Fierce

Here are a few of the ideas that I gleaned from a commencement speech by Mr. Jobs. In three short stories, Mr. Jobs hits some deep truth.

Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick, keep moving on. To do great work, love what you do. Good advice. I hope you work hard to redeem your days this week. Life is, oh, so short.

After that Mr. Jobs talks about cancer his fight with cancer. I'm so close to that, living that moment when you are wondering if you are going to have any more life to live. This experience makes you understand how precious life is. I've been there and it has made me fierce to seize each day.

Don't waste your life. Follow your heart and intuition.

Here is a link to the entire speech from Mr. Jobs.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc.

This week, I hope you thank God that you're here and you have yet more opportunity to follow your dreams.

No doodle this week, instead a photo. I call this "Wild World." I took this pic of the Pacific south of Monterey, CA, last February.



Here is the quote for the week: Follow your heart even when it leads you off the the well worn path. Steve Jobs

2009 Christmas Poem

Here's my annual offering, folks. Not much but heartfelt.

Christmas morning!
Hear children open their stockings.
Shouts. Arguments. Hugs. Pandemonium.
And it's just beginning.
Stacks of blueberry pancakes,
and then children rip paper off packages.
I bask in the glow of tree lights.
Over the squeals and peals,
songs that Mema sang wrap around me.

Not everyone gets what they want.
The cat rolls in the catnip.
I think back to Christmas with my mom and sigh.
No, it's never a perfect morn,
but it's always good.

I love Christmas morning.
A pearl of a day on life's journey.
And I pause and feel the love.
I know we folks are more than we think.
I lift up my face in thanks.

These moments are a taste
of the good things to come.
A breath of thought,
my soul is near the light
of the incorruptible.
Like cleansing rain,
it washes away
the heaviness of the past year.
All my cares fall away
And I open to Emmanuel.

I know God with us.
An unsung song fills me.
My heart, touched by His Son's day.
An unsung song floods me.
Room is made in this heart of mine.
and I smile every time,
and repeat the sounding joy,
Born, crucified, risen,
coming again. Amen.

I love Christmas morning. Selah.


Here is my Christmas doodle:



And now my quote:


Be content with what you have, for God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." So say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid."

Hebrews 13:5,6

Margins

Hi, folks, this can be a busy time of year. Life speeds along. On top of normal hustle and bustle, I'm in for big changes in 2010. The biggest will be a relocation to down-home Texas from fair Washington. Pretty big stuff, so I'm facing a few months of working in the margins. In ideal life, you block a good 25 hours a week for writing, add on another 8 for marketing and finish everything off with blogging, networking, and arranging the office supplies. This is the ideal writing life.

In the real life, you have 40 hours of other business commitments each week and then another 20 to 40 hours on top of that for family commitments, and then you write your book in all that spare time left-over. You write from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. and crawl out of bed at 6:30 a.m. and try to squeeze in 30 more minutes of writing. You write 100 words as many times as you can in short bursts all day. You breathe. You are very kind to yourself and others around you. You fill up the margins with your writing life.

I hope that you all scribble in the margins some over the coming weeks.

I call this week's doodle, Funky Face.



Remember: ©Molly Blaisdell, all rights reserved. If you want to use my cool doodles, ask permission first. It is so wrong to take people's doodles without permission!

And the quote for the week. Something to think about.

I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move. Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Can

I have a flexibility of thought that opens me up to a belief that I can. Whatever it is, I can. How did I get in to the territory of infinite possibility? I think some of it is hard-wired. I was born with it. I find that most creative folks have a decent slice of "impossible dreamer" within them.

This works for you and against you. You may have many outlandish dreams and have to figure out which one is worth pursuing. Another thing, half the battle is to channel all that flexible thought into something salient on the page. Yeah, not so easy.

Unfortunately, no matter how clear my vision is, I can't get the stuff inside me on the page without some serious work. To this day I don't I've ever been able to let the pure light that heats me up within to shine fully out. But I have hope that I'll crack open someday and the light will flood. I have found that you must be on the journey to get to the place that your wish to go. So keep plodding forward, that is one sure way to get there.

On the backside of all my flexibility and creativity is a worry that my point of view is uninteresting and lacks perspective. It's like being a wren. How so? You know, there are lots of plain old wrens out there. They're a dime a dozen. How do you stand out? How do you get your voice heard? Does every wren get her day? I hope so.

When I feel different, plain, awkward, tired and old, this little lyric from childhood sings in my heart:

Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit
Traditional

Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your tail is mighty white.
Yes, my lord, I've been gettin out of sight,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine.

Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your coat is mighty gray.
Yes, my lord, it was made that way
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine.

Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your ears are mighty long.
Yes, my lord, they were put on wrong,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine.

Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your ears are mighty thin.
Yes, my lord, they're a-splittin' in the wind,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine.

Mr Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, I'll bid you good day.
Yes, my lord, and I'll be on my way,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine,
Every little soul's gonna shine, shine.

So here's your gift for the day. Every little soul's going to shine. Don't lose heart. Keep working. Keep creating. You can. You will.

A little rambling today, but still I hope something in here sparks that moment 0f recognition in you, "Ah, here is some one who see things like me", or perhaps, I've spurred you on to say, "I can!" Good. I hope you step out and do.

See you next week with more reasons to seize the day.

Doodles return! I call today's doodle: Angels. There may be a story in here somewhere.



Remember: ©Molly Blaisdell, all rights reserved. If you want to use my cool doodles, ask permission first. It is so wrong to take people's doodles without permission!

I hope that this quote gets you to embrace a "can do" attitude.

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.John Wesely

Winners of the 2009 Golden Coffee Cup.

Hi, folks, thank you for hanging out! Really we are all winners.:) Thanks to my son Jesse Blaisdell for creating our nifty award.



Still, the winners of the real live coffee are as follows:

Janet Lee Carey said...

Hooray for the Golden Coffee Cup and for Molly B!

I finished the first third of revision for Bound By Three -- now for the rest. Took a while to get into the swing of this revision but now it's rolling. The Golden Coffee Cup got me through some bleak days so Thank You! Miss Molly B! And thanks to all the coffee cuppers who posted in the blog or left comments. They helped too.

jesse joshua watson said...
I birthed my novel this month, which was my goal. I had carried the story around in my brain for years and this month it came out. (talk about a long pregnancy ... and a month long labor. ouch.)

Now it can stand on its own baby legs. (Until I knock it unmercifully to the ground with the editing hammer.) Yee haw. Thank you, Molly!

Laurie Thompson said...
Ha! I guess I should've gone back to see what my original goals were before the last day, since it seems I changed them mid-month without realizing it! ;) Either way, I'm not quite finished in time, but I made so much progress that I STILL feel like a winner, and I know exactly what still needs to be done so I have a clear plan for finishing ALL the goals before the holidays. Thanks for the much-needed incentive AND inspiration, Molly!

Michèle Griskey said...

Yes, I completed my work-in-progress. I thought I would be done early in the month, but I finally finished yesterday. Oh well, at least I finished it before the deadline.

Thank you for a great month Molly and everyone.
And here's to a cup of coffee and a new writing project. :)

Send your address to me at molly@mollyblaisdell.com and I will send your card good for a cup of piping hot java!

If you want me to email the Award picture, I will, but you can cut and paste it if you want. :)

My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that 'achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice, too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success. Helen Hayes