Click to solve the mystery. :)

Earlier this month, Deepak Chopra appeared as a featured guest on our virtual seminar, The Evolutionary Worldview. Speaking with EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen about what it takes to be a true evolutionary leader, Chopra challenged our thousands of listeners from around the world to answer four questions about their visions for the future:

via magazine.enlightennext.org

Remind me to do this…:)

 I love the weekend. 

It's a beautiful day here in Feithland. The sky is blue. It's just the right temperature. I have nothing planned but puttering around with art supplies. I woke up late (slept 'till just after 11), which was blissful, and despite some work-out induced stiffness (thank you Biggest Loser DVD), I'm feeling fine.

The quit goes ahead full steam. So far, I have not managed to stay quit on the weekends. I'll not smoke one cigarette all week, but weekends are a weird animal for me. They whisper "have a smoke" and then, when I don't comply, they scream. I've learned that my real addiction to the stuff is not physical (as in, I can go without nicotine altogether) but psychological (certain triggers, habitual smoking, oral fulfillment – which sounds dirty, but it's not! I swear!). Since this journey began, I've gained ten pounds despite eating fairly well (fairly meaning I occasionally scarf down an entire round of brie in desperation) but progress is being made. That's good enough for me. (Just thought those of you who are rooting for me deserved an update!)

I'm doing The Artist's Way again. Week two finds me giggling over glitter and glue. I'm not so much interested in writing these days, but I'm crazy over art journaling and have started to dip my toes into multimedia stuff, too. I'll never be an 'artist' perse, but I am creative, and I love having ways to express that – ways that don't result in my dissolving into a puddle of frustrated tears because I can't find just the right word…

It's been a long break. I write for school now, and pretty much only for school. I'm discovering a talent for the very writing I used to fear the most – essays. I can write essays like nobodies business. Not only can I write them, but they're easy for me. This came as a huge surprise – one I'm delighted by.

This post has zero purpose except to tell you all I'm alive and still working on quitting smoking, doing The Artist's Way and getting messy with paint and glitter and such. I hope you're all having a beautiful weekend!

Love to you and yours!

Fey

We are off to the beach!

This attempt at quitting smoking is attempt number  bazillion and one in my very long history of smoking.I have what they call in the medical parlance a "20 plus pack year history" which means my lungs are fried and I'm well on my way to dead. Also, lung disease. And wrinkles. And stinking to high heaven and being slave to a craving that LIES and tells me I'll feel better if I just have one puff.

So, this is day three, and I feel hella strong in a way I do not remember feeling before. I feel like I could wander around the planet with a wad of cash and walk through crowds of puffing people without caving in. I feel like I have kicked the living shit out of this addiction because I really really want to live. And, hello. iPhone if I quit for 30 days. 

Hell yeah.

I'm not kidding myself, however. I have gone two months without smoking only to pick up a pack and burn them down in an evening. It isn't easy, what I'm proposing here. I can't think about any day but this one day in front of me or I panic, and I start to wonder how I will ever live without EVER EVER SMOKING AGAIN IN MY LIFE OMG I CAN'T POSSIBLY DO THIS CAN I HAVE A SMOKE NOW PLEASE?

So, we're not thinking in those terms. We're thinking today, we are not smoking and it feels good. Tomorrow might be a different story, but today? Today we are stronger than the nicotine and we do not even want to smoke.

*Nods Emphatically*

We want chocolate though. Just saying. Perfection is not attainable so why even try? ;)

I blogged over here today.

I’m trying Typepad as an alternative to Wordpress, and though I love Wordpress, I am not loving the amount of spam I’ve been dealing with lately, so I’m trying something new. Please note that until I make the final decision with regards to whether or not I’m moving to Typepad altogether, I will be posting links to my bloggy things here so you can find me. Once the final decision is made, I’ll be redirection my domain over to the new place, so you won’t lose track of me. :)

If you don’t see anything here you need a more current Browser that supports DOM/DHTML

Please note that this is an embed from my poetry journal at Pathetic.Org. I have no idea why I’m even posting over there, but, hey. Jim comments now and then, and as long as one person’s reading, I’ll keep posting!

Today is a good day. Yesterday was good, too, but my post doesn’t really reflect how good, so I thought I’d tell you just how good yesterday was. Ready?

So, I did nothing of any value except three pages of art journaling (too personal to share) in my new leather bound art journal, and I watched The Mists of Avalon. Twice. I drank an entire pot of coffee with cream AND sugar (no artificial sweetener for me yesterday). Then I cooked London Broil for dinner (I guess that had redeeming value, eh?) and went to my kid’s school concert which was a rock style caberet type night. I didn’t wear earplugs. (This earns me a pat on the back, yes?) Then we took Jamber (my son and his girlfriend are tight enough to warrant one name between them) and Leah (my step-girly) out for nachos and desert at East Side Marios (gag, but hey! It was fun.) We came home and watched U.S. of Tara and Nurse Jackie, and then collapsed into bed. I read for a half an hour (Eat, Pray, Love) and slid into a dream-filled, delicious sleep.

