Nellie Windmill

I feel like 2009 has been all packaged up in a neat little cyber parcel ready to be archived on the blog shelf and reminisced over at whim. A big thank you to Gwen Bell for these fun prompts to help us all reflect on the past year. Without further ado, my final musings to wrap it all up…

December 28 Stationary

When you touch the paper, your heart melts. The ink flows from the pen. What was your stationary find of the year?

I really like the thought of writing letters, but alas, my stationary is relegated to the purely utilitarian task of note taking and since I’ve run out of sketch book, sketching. It’s not heart melty or ink flowy. So, the prize for best stationary goes to my practical retractable pencil. I don’t know how I ever made art without it. It’s perfect for illustrating fine details and I think it would be pretty flowy to write with too.

December 29 Laugh

What was the biggest belly laugh of the year?

Mike and I had three friends stay for a couple of weeks with us in our motorhome, “Nettle”. It was dubbed the “Caravan of Comedy” during the time due to the hilarity that ensued. Good times…

December 30 Ad

What advertisement made you think this year?

The Lonely Planet dubs Tunisia a poster-child for successful post-colonial development and a model for how a moderate, secular Arab state can resist fundamentalism. Whilst here we’ve seen many billboards plastered to the sides of buildings and posters on shop walls of president Ben Ali looking smiley and warm. These have given us plenty of pause for thought when we come from a country that makes fun of our prime minister in comics in the major newspapers.

December 31 Resolution you wish you’d stuck with

(You know, there’s always next year…)

I don’t make new year’s resolutions. However, I did start an exercise from “The Four Hour Work Week” a month or so ago, which is in the same spirit as resolutions. The author, Tim Ferriss, calls it “dreamlining”. Basically you write down what you want to have, what you want to be, and what you want to do and then make a short-list of the most important ones. Then you work out how much money you have to earn each day to be able to achieve your top 4 dreams in 6 months. You start doing something towards achieving each dream that same day and every day thereon. It’s been great for me. I came away from it with clear priorities for my life for the next 6 months. I began prioritising time for art, which I hadn’t been doing before then. I started building my online creative business that very day and am at the point now where I’m ready to sell my art on Red Bubble and Image Kind and have designed 57 original collage papers to sell on Etsy. A month ago I didn’t even know how to use photoshop and a month and a bit ago I hadn’t even considered selling my art.

On a side note, whilst writing this and thinking of the dreamline exercise in terms of new years resolutions, I’ve come up with a few theories as to why new year’s resolutions fail:

1. Most people’s new year’s resolutions bore them to tears. They aim to aim to floss their teeth everyday, for example. Who could possibly get excited about that? In the dreamlining exercise the author cautions the would be dreamer to dream big, unrealistic, wild dreams. Nothing less will induce the motivation required to achieve them.
2. People make resolutions based on what they think they should change about themselves or their lives rather than what they want to change. Again, the author cautions us not to be tempted to put down socially desirable dreams like “fight world hunger” when what you really want is a shiny red ferrari. These socially acceptable but completely passionless goals won’t stoke your “I’m gonna change my life” fire either.
3. Finally, when creating the dreamlines we narrow it down to a short-list of four. Not only does this help us focus on what’s important but it also means we can do each of our dreams justice by giving them the time and energy they require to be fully realised. Remember, the dreamline is timelined – you aim to achieve your goals in 6 or 12 months. So, you focus on the most important goals and then once you’ve achieved them you get to do another four! I’m guessing most people’s new year’s resolutions lists will have more than four items on them.

Thank you all for coming to read my Best of 2009 everyone! A very happy 2010 to you all!

I really didn’t feel like blogging today but I’m so glad I did. It forced me to think about things that are beyond the here and now and I felt so much better afterwards. Thanks for the great prompts Gwen!

December 24 Learning Experience

What was a lesson you learned this year that changed you?

