Two Classes for Journalers

IN-PERSON CLASSES–Tell Your Story!

Saturday, January 21. 
9 a.m. to 1 p.m
One-Sentence Journaling
Location: STUDIO CRESCENDOh
207 N. Broadway St., Studio L
Santa Ana, CA 92701(Left, Confetti Lines by Hanna Andersson).

What will you do in class?
We each have a story to tell. The story is clear to us, but it can be slipper to write down, to get it right, to make it fit. This class will help fall in love with words all over again. Or, if you’ve always been a bit afraid of writing in a journal, will let you fall in love with words and the power they hold.

If you’ve started a dozen journals, but have never finished any of them, if you have always loved the idea of keeping a journal, but haven’t ever kept one, or if you have kept a journal but don’t find it satisfying, this class will make your heart glow.

You’ll start with one word and grow it into a pile of words and a box to keep them in. You’ll chose a word and use it to start your journal with just one sentence. Two, if you are ambitious.

This class is about the power of words you use every day, and the words you want to use on your journey through life. You will laugh hard and write deeply, one sentence at a time. Raw art is part of the mix, and your pages will have color and design on them to help you stay connected with your writing.

At the end of the class, you will have completed at least five journal pages
and have enough ideas and techniques to last you for years to come.

Price: $88. Register at the bottom of this page on Jenny Doh’s website.

(Left)  Imagined Botany by      Quinn McDonald

Sunday, January 22, Journaling for Perfectionists.
Location: Zinnia
1024 S. Mission St. South Pasadena, CA 91030  Phone: 626.441.2181

What Will You Do in Class?
Started a bunch of journals but never finished one? Don’t want to start a journal because you will “ruin” it? Join me–a journal-keeper and recovering perfectionist– to play in your journal. You’ll learn ways to start your journal, ways to save a “ruined” page, and intriguing ways to write in your journal regularly and be satisfied with your work. If you are new to art journaling, even better, because we will be adding color to the pages as well.
Be prepared to laugh a lot, too. At yourself, and at the odd and bouncy walls we build around our lives with perfectionism.

How long:
2.5 hours–11:30 to 2:00 on Sunday, January 22.
Price: $55

To register: Call Tamara at Zinnia– 626.441.2181 or email her at Tamara@Zinnia.biz  You can see more information on Zinnia’s calendar.

What to bring: A journal to experiment in. Scissors, glue stick, several pens (glitter if you like, or gel, fountain, or ball point), watercolor pencils if you have them, and small bottles of cheap acrylic paint (don’t buy it if you don’t have it; I’ll bring some), one-inch brush (Home Depot style, but not foam).

Come join me in a class–I’d love to meet you and help you find your story!

Day 26: Adapt Until it Works

Day 26: Using what you’ve learned.
We experimented with writing styles, locations, times. Now it’s time to choose what works and leave behind what doesn’t. Knowing, of course, that no decision needs to be final, and we can change to adjust to what works best today.

Wisdom from the Comments:
From Krystyna: “I remember . . . saying in despair to my therapist “Am I just going round in circles”. . . He said: “Maybe you need to go round in circles. Maybe you need to keep coming back to the same thing and looking at it from a different angle. Going round in circles can be a very valuable thing to do.”

*     *     *     *

Moon caught in tree. © Copyright 2012 Quinn McDonald

Experimenting is a revealing and interesting action. What you think is true is not, what you were uncertain of swims into focus. Like a shadow forming itself into a shape in the dark, we recognize that what we gave up was serving us after all.

I shifted walking times, writing times, places. And what conclusion did I come to? That hiking is not walking meditation, that unless the discipline happens early, the rest of the day won’t connect.

There may be days I don’t want to walk first thing in the morning, but I have to ask why. Is it too cold? Put out a scarf and vest the night before. Am I too tired? An earlier bedtime is useful. I would love to sleep till I’m no longer tired and go to bed when I’m finished doing what I want to do, but that schedule doesn’t serve my creativity.

Experimenting has shown me: I need to get up and do walking meditation in the morning, first thing. Once the day hooks me, I’m not going to struggle to do the meditation.

I need to write when I come back from walking meditation. At that point, my ideas are fresh, my goals are stepped out, my dreams are vivid. Waiting allows it all to dull like a peeled apple.

If I want to enjoy the fabulous weather, I need to plan an additional hike. Walking meditation is not hiking, and as much as I love to do both, there will be days I can’t. A walk that doesn’t require driving, a lot of equipment, or car keys is best. I’ll manage that. I must. When I come back, do the writing, and then the work day begins.

I still have to figure out how to fold studio time into the day on a regular basis. It always comes last–even after I write the blog. Often, it’s just too late. I’m still working on that, because in my head, the financial work comes first, everything else next.

