Happy New Year 2015!

Wait. What? I hadn’t blogged since November 2014? It’s 2015, in the second week no less.

I thought once 2015 hit, things would slow down a bit. Not so. January appears to be as busy as December. I’ve been contemplating what goals and intentions I’d like to set for 2015, but first a little recap for 2014... in the way of creativity.

I had submitted about 10 things for publication.

I had two articles published.

That’s it for writing, other than daily journaling and illustrating my children’s book, oh and the never-ending letter writing (by choice of course!).

I designed, drew, and created my own Christmas card.

I crafted handmade gifts for family and friends for Christmas.

Now, here’s what I sent out via the good ole postal service in the way of cards and letters: 809 items. If you include the family newsletters that I do quarterly, that brings the total to 1,321. Excluding the newsletters, I averaged 67 items per month. Not too bad.

I think I’ve talked about Letter Writing Month that is held in February. I decided that I’m going to write a letter/note a day. Why just do it in February? That might be a rather huge task, but at least it will keep me writing as I continue to illustrate on my book… that’s the other goal, to have the illustrated draft completed by the end of 2015 (if not sooner). Long term is to have it published by 2018 (if not sooner, again).

I’d like to challenge any of you to write a letter… say just one or two for the year. Anyone reading this, if they’d like a letter written to them, just let me know via email: lober13(at)gmail(dot)com and put LETTER in the subject line.

I have lots of other goals too, but… I’ll leave you with one of last year’s sketches…

Remember to keep the end result of your intentions in mind – the acting as if principal.

LYNCR8MO

Sometimes when I’m off the “grid” and I have been for a while, whether intentionally or not, I feel a sense of peace within. I realize the Internet is the way to communicate these days and I do email regularly, but everything else I have stayed away from pretty much this month. Granted, I was out of town a few times, and any spare time I had I’ve devoted to illustrating my book—which is my own rendition of NaNoWriMo.

I’m calling it LynCr8Mo. Lynn Create Month. I looked at my schedule, decided (realistically) how many hours a day (that were available) that I could draw and used that as my overall goal. I had 20 days—turned that into 20 hours—an hour a day.

I originally thought, Easy-Peasy, however, I was surprised how difficult (this month anyway) it was to do an hour on those days. Eight of my 20 days, I logged in a zero. I’m still on target with my goal since on the days that I did draw, I drew more than the one hour goal. Maybe because I was ahead, I didn’t stress about getting an hour in on the other days. Or I was lucky to be ahead because something came up needing my attention more than the drawing. Either way, it’s all good.

I’m going to create a goal every month. December is going to be a challenge, but I’ll keep the numbers low, and who knows, I may surprise myself. At least there will be some sort of goal.

In light of the world’s current situation, I send out love. I sing HU daily, for God’s will to be done.

Now I’m off to bake…

I’m grateful for all the love in my life—thank you and Happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s What’s Happening

It’s about another month since I last posted a blog… still off the grid a bit. For one thing, my computer was acting up and running so slow, I thought I’d lose my mind. I finally got the computer cleaned up, but still stayed off as I’ve been cleaning out closets and drawers while doing the September Minimalist Challenge. September 1^st you are to get rid of one thing, September 2^nd, two things, etc., and by the end of September, you will have gotten rid of 465 things. That’s some cleaning out, let me tell you. My little sister is going to have a garage sale on Friday, October 10 and Saturday, October 11, where I’m hauling all my goods to her place to sell. Any monies made I’m donating to my favorite non-profit. I’ll post more details later.

If you’re looking for some old time fun, my little sister is participating at the Family Music & Heritage Festival on Saturday, October 4, in Washington, MO where she will be demonstrating spinning yarn on a spinning wheel and other things that have to do with fiber. Her and my youngest daughter are Fiber Freaks. Seriously, they sheered a sheep just for fun, with a scissors!

Next on the list, if you’re a writer and in the St. Louis, MO or surrounding area, you may want to attend The Write Direction Conference on Saturday, October 18 in Columbia, MO. I’ll be there with one of my writing critique friends.

The weekend following, I’ll be heading to Minnesota for a spiritual seminar.  It will be totally awesome and I can’t wait.

I’m still drawing, still illustrating my children’s book, still writing, still taking care of cats, still thinking of everyone, still… being every day… because I’m a

Seriously...

