The election is over, and Barack Obama has made history.  In some sense, it doesn't matter whether that pleases you personally or not.  It has been a historic event, and we have been part of it, whether we were "for it or agin' it".

The world has taken a downturn not seen for decades, and we wonder how, when, whether we will ever recapture any of the economic stability we have lost over the past few years.  Sometimes it's hard to look around and count our opportunities, not our disappointments, but this is the time to do that.  It's not about the election, it's about our lives, plain and simple.  And a new leader for our country, many new leaders for our country, are allowing us to look forward with a new eye.  We are PART of whatever happens next, and we need to accept our responsibility.

Take out your journal, or just a piece of paper if journals are too "collected" for your taste.  Write out all of your miseries, as fast as you can.  Now take five deep cleansing breaths, eyes closed, hands unclenched, neck and shoulders relaxing with every breath.

Open your eyes and write out all of your good fortunes.  Flowers, mountains, pets who love you, the sky, the moon and stars, your good health if you have it.  The last tasty meal you ate.  The last good place you visited.  Your best friend.  Your children.  A person in your life who stays by your side through thick and thin.  We all have at least some of these things in our lives.

Every day if you wake up downcast, scribble scribble.  Then describe just one thing or person who might make you smile today.  Good.  Excellent.

Welcome to a new page in the book of the world.  The holidays are coming.  Be grateful for small things and try not to knock yourselves out buying up "things" for your special day with your family.  BE WITH your family, or by yourself if you choose.  Revel in it.  And look for places where you can make a difference.  Talk to someone you don't know.  Smile at a stranger on the street.  Be patient, not cranky, with the store clerk when you arrive after a long time waiting.  Write a funny note to a lonely friend.  Give a hug more easily than you usually do.  

Write your congress person or senator.  These new people deserve to hear what we're thinking.  It's their turn . . . and it's ours as well.

It is October 2, 2008, and we've been in Vermont for five weeks, gone from Fort Collins for nearly six, since we drove here with our two Goldens, a sewing machine, a suitcase full of fabric, two book drafts, a dozen books between us, and anticipation for seeing "the colors", as they call them here, the autumn turning of maple trees from green to yellow, gold, orange, and several brilliant shades of red.

We thought we might miss "Peak", another New England term, because in the past ten years, the turning of the leaves has settled into a later time frame, beginning now and extending until Columbus Day, perhaps a week later than in the "olden days" when I first bought this Cavendish property. But with all the rain this summer, an unusual occurrence, and the chilly days in September, again much colder than is typical, the autumn color has been spectacular and more spectacular daily since last weekend.

So as we drive from town to town we try to take the back roads, stopping to photograph some of this magic on the hillside, and my internal Woodswoman sings quietly to herself, smiling.

Last night we had an extra bonus . . . a friend mentioned that the Vermont Symphony Orchestra would be performing at the Bellows Falls newly renovated Opera House, and on short notice, we purchased two tickets. Sitting in the beautifully refurbished theater, knees tightly jammed up against the back of the seats in front of us, we settled into the ambiance of a full house, a talented group of 27 string musicians, and the music of Grieg, a contemporary composer named Pierre Jalbert, and the familiar strains of my favorite classical composition, Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

What more appropriate choice could there have been for a concert at the height of Leaf Season? And what a beautiful way to end our time here in Vermont, despite surprises I wouldn't want to repeat again, like Neil's three-week bout of severe back and hip pain, daily trips to conventional and alternative practictioners, and Luna's tumor removal from her foot (benign, thank goodness!), our night at the Opera House was an even more special treat.

We will leave for Fort Collins on Sunday, and be back at our home late next week, in time for the beginning of the CSU Osher writing course on Saturday, October 11.

If you get an opportunity, try sitting still and listening to at least part of Vivaldi's magnificent composition. Just for yourself.

Joannah - Cavendish, Vermont - October 2, 2008

As I write, sitting at my library table at Stone Walls Retreat in Cavendish, Vermont, friends and strangers are walking my labyrinth at the Studio in Fort Collins, by the light of the silvery moon.

Neil and I watched the moon float high above us tonight, returning from a quick dinner at Wicked Good Pizza in Ludlow. I'm not a pizza person, but Neil nas been laid up for two weeks with excruciating pain in his hip and back, and is beginning to find mobility again. He was in the mood for pizza so we went into the next town and sat at Wicked Good while we ate fresh, crispy crusted white pizza with kalamatas, red onions, ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan, pesto sauce, ham, bacon, pineapple, scattered in some measure over two small rounds of baked whole wheat dough.

As we drove back along the curvy black Vermont roads, the moon was pearlized in its luminescence, slowly hiding behind wispy clouds and then standing round and clear again in turn. I thought about the preparations being made 2000 miles away, back home, for a formal walk with others, fire pit crackling, under a moonlit Colorado sky. If it is a clear night, Terry Lake will be shining brightly under the reflection of this beautiful orb in the sky. And if it is cloudy there . . . well, the moon always watches, no matter whether we can see her or not.

We have two Golden Retrievers with us, Marley and Luna. They are the only two now that Chaucer has died, and they are even more attached to us than ever, now that they are alone together. Marley didn't want to come in the house tonight. He preferred lying outside, exposed on the wet grass behind the stone house, perhaps basking in the light of the New England moon.

Luna, named for the moon, Bella Luna Bianca is her full name, Beautiful White Moon in my favorite language, was cuddled on the loveseat next to me as I read and dozed, read and dozed. What a luxury for both of us. For all of us. To be alive under such a shimmering sky, lit up this one night a month in such a special way.

Goodnight, Moon. One of the favorite books from my children's childhood, from my young motherhood. Goodnight, Moon.

Write for tonight: Wish upon the moon . . . if you can imagine looking up at the moon in the sky tonight, even if you missed it in reality, picture what it would be like. Write for a moment, with all the light of that moon, what you would wish for tomorrow, for this week, for this month, for the rest of this year. What can the light of the moon change in your heart? In your life? And how can you make that happen.

It can be small, a tiny, nearly imperceptible change. Or it can be large . . . the "wish upon a star" kind of change. The moon is our mother, shining down on us. Ask her. Ask her.

Joannah - Cavendish Vermont September 15, 2008

Yesterday a full group of women gathered at the Studio at Blue Heron House for a workshop entitled Gathering Wildflowers: Writing Family History and Personal Memoir.

We wrote scraps of our lives . . . childhood, holidays, school, friends, pets, cars we've had, houses, grandma's farm, grandpa's lake cottage, cousins by the dozens, milkshakes on the beach, great-great-grandmothers dead before we were born . . . we moved through memories, each at our own pace, each with our own guiding hearts, each letting the words flow from our memories, through the pens, onto the papear.

We used photos, newspaper headlines, and our own vivid imaginations. We used our willingness to remember, sometimes confronted our terror of the memories, sometimes acknowledged the urgency of the task at hand . . . to discover and tell our truth, in the moment, as a path from who we were, where we came from, to who we are today, where we might be going.

I've been working with, and studying, non-linear forms of non-fiction. People write in all sorts of ways . . . a memory sparked by an old photograph. A memory sparked by an old song. By a dream. Lists can make memories. Alphabetical forms can shape memories. Writing by the years, or by the decades, or by world events. A take-off on the old question "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" That alone could make a wonderful group memoir.

We all have stories to tell, every one of us. And we sometimes say, "Who would be interested in this?" or "I just don't know where to begin!" So I say back to you . . . just begin . . . make a middle . . . pick a scrap of memory, write it down, and then let your pen move across the page for 10 minutes. There. That is your first memoir scrap.

You might use one of these:

-your (least) favorite grade school experience

-your most memorable birthday party (or gift)

-an experience with water

-an experience with an animal

-an experience of losing something

-an experience with music

-something you wish you had done

-the quality of your life in 5th grade (or pick another year)

Really let your mind go back to that time, don't judge or edit your experience. Just write it. And then another. And then another. Once a day, once a week, once an hour. Doesn't matter. You are collecting scraps. Your collage of memoir has begun. Who said it had to read start to finish?

Take care, and keep writing.

Joannah

Many of you already know that our beloved Chaucer died just before 2:00 a.m. at Colorado State University Veterinary Hospital, in the arms of my partner, Neil. I had Neil put the cell phone up to my best boy's ear before he died, and I told him again all the things I have told him for over ten years.