What have you learned from your experiments over the last weeks?

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art. She needs to get back into the writing habit.

Tutorial: Orange-Peel Oil Lamp

An orange tree grows in my back yard. It’s old, and for the last three years, I have been the caretaker, choosing a pesticide free, organic approach. Each year in December, the oranges signal their readiness by becoming fragrant with a floral aroma so intoxicating that I often wish a perfumer could capture it. I’m not talking about an orange smell, or a neroli scent; it’s totally different.

While peeling an orange, I suddenly wondered if I could make an oil lamp out of the peel, using nothing more than the orange and olive oil. And I did. Here’s how you can, too:

Use a ripe orange. The wick of the oil lamp is the membrane stem at both ends–the stem and the navel (blossom) end. It doesn’t have to be a navel orange. This orange was big, so I made a candle from the peel at both ends. OK, I had also started to peel it before I had the oil lamp idea, but it worked out.

With a sharp knife, score the orange about a third of the way toward the middle from both the stem end or the navel end. The easier end to work with is the navel end.

Peel the orange at the middle, so both ends are still covered with peel. This is important for the next step. One you have the equator of the orange bare, gently work your thumbs under the skin of the peel at the stem end. You are pushing your thumbs between the orange segments and the peel. Do it slowly and steadily, working around the whole stem end, until the peel is loosened and only the stem remains attached. Do not push your thumb nails into the stem, you’ll detach your future wick. (I made this mistake, above, but it can be fixed.)

Repeat the process at the other end of the orange and carefully remove the peel, pulling the center membrane out of the orange, but leaving it connected to the peel. In the above photo, you will see that I failed to remove the wick portion with the peel. It’s not the best move, but you can repair it.

Allow the peel to dry for at least a day. I live in Arizona, so you may have to let it sit for two days. The peel doesn’t have to be crisp, but it needs to dry out to absorb the oil. To repair the end that didn’t stick to the peel, I put it back where it belonged and “glued” it in with candle wax. I did this to create an oil-proof seal, which is important to keep the flame alive.

You can cut a smooth peel or leave it ragged. I’m a big fan of wabi-sabi, so I like the ragged one.

Pour olive oil into the candles. Wait at least 10 minutes to let the oil soak into the wick. Don’t fill the peel cup, but use enough oil to cover the base of the wick. Use olive oil.  About a Tablespoon or 2. I didn’t test a lot of oils, but olive oil is authentic in oil lamps and it gives a steadier flame than other oils.

Light the wick. It takes a bit for the wick to light, so a long match or gun-shaped flint-lighter is best. These candles float, so you can float them in bowls of water, but I like them just the way they are. They should not sit on a tablecloth, as the oil soaks into the peel. The more it soaks in, the more it glows. They will burn for at least an hour, much longer if refilled with oil.

–-Quinn McDonald is a writer  and creativity coach who plays with her food.

Day 24: Waiting for Answers

Day 24: Waiting for Answers (24/30 in a series of exploring journaling as a way to Write Yourself Whole.)

You write and write. You repeat some sentences again and again just to keep your pen moving. If you are on the computer, you frown at the screen. (This is why I type with my eyes closed. Less frowning.) At some point you lose the connection to the page and you begin something very much like automatic writing. Your mind seems to let go and you write furiously, from the heart.

Box of magic words, a source for many ideas, stories, and journaling.

This is what you are waiting for. This is why you combined writing with some form of meditation. You are writing answers, even if you haven’t asked the question yet. Many people use journal prompts, and they serve a purpose. The best prompts are the ones you use to get yourself writing. I keep a box of words for this purpose (if you have a copy of Raw Art Journaling, see p. 33-38).

Almost every time I write, I start with a question–about my work, about a problem, about something that pleased me, about my purpose in life. It helps me focus on one thing. Yes, there are days that I just pour out something that needs to be said, and that, too, is therapeutic. But more often, I ask a question: Why was X not a much fun as I thought it would be? Why did I feel such unexpected joy at Y? Why am I still chewing over Z, and, as Staci Edwards at collidescope says, “Chewing it over and over, hoping for a different flavor of Yuk?”

Once you start to write, you may be surprised what your answers are. Don’t stop with the first. Keep writing, keep exploring. Don’t stop too soon. Your first answer might be the kind you’d give your boss–a facile explanation that makes you look good. The next, one you’d give a stranger in a store–polite, but not complete. Keep going until the answer feel real, maybe even uncomfortable. That’s the place you need to push through.

The best kind of journal is the one that tells the truth–in many ways. Whatever your truth is. That’s why we often want to hide them. And that’s another post–keeping your journal secrets.

—Quinn McDonald is on a 30-day journey, exploring a daily writing and meditation practice with a group of other journaling journeyers.

