waves, Canon Digital Rebel

After several recurring dreams this week of looking for the ocean, I finally made it to Ocean Beach yesterday with a friend. It was deliciously warm and we walked and walked and walked until my legs ached and my skin felt dry and salty.

And then, I did something that I never do in San Francisco. I jumped into the ocean. (If you’ve ever felt the water here you’ll know why.)

At first I just waded in and rolled up my pants so they wouldn’t get wet. And as I waded further and further out I couldn’t resist. I dove into the ocean, clothes and all.

And it was glorious.

I felt transformed, alive, joyous.

It was the best day I’ve had in a really, really long time…

candy colored zinnias, photo booth pic

Fall is here! and your time capsules went out over the weekend. I had the opportunity to read a lot of them and was so moved and excited for you.

My wishes for you as you receive them:

1. To be inspired by your dreams and wishes

2. That you honor yourself for what you created and invent a way to celebrate this. It could be a toast you make to yourself in the company of friends or maybe sharing your list with someone. Acknowledging yourself in the company of others is a powerful thing. (You can also ask them what they’d like to be acknowledged for!)

3. And that you hold what you didn’t manifest very gently and either recommit to it or let it go.

The only rule of the game: You are not allowed to make yourself wrong for not writing your list, not sending your list, or not doing your list well enough. You are definitely not allowed to make yourself wrong for what you didn’t manifest!

Whether you sent in a time capsule or not, what is the thing you created this summer that you’d like to be acknowledged for? (big and small things equally welcome)

p.s. See Jeff on the cover of the Palm Springs paper.

just a girl growin up, Canon Digital Rebel

Okay, so I have something to admit.

After five years of having Superhero Designs, I am finally taking on the big project: creating a bookkeeping system. Now I know that I already mentioned that fancy little Quickbooks course a while back, but do you want to know what happened? I took the course for several weeks and then never opened the program on my computer. Hello, resistance!

After going to an introduction for an amazing organization called Conscious Bookkeeping, I realized that I mostly live in an intuitive world when it comes to money. I vaguely know how much I have, I don’t balance my checkbook and immediately seize up when anyone mentions accounting. My strategy is simple: I spend as little as possible and hope everything works out in the end. (Very scientific, no?)

I realized that I don’t know how to create a budget or plan for the future, how to become financially literate or how to grow in this area. So ladies and gents, it’s time for my initiation.

Conscious Bookkeeping offers a six week course here in the Bay Area. Their philosophy is that you can’t even get to the bookkeeping part (without glazing over completely) if you don’t look at your relationship with money first.

Hallelujah.

This is the basic outline of the class:

Phase I – Financial Therapy ? exploring your relationship to money on a practical, emotional, psychological and spiritual level
Phase II – Bookkeeping Training ? learning to set up & maintain a bookkeeping system for personal & business- creating a practice!
Phase III – Life Visioning ? visioning/ taking all the data and creating and living into a values-based Map of Intention (aka budget)

If anyone is interested, let me know! It starts September 22nd and is on Thursday evenings. We can get conscious about our finances together!

flower bits, Canon Digital Rebel

It’s hard to know what to write about this week. Everything seems sort of silly and unimportant in comparison to what is happening in the world. I find that I vascillate between focusing on the minutae of my life, and then seeing something like this, and just falling apart.

At Glide last Sunday, twelve hundred of us sang the gospel song “Wade in the Water” {God’s gonna trouble the water} while images of New Orleans and the hurricane played in the background. We were all a puddle after that.

I am heartened by all of the help, money and love that has poured into this cause. A group called Craft Revolution asked for donations from crafty folks like myself and have already raised over $15,000 (and counting) by selling our wares online. Anything you buy from this site will go directly to the Red Cross. It felt good to contribute in this small way.
……

Some things I didn’t photograph this week that I wanted to:

1. A man on crutches with one leg walking his fluffy brown dog who also had one leg.
2. A man in Chinatown pushing his grandmother in a wheelchair, while his wife pushed their baby in a stroller.
3. A piece of art at Creativity Explored that described Utopia as “a place where everyone has to look for things. And then they find them.”
……

Big blessings to you all. Tell me any good stories you’ve got from the week. We need those too.

“He who can take no great interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.”
– John Ruskin

little Valentina, Canon Digital Rebel

Photo Friday’s theme this week is “Order.”

And of course, there seems to be no order at all in New Orleans right now. The images have been unbearable to me. Still hoping a friend of mine is far away from there… 

Some opportunities to give below:

– If you have a spare room or couch to offer up and you are within a couple hundred miles of the mayhem, you can find more info here.
– Cd baby has a list of artists that are donating the proceeds of their cds to the Red Cross. {via Jinny}
– And of course, the Red Cross.