Sunday night in the suburbs

'amoeba-ish' collage, watercolour and pastel

Amoeba-ish is a good description of how I am feeling at the moment. A bit lacking in definition perhaps? Nothing particularly bad and nothing particularly good, sort of in limbo. Sunday nights are often like this, I'm glad its still the weekend but aware that its going to be over soon...

I made this image a while ago. I am noticing there are lots of layers, from the centre (nucleus?) to the outside (water?). Its quite colourful, like a lot of my work. I am very attracted to bright colours, and usually pick them up rather than darker or neutral tones. I feel this is a bit childish and not very sophisticated but oh well. (I'm also noticing those negative thoughts.)

What is really exciting in this corner of the blogosphere, is that due to my last post, I have had over 1,000 hits on this blog since I started in December last year. That's very satisfying, so thanks!

I have just finished Jodie Picoult's novel singing you home. Reading her novels is a bit like immersing yourself in a warm but worthy bath;  they always have an 'issue' at their core, but they are quite compulsive.  This one has a music therapist as the main character, so I really enjoyed that, as creative therapists are not often represented in popular culture (One exception  being the 1980's film Truly, madly deeply, which has an art therapist - albeit a male one, quite a rare species - as the love interest of the main character). The 'issue' is fertility rights, in particular over ownership of the fertilised eggs of a couple who break up. The woman (and music therapist) goes into a relationship with another woman, and the man gets involved with the religious right. You can kind of guess the rest, and yes it does involve a court case (well Picoult is American).

Another brief movie review - go see Red Dog, which we went to last weekend. A nice Australian family film about - a red dog! 

One thing I have noticed about this project, doing what matters. I am becoming more outspoken about my values and beliefs. Not just in the blog, but in real life, too. When I am with people with very different values, it is more jarring than it used to be. Well I think that's true, perhaps it was always jarring, but now I am noticing it more. 

I found out recently (or honestly, not that recently) that I should be meditating twice a day, to have a more solid chance of actually changing my brain (neural pathways) for the better. This seems like a tough thing to do, but I am going to try, starting this week (can't do it today, as I missed this morning's meditation). I think its worth a try. I had a return of insomnia a couple of weeks ago. Its hard to break the pattern once it returns. As its anxiety related, I am guessing meditation can help - already my sleeping patterns are much better than they used to be. Creating the routine is the hard part, I'm usually quite good at keeping on doing things once I start...

more later.