Word for the Year Wrap-Up

When I wrote about digging for a word of the year, I didn’t know it was going to be so popular. I’m delighted it was. One person told me they hated the idea, that as a Renaissance person, she preferred a theme of the year, but that was fine with me, too. One of the 30-day writing participants picked Hillel’s philosophy of “If not now, when?” as a theme. I’m not making or enforcing rules, I’m tossing out suggestions.

The card I chose. Or it chose me.

“The word should be limber and supple, without any stiffness of punishment, or hashmarks to measure yourself with and find yourself coming up short. . . It should be a good, chewy word that will last a whole year. ”

People made all sorts of suggestions: Easy, Fun, Kindness, Light, Salt, Share, Notice, Free, Celebrate, Action, Laugh, Dream, Explore, Heart, Simplify, Enjoy, Think Less, Let God, Weave, Intention, Trust God, Begin Again, Namaste, Rediscover Joy,  Change, Weave, Bold, Refine, Create, Surrender to Divinity, Synchronicity, Connect, Delight, Risk, Emerge, Prolific, Nest, Grow, Survival, Gift, Choosing Life, Possibility, and many more, even Efficacious.

What a great group of words! I hope they show up often in your lives. Visit them often, don’t let them slip away. I love the idea of “Salt,” both as a verb, as in “salt that great idea away for a while,” and as a noun, in the folkloric “meat loves salt” way.

Reviewing my own, I chose Light in 2010, Step It Up in 2011, and this year, well, it’s a different direction. At the end of December, I attended a ritual in which we wrote down what we wanted to leave in 2011 and tossed the pieces of paper in the firepit. We then were blessed and smudged with sage, cleansed with a selenite wand, and sent to choose a card from a basket. The card held our word for 2012. I chose “Suffering.” My eyes must have bugged out because the woman holding the basket said, “You can throw it into the fire and choose a new one.” That, I felt, would be like riding to avoid the appointment in Samarra.

I turned the card over and it said, “The cause of all suffering is craving. Desire

What suffering means in this case.

things that YOU do not have, and suffering will follow. Realize this and peace will be YOURS. Suffering will disappear and contentment will reign.” I know this to be true about myself. When I want [any item from my impressive list of cravings–starting with my 7th-grade need to be one of the cool kids]  I turn miserable. I hate being miserable alone, so I bring other people with me into my misery. Eww. So I’m keeping Suffering as my first word.  You may notice it’s not a fun as some of the other words. . . .uh-oh, craving again. It’s necessary. Now, moving on. . .

I did allow myself another word. STAY. I found the word on someone else’s blog and she kindly offered to share it with me–and I want to offer her a guest-post here. She will have to contact me, though, because I thoght I saved her website link, but it vanished.

I love the idea of Stay. Stay when you want to run away from problems. Stay and enjoy the nice things someone is saying about you. Stay with your feeling of inadequacy until you realize it’s not your feeling, just a shadow. Stop running into the dark, stop fleeing away from those hard feelings. Stop hiding from your enemies, your talent, your meaning-making. Stay.

Happy 2012 to all of my wonderful readers, including those with good ideas, who made me laugh, and who show up for my workshops. I am so grateful to be on this side of 2012 with all of you.

–Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach, journaler and writer. She teaches what she practices.

Day 22: It’s OK To Be Imperfect

Day 22: It’s OK to be imperfect.  (If you just landed here, you can catch up by, starting with the first post in the series.)

Brene Brown's book is a must-read for every imperfectionist. And perfectionist.

Wisdom from the comments:
Arlene Holtz noticed, “I have also skipped a couple of days of writing since I started – not deliberately (well, at least not consciously). . . . What was different for me this time, was I noticed I hadn’t written, and even “missed” the writing. In fact, I was really relieved to get back to writing the very next day. It feels like it is becoming a real part of who I am.”

Marianna Dougherty wrote, “I do sitting meditation and sometimes get great revelations as a result. Not during the meditation but later in the day or another day. It’s the process of quieting my mind and the daily practice that brings about results.”

Diane Becka had no problem with walking everyday, “On the days I don’t want to, I do it mostly because I haven’t missed a day. So even in bad weather I find a way to walk just so I can feel I’ve kept this commitment to myself,”  but hit a rough patch on the writing, “Journaling has been another matter. I just couldn’t make myself start. I bought more blank books, new pens. Nothing. Every day I would read how much the writing was helping others, all that you were learning from it, and the more I read, the harder it was. I let the expectations I had grow until there was no way I could meet them and it was overwhelming.”

Bo Mackison said, “I find it hard to do the writing and the walking, maybe if I had made the commitment to do one, got that down and then added the other it would have been easier. ANd I have no ambition to walk in cold or snow or sleet or winter mix. . .”