Unfortunately, I was speeding, literally, from Chicago to Cedar Rapids, Iowa so I could get back to Colorado as soon as humanly possible, and at least see Chaucer one last time before he became a good teaching tool for the vet students. He still looked beautiful and is now at peace. We have his ashes and will sprinkle some of them in spots around the country . . . places Chaucer loved. Ouray, Vermont, Paradise Park.

We have received many e-mails, cards, and calls, and Neil and I appreciate all of you who are dog and cat lovers, or who understand those of us who still have these furry creatures. Thank you so much for your kindness.

I'm back in Iowa City for the last two writing workshops for which I had registered last winter. I wish that those of you who want to write, who do write and want to shape your work, or who write in fits and starts but long for inspiration, structure, and time . . . I wish you could be here, too. I'm surprised to say that I have found Iowa City to be an amazing little town, smaller than Fort Collins, I think, but perhaps just laid out differently.

Teeming with book energy and writing energy, and some of the liberal political atmosphere we used to feel in the Fort. I'm not sure how I sense that, but I do. And I am sending a wish out to the universe, so I can make the time to write more and more regularly when I get home.

If your journal is near you, open it to a blank page, pick up one of those favorite, fast-writing pens I always talk about, and begin with a prompt of your choosing. A line from a poem, a newspaper headline, a song lyric, or perhaps just:

. . . what is going on in my life right now? Go . . . 10 minutes.

I hope to talk with some of you soon.

Take care.

Joannah

Another unedited flow write . . . and when you're done reading these, try starting with a sentence or a fragment that's on your mind lately, and let your pen fly for 10-15 minutes.

Chaucer is dying of time bombs . . . little ones, multiple ones. Kate told me, “He has multiple tumors in his spleen, liver, lungs and around his heart . . . they’re blood tumors and one of them will burst and kill him . . . soon.“

That was three weeks ago, and I sit here in Iowa City, partly wondering what I’m doing here instead of being with him. I’ve been with him for everything important for ten years, and now he may die without me. He knew the other day that I was leaving, though I tried to quickly pack up my clothes and load them into the suitcase and then into Ashley’s car, before he realized that I would be going somewhere without him.

He’s so smart and I’ve spoiled him rotten, taken him with me everywhere that it was possible. We go to Vermont, to the cabin, to massage and to Open Studio. He’s used to being my boy, the best boy, and when I leave without him, sick or not, he looks at me with a completely outraged glare on that long face of his. How COULD you leave without me? You NEED me, I know you do.

And now, I’ve left him for three weeks and call home twice a day to make sure he is still all right.

Chaucer is dying of time bombs, and they could be detonated at any moment. He will come to his knees, losing oxygen, losing breath, blood filling that beautiful russet body cavity of his, and then he will be gone. The gums we check four times a day will no longer be dark pink and healthy. They will be pale or grey, a sure indication that he is bleeding to death. And there will be nothing to be done. Nothing I can do from here. Nothing I can do even if I make that emergency flight back to Denver from Cedar Rapids.

I will be left with a small container of ashes and a huge mind full of memories. The first time I saw this boy, I knew he would be my boy. He was the last of the litter, a darker male, when most people in that year wanted light females. I wanted half and half . . . a medium copper colored girl, but he sat in my lap, played affectionately, showing neither shyness nor anxiety, and I put my money down. Brought him home the next week, and Neil shook his head.

Just remember, he said, I will take no responsibility for feeding and caring for an animal ever again. And I agreed. That was a better deal than the first one Neil used to tell me.

If you decide to get a dog, you’ll have a lot more closet space. No, he’d stay, and so would his clothes. But he was not going to have anything to do with taking care of this little fluff-bucket. So he said. Soon he began taking the puppy on bonding walks, and later, when I left for a week and planned to take Chaucer to a kennel, Neil couldn’t bear the thought of the dog being locked up somewhere. By the time I came back from that trip, their bond was solid, rock solid.

So here we are ten years later, and Neil is holding down the fort in this life-and-death situation. We’re all waiting for the guillotine blade to fall, for the time bomb to burst, all those clichés when we are on pins and needles (there’s another one) waiting for the inevitable to happen.

And I can’t stop thinking about Chaucer, but I must stop or I’ll just get in my car and drive the 800 miles west, back to the Fort, where he will leap vertically, all four paws off the floor, in ecstatic greeting, joyful sounds of whining and scolding me as I return, the prodigal owner.

I’ve written and written about this boy in the past three weeks, and there is so much to say about how funny he is, how quirky his quirks, how loving his kisses, how devoted a doggie he is. Jacques used to say, “You’ll never find a man who will sit at your feet adoringly for his entire life like this dog does!” And he was right. Chaucer gives me unconditional love like no one else can, like no one else ever will. He follows me around the house in case I try to sneak out.

On days when I’m getting ready to go out (and he always seems to know this . . . ) he won’t even eat his breakfast because he’ll have to turn his back on me to eat, and I might disappear. If I open the back of my car and run back inside to get something I’ve forgotten, I will come back out to find him sitting on his pillow, waiting to be driven anywhere I want to go. He never minds whether he comes in with me or not. If he’s in command of the rear half of my Expedition, he knows he’s the one, he’s the chosen companion of his mom.

So now I’ve left him to do something for me, something I’ve been planning for a year, been registered for since February 15 at the stroke of midnight when I got online to check out the classes and make sure I had saved a space for myself before I went to bed in the wee hours of that morning. And if he can cooperate, he will still be alive when I pull up in the driveway on July 27, as soon as I can get back there.

I will take him to the lake, let him get good and wet, good and tired, and then lie down with him on the floor with a big bath towel and make him warm and dry. I hope I will get that one more chance. And if not, I hope he will forgive me.

Well, everyone . . . I guess this will be a series, won't it? And maybe someday a memoir of this very favorite noble dog of mine . . . who sometimes has a potty mouth. But he can say what he wants, now that he's in a precarious place. Just another flow write . . . the truest kind of write!

Saturday, July 5, 2008

I waited until last night to bring the suitcase upstairs from the garage, so as to try to minimize Chaucer's "suitcase trauma" a bit. I packed my clothing suitcase quickly, accumulating most of my clothes in a stack in the closet first, so I could swoop into the bedroom with a large handful of folded clothing, plop it all quickly into the bag, make another trip into the closet drawers for a substantial stack of underwear for this three-week trip, drop the underpants and the bras with cups the size of salad bowls     . . . drop them into the zippered inner compartments of my red and black Eddie Bauer suitcase. Zipped it up quickly and took it downstairs into the entryway, the one just before the big wooden outside doors so Chaucer wouldn't have to look at it all night and this morning and KNOW I was leaving without him.

I have an incredible amount of stuff to take . . . a plastic "milk crate" with my NaNo draft, my thesis draft, two reams of paper (one at 20 # and one at 24#, just in case . . . ), books on CD, books on paper, music on CD, extra cords for my Kindle, my Palm, etc. etc. A green translucent plastic folder with all the information for the writing workshops.

Three bags of groceries . . . crackers, fruit, coffee, a single mug coffee maker with accompanying portable coffee thermos, and all that jazz. Dried apricots, tabooli wheat, pasta mixture from Montepulciano . . . we have a guest house with a kitchen while we're there, and I want to cook occasionally because I don't want to pay for going out every night. And I want to hunker down in my little private guest house room and write write write.

So . . . early this morning I began to load up the car. Neil had taken my bigger suitcase outside and put it behind Ashley's car (I'm taking her car again because she gets more than twice the gas mileage that my Expedition gets, of course). And when I started carrying things out, I let Chaucer and Luna come along, just so they would feel included. Big mistake for the C-man. He had gotten used to knowing that I was using Ashley's car for Ouray, and he had learned quickly how to get in and out of it. No big block step needed like he needs at this point to get into the back of my big car . . . so when I was finished loading and returned to the house to have breakfast and watch the Wimbledon Women's tennis finals, Chaucer was having none of THAT. He folded himself down like a collapsing ironing board just behind the trunk of Ashley's car and would not budge. No chance he was going to allow me to sneak away without him. This is a common behavior for him, learned years ago when he wanted to make sure he was included in our trips.

So . . . I finally got him into the house, by the collar, no less. Ate my soft-boiled eggs, and returned outside with the final batch of stuff, including cooler, blanket and portable laptop lap table for my computer. And I thought while I was at it, I'd open the back of my car and let Chaucer get into that one and go with me to the bank and Albertson's before I really took off for Iowa.

