During December I took a wonderful class from the amazing Stephanie Lee (she’s offering the class again in January and you can see more detail here). The class was amazing in many many ways that I can’t even put into words. And even though I didn’t keep up with my daily journaling (I will work on this for 2010), I still awaited her posts with baited breath every single day.
During the weeks the class was on, I had some rough days. I was feeling down and frustrated. And then one of her posts completely changed me. It made me realize that joy is a choice.
While I’ve read this many times before and probably knew it deep down, it didn’t hit me until the moment I read her words. Every single moment of my day I get to control how I feel about that moment. And since I am a major worrier, this is a life-changing perspective for me.
For example, I spend a lot of time worrying about all the bad things that might happen. And the fact is, they might. Something terrible might happen to my child. My house could burn down. My husband might leave me. I could lose my job. I could hurt myself. I could get cancer.
No one can tell me that these things can’t happen because they are all in the realm of possibility and no one can tell the future. And while I am a math-person, knowing that these are all low-probability events still doesn’t really help me. Even if the chances are one in a million, the possible result is so devastating that it really upsets me.
But here’s something that does help:
Choosing Joy.
It sounds simplistic and stupid, but I swear it works. If indeed something is going to happen to my child isn’t it better that I enjoy every single moment I have with him? That we play, laugh and make the most of our time? If my husband is going to leave me, shouldn’t I savor it while he’s still here? Shouldn’t I appreciate my beautiful home while I have it?
As I said, it does sound simple but a worrier like me doesn’t focus on the good. I need to concentrate on what’s here right now. What’s wonderful and possible and magical about what I have, what I can do, what great things could happen if I had the best attitude at this very moment.
If I choose joy over worry. Joy over frustration and anger and sadness.
How would my life be if I just chose joy every single moment?
When I read Stephanie’s post, I was overwhelmed with all these thoughts and my perspective changed immediately. I was filled with so much joy that I felt compelled to email my husband (he was at work) and tell him about my new revelation.
So I decided that this is something I want to embrace. I plan to make a big sign for my desk that reminds me to choose joy every time. Reminds me that I have a choice. And that I can make the choice that makes me happy instead of the other, not-so-productive, ones.
If I remember nothing else from this amazing class, this will be the best present I have ever received.
thank you, Stephanie.
Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.
I know a few of you have been emailing me or leaving comments about how my new feed isn’t showing up. I apologize profusely for the inconvenience.
Edited to add: My friend Manu told me this rss feed wasn’t doing its job properly, so I registered for a feedburner feed and so I am updating the links: Here’s the link for the new feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Karenika and a clickable version http://feeds.feedburner.com/Karenika I just tested it on Bloglines and it works. Please let me know if it doesn’t work for you.
In this blog you can also subscribe to the comments I get here: https://www.karenika.com/?feed=comments-rss2 (I am not sure you want this ever but since the option is there, I wanted to show you.) https://www.karenika.com/?feed=comments-rss2
There’s also Atom instead of RSS but if you know the difference, you’ll know how to get it.
The link I gave in the other RSS feed you were subbed to should also work but just in case, here we are.
Thank you for asking me and wanting to subscribe to my posts. I appreciate it immensely.
I meant to note this last time but I forgot. When I changed blogs, my sister commented that it was considerably harder to leave a comment since you had to load the entire page, etc etc. So I now have another link called “leave quick comment” which opens up a small window under the post, without loading anything else. You should be able to leave comments this way if you so choose. If you want to see all the comments, you still have to click on the “X comments” link.
Let me know if you have any feedback.
I haven’t decorated much of my house yet. I have been waiting for my mom because she will bring some things to put on the walls and I decided to leave everything empty until all the paintings get here. But my friend Katie posted some Christmas presents on her blog the other day and I couldn’t resist buying some for our house. I had to get this amazing wreath and I cannot tell you how beautiful it looks in person.
I have a thing for birds’ nests. I’ve always loved seeing others’ photos with nests in them and so when I saw this garland and the nest in the first photo, I didn’t even think. I bought them with love and adore them. The long tree in this photo was the only item that didn’t really turn out the way I’d hoped. It’s too tall. But I still have plans for it. I plan to get a wreath for it to sit in and I plan to dangle some beautiful things from it instead of using the candles. Let’s see how it turns out.
And I bought these little runners for the table. A little bit of color. Love them, too.
