Career Vision Board

As I said in last week's post, while at Kripalu, I took several workshops; among them, one that was about following your dreams and another that included making a vision board. I have been all over working on the dream journal this week and decided to make a vision board about what I said I would do if I could do anything without the possibility of failure. What I said in that group was an idea that came to me as part of a project in my expressive therapy and social action class. It's funny, because it was my last class of grad school, an elective, so my main goal was getting my three credits and moving on with a shiny new degree. But the organization I made up, has stuck in the back of my brain, just kinda drifting around someplace near the occipital lobe. Just chillin', wandering to the front every now and then, saying hi. You know how it is.

So, what I imagined was a holistic center with office space for therapists, body workers, physical therapists, etc. who share a common goal of using the whole body and mind to create wellness. This place would be open to the community and offer yoga classes and expressive therapy groups of all kinds, depending on need, in addition to having individuals who do their own thing to help others, renting space in the upper floor or floors of the building. I want to create and work in that place someday.

So I made a vision board about it. It looks like this.

Making this has made me really excited about that idea. As I am driving to work, I imagine groups I would want to offer the community, exhibits we could have, benefits I would give people who were a part of the process. And I feel happy. In a way, this is not a plan that I ever considered impossible, because I invested my inheritance with this in mind someday. However, as I cut out words and images and simply collaged about it, it started to feel more real and possible. Although this idea has been with me for almost two years, I have officially transfer it to my seven-year career plan. This is what I am working toward.

For more about vision boards go here.

 

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Altered Calendar and Gratitude

I have a confession. You know how medical students sometimes go through a phase of hypochondria when they are learning about all the things they may die from someday? Okay, I don't know if that is true, but I have heard rumors. I think psychology types go through the same thing. We diagnose our friends and ourselves. Mental illness is everywhere. As for me, I would give myself ADHD and I am kinda in a constant mild state of mania; not like spending all my money or running naked through the streets mania, but trying new things and feeling giddy on the regular mania. It's a gift really. Hallelujah. Blessed be.

The ADHD tendencies on the other hand, can be troublesome. I would like to be more organized and less distracted, so I was excited to start a new project with my calendar this year. I am making an "altered calendar" and I also came up with a plan that I have been using on work and personal goals. First, I underline one thing (maybe more for work depending on deadlines, but I try to keep it as minimal as possible) that I must do. I make one priority in my schedule and do not allow myself to move on to what I would rather be doing. In my personal life, this has made me study everyday this week rather than do a hundred other things to avoid it. At work, it has made me turn in large reports on time or early. It's been a productive week and I feel good about my self-diagnosed ADHD management. I tell you this, in case you also struggle with time management and doing what you are supposed to be doing rather than everything else possible in the whole wide world.

I have two agendas that I use. One at home for my personal beeswax and one at work for my professional self. As for the one at home, I have spent the end of each day drawing over the day with something about the day, so it becomes a visual art journal at the end of the year. This also means I am forced to create everyday.

My Personal Agenda, Week One

I love fresh beginnings, so I spent some time thinking about structure I can add to my group when the kids got back from vacation. I decided that for the month of January, and maybe beyond, we will spend the first five-ish minutes writing or drawing in a gratitude journal. I have a lot of guys who hate everything, so the rule is they must think of one good thing at the beginning of group twice per week and document it in their journals. Afterward, they may voice all of their complaints, if they like. To decorate their journals, I brought stamps. The guys were all over that. They loved stamps so much, I think I will continue bringing them for each day. We don't always have a lot to work with, so these are just a few pieces of legal sized photocopier paper, folded in half with staples. It was so simple and the guys were very pleased to make them. I started one, because I feel with my kids, it's important to set an example, because they often feel they have rules and demands others don't have, so when I make them work, I work. When they have to play and I am around, I play as an equal participant. These are a success so far.

The Journal I Started Working on During A Group

A Photo from Today, Just Because

The Week in Failure and Successes

My guys are split into two different groups. The first is my talkers. They like to work on problems, have discussions and set goals. At times, they are regular teen boys: disruptive, inappropriate, intensely silly or angry at the world, but overall they get stuff done to the best of their abilities. My second group struggles with most everything: sitting down, holding still, listening, following a single step direction and sometimes not punching people. I have tried mixing them, so my strugglers can see how a group runs and maybe manage to participate, but that mix tends to make my talkers into strugglers or cause them to gang up on the poor strugglers, who often just feel worse about themselves. Ideally, I would like my strugglers to be seen individually until they are able to manage behavior better, but that's the downside to not being in charge. I have to follow rules sometimes, even if it seems contraindicated. My strugglers are tough and often all I want is safety and for them to leave a little calmer than when they came in. We are working from the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs most of the time.