Before I could get the block-step down for him to use, he frantically tried to jump into the back of the car, like he could easily do until three weeks ago. And he missed. Hit the middle of his abdomen on the frame of the car and just hung there for a few seconds until I could help him down onto the ground on all fours. I then tapped the block step, motioning for him to use it to get into the car. He looked at me like . . . "I don't need no fuckin' STEP . . . !" But of course he knows he does need it, and reluctantly planted one foot, then another, then one back foot, and the fourth, and walked up into his space.

We went off on our errands, and I left the locked car running with the AC on for him, scared shitless that when he hit the middle of his body trying to jump, he might have dislodged one or more of those bloody tumors and die while I was in the bank. But no . . .

We drove back home, I brought him in as though that was it for the rest of the day, hugged Neil goodbye, kissed him gratefully for being so encouraging about all this, and watched him take all three dogs out the back door for a pseudo-adventure while I snuck out the front entrance again.

Sending white light around Chaucer so he will still be here when I return. I'll call him tomorrow and Neil can put the phone up to C's ear so he can hear my voice. I do that when I'm gone . . . spoiled doggie child that he is . . .

Neil watched me sit on the floor with Chaucer this morning, hugging and kissing the russet boy, telling him what a good boy he is, the BEST boy, and how much I love him. I stood up to get in the shower, and Neil's eyes were streaming. He said, "I feel so bad for you, feel how torn you must be to leave him. I want you to get whatever it is you are looking for from this next three weeks . . . ". Sigh. Torture, isn't it, when we desperately need two disparate things and one of them is life and death . . .

But I'm four hours away from Iowa City and unless I get a desperation call from Neil, I'll keep going tomorrow. Called home tonight and the boy ate his dinner well . . . he hasn't been eating breakfast for the last three days, but that's not so unusual. He isn't frantically searching for me, and all is well . . . for today . . .

 . . . and just for the record, he is doing remarkably well, though we know that is only grateful postponement of what's to come soon. We hope he will be around to greet me exuberantly when I return from my writing workshops in Iowa! I'm here to write, and not surprisingly, I've been writing about this best boy of mine, so here is one entry from the past few days . . .

Writing tends to start somewhere, wind around into places you never thought you'd go, and perhaps, if you are focused on what led you to those places, you will be back to your original topic in a new way before you're through. Try it sometime. Go with a thought, an image, a "snapshot" of a memory, and put pen to paper for twenty minutes. Without stopping. Go.

Here's an example of what you might get . . . rather, it's an example of what I have gotten lately:

June 27, 2008 - Chaucer lies on the floor next to our bed or on the cool tile in the bathroom and as usual, his iron bladder gives him a reason to lounge around a bit more, rather than getting up to relieve himself immediately, as I have done three times during the middle of the night. At least I know I'm drinking enough water!

It has been a week since Chaucer's ugly diagnosis, 11 days since his collapse at the cabin, and now he looks as though he isn't sick at all. Except that he can't jump up on our bed. Except that he can't jump into the back of the car. But otherwise, one would never know.

Interesting how time bombs work. A man I used to know, a rep at a carpet place here in town, had a wife who had a cold. A bronchial infection whose cough just hung on for an extra week or two or three. Really no more than that. She went to the doctor and he thought maybe she could go get a chest X-ray. Just as a precaution. No real worries. The Xray was suspicious and immediate follow-up tests showed lung cancer. She was dead in three weeks.

My old neighbor, Paul, across the street from my house in Warren Shores, also had lung cancer. Had a lung removed, was on oxygen at home, not able to go anywhere, and we thought surely he would be dead within a few months. His strong German wife, Helga (really, Helga!), said when all this was going on, "He's not going to die, he's going to be as fine as he can be." That was at least nine years ago. And he's still ticking, not a vegetable, but actually alive and fairly okay, considering.

Brain tumors . . . nine months at the outside, yes? Time bombs. Our own aging organs . . . 60 years? 80 years? 101 years? We're all time bombs if you want to consider it this way. I don't look at it like this, except when I'm into a weird flow writing about my Chaucer's time bomb cancer. Typically I look at it differently. Last night, actually, I was thinking . . . "Well, if I reach my goal, I have just aboutt 35 more years to live. And if I'm going to do THAT, I am going to live them well."

But as I used to say to my journal-therapy cancer group, when I was running the Pilot Program for my thesis, we're all "livin' and dyin' in 3/4 time", like the lyrics in Jimmy Buffett's song. And we are. So how do we live our lives? Chaucer didn't decide that since he is riddled with blood tumors that can kill him at any moment, he'll just curl up and die. No, he decides that if this is the case, he'll make damned sure he sniffs Luna's crotch at least once or twice a day. He'll continue to whine at her until she rolls over and spreads her legs so he can have another lick, one of the great pleasures of his days. She no longer has her heats, so he can't be the guy who cleans her up (and cleans up the tile floor when she bleeds), but he can still get that wonderful smell into his beautiful snout. And she accommodates him every time. Does she do it with a disgruntled sigh ("Okay, okay, all right already . . . ) or in ecstasy ("Ah, I'm so glad SOMEONE around here knows how to treat me . . . go for it, C-man!)? No matter, she rolls over and pants. Just think what kind of day we would have if every one of us got a dedicated crotch lick daily! Okay, now I'm getting gross . . . back to my Chaucer-man . . . .

Chaucer doesn't say, "Well, I guess that's it . . . I have nothing to live for, and I'll just wait a week until I explode." No, he prowls around the dining room table, as he did last night when our neighbors were over for dinner and I had gotten out new cookbooks and cooked up a storm. He could smell the shallot marmalade, the cabernet sauce, the wild rice with cream and red peppers and corn, the rack of lamb, very rare the way we all love it. He could smell the fig galette with port-glaze and stilton. He could smell the pate' I made, and the brie with apricots and strawberries Linda brought over as her contribution. And he paced around the table, sitting properly, intently, closer and closer to each of us in turn, hoping that we'd have mercy on him and give him a bite before our dinner was finished.

It was as though he were saying, "Hey, I'm dyin' here, and I need a bite of that NOW. I know, I know, I'm supposed to wait until you are all finished. I'm supposed to lie here hoping you'll remember to save me a bite. But I'm DYIN' here, y'know? Remember? Have pity on me! You will be very sorry if you wait another 10 minutes and then I'm dead. You'll be SORRY!"

And though we don't give in at first, we all smile. Tom and Linda are great animal lovers too, and everyone wants to pamper Chaucer, just a bit. I hope someone will give me a bite of their luscious meal when I have an active time bomb in me. I hope someone will put a straw in a Kongsgaard Syrah or a fabulous Limerick Lane Furmint, and let me have a sip just before I slip away or explode in a dramatic swan song of a collapse.

My next dilemma is whether I should still go to Iowa City a week from tomorrow, to spend three weeks at writing workshops I've had my heart (and checkbook) set on for most of the last year   . . . Neil says I should go. If Chaucer still looks this good, I should go. Maybe he'll be here when I get back, or if he declines in the next week, we will make our decision. If he waits until the middle of my Iowa City stint, I could always cough it up and fly from Cedar Rapids to Denver quickly. And of course even today or early next week or next month, he could die in his sleep.

Neil says to go. My sister even says to go. My good friend Marianne says go. My writing buddy Mary doesn't want to say "go" because even though she REALLY knows this will be good for me, my turning point, she also has had sick dogs and would never dream of telling me to go, afraid I'll go on HER advice and Chaucer will die while I'm gone and I'll never forgive myself.

I don't know what I can forgive and what I can't, especially about my own behavior and this special dog, but I do think if he is still good a week from now, I'll be packed and ready. I have lots of options for postponing, coming back in the middle, etc. etc. etc. So . . . we take it a day at a time, like we would LIKE to do every day of the year but don't.

Neil and I were supposed to be gone this week and part of next, so we have NO commitments, no appointments, no bridge dates, clients, classes, NOTHING. And we hang around the house, doing work, watching Wimbledon, and petting all five of our furry friends. Count us lucky.

June was a beautiful month here in Colorado, much cooler day temperatures than we've had for the past few years, for the most part, and that old familiar bit of cloud and rain in the afternoon. Like the old days I loved so much!