Today started with me being rousted out of bed by the smell of coffee, because the Beloved put some on for me. It’s raining and grey and chilly, but I have a road trip to Guelph planned, just so we can drop a friend off to see another friend, and because we like driving around in the rain blasting Dire Straits album Communique. We will then return home with beer and I will play with art while the Beloved kills things in WOW. I’m making butter chicken for dinner. At some point I will work on stuff for Poetry For People, and I might even dip my toes into a lesson for English 11U. I am three weeks or so ahead in my university course, so I’m not touching it until I get my first assignment back and I know where I’m at with that.

On Sunday, Stacey and Char (also sisters of Avalon) are picking me up and we’re taking a road trip to Stratford (of Date Night Fame) to check out a new occult shop that opened there recently called The Magic Box. There will be giggling. There will be lunch. There will not be any morose thoughts over my nonexistent relationship with my mother, but there will be celebrations of my own status as wicked good mom who didn’t eat her young when she had the chance. I think the Beloved is making me waffles with berries and whipped cream to start my day. You know how I know? I told him this was what I wanted, and because he is made of win, he will deliver. My children will likely not acknowledge mother’s day with more than a nod in my general direction, but after 20 years of this, I’m used to it. They will most likely buy me a house in the country after they have children of their own and realize just how brutally difficult this job is. Then again, three quarters of my children are boys and will likely not even notice how hard it is because their wives will be doing the mothering…

Hopefully, they make their wives waffles and berries with whipped cream, too.

See? Rainbows and Lollipops. :)

Love to all,

Fey

The post arrived today as it does almost every day, but today, instead of bills, I found a bulky package containing my black leather bound art journal from this incredible Etsy shop. As a member of Art Journal LOVE, I got a steep discount, and I have to tell you – I am completely thrilled with this purchase. The journal is hefty, chock full of beautiful paper, and just rustic looking enough that I won’t mind slopping paint around.

Also, I redesigned the blog. Also, I sent my first assignment in to my university tutor yesterday. Also, I am actually managing my time better. Getting up two hours earlier than I would normally get up is helping a lot since it gives me two hours to putter around as my weary self seems to require first thing in the morning. Also, I feel like I’m done therapy – like I have the skillz I need now and as long as I actually apply them, I’ll be okay…

Takes a deep breath.

More than okay, ackshully, because I am truly feeling much, much better. One constant source of stress and angst is up North getting his proverbial poop together (we hope) and even if he’s collapsing in a heap of parasitic dependence on his Grandparents, you know? I’m okay with that. My sense is that they broke him. (There’s a long story here about them essentially abducting my kids for five years based on several false assumptions (that I was a bad mother, that being pagan is the same as being a devil worshipper) and poisoning their little minds with Pentecostal Christianity of the most extreme kind, but I’m not telling that story today. Let it rest with this – they turned him into a spoiled, entitled, momma disrespecting, angry, emotionally violent drug addict. Now they can live with the consequences because after six years of post traumatic stress inducing cloud-of-doomness, I am done.)

Am I sad? Yes. I’m sad. But I am also relieved. Six years of hell have come to a close and I feel like I can breathe easy.

Wow.

That was a lot of venty mcventyness.

Thanks for indulging me.

Fey

It has been an interesting few days, what with preparing the Eldest for his journey up North (way, way up North where the sun shines all summer and the moon shines all winter), starting my University course, continuing my English 11 U course, continuing my apprenticeship with The Temple of Witchcraft, plodding slowly through my Bardic Grade, doing orientation with the Sisterhood of Avalon, and starting (*gulp*) a poetry workshop with Sage Cohen.

Oh, and then there’s the puppy training and the other kid I’m raising and the house to clean and the dinners to cook and the walks to take so my muscles don’t atrophy, and the art journaling so I don’t lose my ever loving mind in all this madness and rushing about to get things written, read, answered and turned in.

And then there’s the repeated attempts to quit smoking and the lovely effects of the drugs I’m taking to assist me in doing that…

And the fact that I’m really, really, really hard on myself.

I am a little Frazzled. There are joys in the frazzled fur of my being, like the Tribe and doing well in my courses and feeling challenged in a great way in my apprenticeship and the fact that I had the guts (*gulp*) to do Poetry 4 People in the first place. And there’s a road trip upcoming with my girls, Stacey and Char to Stratford, and there’s Mother’s day, which whispers around here indicate might actually be celebrated this year with more than a ‘Happy Mother’s Day” and a hug.

So, good. All good. But frazzled.

I can’t remember the last time this happened.

It’s Saturday. There’s *no one* here. I am *alone*.

OMFG. Bliss.

There is a soft, delicious breeze coming in the windows. The puppies are thoroughly exhausted after being run around the dog park by their master. I’m listening to Adam Lambert. I’ve got my art journal out and I painted a green wash on two pages and printed this out in three different sizes:

I’m sipping hot whiskey toddies. I’m watching art journal videos and experiencing extreme inspiration. I’m thinking about how easily the words “Ugly” slip from between my lips. I’m thinking that has *got* to stop because I’m not ugly, and neither are the fruits of my creative labour. There is nothing truly ugly in my life.

*Must Strike Word From Vocab*

***

I love my solitude like no one else I know. If I could make love to solitude, I would.

*nods emphatically*

Love. It.

Love you, too.

As Ever,

Feithline