In the end, I am glad I got them all. They were each on sale for 60-70% off and they make me happy. What more can a girl ask for?
So we made it to Gilroy Gardens last night and it was mostly drizzling so I was all excited about finally being there.
As we entered I grabbed some shots and saw this beautiful scene.
So I decided to run and grab a photo of my family as they walked in. Except that I was wearing the wrong shoes and I was stupid and I slipped and fell. And the camera fell with me and the lens hit my face.
It all happened pretty quickly and since my running had prompted David to run Jake was trying to get him to stop and not looking at me at all. When he came over to see if I was ok, we both saw the blood dripping out of my nose. I’m told I was covered with it within seconds though I never got to see my face like that.
We waited around for the EMT to show up, all the while I cursed myself for being so stupid. Several times I told them that we should just go in and I was fine. But Jake insisted we wait. Finally the woman showed up, cleaned me up and said we needed to go to the hospital cause my cut was too deep and it was going to need stitches.
I had just told someone last week that I never had stitches in my life. Never.
We got in the car and drove around for a bit, trying to find the urgent care she gave us directions for and the woman at the Walgreens drive-through told us that it was closed so we then got on the road to find the Gilroy hospital. Halfway through, we decided to bail and just come back home so we could go to Stanford hospital. By now, it was already past Nathaniel’s bedtime. We called up the hospital and they said that I had 12 hours to get sutures so it was safe to take the extra 45 minutes to drive there.
When we got to the emergency room, the nurse looked at my nose and sent me to the extension which is a quieter, calmer portion of ER where less serious patients are sent. After several visits from hospital personnel, the resident showed up and looked at it. He said he might be able to just glue it. (Which made me happy, I am still nursing so I wasn’t keen on getting any drugs for the stitches. Not to mention my track record of not having any stitches.) We all waited for the attending to show up. Nathaniel was a champ the whole time.
The doctor came and decided she agreed and we could use dermabond. We were very concerned about any long-term scars since it’s on my nose but she assured there’s no difference between stitches and glue for that. So they cleaned my nose off really well with saline and went to get the stuff. I asked Jake to snap some photos while they were gone. I had still not seen what I looked like. Here’s the only one that came out relatively clear.
The resident came back, glued me up twice and put some small bandages on. The doctor came back and checked his work. And then the nurse came and gave me a tetanus shot (I hadn’t had one since I taught for Teach For America in 2002. And I guess you need to have had it in the last 5 years.) which made me bleed all over.
So at 8:15pm, we were finally done and could go back home. Everyone was exhausted and worn out from being on adrenalin for four hours. After having paid the $15 admissions fee for all three of us and the $10 parking fee, the above one is the only photo I have to show for the almost four hours we spent driving back and forth to Gilroy this weekend.
The $55 photo.
Before we had kids, Jake and I used to go back to Istanbul regularly. Each time we went home, my parents would take me to a new local place and we would always run into people I knew. Always. Istanbul has over 12 million people. Yet we would run into the same people over and over again.
I was flabbergasted by this. Until, I realized, of course, that the people I knew all went to the same few places. This is always the case in a small community. People tend to go to the same places, know the same people, like the same things, and talk about the same issues. Therefore, it should not have surprised me to run into the same people everywhere I went, even in a city with a population of 12 million. It’s like a sub-culture within a big, dense city.
Yet, when the exact same thing happened lately, I failed to recognize it again. The web is even more populated than Istanbul (by quite a bit) yet it felt like everyone whose site I read knew each other. Everyone I was following on Twitter was talking about each other. It felt like I was a voyeur into someone else’s popular clique and I kept feeling like an outsider. Like the rejected girl (as I often have felt in my life.)
Until I realized that the same phenomenon that happened in Istanbul was happening here. I kept running into the same people because I found them by clicking on each other’s blogs. I followed them because one person I followed was following them, etc. Since they referred to each other often (as they are friends) I had soon built a long list of people who were already connected and built that list exactly because they were connected and then I proceeded to forget all about this and feel like an unpopular kid (those childhood feelings are hard to disappear and come back rushing very quickly).
Like Istanbul, the web has niches. In these niches some people are wildly popular even though no one has heard of them outside this relatively small niche. Yet, if you’re observing this niche, it’s really quite easy to lose perspective of it all. And to think this person is more unreachable (untouchable) than they really are. in the end, this is just a bunch of friends who all happen to have blogs, twitter accounts, etc. who are using these popular forms of communication to document and keep in touch with each other. The only difference here is that tens, thousands, millions of people get to observe this if they so choose. This creates an interesting dynamic. One that I am still thinking about and trying to see how I feel about. I am trying to remind myself that this is not me getting rejected. This is a bunch of people I don’t know sharing a piece of themselves and letting me read it.