The Journal Conference 2008 was phenomenal, and I hope next time (perhaps 2010) more of you will join me. There were about 15 of us from the Fort and beyond, and more than 350 total at the Sheraton Lakewood Hotel.

Unfortunately, I had to leave the conference early and race back to Ouray, where Neil and I had planned to spend three weeks with our dogs at Neil's rustic cabin up on the mountain between Ouray and Ridgway. Chaucer, our oldest Golden, began to have major physical problems, and I drove the 7 hours back to the cabin from Lakewood, packed up all my stuff, and brought Chaucer back to CSU Vet Hospital the next day.

Our wonderful oncologist, Kate, stayed at work until I arrived at CSU, and arranged emergency ultrasounds, which showed us what Kate had feared. Hemangiosarcoma in this dog, an ugly, fast growing cancer which creates blood tumors in major organs until one of them bleeds out and kills the dog. Chaucer's collapse was due to a small bleed which repaired itself, possibly caused by the higher altitude at the cabin (8000 ft.)

Needless to say, we were devastated, and cancelled any thought of going back to 8000 ft altitude, risking another bleed. But surprisingly, Chaucer is back to his old self on the outside, but for a few things he is hesitant to do, like making the leap into my big car, or onto our high bed. We can lose him tomorrow or two months from now, but he's happy at this point, and we have to be content with that.

So Saturday, at Neil's strong encouragement, I'm going to depart as planned, driving to Iowa City for three weeks of writing workshops at the University of iowa Summer Writers' Festival, and I am looking forward to that, though I have mixed feelings about leaving my best boy, Chaucer.

As a friend pointed out yesterday, this next couple weeks is not the total sum of Chaucer's ten years with us, and he has been the pampered boy in our animal house from the beginning.

So . . . bring Chaucer good pink and white light, and he may live for another month or two. If he is VERY lucky, perhaps he will last until we go to Vermont in late August, and can go with us for awhile. No one thinks he will live that long, but there are miracles . . .

Speaking of Vermont, remember that we are having a wonderful women's retreat at Stone Walls in Cavendish, Vermont, September 11-17, 2008. You can go to the "workshop" section of this website to get the details, and I'd be happy to mail you a color brochure if you would like one.

Perfect time to come to New England, and it will be relaxing as well as stimulating.

Must go now . . . take care.

Joannah

I have been out of touch since my father died, and I apologize. It's not even my emotional state after his death that has kept me away from here, but the sheer onslaught of one thing after another that was already planned, added to the week in Chicago for Dad's service, the weeks planning another gathering in Toledo, his hometown and mine.

In mid-April I flew to Hilton Head to meet my daughter, Ashley, for 10 days of belated 30th birthday celebration for her. We walked on the beach, took a kayak trip through one of the wilderness areas, drank margaritas poolside, rented bikes and pedaled throughout the myriad of bike paths on Hilton Head, and then spent the last weekend in Charleston, S.C. at the Meeting Street Inn, a delightful B & B right in the midst of the Market District.

We also visited my NAPT (Poetry Therapy) friend Jeri Chaplin and her husband, ate some great food in Charleston, and had a wonderful mom-daughter bonding vacation.

I was back in the Fort for less than two days before flying to Toledo for Dad's other memorial gathering. Home again for about 36 hours and then off for my Italy Women 2008 trip.

I was the all-around planner and guide for 9 very bright, diverse, and interesting women for nearly three weeks in my favorite country. We began in Florence, then moved to Siena and the southern Tuscan countryside. And then a last week in Cinque Terre and Lago d'Orta before heading back to the US.

It rained more than ever before, but was still lovely. We ate wonderful food, lots of fresh fish during the last week, drank good wine everywhere we went, and generally enjoyed the Italian culture and people.

This summer is full of travel too, but lots of it is for me . . . to Ouray to the cabin with the dogs, then to the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival for most of July. A bit of August in Phoenix for ArtUnraveled (see workshops for my two offerings), and then a long stint at my Stone Walls Retreat in Cavendish, Vermont.

I'll be doing a women's retreat in mid-September (also see the Workshops section of this website) and will be relaxing for a change during the rest of my stay in New England.

I hope your summer will be calm or at least full of enjoyable busyness And I encourage you to carry your journals with you all the time, for those brief moments "in between" anything you are doing. Five minutes can capture many of your thoughts, and those five minute increments strung together do fill a journal more quickly than you might imagine!

Take care, and I promise I won't be gone for such a long time again.

Joannah

Last week, Neil and I joined two friends and drove to Kearney Nebraska . . . yes, Nebraska . . . where from late February to early April, 500,000 sandhill cranes visit and feed, midpoint in their journey from Mexico and perhaps South America, to Canada and the far north regions. All along the Platte and North Platte rivers in the middle of America, they stay, readying themselves for their mating and migration to warmer climates.

The experience is amazing, breathtaking, and this year our trip coincided with the peak of the migration. Before sunrise, we drove to the Rowe Bird Sanctuary in Gibbon, about 15 miles east of Kearney, where we joined a small group of other bird watchers and a guide. We silently moved almost as one body, along a trail and out to a blind just at the edge of the Platte River, where we set up spotting scopes, video and still cameras, all of us armed with our own chosen pair of binoculars.

I cannot really describe to you what this experience is like for me. The din of the crane's deep-throated chirps is both soothing and astonishing, first barely heard as thousands of them sleep in groups along the patches of land in the river. The group call increases in crescendo as they awake, and elevates itself to a volume that's unbelievable, and yet comforting. After perhaps 90 minutes, for no particular reason and in tune with some bird-signal we can't discern, huge groups of the cranes FLY, WHOOSH, all at once, lifting off the land in one movement.

Those still on land seem undisturbed, seem to not notice at all, gurgling to one another, flapping their wings in a mating dance, until at their own group signal, they too fly up in a WHOOSH!

Stunned and happy humans straggle out of the blind when their freezing toes and fingers finally scream for warmth, and we go to find our own food . . . Perkins seems to offer the best in Kearney for breakfast.

After naps and re-grouping, we four wandered to the Museum of Nebraska Art where a surprisingly lovely collection of paintings, quilts, pottery, assemblage, was on display. Upstairs at the Art Museum, a young woman was offering a performance piece. . . making round loaves of bread from thousands of sticks of ordinary school-room chalk . . . and oil, a bit of honey and salt. Very strange, but the smell of baking bread invited us upstairs to witness the crushing of the chalk, the little toaster oven which held two loaves of bread at a time . . .

Then in the early evening, we found a viewing bridge over the river, at Fort Kearney State Recreation Park, where perhaps 50-60 people gathered, again in amazing quiet, to wait for the cranes to fly from the corn and wheat fields where they had been feeding all day, to settle back in along the river.

The full moon was rising, the sun was setting in glorious oranges and pinks in the western sky, casting a golden pink reflection on the river grasses. When we thought there couldn't possibly be more birds arriving or flying over us toward the east, another dark cloud of cranes would approach us from the west and cover the sky above our heads.

Unbelievable. We ended the night with visions of these beautiful birds making their passage for the summer, filling our heads.

Then in the early hours of the morning, there was another powerful creature struggling to make his passage to far-off places. My father, 87, struggling with severe dementia for the past 5 years, quietly slipped away at home, attended by two caregivers. My mother, a 12-year victim of the cruelty of dementia, was with Dad for much of the day, with her own two caregivers, in their home of 44 years, and my sister was there until nearly midnight. My father loved the outdoors, loved nature, and would have thought there to be no better way for me to have spent his last night on earth.

Flying away in bird migration time would have pleased him.

Good night, Dad. You are free of the mind and body prison you have been trapped in for too long.

I have been working up my enthusiasm to do the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, June 28 and 29 in Dillon Colorado, a beautiful location.  I have been exercising, made paced music tapes to keep me going, found a website with a training program for walkers, and talked with a representative in Denver at the Avon Walk office.

Signed up for About.com: Walking newsletters, and had enlisted the participation of a few friends to join me.  Each person has to raise at least $1800 for the walk, and I had begun to compile my list.

Then I got an e-mail from the About.com site warning us to check our event rules . . . some of the events are beginning to forbid iPods and other music headphones for "safety reasons".  Never mind that we're all walking 39 miles in the heat, at high altitude, with thousands of participants grouped in mini-throngs all around us.

