It happened that I was interviewed recently for the radio! I know, I have talked in lots of places but never on the radio and never about what I have been doing with my art and book and colouring groups. In the past I talked about things other people thought were important and put my emotion into the presentation because that is the only way I talk about anything really. Lots of people don’t understand what colouring in or activities like it are the people they are something too. Having colouring in groups has allowed me the privilege of seeing into other people’s lives and sharing some of the joy, peace, quiet, community, warm fuzzy feelings, or space my drawings bring to them. That is why I began colouring with people, to understand what it is for them. There are lots of important people like scientists and spiritual practitioners and therapist who tell you it is good for you and it is true but I wanted to know people who did it to find out what it is. And I have and suddenly one night I was asked if I was free for an interview the next day.

It started and avalanche of activity in my world of colour and paper and people! New networks of people have come into my life, new places to colour in…too many for me to manage to fit in in a week. this website was born and my work (my art) put on display with a panted van full of helpful ideas and advice and that is just in my head! Everyone has been so helpful and kind and the vision grows then changes and expands again. So much energy and activity that I was even inspired to clean up my CV and my LinkedIn page and think about what happens to My Sophist Garden where I started blogging about being an artist and being alive. I am still in shock that I cleaned my office. Note I said my office and not my desk. My desk is always a glorious bumping away from chaos but then I am the daughter of the mother who believes wholeheartedly that a tidy desk is a sign of a not very interesting mind….her words….I like that a bit of clutter adds interest and makes the most recent things in my life easy to find.

So, the nett result of going live is more activity. As yet not more income and having a business is about building income. Even an art based business, is about income. All this happens as the school year begins and I get to consider what it is I want to be doing in 3,6 and 12 months time. This time last year I had no idea I would be writing a blog about the life I am inventing and have no picture of as it is nothing like anything I have done before. Many of the skills I developed over years of doing ‘sensible’ and productive things are being used everyday, but, the context is soooooooo different it is in so many ways it is wonderful. I get kind of wigged out at the thought that the adventure might not be able to continue because of money. Eating and sleeping under a roof are luxuries in some places in the world but in my life are necessities. In my mind I am balancing sensible with totally not and trying to find a middle ground. Maybe there isn’t one and that is the point of going live! Going living.

How often do we hear ourselves and others talk about wanting a life or having a goal to work toward their authentic life. Perhaps the reality of those statements is simply to go living a way to the place where a Journey to Beautiful places leads to interesting and new people and ideas. Then the effect of that encounter allows you to see yourself through sets of different eyes that clears your own vision and reframes your world. it did for me. The circumstances that lead to be stepping into this entirely different description of myself didn’t change my life. They let me see myself, me decisions and capacities and then opportunities from a different perspective. The circumstances of my melting lead to my flowing beyond them, to borrow some words of analogy that are rarely used together. It is joy to write author/artist and say I am a published author. It is joy to be able to say I am a founder of an enterprise that I hope will lead to networks of community built around sharing an activity that is simply shared ‘niceness’. It is joy to talk about it and the others parts of my life from the what is right perspective! We are all more whole than broken, or lacking. We are all more able than an inventory of skills and comparison will allow! Going living through my Journey to Beautiful, drinking lots of coffee and drawing in the moment is inventing my life.

Now I am looking to find a subscription page for my website so others can join the Journey wherever they are. Going live everywhere there is a person who finds joy in my artwork and wants to add the colour of their moment to it. That is the next step. Going living with other people as they journey to beautiful places in their own lives and are touched by what it means to be still and quiet a while and be colourful!

I will let you know when the interview is on the radio. Jill and Martin who joined our community in person each week they have been in Brisbane are leaving next week to go living somewhere else on their travels but they take our community with them and have shared their passion for going living to invent life as it is meant to be for them in warmer places than Minnesota in the winter time! You will hear them on the radio too.

Thanks for sharing the adventure of finding the living that is being invented before me. (That is a whole other blog…. invention and the forward progress of creativity….) Life is a gift and I get to live it. Happy Day!

Sandy