For those of you who have been so kind to be tortured fulfilled in viewing my sketches every day for the past three months, I'd like to thank you. Yes, I blogged every day since April… I wanted to hold myself accountable to someone so that I would sketch every day. I’m pretty sure I got it down. So much so, I’ve decided to illustrate my own children’s book. I'm not sure if I have what it takes, but I'm willing to try. Oh baby. Since blogging daily and drawing daily takes up a lot of time, the only way I’m going to tackle illustrating a children’s book is by doing it. Something has to give. I’ll post once a week just to show you my progress… with drawing. Oh, and I still plan to tackle the thesaurus and drawing to the words, I’ll just be on a bit of a break from that for a while... I only have some 700+ words to go.

Until next week, enjoy and wish me luck!

GREATNESS

How do you measure greatness? How do you draw greatness? My husband woke me up the night the moon was on fire. It wasn’t really on fire, but it just looked like it, to me anyway. It was some sort of red moon. However, to me, that spectacular site signified greatness.

This fiery moon was drawn early in my “sketch a day” challenge. I can’t draw from my head… or at least my drawing is better when I have something to look at.

food for thought:   “The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time.”—A. Smith

DEGREE

I do not have a degree, but I don’t let that stop me from achieving whatever it is I desire… like writing or drawing.

food for thought: Do you have a degree?

PROTOTYPE

Things that are copied are prototypes. Dur.

 

food for thought: I don’t want to copy anyone, but I’m glad there are masters out there for both writing and drawing or I’d be up a creek without a paddle.

DIFFERENCE

The difference between an artist who is mediocre and who is great is in the amount one practices. Right now I’m mediocre (at best), but I have lots of practice to do. I may never be great, but I will get better. And that’s okay.

food for thought: “It is difference of opinion that makes horse races.”—Twain

CONTRARIETY

Without contrariety, there’d be no yardstick to go by.

food for thought: “Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.”—Emerson

IDENTITY

Your identity is unique because there is no one else like you. (Ms. Kitty had to get in the picture.)

food for thought: “What’s in your wallet?”—line from commercial

CORRELATION

In case you’re counting, I’m at word 12 in the old thesaurus… check out older posts to see what I’m doing.

I need to improve my correlation, or do I? I used this word in relation to reciprocate. And no, it makes no sense at all, does it?

food for thought: “We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”—Shaw

 Have you gotten the idea that when I’m clueless as to how to draw something related to the word, I color the word or a word that’s related? And you also can see just how bad my vocabulary and use of words are… yikes. I'm striving for progress and improvement, not perfection. Good thing.

CONSANGUINITY

Who would have known that consanguinity is like kinship, sisterhood, brotherhood, homefolks, etc. I never heard of the word before. I belong to a consanguinity of writers – the WWWPs.

food for thought: “Blood is thicker than water.”—Unknown   

“But sometimes the water is better.” —Me

IRRELATION

There’s a definite irrelation when I’m around those who do not think like I do.

food for thought: “I do desire we may be better strangers.”—Shakespeare

RELATION

In relation to my relations, I’m a lot like them and then again, I’m not like them at all.

I have to say that these first words (this is number nine in my old thesaurus) have been rather hard to figure out what to draw “relating” them to the word. But when I picked out the food for thought, that gave me the idea of what to draw, and it was F-U-N.

food for thought: “A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots.”—Emerson

CIRCUMSTANCE

Considering the circumstances of my past, I am one lucky lady, in more than one way.

food for thought: “Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power.”—Disraeli

STATE

My state of being is usually not affected by others, but sometimes it can be.

food for thought: “No one lives content with his condition.”—Horace

EXTRINSICALITY

The sixth word in my quest to go through an old thesaurus. This word stumped me, even reading all the words relating to this word. Bah. Drawing something was a challenge too, so I resorted to being creative with just the word.

food for thought: “Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth”—Aesop

INTRINSICALITY

Stumped again… I understand the meaning, but putting it into a sentence is another thing, and I have a hard time pronouncing it!

food for thought: “Character is higher than intellect.”—Emerson

What is the innermost recesses of my heart?

UNSUBSTANTIALLY

n. (something unsubstantial) shadow, air, thin air, mockery, “such stuff as dreams are made on” (Shakespeare) 

Another tricky word – who can make a sentence?

food for thought:  “Out of nothing nothing can come, and nothing can become nothing.”—Persius

NONEXISTENCE

See previous post to understand what I’m doing… drawing and writing via Thesaurus.

The nonexistence of the physical body when we die is just that... but really, we live on forever.

food for thought: “Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.”—Millay

I have been inspired ever since I took a workshop by Brother Brian. He has one coming up on May 10 (however, I have other plans – as do some of my other writer buddies who are going to see Sioux perform in Listen To Your Mother), but if there’s someone out there who is interested, check out Brother Brian’s blog post.