1. You must live it to learn it (bumper sticker much?). Life lessons are not something we can be given. They don’t make sense on that fundamental, your gut know’s it’s true kinda way until you’ve worked your own way there. Only then will you be open to it and see the wisdom of it.

2. The consequences for a functioning alcoholic who has a family that has an immense capacity for denial is exactly zero. All of the consequences fall on the family. The functioning alcoholic does not experience shame, or embarrassment for his behaviour because of his masterful use of denial. Denial that he has a problem. Denial that the problem is serious. Denial that there is anything he can do about it. Oh, and there’s that pesky black out side effect of drinking that means he doesn’t remember anything to be ashamed of. All of the shame and embarrassment falls on the family. Like antisocial personality disorder the negative effects of his behaviour are predominantly preserved for the blameless loved one’s.The thing is, he doesn’t know any of this if nobody tells him.

3. You cannot be authentically yourself and try to make everyone like you at the same time. The two are like oil and water. They are mutually exclusive states of being:

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

- ELBERT HUBBARD

December 25 Gift

What’s a gift your gave yourself this year that kept on giving?

I gave myself permission to dream big. To be impractical and ridiculously optimistic and do what excites me no matter how green I am. I gave myself permission to want more than a secure, comfortable, unchallenging subsistence.

December 26 Insight or aha! moment

What was your epiphany of the year?

First of all, can I just say that I find the phrase “aha! moment” extremely aggravating. It’s just so clunky and we already have a perfectly good, elegantly French sounding word for it. Can we all just agree to say “epiphany” and be done with it? Well, with that out of the way… My answer here is intrinsically linked with my one above. It’s funny how much overlap there has been with my answers. i guess the significant things in one’s life all share the same roots. First, some background. I’m very new to the art world. I left my social work job in Australia to travel around Europe in a campervan with my partner 6 months ago and have recently let myself dream of having a creative business. It’s obscenely early to be thinking of starting my own creative business but it’s the only thing that makes sense. I’ve read two self-helpy type books – one on creativity (“Taking Flight” by Kelly Rae Roberts) and one on lifestye design (“The 4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss). Amazingly, despite their vastly different scopes and styles the two books actually have many philosophies in common, which was something I didn’t recognise straight away. One of these philosophies is to dream big. So, this “dream big” message just popped into my head a few weeks ago and you know, I’m not sure I’ve ever really had a groundbreaking epiphany (or at least none that I can remember) but this probably came close. I realised that in terms of my career I haven’t been dreaming at all let alone dreaming big. I haven’t even let myself think about art in terms of a career because it’s way too much pressure, and absurdly unrealistic. But you know what, as soon as I let myself imagine doing art for my career it made sense. Saying it out loud to my partner for the first time was really hard! I felt embarrassed and vulnerable and was kind of hyper aware of his reaction. In light of this epiphany I started re-reading “The 4 Hour Work Week” and realised that that book has the same message! It was like reinforcement from the universe that I’m on the right track.

December 27 Social Web Moment

Did you meet someone you used to only know from her blog? Did you discover twitter?

I started my blog this year and I am in love with it. I get ridiculously excited when I get comments (hint, hint). I get excited when I read other people’s blogs and I feel like I could have written their article myself because it’s so in tune with what I’m experiencing, feeling, dreaming. I’m amazed at how much we all have in common. One blogger who I commented to about this replied “Ithink we all have really similar thoughts and feelings when we are being really honest” and I think she’s right. I’m continually impressed by the level of honesty and openness in the blogs I read and I aspire to that. I love how blogging has changed how I experience things in the “real world”. I pay attention more. I take my camera when I go on walks or just down the street. I reflect more. My blog is very new and I can’t say I’ve made any friends through it yet but I have hopes. Big, big hopes. I’m really excited to join twitter, something I haven’t done yet but it’s on the to do list. I’d like to join a few other creatively oriented online communities but the vastness is a bit overwhelming. Any suggestions? You could leave a comment (nudge, nudge)?