“Open” by Effy Wild

I’ve been thinking a little bit about what I want to do with this blog in 2013. Like everyone else at the end of the year I’m setting intentions and making plans, but this year, I’m thinking more about how I want to FEEL as opposed to what I want to do. I have Danielle LaPorte’s course “The Desire Map”  (affie love!) to thank for this delicious shift. Click the link and check it out. I’ll wait.

Welcome back!

If you’ve read me for any length of time, you know I share my life in a super transparent way here in the blog. That mostly works for me, but I realized in my yearly trip down blog-memory lane, that I don’t share my art very often. Making art, and especially, art journaling is a huge part of my life. It is, in fact, a mahooooosive part of my life, and it is the number one way I deal with the stuff I’m so super transparent about.

Not documenting my creative practice in my blog makes absolutely no sense, right? Like…none.

So my intention for this space in 2013 is to share more art. I want to tighten things up just a little bit, too, in the sense that I’d like to challenge myself to pop in here at least once a week with something ~ a tidbit, a photograph, a love letter. I want to infuse this space with a greater sense of purpose. I want it to be a little more soul food and a little less venty screedy.

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Twenty thirteen already feels like a juicy plum to me. I am excited about the ripeness of it, the scent of it, the colour of it. It is just waiting for me to sink my teeth into and I am drooling over it. I don’t know why this coming year feels so monumental, but it does and I’m just going to trust that.

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My One Little Word for 2012 was “Trust”. I feel like I lived it ~ like I was thrust into situations and circumstances that brought that particular morsel of a word into my awareness over and over again. I have learned that trust is very, very difficult for me, and that when I’m ‘off’ it’s because I am failing to trust – myself, the universe, my partner, the divine, my work, my guts, my muse, the incredible beauty that is life itself…

I get it now.

(Thank you, Trust, for journeying with me!)

Learning about trust and how I struggle with it has been a ‘surviving’ thing. It has been about anxiety and quitting smoking (and thereby *literally* surviving) and learning to manage emotional states that make me crazy mistrustful of everything and everyone.

I’m ready to thrive.

I want to feeeeeel like I’m thriiiiiiving.

And being open feels like the next logical step.

Trusting is good! It is a crack in my resistance. It is a light shining over shadow! I am down with the trusting!

Being open, though, feels richer than that. It feels like I’m not just safe (which is what trusting led me to know for certain this year) but I am ALSO free to be a kid in the candy store that is my life with a pocket full of dimes and cavity proof teeth.

Thrive could easily have been my word for 2013, but the possibilities that lay within the word OPEN are too seductive for me to ignore. I think being open, staying open (soft, willing, open, open, open…) will lead to thriving in a way I might never have imagined I could.

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I want my blog to thrive too, right along with my creative practice, my business, my newfound lung function now that I’ve quit smoking…

I want everything I offer to be a juicy plum that you get to sink your teeth into.

Starting now.

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Hello, 2013!

P.S. I’d love it if you’d join me  on January 1st, 2013 at 6 P.M. EST for a live video show in which I will talk about embracing 2013 and decorate my my new art journal. You are invited to attend and do your own embracing ‘in community’. We think of these shows as ‘love streams’ as opposed to ‘live streams’. They are totally free, and you are most welcome to pop in and out as you like.

The show itself will be recorded and archived for a limited time for those who can’t actually be there. You can find my Ustream channel by clicking here. You can also access this show in my on line arts community. Just click the Ustream tab on the right hand side of the page.

P.S. Again: You can subscribe to get this blog in your feed reader or your inbox by clicking here! Easy peasy, lemon squeeze!

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