urbanrosary

The Lost Art of Handwritten Letters: Why We Should Bring Them Back | Office Organization & Office Efficiency | OfficeArrow

If you were born after 1979, you may have never sent a handwritten letter to anyone. So accustomed to email and now IMing, actually picking up a pen and writing a personal message to someone - not on a sticky note, but on actual stationery - may seem foreign to you.

via www.officearrow.com

I relished in the fact that I had good handwriting as a young child. I loved the art of making my letters perfect. and I especially loved that fact that I got an "A" on every report card. I remember it making my mother smile.

Recently, I received a sympathy card after my mother's death. It was from a friend of mine that is very cherished. She wrote a long note in her card, remembering my mother through her eyes. I am not able to spend time with that girlfriend since she lives so far away, but seeing her handwriting and her memories of my mother written made everything seem so personal. I had been thinking of this for a long time. I would love to bring this art back to life...so it becomes an extension of who we are and part of our personality.

There is so much more to say about writing "it out all out"...

Feeling Down On Yourself? You won’t after you read this…. | Mel Robbins

Back in June, I climbed into a cab driven by a 26-year-old guy named PJ. He looked like “The Situation” from Jersey Shore. He had on his black wrap-around glasses, his big diver watch, slicked back hair and I could tell the dude worked out, just by looking at him from the back of the cab. I peppered him with questions and PJ chatted up a storm. PJ’s family owns six cabs. He doesn’t normally drive the cab, but today one of the normal drivers was sick. PJ grew up in Queens, and just finished his associate’s degree in marketing, but what he really wants to do is pursue his DJ business. I asked him all kinds of questions about the club scene in NYC and the economics of the DJ business. And yes, I of course had to give him some advice about ignoring his parents’ concerns and following his passion. Then PJ got a call. “Do you mind if I take this? It’s a promoter that books me a lot.” I said, “Go for it.”

via melrobbins.com

To get past my blocks creatively I decided that I would search out and find a career counselor. I thought at first I would like to go to one, but then I found this woman on TED.com. Mel Robbins. Her message is simple and for those of us creatives who can't get out of our own way, I thought I would re-post from her blog.

Adding On...

I have officially designed my new business cards.  I have been building my portfolio in graphic arts and I am getting ready to start posting some designs that I have done.  Some of those designs were for friends, and some for personal expression.  I have been working on a graphics certification for the last two years at the community college.  It has been an amazing experience and I absolutely love doing graphics.  

Occasionally, I will continue on as I am inspired, to do my devotional art pieces.  I have so many findings and treasures that I know I can let too much time go by before I will need to create those again too.  In the meantime I will be taking special orders and considerations.  I have visions and ideas of moving towards utilizing mosiacs in my pieces, and have been gathering ideas for some new pieces. 

Inspired by a trip to Italy I took years ago with my dear friend Natalie, I captured Italian mosiacs with my camera. Being Italian in decent, I am wanting to deepen those roots by incorporating that art form in my work.  

It may be slow in coming as I have had a big year this year with so many changes.  Changes I am learning to embrace with grace.

 

A love story

*names have been changed to protect the identity of the temporarily heart-broken

Louise* and Lance* were best friends. Just friends, never so much as smooched. They were roomies, they got drunk at concerts together, they slept in the same tent, exchanged great Christmas presents. Lance dated other people. Louise was in love with Lance. Plain as day, we all could see it. Well, maybe someday Lance will get it.

Twelve years went by. New partners and holidays came and went. It was good n' truly time for Louise to lay down the torch. She decided make a pitch. This is the crescendo of all romantic comedies where the protagonist decides to go for it:

It's 4am and we'd all been dancing at a fabulous wedding. Louise and Lance are slow dancing as the DJ starts packing up. There is a small audience of us in the corner table balancing Stella bottles and wearing neckties around our heads. "Oh...my...I think she's going for it," one of the cast says. We lean in to gawk, trying to read their lips.

Sure enough, with heart in hand and Cabernet courage Louise made her overture...Do you think we could make a go of it? Lance listened. He's a great guy. He listened softly. And softly he said: If it were going to happen, it would have happened by now. Truth bomb. Gently dropped.

If it were going to happen, it would have happened by now.

Even destiny has an expiry date. This is such primal wisdom. I'm all for relentless dreaming and fierce faith. But if you're spending an overly long time trying to wish, hammer, hope, push and ploy things into form, maybe it's time to point your dream in another direction. If a crop isn't growing, the farmer doesn't keep wasting water and fertilizer on it. He yanks it out, tills the soil and plants a whole new kind of seed.

Let 'em go. Kill the project. Shut down a division. And take that same longing for love, or creative fulfillment, or phat cash and face forward!

HERE'S THE KEY DANCE MOVE:

Hold on to the core desire of the dream -- that feeling you want to feel when the dream is realized, but shift to a wholly new target. Change directions and a new form of satisfaction could be right around the corner.

...just like it was for Louise. She got on with her life. And fell in love with someone who fell crazy in love with her -- easy breezy and right away.

After reading this in the morning after coffee and before yoga, I thought this is me...this is me and my bottles...I need to be the farmer...I need to make a change.  I have been working on making that change and now I need to take a different kind of leap.

I have been learning computer graphics for the last two years.  Yes I plod along and it is difficult for me, but I LOVE computer graphics...it's tedious in a different way than making the bottles...

I have my work station for bottle making always beaconing me, and it is not that I don't want make and create them, but I feel hopeless in doing it.  They are really a lot of work.  I am not afraid of hard work, but I need to work smart not hard all the time.

So in that, I am going to be working on a line of greeting cards and doing graphics.  Maybe I will continue doing the bottles maybe not.  I have so many beautiful crystals and other findings that I can't just pack up in a box and put in storage.  So...maybe I will just make them as I am inspired as gifts for friends...  

 

Dia De Los Muertos

via s3.amazonaws.com

Happy "Day of the Dead" - in Latin countries the world over, people visit and groom loved ones' graves, then picnic in the cemetery sharing stories of deceased loved ones. This is the origin of our "Halloween".

My devotional art is a way that I keep memory alive. Some of my personal creations are inspired by family and their stories of faith, hope and devotion.