So I called the rep in Denver and she confirmed that yes, their event has installed that "rule" as well.  I've spoken with three of the Avon people and got an e-mail from the Susan Koman 3-day Breast Cancer Walk and all patiently explain, as though I am 5 years old, that it's a "safety issue".  One woman did admit that no, she had never heard of an incident in which harm was caused because someone was listening to music while they participated in a walk-a-thon.

So . . . if you are walking or running in a charity event, raising money for that event, and training like crazy so you will actually be fit enough to stretch your endurance . . . AND if you use music to keep that energy and pace for the long haul . . . please check with your event coordinators to see if they are implementing what I think is a truly oppressive restriction.  Visit About.com:Walking and check out the articles, responses, and the survey.

If we make our objections known, as responsible adults who do not like being treated like 10-year olds, perhaps things will change.  Apparently this past New York marathon outlawed headphones of any kind and the participants raised such an uproar that the committee is re-thinking the restriction and it is likely they will go back to allowing what has worked for years.  I hope the Avon Walk will come to that conclusion eventually, because they have lost at least $6000-$7000 from me and the friends who were going to accompany me.

Stand up for your rights . . . we sign release forms for good reasons, and that should be enough.

Have a great week!

Joannah

I realize it's been over a month since I've written an entry here, though my journals fill and I "talk" with most of you every 10 days or so in my e-group letters.

Life has been quite busy, with much workshop facilitation both at the Studio and through the CSU OSHER LLI program. Our Full Moon Labyrinth Walks the past two months have been lovely and varied, since January's was cancelled because of crusty snow on the paths, but seven sturdy people showed up anyway.

Last week's walk promised to be clear, though the sky was cloudy when we began. Fifteen people came at various times and by the time three of us had reached the middle, the moon was beaming at us from a clear eastern sky, though the clouds were still intact in the west.

I attended two memorial services last week, and got notice of an aunt's death yesterday. We also have a dear friend in Hospice whose minutes are numbered, and it seems these things come in waves. Death forces us to think about things quite differently than we typically do . . . at least that is the effect it has on me. Lots of friends show up to celebrate a life, a magnificent life almost no matter what the circumstances. And we take an inventory of our own lives.

Are we living our dreams? Are we moving toward them at least? Do we tell or show our friends how much we love them on a regular basis? Are we living under a cloud of bad blood, resentments long-held, tasks left undone?

This week, perhaps as you open your journals, you could ask one simple question . . . What is next? What's next in my life? What next thing do I need (or want) to do to move toward, not away from? if I had one more day to live, how would I spend it? What about one more week? One more year?

What are the ten things I would do if I could "finish" my life with a bang, not a whimper?

Take time to reflect on these things. Then write write write . . .

Dear writers, seekers, art-makers, etc.:

I saw a friend today at the grocery store (yes, YOU, Marcia S . . . ) and my head was so jumbled I couldn't quickly pull her name out of my brain, though her smile lit up my "recognition button" immediately.  That is what comes of being busy, having more interests and errands than time, and getting older, I guess. 

But it was wonderful to see her and I thought about how many of you on this list I haven't seen for a long time.  Some of us have never met face to face, a few of us not even voice to voice.  No matter . . .  we are connected by our inquiring minds, our enthusiasm for writing and for life.  Perhaps many other things connect us, but we are unaware of those specific threads . . . we do, however, acknowledge their presence.  Two or three of you are on this list for the first time because of a workshop in Denver last weekend, where our individual threads were entwined for a day of goal-setting as writers.  Life is good!

That said, here are some of the threads that connect one thought to another in my mind tonight as I think of all of you:

1)  Two Artist's Way 16-week groups have begun at The Studio here on my property, with amazing participants in each one.  For all of you I am truly thankful! 
2) Full Moon Labyrinth Walk is next Tuesday,  January 22, 8:00 p.m.
3)  TWO Tarot classes offered by my friend Ginny Cross beginning Sunday and Tuesday at The Studio and they are full . . . lots of interest in that insight-based course. 
4)  Nearly full Writing Intro, Saturday, January 19, 9:30-noon.  One space still available.  $10.
5)  Journal Conference early-bird deadline is approaching - February 10.  For more info, go to www.journaltherapy.com and scroll down the page to the Conference Info.
6) More Lifeprints workshops planned (check the website) throughout the next three months.  Then a break from teaching (but never from writing) as I change hats and become an Italian tour guide!
7) ONE place for an adventurous woman who would like to spend nearly three weeks in ITALY in May.

And the stars still shine, the wind still blows, we all breathe . . . the world, though we may be dismayed by the continuous disruptions, environmental, political, spiritual . . . the world is alive.

Any of us, every one of us, can begin anew, begin our commitment to exploring our inner threads with words, paint, or any other medium of our choice.  Classes and workshops help, yes.  They're fun, yes.  They offer opportunities to meet like-minded others.  They hold us accountable for our promises to ourselves.  But we can do anything we want in the confines of our own space, our own solitude, our own circle.

Light a candle, set your intention, speak it out loud.  Then begin.

I hope to see some of you soon. 

Take care on this very cold January night.

Joannah

and the wind is howling its encouragement.  Yesterday I began my season of new classes with The Artist's Way course, one group of new participants for a Monday evening class and another group for Tuesday afternoons.

It's the new year and many of us are ready for a change (sounds like Hillary, Obama, and John Edwards, doesn't it?  Does McCain sing the "change" song, too?).  A change in our schedules, a change in the direction of our work efforts, a change perhaps because of a retirement or re-location, a serious health problem that calls for waking up to life in the moment.

I attended a seminar on Saturday through Lighthouse Writer's Workshop which coaxed and coached the participants through a process to get our writing goals in order for the year.  Well, I've got the goals, and now I have to just implement them!

What are your goals for this year?  They can be small or large, but one way or another, they must be broken down into manageable bites.  Remember that old metaphor about the way to eat an elephant?  One bite at a time!  Well, it's the same sort of thing for any goals we have.  Want to lose weight?  How much?  By when?  And what will you do to get to that goal?  Exercise?  How much, and when?  Etc. etc. etc. as Yul Brynner said in The King and I.

Write quickly five goals you'd like to achieve in this next year.  Break them down into details, specific and manageable.  Set a schedule for yourself to insert those details into your daily or weekly schedules.  Now pat yourself on the back and begin!

If more writing is your goal, you might benefit from some of the Lifeprints workshops in this website.  If you see a workshop with no dates on it, please click on "get info" and I'll put you on an "Interested" list.  Letting me know you are interested in a particular workshop will help facilitate putting a date into the calendar for that offering.  It's that thing about "ask and ye shall receive", y'know.

I hope to see you in the next few months.  We have great fun, gain insights about ourselves, and spend time with like-minded people.

Take care.

Joannah

It becomes a mantra, doesn't it? "Time passes so quickly . . . " and "In the blink of an eye . . . "

And here we are, less than one week away from the turning of the calendar to another year. 2008 will be upon us and I wonder how things will change, if at all, in each of our lives, in the life of our country and the world.

2008 will be a Leap Year, so we will have one more day to do what what we want, what we will, what we must. 2008 will also be an election year, so we will be inundated with political calls, automated requests for donations, mail endorsing this candidate or that. We will have to ask ourselves if anyone is running for office who represents our values in any way. Most of this 21st century has been fraught with tragic events, political upheaval, and a divisiveness among our citizens which hasn't been seen for a very long time, perhaps since the Vietnam War years.

So as we begin to step into 2008, perhaps we can each ask ourselves:

What will I do, what CAN I do, that will make this year just a little better than the last?

What will I do, what CAN I do, to give myself just an ounce more peace of mind than I had last year?

What will I do, what CAN I do, to help one person, one family, one cause, and make a difference in a small way that matters to me?

Perhaps this could be the subject of your first morning's write, next Tuesday, January 1, 2008. What can I do to make changes in my little part of the world?

I hope your days will be calm, alone or with family as you choose, and that 2008 will see each of us contributing in our own ways to bring our lives into the balance we tend to seek each day.

Happy New Year!

Joannah

Well, fellow writers and readers: My website techno-ghosts are working properly at the moment, so what you see is a Winner's icon for the National Novel Writing Month Challenge, which I have just completed!

I can't tell you how excited I am to have finished this challenge, to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I joined over 100,000 other writers across the world, and have now entered the realm of "winner" on NaNoWriMo's official site.

