Hi there!

I’m so glad you stopped by!  Now that the 2009 wedding season is done and the new year is here,   I’m refreshing  my website design  & portfolio.  I’ve taken down my portfolio page while I update it. Please make sure to visit again so you can see the changes! Thanks for your visit!

What do you think?

The house is quiet. My husband and one daughter are sleeping. The other two spent the night at a friend’s house. I love these quiet moments. They are perfect for reflecting and reading.  And I just read an e-book that rocked my world a bit…in a good way. It’s the inspiring, focus producing ,  free e-book, What Matters Now.

This e-book, compiled by Seth Godin,  contains 70 authors each briefly sharing an idea for us to think about as we head into 2010. Some of the articles I only glanced at; others I read slowly.

Here’s a bit of what I gleaned:

• Page 5:  Be generous. Art can’t happen without someone who seeks to make a difference.
• Page 11: Ease up.
• Page 15: Vision, it’s the first casualty in hard times. It’s needed for hard times to improve.
• Page 40: Celebrate others.
• Page 42: “Say yes to adventure….journey with zeal.”
• Page 50: Ask, “What’s working and how can we do more of it?”
• Page 54: Cultivate your confidence.
• Page 64: Show don’t tell.
• Page 76: Say, “I’m sorry” and mean it.
• Page 77: Get some sleep.

And the two pages that resonated the most with me…

• Page 16: Commit. Care. Connect. Communicate. Expand capacity. The litmus test is this: “If you are truly enriching someone’s life, they will typically miss you in their past. They think their lives would have been better if they’d met you earlier.”
• Page 31: Tough-mindedness is “the ability to draw lines and boundaries within which we protect and preserve the mental and emotional space to do our work and to be true to our selves. Not to the point of insanity (we gotta keep a sense of humor about this stuff), but we also desperately need the ability to play real hardball with ourselves when we need it. Otherwise, we’ll all expire from shallowness.”

If you want to add some fresh insight & focus to your 2010,  go read, scan or inhale What Matters Now for yourself. You can read it below or download your own copy. What resonates with you?

Please share your thoughts. What clicks?

Yesterday, I woke up with much to do. I needed to edit a video, prepare graphics for Sunday, go Christmas shopping and our house needed a cleaning in the worst way. But…I felt a longing to create.  So, instead of hitting the task list, I went to Old Sac with my camera. My goal: to look for the good light and create for the sake of creating. It was glorious. I found myself getting lost in the moment and just taking in my surroundings. I prayed. I hunted for good light. I asked God to inspire me for the days ahead. I felt released.

As 2009 comes to an end (!), I’m going through photos from the year…still processing ones from my Europe adventure. I came across these of the Mediterranean. Looking at them make me feel warm…I need that today. =)

I’m still reflecting on this writing by Henri Nouwen:

You have an idea of what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there. Even though you know that you have not found there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones.

Now you have come to realize that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.

Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on . Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.

It seems that you keep crossing and recrossing the border. For a while, you experience a real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back to the old country. To your dismay, you discover that the old country has lost its charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer.

–Henri Nouwen

While out scouting a shoot location yesterday, I looked up and saw this. I love the grain. Art is truly everywhere!