Carrying on from yesterday...

a little sunshine did us good today



So here's the thing.  If I'm to do a daily project, it could fall into a few different categories that would shut it down awfully quickly.   A daily exercise, creative though it may be,  would certainly improve whatever skill I am working on.  Perhaps because that sounds too much like a job, I can see myself abandoning the discipline pretty soon.  So I figure if I'm going to set myself a daily project, it ought to be something I LOVE. Therein lays the purpose.  As someone once said, "doitforlove".

Well, that narrows it down a bit- Not!!  The nemesis of my life is that I love too many things, and am easily distracted by so much beauty and wonder that I can barely focus on the job at hand.   And what could I do that would be different than what I already do:  a dabble here, a dabble there?  The trick would be to incorporate that very part of my nature into this daily project.

All this came to me one week after I had read Cathy Cullis' challenge to do a daily project  (see last post).  I set myself the task of journalling on the subject of what to do but eventually came to an impasse.  I put my pen down and closed my eyes.   I find with closed eyes I can "hear" myself more.  What I heard was  "It has to be one thing that I am alway delighted by.  If I can find that one thing, I can play with it,  try anything I feel like with it as a take-off point."   I opened my eyes and scanned the room and the pretty things I'd collected over the years,  but nothing caught my imagination.  And then it hit me.





I'd been awaiting the arrival of a rare vintage doll I had bought over a week earlier  from a shop on etsy called Matties Menagerie.   I don't remember what possessed me to go doll shopping.  As I recall,  a certain someone had encouraged me to focus on what I might want for Christmas, and probably one thing led to another as it does on the internet,  let alone etsy.   I  made a point of not looking at the picture of this doll online after it was purchased; I think anticipating its arrival blew its beauty up in my mind.  Once I decided it would,  indeed,  be my muse for my daily project even though I had yet to hold it in my hands,  I  was elated.  But by the next day,   I began to question myself.   Was I being realistic thinking my enthusiasm could sustain itself for a whole year?

Then I realized that through over-analyzing, indeed analyzing at all,  we kill our communion with the muse that existed before it occurred to us to put words and thought to it.   Imagination is a sacred process that must be trusted.  Leave the analysis to others.

And so on Christmas morning,  I  tore open the brown paper wrapping and opened this box...





Each of us has a muse,  something that speaks to us more than anything else.  For some it's music, or writing, or poetry or photography.  For others it's a child,  their beloved,  Mother or Grandpa.  It could be a soft breeze on a summer's day or the scent of lavender or wild roses  or puppies.   I hope this doll,  that is more beautiful to me than I imagined,  will be the vessel that carries me through a year of magic, mysteries unfolded, secrets undisclosed.   I see a great adventure before me....

I wish you a magic carpet ride of your own,

even if it is as simple as curling up in a cozy chair with a good book.