Sunday, November 11, 2012

Hey, I'm Back!

Life's been busy and it has been hard to get much art done, let alone blog about it, so my mission as of late has been to find time to fit creativity into my life.  Now that I have somewhat of a delicate grasp on that, I want to take a moment to tell you about it.

In addition to studying for the licensure exam, teaching yoga (including a new hybrid Yoga for Athletes class that I started from scratch), taking on new certifications in Piyo, Turbokick and starting AFAA certification, I have also completed a full marathon.  It sucked.  Doing a training run for a marathon, takes a whole day out of one's schedule, at least for me.  It seemed for awhile, I had to be all about the physical when I wasn't actually in work working.  Now, I have resolved myself to the half-marathon, which allows me to have more of my life back, thank you very much.  But I still need to train and training takes time.  Both worlds started to collide once I started packing my phone for training runs.  I have been photographing where I run.  It slowed me down, and it's hard to take photos on a phone outside while one is trying to stay at a certain pace, but it felt good.

This is a view from one of the bike paths I like, taken on my iPhone.
Taking pictures, even hastily, using the instagram app, made my runs enjoyable and made me feel more creative, so I started drawing in my sketchbook again.

This is a spread from my journal.  The right side is based on that image.
This is from a park in the city where I run sometimes, taken on my iPhone.
A couple of drawings that sprung from that run.
A gift I made based on the drawings.
Drawing is not my forte, but it feels good.  It's transportable, requires very little expense and slows down my thought process so that everything happening in my world and racing around my head can be observed and make more sense.  It's a kind of meditation.

I feel good.  More has come from running.  I will tell you about that next week!