Tuesday, February 27, 2018

It's the Journey

I got it. I got it. It’s the journey!

I’ve been blogging for some time—as you wonderful folks who have been reading me know, but I have been all over the place, searching for my spot, my focus. Finally I got it. I write about my journey, and I share it.
Simple.

Like duh! It had to hit me in the face.

And here I offer an invitation for you to join me.  Share your stuff and perhaps others will want to come along. Give someone a pat on the back, a kind word. We are all in this soup together, and we all need a little motivation from time to time. This venue won't be for everybody; it will be for those special few who resonate with what we are into. 

Don’t we all wonder about some of the same things?

Don’t we wonder what our mission is?

Don’t we wonder what happens after we die?

Don’t our minds wander into the great cosmos and say "Wow! How did all this happen?"

We want joy, happy relationships, a job that sustains us financially, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

I believe all that is possible.

With a little help from my friends.
I believe there is a great malaise present nowadays of folks who are going through the motions of life without enjoying it, and that some days we feel we are getting pecked to death by a duck. I know it isn’t all sweetness and light…but that is the bull's eye we intend to hit.

Inspiration says,”Let’s jump.”

Well, sometimes the net will catch you, sometimes it doesn’t.

As you lie bleeding and broken, inspiration is sitting beside you going, “Wasn’t that fun? Let’s do it again.”
(I got this from Elizabeth Gilbert—well, she said it sort of like that.  At least that was the gist of it.)

Around ye old homestead:


February 21, pink sky in the evening


February 22, snow in the morning


February 23, snow gone, flowers up


February  25, Blonde's first egg of the season! Since she lost her sister she prefers being with people over being with the three new pullets. And I am happy to see that she is the one who lays the aquamarine egg.

Okay, don't laugh, I did add another blog site--I will keep doing it until I get it right, it is www.thejourneybyjo.com

I couldn't get The journey.com without the by jo, so I will go with that one. I repeated this content from that blog, but I won't always. If you want to see different pictures, plus my morning smootie, and know its recipe, check out www.thejourneybyjo.com.

And if you sign up I will dance a jig for you. 


"Working hard at something we don't care about is called stress;working hard for something we love is called passion." --Simon Sinek

Thursday, February 15, 2018

This Simple Little Bouquet of Flowers Taught Me Something





Think about the simple task of going outside and cutting a few flowers from the yard, of bringing them inside and putting them in a vase with water. Simple right? No study was involved. I didn’t take flower arrangement lessons. However,  they are elegant because the flowers have their own beauty—just like you.

In looking at my bouquet, I thought of how we feel compelled in a world of professionals, to look good, to try to match them, and then we feel not good enough. We see the result of years of hard work with musicians and artists and feel we can’t begin because we will never match them. 

Young girls look at airbrushed and photoshopped pictures of models, even to the point of eye color, and feel inadequate in comparison.

Yesterday I listened to #Marie Forleo’s interview with #Rene’e Mauborgne. Her 
shtick is: 

 How to avoid competition.

A lofty goal right?  Her book is #Blue Ocean Strategy, How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Completion Irrelevant.

Blue ocean means outside the competition. Red Ocean is immersed in competition.  Red Ocean is where most all industries exist today. 

Here are a few Blue Oceans: 

  • Blow Outs  in New York. One hairdresser threw out everything in her salon except blow dryers, and created  a raving business.

  • ·        A young girl in Afghanistan, a musician, in a country with virtually no music instruction and few instruments wanted to start a youth orchestra. She searched the internet for a conductor and found one willing to work with her in Scotland. Together they began an orchestra—not the most talented, not the best musicians, but with a message—They didn’t want their country to continue with the legacy given them.

  • ·        Cirque du Soleil—they did not compete with Ringling and Barnum and Bailey Circus, and they took the world by storm.

  • ·        Marie Forleo’s TV, a video blog unheard of a few years ago.

I’m thinking. I haven’t found my spot, I’m blogging, but how am I different? 
I’m simple.
I poke flowers in water.
I offer them for viewing. 
And let me hear from you  You Rock, 
Jo


Sunday, February 11, 2018

Hello from Portland--A Vision Quest


Oregon that is.

An overcast day on the gem of the ocean, the Columbia River.

The Red Lion Inn is situated in Jantzen Beach on the Columbia River—sounds divine, with a river walk and all. The only problem is it sits next to a steel bridge with a constant stream of traffic, and every second a truck drives over something, a steel plate I think, that sends off a loud clang that drives my dog nuts. That is if we are outside. Inside the room, we are in hog heaven. It’s quiet. I can concentrate. I can write myself silly. Sweetpea mainly sleeps on the bed.


