cross my heart
© 2007 kelly angard
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.
- François de la Rochefoucauld
i have a feeling this quote will be responsible for many pages of writing today…
musings
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ambiguous horizon
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.
– Thomas Carlyle
theme: on the street
for:
for:
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note to self…
“doubt. full”
© 2007 kelly angard
Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties?
Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope…
- Vaclav Havel
I found this post at My Success Company via Circadian Shift.
Ten Rules for Being Human
by Cherie Carter-Scott
| 1. | You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period. |
| 2. | You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.” |
| 3. | There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.” |
| 4. | Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson. |
| 5. | Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned. |
| 6. | “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.” |
| 7. | Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. |
| 8. | What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. |
| 9. | Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust. |
| 10. | You will forget all this. |
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monday musings…A New Perspective
“head over heels”
© 2007 kelly angard
“Her job was to turn everything upside down to see what might fall out.”
- David Leitch
There are so many thoughts running through my head lately, I find it difficult to form a cohesive thought, let alone paragraph. Rest assured, it’s all good…because great things happen when we are able to look at life and people and experiences from a different perspective.
I dare each of you to gain a new perspective of something that is utterly familiar: sit in a different chair in your living room, drive a different way home from work or look at your face in the mirror with one eye closed. Better yet…go outside, lie in the grass and look up toward the sky…and tell me what you see!
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progression
The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.- Maya Angelou
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still waters run deep
“reflecting”
© 2007 kelly angard
i’ve got this yearning to simplify.
everything.
wish it was as easy
to organize my thoughts
as it is my closet…
don’t be thinking this would be an easy task.
you haven’t seen my closet.
:)
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monday musings…Give Yourself Credit
art every day…4/30
“looking”
© 2007 kelly angard
I recently realized that June 1st will mark two years of blogging…two years! When I started my blog, I didn’t know anyone else who had one, nor did I have a “plan” for my blog; I did what I usually do…I just jumped in and started swimming! Since I was feeling nostalgic, I read over some of my earliest entries and felt like I was looking back in a old journal; amused at what I decided to post and surprised at some of my early insights. I thought this entry was worth re-posting because no matter how long we’ve been creating art (or blogging for that matter!), it’s easy to take what we do for granted. Maybe now is a good time to take a break…and give yourself a bit of extra credit!
Do you give yourself enough credit for what you do?
Creating art requires us to think outside the box, whether it’s about the objects or elements we select, how we use our supplies, or the way we assemble it. It requires us to creatively combine unrelated thoughts and materials with nothing but a vision of what we think we’re going to create or believe we can create. It takes a leap of faith.
Do you give yourself enough credit for what you create?
I’m not talking about how good of an artist you are, I’m talking about the fact that you sit down and face the blank canvas, paper, etc.! Creating anything takes courage; it takes belief in yourself to know something, even if you feel that you don’t know enough. I think it says a lot about the human spirit of each and every person…despite the unknown, we know we must move forward, no matter the fear or anxiety, we must create art…and so we take a leap of faith.
Do you give yourself enough credit for what you know?
We show our humility and our sense of humanity when we put our art out to be seen and make ourselves vulnerable to others’ opinions and criticism. We are at our most fragile when we display what has come from inside our hearts and minds, and we show our belief in humanity when we do; believing most will be honest but not brutal. It takes courage to be able to hear what someone has to say and not have it reflect how we feel about ourselves. We must believe in ourselves enough to know what we know, and we must believe in ourselves enough to take that leap…
**********
Now it’s time to give yourself credit for all that trivial knowledge you learned in 5th Grade!!!
Here are the answers to “Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader” quiz I posted last Monday…
1. C
2. B
3. A
4. B
5. meter
6. C
7. C
8. A
9. 36
10. inside
11. Katmandu
12. B
13. A
14. 1,000
15. true
16. C
17. B
18. C
19. 150 degrees
20. A
(i missed five…#4, #11, #13, #14, #20)
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Friday Faves…
“color my world”
© 2007 kelly angard
Inspiration is everywhere!!!
Here’s a few things which have caught my eye, spoken to my muse or piqued my curiosity…
the blissful pixel has some great Photoshop links as well as beautiful digital scrapbook art…
life*fever features what’s hot around the world in fashion, art, trends and design…
the style files showcases something I can never get enough of: stunning style & delicious design!
Create a Connection is a unique, warm and welcoming place to connect with other creative spirits. Creative blogger, artist and visual journalist Melanie McMullen is a woman who is living her passion…and willing to share and encourage other creative spirits to do the same! I love this part of her bio:
It may be this instant or in ten years
Or in ten lifetimes, but your outcome is inevitable
What you must do, must Be
To Live Your Experience of Heaven
Or in ten lifetimes, but your outcome is inevitable
What you must do, must Be
To Live Your Experience of Heaven
Be Alive
Believe
Be You
August 2005 ~Melba McMullin
The mission statement behind Create a Connection says it all: The mission of the Create a Connection blog is to exchange knowledge and energy, to embrace each other and new ideas, and to expand participation and our relationships.
So I was honored when guest host and writer/author Angie Pederson interviewed me for it’s weekly Interview Tuesday column last week. Many thanks to Angie for thinking of me and for the thoughtful interview questions…and to Melba for providing us creative souls with a place to connect and learn and exchange ideas!
and last but not least…
The Blog of Me by author/writer and marketing entrepreneur, Angie Pederson. Angie combines her talent for writing and blog marketing with ideas and resources, intended to make life and writing easier, more productive, and more meaningful. She is a pioneer in the field of personal journaling before it became the “thing” to do, authoring three books, “The Book of Me”, “Growing Up Me”, and “The Book of Us” and someone I’ve had the pleasure to meet and correspond with over the past few years…this is one site you’ll want to bookmark for sure!
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escape
© 2007 kelly angard
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman,
and these hills, the softness of the sky,
the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning
with which we had clothed them,
henceforth more remote than a lost paradise…
- Albert Camus
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monday musings…Unexpected Sadness
“entwined”
© 2007 kelly angard
Everything connects to everything;
therefore, as we change, the world cannot but change with us.
- Marianne Williamson
I started out writing my “monday musing” post this morning about unexpected kindness…but I stopped as soon as I heard about the shooting at Virginia Tech. Living here in Colorado, not far from the sites of two horrible school shootings, news of another campus tragedy hits too close to home…and a familiar sense of pain and shock reverberates throughout the community. I just couldn’t bring myself to go on about a few recent acts of unexpected kindess I’ve experienced lately knowing that there were a number of families who were surely experiencing one of the worst days of their lives.
Maybe my original idea of writing about unexpected kindess wouldn’t have been so bad. Maybe it’s what we need to hear about and remind ourselves of at a time like this so that we don’t look at our neighbors with paranoia or live under a cloud of fear. I don’t know what the “right” thing to do is…all I know is that I am so very sad…and even more thankful for the unexpected kindesses I’ve experienced lately.
I think that when something like this happens, we all ask “why”? We struggle trying to make sense out of the senseless…and wonder, “what is the lesson here”? I look at my middle school-aged daughter and realize that this is the third school shooting she has heard about in the past six or seven months. And I don’t know what to say to her so that she will feel safe going to school tomorrow.
Maybe my original idea of writing about unexpected kindess wouldn’t have been so bad. Maybe it’s what we need to hear about and remind ourselves of at a time like this so that we don’t look at our neighbors with paranoia or live under a cloud of fear. I don’t know what the “right” thing to do is…all I know is that I am so very sad…and even more thankful for the unexpected kindesses I’ve experienced lately.