Catalyst 58 is: What’s your favorite word? Why?



Here are my words:


I was going to pick Family or Love. Honestly, those words are what make me coziest and warmest inside but I wanted to pick something different from last week so I decided to go with Euphoria. I hadn’t heard of that word until college (Just to be fair, English is my second language.) and as soon as I heard it, I felt happy. To me, it is one of those words that suits its meaning so well. So I love that word.

This week’s catalyst is: Create art around a mistake. The bigger the more therapeutic.



My journaling is:
Since I am the kind of person to harp on little things for hours, days, sometimes months, I try to think hard before I make decisions to minimize the possibility of making a mistake. I am happy to say I have relatively few regrets in my life. One of the very few happened a couple of years ago. I quit my job on Wall Street to join Teach For America which is a nonprofit program where you teach at under-resourced schools. I taught fifth grade at a school in the South Bronx in New York. My regret is not quitting my job but it’s quitting Teach For America before fulfilling my two-year commitment. When I quit my job, I firmly believed that TFA was my path in life. I wanted to do it for two years and then move on to starting my own nonprofit and making the world a better place. So much so that at some point, I even felt the importance of improving education in the United States so strongly that I was surprised more people weren’t prioritizing their life accordingly. After several months of struggling, failing, crying, trying more and failing more, I finally gave up and quit. To this day, it’s something I regret. I know that it was the right decision on many levels but it’s still something I regret and consider a mistake.



Technique Highlight
Since reading Kelly Rae Roberts’ book Taking Flight, I’ve been meaning to try my hand at polymer clay. I took this week’s catalyst as the opportunity to do so. I created a door to represent the new stage of my life TFA was at the time and wrote the words “believe” on the bottom since that was the strongest emotion I felt at the time: a solid sense of belief that this was the right next step for me in life. I then painted the clay and put it in the oven to bake. As it turned out, I overestimated the amount of time it needed to cook, so I burned it and a part of it got distorted. Right before I was going to throw it out, I decided it was an even better fit for my catalyst. As I started teaching, my belief and faith in this opportunity and what it represented got all bent out of shape and distorted so I decided this burned clay only reinforced my theme.

This week’s catalyst is: What’s something you wish you could do? (Something you know how but are too afraid to try.)



Here are my words:



This one was easy for me. I’ve always always always wanted to be a published author. Fiction. Reading has always been and will always be my number one passion in the world and I’ve always dreamt of being one of those authors on people’s shelves. I have started several novels and have done a lot of writing over the years but I have never taken it all the way. Never fully finished, edited, and sent out a book to a publisher. In the last six years, I have mostly stopped writing altogether but I still think of it from time to time and the desire to become a published writer has not subsided one little bit.

Catalyst fifty-two is Tell us about something you’ve always wanted to learn. A really exceptionally good week this week with a lot of varied and beautiful art.



My words:
I’ve always been a worrier. All the time and about everything. When I was pregnant with my first baby, I put a sign over my door that said “give up that there’s something wrong.” and I looked at it every day. Over the last four years, I’ve gone up and down on this. And this year, I’ve decided to put extra focus on achieving peace and letting go of worry. Though, I must admit the relatively rough pregnancy hasn’t helped a lot, I really have been working hard at letting it go. If there’s one thing I’d love to learn, it’s letting go of worry.



Technique Highlight:

This piece is inspired by the amazing Kelly Rae Roberts. I used several of the techniques she teaches in her book “Taking Flight.” The wings have glitter glue on them that makes them shine and they are made out of wire and tissue paper.

Today’s catalyst is: What is something that you turn to, to lift you up out of a bad mood?



here’s my text:

The one thing that never fails to lift me out of a bad mood is music. Even if I’ve had the worst day, I can get in the car, jack up the music all the way and feel better instantly. That’s why I am thankful for my 120gig iPod. This way I never have to worry about not having the kind of music I am craving at that moment. All my music is in one little machine.

This week’s catalyst was: Create
art around a secret you’ve been keeping.


Here are my words:


It may not seem so, but this catalyst was incredibly cathartic for me. I
spent my whole life being the girl with the diaries and the girl with
secrets. I would never tell anyone anything about me. Anyone. Ever. Many
good friends complained how it wasn’t fair that I knew everything about
them but they knew nothing about me. I agreed it wasn’t fair but I just
couldn’t get myself to share.



But somewhere along the way, I shared once and then once again and then
I realized the healing power of sharing. The connection it created, the
way it helped me resolve my problems just by talking about them. And
imagine my surprise when I sat down to do this week’s catalyst and
realized I had no secrets. Nothing. I feel so relaxed and peaceful. When
it comes to keeping others’ secrets, I am still a perfect confidant who
never tells a soul but now I don’t have to fill dairies with my own
secrets anymore. I have kind souls to share with and I do so as needed.
I am eternally thankful for that.