Snowflakes = Bad Idea of the Day

Both of my groups get some self-regulation with each group. Sometimes with my strugglers, it is an hour of self-regulation and attempts at group cohesion. I often use a book called Ready, Set, Relax. I highly recommend it. It has guided relaxation scripts for kids with discussion points and activities. I think the scripts could work for anyone and the activities could be modified. Anyway, for my failure of the week I read one of these scripts about changing weather and being unique. Then I asked the guys what makes them unique, which they were unwilling to discuss. Then I asked them to talk about what made each other unique, which resulted in insulting each other. We also attempted to cut out snowflakes, which somehow resulted in them wanting to murder me and not a single snowflake. I think the problem was in the mood of the day. Sometimes they enter the room in 5 different places, all of them mad and hating each other. It was that kind of day. These days overwhelm me and I feel hopeless as a therapist and they feel hopeless as little people in the world. It sucks for all of us. On the positive side, I saw one of them the following night for an individual session and he was making snowflakes and wanted to continue with what we started in group.

Bumparena = Success!

The success for this group was a game called Bumparena. We made teams of two and the guys took turns making decisions, asking for feedback from each other and planning how to get balls to fall into their goal. They loved it! They were focused, understood the rules, were respectful to each other and able to slow down and think things through -- all unusual skills for them to exhibit. I couldn't have been prouder. It wasn't a deep insightful group, but a great game to get them thinking about some basic cause and effect, get along and actually love being in group. We all left happy and they have been asking for me to bring the game back... although next time I may find a way to incorporate some new therapy goals (insert evil laugh).

And because one of my goals for the year is to create regularly and add to my posts...

I am still taking photos during my training runs and saving for art journal inspiration.

 And I completed a couple of monkeys. I am waiting for some natural lighting so I can take some decent photos and put them on etsy.

Next week, I hope to do more drawing.

Art On The Go

One of the awesome things I have been loving about doing races is the travel. I have been running for just under a year and I have only run in four states, including my own, but I am loving going places I have never been and maybe would have never considered going otherwise. On a side note, I need to design a U.S. map to chart my travels as well as some way to display medals, but that's a post for another day.

This year I did two races that required overnight travel and both were artistic adventure gold: Corning, NY for the Wineglass Marathon and Half Marathon and Philadelphia, PA for Marathon Weekend. Corning is home of the Museum of Glass, quite possibly the coolest museum I have ever seen. In addition to awesome work on display, they offered demonstrations of various glass making techniques, which is way more mesmerizing than the newest Twilight movie (not that I've seen it) or bowling or whatever one might do for entertainment on a long weekend. They also offer various workshops, so a visitor may do actual glass blowing, bead making, sand blasting etc., with the comfort of a teacher who knows stuff, guiding your hands who will not allow glass to explode in your eye or a blowtorch to light your hair on fire, which is a nice way to work with glass the first time. Oh, AND runners got a two day pass to the museum for just six dollars!

some of the work I liked in the museum

bead I made

Finishers' Medals at the race are also glass

Last weekend I attended Philadelphia Marathon Weekend and ran the half marathon. It was the biggest race I have been in yet. Last year had 23,000 runners -- I don't know how many this year, but it took us about 25 minutes from the gun to cross the starting line due to all the people who needed to cross it. Although we started in front of the Museum of Art, we did not get discounts at that museum. How rude! (We went anyway.) Runners did get a discount to Isaiah Zagar's Magic Gardens, however. It was the first time I have ever seen something that made me feel like crying for no recognizable reason. It was powerful. I know the Philadelphia Museum of Art is rated as the second best art museum in the country and tickets cost more than double the entry fee to Magic Gardens, but South Street is where it is at for this chick. I am inspired.

Magic Gardens

And the murals around town were AMAZING! I really would love to live in Philly. Seems like a great place to be an art therapist.

Murals of Philly

Places to come: Virginia, Utah, Wyoming and New Hampshire. Having a job is good. Too bad I don't get more vacation time.

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!