The goal for these words was to complete them, and to leave one's Inner Editor/Critic at the door. You know who that guy is, don't you? The one that whispers bitter nothings in your ear, the one that stops you from doing every creative thing you hope to do?

This has been a truly life-changing activity for me, and I may even have a novel that will be worth something after I edit it again and again. THAT is allowed only AFTER completion of the quantity challenge. The quality control can't come before one does the flow writing, or it will never get written.

I strongly believe that the reason I could actually complete this novel-writing challenge, though I am not a novel writer, is that I have had 50 years of practice at flow writing, journaling, reflection, whatever you want to call it. So my own Inner Editor/Critic is already used to sulking outside the door of my writing room sometimes, just like a child knows, finally, that some nasty behavior of his simply won't be tolerated in specific circumstances.

So for those of you who want to write, please know that you can. No matter what, you can leave your Critic/Editor at the door and write to your heart's content. A gathering of words to describe your feelings in the moment, a short story, or a 50,000 word novel or memoir. You CAN do it.

If you are interested in knowing more about this project, please visit www.nanowrimo.org and discover the origins, details, and excitement of being part of this ever expanding group of writing hopefuls. You don't ever have to show your work to anyone but yourself, and the Challenge happens every November.

Last year, after a friend told me she had done the Challenge, I marked my daytimer for THIS October 15, to make sure I remembered to add my name to the Challenge list of participants. Then on the stroke of midnight, November 1 (seriously!), I began. I just now completed my words, with a total of 50,684 words!

So you CAN do it, if I can, honestly. And any writing always begins with taking out your pen and notebook or journal, or turning on your computer and putting your fingers on the keys. One word at a time. And then another.

And then another . . .

I have finally settled back into my Fort Collins home, office, and Studio, after a series of trips that kept me out of town, mostly out of the country, for about six weeks.

Taking care of all the things that went untended while I was gone, as well as planning for new classes and workshops for 2008, has kept me very busy indeed. And those of you who attended the Meeting Our Other Selves one-day workshop had a great time discovering how to open the lines of communication within yourselves.  For all of you who missed both sessions of this illuminating process, I will be offering this class again in early 2008.

In January I will begin three new sessions of The Artist's Way, a powerful 16-week opportunity to explore your creative self. Please check out the workshop section of this website for dates and times.

We'll also continue the ceremony of walking the labyrinth together on the night of the full moon each month. Saturday, November 24 and Sunday, December 23 are the last Full Moon Labyrinth Walks for 2007.

Be sure to check out the information (in Links) for an amazing gathering to be held in the Denver area next June: Journal Conference 2008: The Power of Writing. Early bird registration fees apply until December 10.

I hope you will have a safe and peaceful holiday season, with family and friends if you wish, yourself in grateful solitude if you so desire. My youngest son will be home for both holidays, and my only daughter (and oldest child) will come from NYC for Christmas. My middle son, Tanner, will stay, as usual, on the island of Koh Tao in Thailand, where he owns a restaurant. The Christmas season is a high-season time for this dive mecca, so we'll have to wish him our love through the phone lines.

I hope to see you in 2008, or perhaps for a short workshop or labyrinth walk before the end of this year.

Take care of yourselves.

since I posted here, and I'm in Italy on a funky computer, so who knows how this will turn out. I regularly send out a group e-mail to everyone who has expressed interested in the activities of Lifeprints, so if you are new to this site, please send me an e-mail and asked to be put on my e-list. I don't share it with anyone, including the participants, so your e-mail address will not be shared either.

However, I've also been posting to my Italy travel log, and if you want to read some of what's been happening lately OUTSIDE the Lifeprints activities, you can go to www.woodswomanabroad.blogspot.com. I will return to the U.S. on October 14, so Iìll try to be better about keeping this Checking-In section current.

In the meantime, picture Italy. Picture ME in Italy. Picture my smiling face. And if you can picture yourself here too, please let me know. You might be a good candidate for the Italy Women program I offer every two years . . . perhaps soon to be every year. Some of the trips will have a writing component, but all of them focus on seeing beautiful parts of Italy, cities, countryside, ocean, mountains, and most importantly, the people, the wine, the food, the loveliness of the language, the country itself.

I hope all is well for all of you. Remmber that you never attain your dreams unless you actually DREAM them (not necessarily at night . . . daydreams will do just as well!). Write write write in your journal, NAME your dream, and you WILL attain at least part of it. I am living proof, because here I am, just finished with two weeks of language school, which I have promised myself for many years . . . I have written for decades, "I want to learn to speak Italian . . . " and I'm doing it. So can you . . . whatever you set your mind and heart to, you CAN achieve some part of it.

It's not a "Hey, I hope I win the lottery" game, but rather a "What can I do to move myself forward toward my dreams?"

Ciao! Joannah

I groan at this cliche, especially since I chose it to begin this entry about our first real birding course. I have been feeding birds in my yard for about 10 years, and even made a 30-hour round trip from Fort Collins to Kearney, Nebraska area in early April to see the last of the sandhill crane migration. Drove in the middle of the night each direction, saw the birds at sunrise and sunset in one day, slept in the Perkins parking lot, etc.

But the cranes were magnificent, and though I wasn't sure I would make it back home without falling asleep between Cheyenne and Fort Collins, I DID IT!

Neil and I get out our spotting scope in the evenings and look east, out to the island in Terry Lake where we live, to watch the Great Blue Herons fly to and from the rookery on the island. We've been able to see that there are about three dozen nests built in the trees on the island, and in the spring and early summer can see the moms fly to the nests to feed the babies. At least that's what we think we're seeing, but we have had NO instruction in any of this birding stuff.

Last Monday morning we packed up our suitcases, binoculars and a smaller spotting scope, along with several bird books, and headed to Pingree Park, a beautiful mountain retreat center which is part of Colorado State University's campus. Pingree Park is the site of many Elderhostels during the summer, and we decided to take our virgin plunge into the Elderhostel ocean by spending a week learning about birds and the wildlife of the Rocky Mountains.

Twenty of us spent this past week driving in vans to wonderful areas, with a variety of "GALP", a term our amazingly knowledgeable leader, Kevin Cook, uses for the bird environment. Whether grassland, marsh, prairie, or some combination of these, there are always birds, birds, birds. But the TYPE of bird depends on the terrain, of course, and we got an incredible wealth of information about how to look for certain birds in certain areas of the mountains.

It was an exhilarating experience, and I think we personally saw over fifty species of birds this week, including spotted sandpipers, ibis, black-crowned herons (different from the great blues we have on our property), pine siskins, among many many others. Neil even saw a white-tailed ptarmigan, apparently a rare site. He was up on the tundra at about 11,500 feet, and was able to catch a mom and babies wandering around on the rocks up there!

We drove home early this morning . . . everything happens early for birders, apparently . . . and about a mile from our house we passed an osprey nest which sits on top of a telephone pole by the side of a well-traveled street in Fort Collins. Only THIS morning, with our heightened sense of awareness, we actually LOOKED UP to the nest, and I pulled over to the side of the road, we both got out with our binocs, and watched TWO young osprey in the nest, with Mom on the next phone pole and Dad circling in the air above (or was it Dad on the pole and Mom circling . . . don't know enough about osprey behavior to be sure).

It was incredible, and I know I'm filling this entry with superlatives, but I can't hide my excitement!

Enough said . . . so now . . .

Next time you are outside and see a bird, look UP and pay attention. You don't have to have binoculars, or know what to look for in order to identify the bird if it's not convenient or desirable, but just pay attention for one moment. Perhaps your next journal entry might begin with a reflection of flight, literal and figurative.

What makes you "fly" in your heart? When do you soar? When do you feel grounded? What are your thoughts about the wonders of the bird world? Spend five journal minutes musing about something in this realm and see where it takes you.

Have a great week . . .

I'm sitting in a cabin, a very old log cabin over a mile up the mountain, a couple of miles north of Ouray, in the middle of the San Juan Mountains, appropriately nicknamed the Switzerland of the United States. I can hear Cutler Creek below me, and see a slice of Lake Lenore down in the little valley halfway to Highway 550 in southwestern Colorado.

My partner, Neil, has been coming to this family cabin for nearly six decades, and while it sports a new forest green metal roof and a bit of furniture that is only forty years old, basically it is as it was when his parents built it in the early 50's.

From the split rail porch we can see Whitehouse Peak, Twin Peaks, and Mount Haydn straight across our sightline, fringed from below with those tall lodgepole and ponderosa pines that have grown nearly uninterrupted for longer than we've been on the earth.