*     *     *     *    *

What causes most people to quit a new habit? The same thing that causes most people to abandon their New Year’s resolutions? It’s not that the goals are too lofty (unless made in a hurry under the influence of drink or peer pressure), but the mistaken belief that one mis-step “ruins it all.” It doesn’t. One mis-step, one missed day, one incomplete page is just that–an imperfection. It doesn’t invalidate the intention or the goal.

Quote from Brene Brown's book.

It does, however, make it easier to add another missed day to the stack. And that’s where the self discipline comes in. If you skip a day, be aware of it, be conscious, make it a choice. And the next day, make it a choice to return.

Change doesn’t happen all at once. Change happens when we replace one action with another. And the more often the replacement happens, the more likely we are to repeat, until we have a new habit. In an email I received, someone insisted that if they forgot one day, they would have to “start over,” they added, “with nothing.” I know that’s how AA does the counting, but I don’t think that’s true with journaling. You have something. You have begun to walk down a path. You are exploring your motives and excuses. That’s not nothing.

Of course, if you want something positive to happen, you will have to kick yourself occasionally to keep doing it, and you will have to do the work, but you will always do your work imperfectly, because that is the reason we keep learning–every imperfection is a chance to learn something new.

What have you been learning as you go along?

–-Quinn McDonald is a journaler and creativity coach who is exploring the habit of journal writing with readers of the blog.

Image: the saying from Brene Brown is available for purchase from this site. I am not recommending it, I’m simply letting you know where it’s from.

Happy New Year 2012!

New Year comes at an odd time of year. It’s mid-Winter,  the shortest night of the year is past, but the coldest months are ahead. Spring makes more sense, when determined shoots push out, and so does Fall, when the harvest is in. But no one called me to ask, and Romans messed around with the calendars until it worked to their satisfaction, and so Filofaxes were invented. (I’m skipping a few years between the two. I learned that from Timeline on Facebook.)

Thumbnail moon from space.desktopnexus.com

In the years you start celebrating New Year’s at home because it’s more comfortable to tipple champagne in your jammies, you look at each new year and begin to wonder. If you will still be here next New Year. If it’s time to start working on your bucket list. What kind of regrets you might have if you woke up to very bad news. (Add your own here, we can scare ourselves best. Just don’t leave them in the comments, thank you.)

The question I ask myself more often is, “Have I really done what I was supposed to do?” A lot of my life seems routine, but it was a responsible life–earned a steady income while I was a single mom, went grocery shopping, cooked healthy meals, kept the house clean, oversaw homework, polished shoes, didn’t date seriously till I knew what I wanted.

Now that those days are over, I ask myself, “What do I need to do to live a life with no regrets?” It’s another variation of the question, “What is the purpose of my life?” (I don’t waste time with the inconsequential stuff like “What’s for dinner?”)

I decided I didn’t have to have the answer to that, actually. I turned the question around (I have a 5,700 year heritage is answering questions with questions), and said, “What does life want of me?” It seems easier looked at from that perspective. Life does not ask one thing of us. There is a different answer every time we ask. Just as there is not one “right” answer to “what is your favorite color,” or “what is your favorite song?”, there is more than one right answer to “What does life ask of you?”

Hand-marbled paper © by Rosefirerising

To dig out the answer, I put it in the surrounding that Victor Frankl, the philosopher and therapist did: At this moment, I can give the answer as if I were living a second time, and had made a wrong choice before. What choice will I make this time? This choice is made as if I can return to the past and make the change that alters the future. All by changing my perspective now. What life asks of me is to be responsible for my own answer.

And what’s the purpose of that? Here is what Frankl says:

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself . . . . you have to let [success] happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run. . . success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”

I have the freedom to pursue the work of my heart, because the work of my heart makes meaning, and when I am making meaning, I know what I’m doing. I know where I am going. I’m striding out into 2012 not to pursue greatness, but to make meaning. How does that translate into action?

I’m choosing to teach classes that won’t please everyone, that won’t gather a huge audience. I’m not going to teach classes that let you walk away with a product–a pretty journal, or a gift for your sister-in-law. I’m going to teach classes that will give you an ink-stained heart, and write yourself whole.

I’m teaching classes that put you in touch with your creativity, that allow you to make meaning. I want to do this. I don’t have time to waste. You’ll leave the class with a new vision of your own, with having discovered your own creative heartbeat.

I’m a little scared, because it’s not what’s out there now. But I started with Raw Art Journaling, and I have to support what I started–that making meaning is the force behind living an artful life.

–Quinn McDonald is available to teach classes in meaning making through journaling. She has two classes scheduled in January.  She’ll teach others if asked.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosefirerising, under an Creative Commons agreement.