 Do you know what this is?

It's a rain chain. It directs water from the roof, down the chain and into the ground.

I’m on a birthday retreat, a vision quest of sorts. Three days without concerns of home and heart. I’m not like Dick Van Dyke, who as Rob Petrie on his TV show, set himself up in a mountain cabin to write and ended up playing with a paddle ball, and lonely for home.

I just completed the longest blog ever—for bloggers on www.bestdamnwritersblog.com. (And there I found I am a Crash-test Dummy blogger.)

You know how I have complained that the blogging gurus say long blogs work best. It’s a mystery to me. And today (ha ha) Seth Godin (world renown blogger) had a two-line blog. I love it.

I am playing around online with a downloadable day planner/calendar. About ten years ago I bought a day planner that worked great for me. Since  then , and not wanting to spend $29.99 and up, I’ve been buying some that have pretty covers, but don’t work well for me. I end up writing over pages meant for something else, so I decided to put one together myself, without knowing that would not be a simple task. My plan was, maybe is, to have it eventually as a downloadable give-a-way.

Already January has zipped past, so I better get it together before the end of February or I’ll lose another month.  I’m searching for quotes to add to monthly pages.  I have a picture (painting) I like for a cover that I hope is not infringing on any copyright.

The day I was to leave for my trip I pulled a Medicine card from its deck. It was an Eagle--upside down. It said I ought to go on a Vision Quest for I have felt my wings were clipped. And I should build my nest higher—whatever that means.

It is self-preservation to take care of oneself.

In Europe, they send people to spas instead of to the doctor. A time to heal. I think my decade birthday was weighing heavily on me. When you begin wondering how many days you have left it’s time for a break.

The other day, my friend asked her 102-year-old mother, if she’s ever lonely for her friends who have passed on. She smiled and said, “Heck no, I never liked the pressure of being constantly amicable—now I can be as ornery as I want.” What a woman.!

Yesterday sitting at my breakfast table in front of a bank of windows, I squinted across the river—way over into Washington State (Oregon and Washington divide right in the middle of the Columbia River), and I saw a building I recognized as one our family visited years ago. Daughter dear still has a tee-shirt from there that reads “Peace, Love, and Crabs.” The building was Joe’s Crab Shack.

Hold on. I’m having a bath here and going over there for dinner.

I had a bath too, but can’t go into the restaurant.
Dinner is over. I have clean hands and clean fingernails--all evidence of crab and butter washed away.  I drove across the river, across that clanking bridge, and there I was within a stone’s throw of the Crab Shack but had to drive about 6 miles to get there.

That bridge seems to be hanging over my head.—like someone toying with me. I look up, but the bridge stays right over the top of my head. I can see it, but how do I actually get onto it?

While both the hotel and the Crab Shack are tucked beside the bridge, the labyrinth of roads beside it, make crossing the bridge a challenge.
                                                                   `
I made it to Joe’s Crab Shack where I cracked and peeled the beautiful crustacean before me, indulged myself on crab meat, and butter and lemon, and made a royal mess. No potatoes, no corn. Right now I am on an anti-inflammatory diet. 


 Back in my hotel room, I clicked on the computer, and there was a perfect ending to my Vision Quest.

#Jack Canfield sent a link to a #Dr. Christiane Northrup interview. Her topic, “How our beliefs effect our health.” Perfect.

When she said, “Goddesses never age,” my ears pricked up.

Our emotions are the key, for the body is self -healing.

The following are highlights from Dr. Northrup’s interview:

“What we call health care, has nothing to do with health. It is disease management and disease diagnosis. “

Northrup went on to say that we are used to a bandwidth of emotions. We don’t get too high, or too low. If we study #epigenetics (gene expression) we see that it is the environment (what we eat, think, live, what chemicals are coursing through our bodies, etc. ) that governs the genes.  It is not, as is often stated, “My mother had it, her mother had it. It’s in my genes.”

Northrup  never tells her age because she does not want anyone’s input about her age. Ta Da!

At age 84 Dr. Northrup’s mother went to the Mt. Everest base camp.

Wow, ok. Let’s go for it, not Mt. Everest, just whatever we want.

Upon postmortem examination- on Nuns who gave their consent-- researchers found that people with dementia and people without it had the same Alzheimer’s plaque in their brains.

Dr. Northrup has found that people the world over who have lived to 100 and beyond have one thing in common. They are future orientated.

Her affirmation: “I love and accept myself right now.”

When you go on a vision quest, honor whatever shows up.
Live long and prosper,
Love from Joyce