It's at times like this that I remember what quiet sounds like, without the constantly ringing telephone, delivery and service people ringing the doorbell, and a full appointment book that runs our lives. This ritual escape of three weeks in early summer has become a lighthouse for my busy life. I am grateful for nearly every part of what takes up my time, be it clients, classes, animals, yardwork, planning, writing, reading, cultural activities. But no matter how delightful and/or rewarding these pieces of life might be, I remember Julia Cameron's idea, which shows up repeatedly in The Artist's Way. Creativity begins in solitude. And our culture is not geared toward solitude as a positive, rewarding experience. We talk about being lonely, punishing someone by putting them in solitary confinement, or on a milder scale, "time out".

For many people, the concept of solitude conjurs up fear, abandonment, being unloved and unlovable, instead of the richness solitude can offer . . . learning more about one's individual self, allowing the quiet to nurture and cultivate the creative juices that might lie dormant in our veins, our spirits.

So I will enjoy and embrace the solitude these next days will offer me. I will return to my home renewed and refreshed, ready to put my ideas to work during the rest of the summer.

I wish all of you the peace of a few hours of solitude in each and every week of this summer. Close your eyes, listen, smell, feel the air, allow your thoughts to drift.

And if you are in the neighborhood of Ouray, Silverton, and Durango, wave UP to the place where I sit. I might just feel your breeze.

since I have written in here. For the last six weeks, I've been hiring a new office employee, getting ready to go to NYC and Vermont, actually going "back East" as they say, returning to Fort Collins, spending time with my middle son, who was here for a few days on a USA break from Thailand where he lives . . . What then? Finding out that my hired employee can't work for me after all . . . back to the job post, advertising for the office assistant, reading through the many many applications I received in the first day, interviewing half of them and letting the other half know that I appreciated their interest, etc. etc.

I've also planted most of my vegetable garden, filled a 5x10 ' raised garden bed with lavender plants, hosted two nights of Full Moon Labyrinth Walks (thank you all, for participating with me) on May 31 and June 1, and enjoyed new baby geese and birds, listening to my neighbor's peacocks' mating calls, and settling in to summer.

I've spent the last two days in Denver, attended some wonderful writing workshops at Lighthouse Writer's Workshop (see Links) and last night gloriously experienced a John Mayer performance at Red Rocks Amphitheater. The music was great, the sky was completely clear, and the weather was perfect. Cool enough with the accompanying breeze to keep me from sweating, but never cold enough to be called cold! And Mayer was exceptional. I forget how much I love going to concerts at Red Rocks, and I have promised myself that I won't let another year go by without visiting that beautiful place again.

This summer, I will be offering very few classees, though the Workshop section of this site does give you dates and times for three or four offerings I've scheduled, one in mid-July and the rest in August.

I will be in Italy for a month from mid-September to mid-October and when I return, a new schedule of Winter Semester workshops will be put in place.

I wish you a wonderful summer, doing some of what you love every day. And I hope you will keep some sort of pen and paper near you occasionally so you can record your reflections. Next year, you will begin the summer by asking how the time passed so quickly, and if you have journal jottings from the next few months, you will at least have the pleasure of refreshing your memory and reliving some of the highlights that might be awaiting you in the next few months of this season.

cleaning out the garage, planning your garden in your journal, sitting outside and watching the birds swoop down on your bird feeders. May is the month for realizing how MANY dandelions are on my acreage. And it's the month that reminds me summer is REALLY coming soon.

Neil and I went to Steamboat Springs last weekend for his birthday and we spent time with a good friend of mine from Fort Collins who just moved to Steamboat, realizing her dream of building a rescue center for retired race horses.

We also visited a colleague from the National Association for Poetry Therapy, a fellow Journal To The Self instructor. Her good friend, a long-time writing group companion, made a delicious dinner for us . . . FRESH pasta!

And the sun shone, while I wrote and wrote and wrote . . . on the deck at the condo, overlooking the ski slopes (with a bit of snow still on the runs), near the Yampa River at Off The Beaten Path, the local bookstore. I wrote and wrote and wrote sitting next to Soda Creek on the patio of a lovely breakfast restaurant called Creekside Grill. The sound of the water gently flowing past me was music to my journal's ear.

Getting away for just three or four days can do wonders for my very busy spirit, and I am grateful that my journal pages will remember these times much longer than my mind will.

Take your mind, heart and spirit on a mini-vacation. Find a quiet bench somewhere, around your house, in the park, in the mountains, at a coffee shop in Old Town. Open your journal and write what you see, who passes by your perch, what sounds you hear. Capture your LIFE, moment to moment, and you will be surprised by how meaningful these little bits will be in the months and years to come.

Kiss the earth for its warmth, fertility, its constant presence under your feet. And open your arms to the season that is about to arrive.

makes for a wonderful mood for writing by the fire. All this rain is encouraging the plants, flowers and trees to wake up from their long winter slumber.

All this rain is welcome as we prepare for the hot Colorado summers. All this rain may begin to fill the rivers and streams before we venture to the mountains for summer hikes, camping trips, and drives through the canyon.

All this rain makes me think about tears . . . tears of joy and of sorrow as we re-live the events of our lives in our journal pages.

JOURNAL PROMPT: Date your paper (of course!) and make two lists: one for the joys you have experienced since New Year's Day 2007, and one for sorrows during the same period.

Look at the list of sorrows and pick one that jumps out at you. Quickly scribble as much detail as you can remember about this sorrow. Fill in even more detail now that you have jogged your memory. Do the same with one joy that seems most alive for you.

You have a list that might keep you busy for awhile. Give yourself time, add to the joys and sorrows if you think of others.

Let the rain give you an opportunity to capture these first few months of 2007 in vignettes of joy and sorrow.

And may the sun shine on each and every one of you!

have been posted in the Workshops section of this website. Some have specific dates (like Journal To The Self, and Meeting Our Other Selves). Others have tentative dates because the website format requires me to enter specific dates before it will "post" the class; however, what I prefer to do with workshops such as the Journal Process Group and the Luna/Crone Group is to gather the interested participants and make sure our chosen dates and times work for everyone who wants to come.

So please either register or e-mail me and we'll work out any scheduling difficulties. The Journal class in June and the "Selves" workshop day in July are fixed dates, because I'm traveling quite a bit in June and July. Same with the Free Introduction sessions in May.

And please contact me if you try to register and cannot complete the process. My web designer has been trouble-shooting MSN and some other servers and most of them are trouble-free now, but there are always little glitches. So thank you to those who have let me know about their registration difficulties. I appreciate having the information.

I hope to see some of you in these workshops. We have such an amazing group of inquiring men and women and I am honored to meet new people and see old friends around my writing table at The Studio.

and I have actually attempted to post here TWICE in the last 10 days, and then checked the X instead of the check-mark in my management section of this site . . . so my writes were deleted. Lovely!

Spring is definitely here, the labyrinth has welcomed its visitors, the grass is greening up outside the Studio, and the Blue Herons (yes, we really have them here on Blue Heron Lane) are returning to our lake, preparing their nests. They are amazing birds and I can watch them from both sides of my office.

This week and next week new people will come to the Studio to take my introductory (no charge) journal workshop, and I invite you to do the same.

As the seasons change, and time goes so fast, I think the only way to keep track of my thoughts and my life is to write. Every day. Preferable in the morning for the clarity, and at night if I can, for the summary of the day's events and reminders of what is to come later in the week.

If you find yourself going days without writing in your journal, place it on your nightstand, and before you turn out your light at night, just open the book and write three sentences about the day. In the morning, do the same.

You will be amazed by what collects in the space of a week or a month. Start today.

Happy writing! I hope to see some of you soon.

can Spring be coming soon? I can hardly believe February (and thus our very long, cold winter) is over. The Labyrinth rocks are finally uncovered after a long sleep under the cold white blanket of snow.

Workshops are in gear, writing and creativity are in the air, and soon the buds will be on the trees in the same way the buds of imagination will flower in our journals.

I will be adding new class dates to the schedule within the next week, and perhaps you will find some of these workshops of interest.

Before you get too comfortable with the soon-to-be warmer days, take a half hour to reflect on how the winter affected you this year. Did you embrace it enthusiastically with boots, mittens, skis or snowshoes? Or did you pull in your horns, heat a cup of cocoa, and light the fire, snuggling into a blanket covered couch with a good book?

