This Is An Orange Polka Dotted Swiss Moment...

Dear Ones,

What is written below was written on my new page on Facebook, the page for Dragonfly Cottage Studio where I work and spend most of my days. With much time and reflection I have truly realized that what I have suspected, and been told by friends and fellow writers for much longer, is that the time I spend here on the blog writing long thoughtful entries, though I love to do it, has really drained my writing energy which has made it very difficult for me to get my books and other work written and out into the world. As I said last time I love this blog and will still be in and out, but you will mostly find me on the new page because it is an extension of my studio, my working days, many different types of works and moods and materials and thoughts, some soft and soulful, something downright silly, some contemplative, and some for creative inspiration and sharing resources. 

I have tried to fit myself into a mold for far too long and it's gotten kind of crowded in here. To be as expansive as I want to be, as I know I can be, I have to let all of me blossom and blow up and bounce all over the place like, as I wrote to SARK today, a jitterbugging jellybean. In fact that part of she that is me will be in a new book I'm creating, and there are 2 very different kinds of books in the works. 

I wanted to share with you, below, what I wrote on the new Facebook page so you will understand and visit me there, and do "Like" the page and get on the mailing list to receive freebies and goodies and just plain old home-cooked cottage info. It's about to get a lot more active.

I'm sending you all big love and hugs, and I'll see you here soon, in perhaps a slightly different way than I have. "Maitri's Heart," MY heart, is big and holds a lot, and it always will, and it's time to share it all...

 

"This is the beginning of something new. 

Real new. 

Only here will this work. 

 I am redefining who I am as a writer and artist, and allowing all the facets of myself to express themselves however they see fit. There are the "Deep Listening Soul Guide" moments and those come from a tender deep place inside of me, but there's more of me than that, lots more, and so I will have different icons, if you will, with different types of entries. in different moods, voices, colors and styles. I am looking around my studio at all of the different elements that are here that I love and I am trying them on in front of the mirror. Some of them will be crazy. Some tender and gentle, some downright peculiar -- maybe -- some painfully honest, and some unabashed works of fiction -- I think. 

 Inotherwords, I am now going to use this space on Facebook as a room in my studio. Process, product, things I'm trying out, things that may succeed beyond my wildest expectations, things that will flop, and I won't be afraid for any of it to happen because it's honest, it's real. 

I am not so much a marketable product as a smorgasbord and it all started in 4th grade when I took a sewing class on Saturdays and while I was one of the only kids in a class of mainly adults we were all so painfully bad that on the last day the teacher actually cried and said if she ever had another class like us she was going to stop teaching. Sobbing, she was sobbing. 

NONE of us had finished our projects, not a one. The year was 1964 -- so be kind, although even then I think it was downright ridiculous -- but I chose a pattern of a dress with too many ruffles to count and -- wait for it -- orange dotted Swiss material. Can you imagine how ghastly it would have been if I actually finished it and WORE it some place??? 

I'm quite certain if I were the teacher I'd have jumped off a bridge. 

So when I'm in this mood on this page which is now pretty much taking the place of my blog, although it will still be there, (I can pop in and out of here at random and for fun or a few thoughtful moments but I have realized that the long thoughtful pieces I wrote for my blog were just plain draining my writing energy away. Nuh-uh. No can do. I've got books to write, classes to create, and places NOT to go.)

I promise these will not usually be this long, but I had to kind of explain it to myself and let you listen in. If you made it this far, thanks. and maybe someday I'll drag that material out and make you a dress."