I am not sure what my point is here, of course. Some days, I feel really sad and want to unfollow many of these people. Then I remember that I chose them cause I like their words, the way they encourage me to think and ponder. And the feeling of rejection is really just living inside me, not coming from these people. Even though I know this, it still sometimes hurts.
First of all, thank you for all your plethora of suggestions about what to sell on my etsy store. I think there are some awesome ideas and I will try most of them, slowly.
Last week, I was lying in bed when the idea for this book came to me. I loved making my december daily book and recently I was looking at creative therapy catalyst book and realizing that it was my art journal for the year and I loved it so much. So I decided to make those for my store. My word for 2010 is LOVED and I love the idea of having an art journal dedicated to my word of the year. I love how beckoning this cover is for me. How it already makes me feel loved.
So I decided to make custom journals. Covers. The inside pages are for you to fill. If you really want one with inside pages, let me know and we can discuss. I really enjoy making these and thought maybe people will like having them.
So, here they are: custom word of the year journals. More detailed photos there.
Hope you like them.
Jake and I were talking about birthdays a few weeks ago. How we treat people extra-special when it’s their birthday. How we feel it’s ok to ask for a little more special treatment when it’s our birthday.
It made me wonder why we don’t do this more often. Why we reserve the extra-special for birthdays. I know, it’s once a year and it’s easier and more realistic to drop everything and prioritize someone once a year. But imagine if we picked a select few people in our lives and decided we would treat them as if it was their birthday every single day. So you could always treat them with a little something special?
Maybe special would lose its meaning then? Since every day will be special and all…
But I think not.
I think it would make the relationship that much stronger. That much better and deeper. And wouldn’t it be cool to know that you don’t have to wait for their birthday to make those special pancakes, to give that awesome gift, to make them feel as special as they are in your life?
It just feels right to me. I want my loved ones to know that everyday is their birthday. That I can make them feel special every day. I want to.
I consider myself a productive person. In an ordinary week, I get a lot done. Here’s a typical list: creative therapy art piece, layouts for amm, layouts for the BPS class I am taking, organizing/writing BPS class that I am planning to teach, a new tag, a photography video, a photoshop video, a book to start and finish in the same week, my writing homework for the week, writing for my upcoming submission to the critique in my class, digital downloads for the week, photos every day of the week – taking them, processing them, uploading them, and posting them. Preparing and posting each week’s creative therapy catalyst. Emailing artists to see if they would guest for us. Following up on guests that are coming up due.
I’m tired just listing them all. And none of these are required. On top of of all this, I have my actual obligations in life. Like my job and my almost five year old and my six month old and my husband. Attending meetings. Taking David back and forth from preschool for two hours a day. Making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for him. Nursing Nathaniel – day and night. And now preparing and giving food to Nathaniel.
The thing is, I love being busy. I love scrapping, taking photos, doing art, reading, writing. I love it all. But because I am doing it all, I am always in such a rush that I can’t seem to enjoy any of it. I find myself running from one task to another. Making 27 item-long todo lists each weekend. Telling my son he has to go to bed without a story so mommy can do her stuff. Not replying to emails. Not inviting friends over so I can do my stuff.
And, on top of all that, I am not even happy with what I do. I often find myself seeking validation. I annoy my husband to read my words, to look at my pages. I post them online and refresh constantly for feedback, never believing the good stuff and constantly reading into the words, looking for the criticism. I am obviously not made out of whatever it takes to do this stuff. Ten times a day, I think of withdrawing myself from everything. Giving up all my obligations (most of which are to myself) and just living life.
But I also know that being busy is what stops me from going crazy. From being depressed. And as I mentioned a few days ago, I often need a purpose to execute.
I think the trick is to find a little more balance. To take the time to seriously sit down and analyze which parts I enjoy the most. While there might be days I don’t enjoy having to remember to take a photo, I love seeing daily photos of my son. And I love that because of that practice I have some amazing photos of both of my sons. Of our lives. Of our events. I love creative therapy. I love the environment it’s created on the web. I love the guests we’ve had. The art I’ve done. The team we have. I love reading. I love the layouts that focus on the words and the photos. I love having our scrapbook pages to look at, the stories I get to remember, the moments I get to preserve. And I’ve been getting a lot out of the videos, digital work, classes, etc, too. But I can’t do it all.