What is your favorite weather? How does it energize you? What steps can you take to insure that no matter what's happening outside your window, you enrich your days with comforting activities?

The time does fly, and each day can be welcomed as a new experience of being alive.

I received an e-mail this morning from a friend and former student, a woman I only see once a year at a mutual friend's Christmas party. Her note was so delightful, I asked whether I could share it on the website. She happily agreed, and said I could include her name as well. So . . . Lisa Browne writes:

Since the end of December I've thought about you a lot. Why, you ask? Well, after more than two feet of snow fell December 20 and the cold temps did not provide any hope of a quick melt, I decided to give Libby (my 8 yr old golden retriever) a chance to enjoy it.

After a couple of days of it, she was getting bored and her options for potty spots under the eave were running out. The snow was not very navigable, and too deep to squat. I decided to put my shovel to better use than to just continuously clear the driveway which only led me to a street that I couldn't enter. That said, I dug a windy, twisty, curvy labyrinth in our back yard that allowed Libby a fun escape from the patio and house perimeter. At first she would almost disappear when she entered and I could see only her head over the snow. The last few weeks the snow has 'shortened' and she's much more visible while strolling through it.

It has been really good for her to be able to wander through the space she defends, not to mention getting a much needed change of scenery. In some ways we claimed our yard back from the clutches of old man winter.

Thanks, so much, Lisa, for giving us a wonderful image of your Golden happily trotting through her own labyrinth! I have three Golden Retrievers, and can just picture it. I'm sorry I didn't think of it myself. (I've included a photo of Barrett, my fourth beautiful Golden who died in March 2006 of lung cancer. She walked the labyrinth with me many times before she died, and I thought it only appropriate to include her photo, sitting at the labyrinth bench, in this entry, since I don't have one of Lisa's Libby.)

As for the Labyrinth at the Studio, it is still under about a foot of crust, with none of the rocky paths showing yet. But soon . . . I'll send out a notice when it is uncovered again. For now, showshoes would be the only option, but still there would be no paths to walk.

Keep warm! The melting temperatures are moving toward us.

and I hear it is still sub-freezing in Fort Collins. But I have spent most of the past ten days sweating night and day on a Thai island called Koh Tao (Island of the Turtle) with my partner Neil, visiting my son Tanner who has been living on Koh Tao since March 2004. He has come back to Colorado twice for short visits and the weddings of two friends, but since opening his restaurant, Morava, on Valentine's Day 2006, he has not been able to leave the island, so we decided to go to him.

My journal has wrinkled pages and running ink, living with me in the land of scuba diving, jungle and tropical beauty. Thatched roofed huts amidst dozens of ATM and Internet businesses give a journal-keeper much to muse about, much more to write about, as the pen flies over the pages. A bit of salt water never hurt those pages, and I have discovered that my journal actually likes a bit of Margarita mixed with sweet chili sauce for dipping those delicious prawns!

We left the hot and humid island a week after we arrived, on the 18th, and took a ferry and two plane flights which took us to Chiang Mai, province of hundreds of Buddhist temples. The first thing we noticed was that it was more like Colorado early summer weather . . . not much humidity, and cool nights. My idea of heaven!!! And speaking of heavenly things, nearly 300 temples or wats are in the city of Chiang Mai itself, and we decided not to try to see too many.

One magnificent one at the top of Doi Suthep (the Mountain of the Hermit), and two small unassuming ones in town, mixed with trips to the Silver Showroom, the Thai Silk Factory, and the Orchid and Jade Showroom (all arranged by our guide, Chen, who probably gets a percentage of what his customers spend in those places) devoured our first full day in Chiang Mai. Today, our second day, was spent in the mountains with the elephants, watching them paint (honestly! It was unbelieveable!), and bow and eat sugar cane and bananas out of our hands as though they hadn't seen food for months. We took an elephant ride into the jungle, came back to the "camp" by oxcart, and after a traditional Thai lunch (and the requisite souvenir bombardment) took a lovely, leisurely float down the Lee ___ River on a bamboo raft with two Thai polemen.

Just Neil and I and our two river drivers in the sunlight, past giant bamboo trees, lychee trees rich with their full dark leaves, banana trees, and of course elephant dung floating past us down to the hand-made paper factory, where they take that dung and make magnificent (and odorless) paper in dozens of colors.

Tomorrow we fly back to Bangkok, meet Tanner and board one more short flight into Siem Reap, Cambodia, to spend two days exploring the amazing Angkor Wat. So I will leave you now and write a bit more after a day or two in Cambodia. . . Cambodia! For those of you who are my age, you remember that word as one that invoked riots and the infamous Kent State shootings. I suspect we will find it a bit more peaceful at this point. I just hope the tourist industry hasn't completely overtaken whateve charm it managed to retain after our invasions half a century ago.

Until later . . . remember to check in with yourself on paper. And I look forward to seeing some of you in class in the next few weeks. Sa wa dii, ka (sorry for the awful spelling), Joannah

P.S. Here in another land, the computers do not have the proper formatting program for my site, thus the absence of ANY paragraph breaks, though I put them in when I wrote this piece!

whiter, fluffier, and more abundant than I have seen in my 37 years in Colorado. As we anticipate being "stuck" at home for the second major snowstorm in a week, I hope all of you are safe and warm, that you have enough of the essential food groups (does that mean chocolate or dried apricots? Pistachios? Hot cider and tea?), and that you take this opportunity to sit quietly and enjoy the breathtaking beauty outside your window.

At times like this, it doesn't matter WHAT is outside your window. It will be covered with the lightest, most amazing glaze. Perhaps a childhood memory of winter will come to your mind and you can grab the memory, pick up your pen, and jot down a few details about sledding in your hometown on the hills around your house, or about the first time you made a snow angel, or about snowshoeing in the dead of a frosted forest.

Whatever the memory that comes to you, cherish these times of tranquility and allow them to help you reflect on your life.

Be safe if you must go out, but if you can stay in, enjoy the next day or two. The sun will be out, and sooner or later there will be melting show by the trainload and . . . MUD! Those new landscaping plants you carefully put in the ground last summer will love the moisture, and our old dependable Colorado weather will return once more. In the meantime, the calendar will turn over a large page and it will be 2007 before you can blink twice.

Happy New Year! I hope to see you in a class or two in February.

a WHITE Christmas?? Well, I guess so. After the snow goddesses dumped something close to two feet of snow in the Fort, we will have not only a white Christmas, but a white New Year. Trying to get this site up and running in between shoveling the cars out of the driveway has kept us busy.

My wish for all of you is that the end of 2006 is peaceful and that 2007 moves you to the next goal or dream on your journey. So for the next week or 10 days, try this:

Every day, just open your journal and jot down five quick memories from 2006, good or bad. Then five quick hopes, wishes, dreams, challenges you can think of for 2007.

Are there any memories you'd like to write more about? This is a very busy time of year, so just take 10 minutes and scribble some of your impressions about that memory.

Are there any of those 2007 possibilities that rise to the top of your list? Take a few minutes to expand on one hope, dream, or challenge coming up in the next month or two.

Keep adding to your lists. You will have a nice summary of "looking back" things and "looking forward" things. Good fodder for a longer journal write when you take the time for it.

Happy Holidays, and a peaceful entry into 2007 for all of you.

When it turns cold in Fort Collins, it typically lasts for two or three days. But it's been two weeks, snow is still on the ground, and though the weatherman promises it will be warmer "tomorrow", it hasn't happened yet! This presents a wonderful opportunity to light a fire in your fireplace (or turn on the gas), bundle up with your favorite blanket, journal and pen, and reflect on the year that is nearly over, as well as the one just around the corner.

Open your journal to the next blank page . . . and write for five minutes without thinking much about it. Let images from this past year, emotions, events, whatever, pour onto the page. Now take a few minutes and read what you wrote. If you're like me, this reading will bring up another batch of impressions, feelings, hopes, fears, etc. Now take 5 minutes and write down as many of those as you can capture quickly. Here is fodder for a longer write, one which might begin . . . "This year, I was amazed that . . .", or "Next year I hope to . . . ". Like that. As you gaze out your window, remember that someone, somewhere, doesn't have that blanket, journal or pen. Scribble scribble scribble. Make great use of the cold outside by warming up your writing pages with ink! Happy holidays. Joannah