Just 71 days left . . .

[I wrote this on December 30, 2008 and posted it in my "Creative Edge Alumni Group." In light of Dale asking me why/how I use an artist's journal, I thought I'd post it here in my blog.]

On the brink of a new year . . .

Our lives are so fast-paced, with events, images, and noise bombarding us constantly. No wonder we feel time is screaming by and continues to pick up speed. Before we know it, a day, a week, a year, and perhaps a life, is gone.

How can we slow it all down? How can we savor the little things? How can we remember the quiet of an early morning, the day it snowed on the coast, the clever phrase we just read, the pithy quote, the price of crab this season, that there were 10 fishing boats on the horizon last night?

How can we freeze-frame all these seemingly insignificant things and "mark" them so they take on more meaning, more importance, and add quality to our life?

We do it with our photography. Why not add words and scribbles to your artistic melange and create a journal of sorts?

Journals aren't just a "chick thing" -- stereotypical crafty moms with glue sticks -- nope. Lewis and Clark were masters of the journal; Benjamin Franklin became a publisher as a result of his; and Leonardo da Vinci? I rest my case.

Your journal may consist solely of your photos -- a photo a day? a week? It may consist of 3x5 cards (actually, this is a cool idea, and I just thought of it). Keep index cards handy when you read, when you eavesdrop in a restaurant, when you watch TV. Write down the date and the absurd statement, the humorous quip, the clever quote. File the card away. Do this daily and, combined with your photos, at the end of a year you've got something interesting with seemingly no effort.

What's my point? Life is zooming by way too fast. Let's slow it down and savor it by paying more attention and by recording -- in pictures and words and scribbles -- the little things that are too easily forgotten.

By elevating the smaller stuff and giving it more importance and by snagging it in some form that we can go back to, the current moment becomes that much more enhanced. Our life becomes richer and more meaningful as a result.

A new year begins tomorrow night. Slow it down. Savor it. Make it important.

Carol Leigh
[Written 12/30/08]