I don’t want to do it all. I want to be able to do art for four hours one night and not worry about the other items on my list. Or read for seven hours. Or just be with my kids and do workbooks. Read stories.
So something’s gotta give. I don’t know what yet. I feel too sad giving any of it up. But as the holiday season approaches and I get to have more days at home with my kids and I think about gratitude and family and thankfulness, I want to look within and see what fulfills me the most right now. Yes, I love the idea of writing that novel, but I am not really loving writing it right now. Maybe it’s ok to let it go. It doesn’t mean I failed.
Living my life authentically for me. For the values I cherish. And not for looking good for others. Not for validation. Not for approval or admiration. But for joy, love and gratitude. I am going to try to practice that for the next nine weeks. I will still create art and take photos and read books. But I am going to try my hardest to give up the need for validation. I am not even sure I can do it. But I am going to try hard. I think that if I didn’t need the validation, I might be a better person. And I know that life would be considerably more pleasant.
Here’s to nine weeks of authenticity and joy.
—
ps: no photoshop video this week. I have no more ideas. If you have ideas of what you’d like to see email me. karen AT karenika DOT com.
So have I mentioned that I love Rebecca Sower? And I love the art tags I’ve been doing all year? I have? Yes, I know. There’s something about Rebecca’s art that speaks to my soul. I can’t even put my finger on what it is. But each time I look at it, I fall in love with the fabric, with the art, with the stitching.
So I was telling my sister a few months ago that I want to make these amazing pieces, too. I know they will never compare to Rebecca and they might not turn out all that amazing but I am ok with that, I want to try. And since I need a reason for doing everything I do, I told her that maybe I’d open an etsy store and list what I make.
Being the amazing person she is (and she is so amazing) my beautiful sister went and bought me a ton (and I mean a TON) of amazing things. Fabrics, beads, metal embellishments, sequins. Let me show you some of them:
Aren’t they amazing? And this is not even all. There’s fabric. Stunning fabric. And sequins. Felt. And so much more.
So now I have these amazing goodies. I am scared of not doing them justice. Not doing my sister justice. (She packed all of this stuff into tiny little bags, neatly packed into a 30lbs box and shipped it all the way from Turkey.) I want to dig into them. I want to make things. Conquer the fear. Find the joy.
So here’s where you come in. I need ideas. What kind of things do you think I could make? What are things you might like to buy? This is no commitment to buy anything, I would never expect that, I just need some ideas. Some encouragement. If you have some ideas about the kind of things you have seen that you like, things that you think I could try to do, I would be very grateful.
Thank you.
I’ve been with Jake for almost fifteen years. We met the last few weeks of the first semester of my Junior year in college. We were friends for a short while and then started dating right before it was time for us to go to our own homes for the holidays.
Even though Jake’s flight was several hours after mine, we went to the Pittsburgh airport together and talked and talked until it was time for me to board my flight.
At the time I was a Resident Assistant and a few days before the Christmas holidays begin is finals time at Carnegie Mellon. And during finals we observe Quiet Hours in the dorms. Which means exactly what it sounds like. About a week before I left for home, I had heard blaring music from the room adjacent to mine. I walked into the room, prepared to remind them about Quiet Hours, but instead I sat on the bed and listened until the song finished. After that, I told them to turn the music down and went back to my room.
But the song stuck in my head and I managed to get a copy on tape (this was before there were mp3 players, thank you very much). Even though I knew Air Supply, I’d never heard “Making Love out of Nothing at All” before and I really loved it. In fact, I pretty much listened to it on repeat for the new few weeks.
On the day of the airport, I was still listening to it on repeat and as I boarded the plane and took my seat, I put the music on and looked out the window. That’s when I saw Jake standing by the big glass wall that looked out on the runway and waving. I thought of waving back, but I knew he couldn’t see me.
And yet he waved.
He continued to wave for the next 30 minutes. All the way until my plane pulled back and got on the runway to take off. I spent the whole time listening to the song over and over again and watching him wave at me. That might be the moment I fell in love with him.
All these years later, I still think of that day when I hear the Air Supply Song. As the band plays images of the airport appear before me. I see him waving at me. Smiling.
And I fall in love all over again.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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