Well, hello again.

Look at this! I’m doing another post as promised.

The jury remains out if this is a good thing…but here we are.

How’s everyone doing?

I’ll start…I lurch between contentment and despair…so really not much is new.

Except, though I try to limit my exposure to the news, the reports seep in and the despair seems even darker than usual.

I wonder how humanity can keep repeating the same stupid ugliness over and over. Why oh why don’t we learn from our endless mistakes? How can so much cruelty be allowed and even encouraged? Are we, like the threat of purgatory, doomed to hang in perpetually dark ignorance?

There is another layer to this strange feeling of purgatorial hell.

Here in the East Kootenays, our weather, like everywhere else in the world, has been strange. This week has been foggy and frozen. The usual and madly wished-for snow has not shown up and this perpetual grey twilight reminds me of the surreal smoky skied timelessness that was our recent wildfire season.

 

 

Which (of course!) plummets me into more of the aforementioned despair, only now my focus has moved from war to climate change.

Okay. I’m taking a big breath.

Let’s back this truck up.

If you’re still with me and wondering why on earth you are…sorry…I can’t help you.

Maybe like me, in spite of all the shitty news, there is still that part of you that remains curious and hopeful.

Isn’t that a fine thing? That we can always keep looking beyond the immediate and maybe find more good than bad?

As Alice said, Curiouser and curiouser!

And that my friends, is my ongoing answer to navigating my darkness.

I remind myself several times a day to focus on the good, find the beauty, create something, strive to be kind, be present, be alive and be thankful…and above all remain curious.

So here we are, we’ve arrived at the last day of 2023.

I am SO not interested in talking about a big shiny list of goals and aspirations. Honestly, it’s enough to navigate what we are already facing (see above).

Instead, I plan on continuing with an epiphany I had a few months ago. I was writing in my morning journal and had the realization that I felt best when I was creating art or actually, creating just about anything, whether it was baking cookies or painting with my skillet of encaustic wax.

And as I looked back on things, I saw that I’d unconsciously created a framework for my life. As an added bonus, this template had alliterative qualities. I absolutely adore alliteration (see what I did there?), so this was a huge bonus that the three words I’d been unknowingly working with, all begin with “C”.

Unwittingly or perhaps a little more wit than I give myself credit for, I’d been using this filter to help me decide what to say yes to and what to say no to.

This ‘test’ asks three questions of almost anything I might take on:

Does this foster Creativity? 

Does this foster Connection? 

Does this foster Community?

And there it was. Staring me in the face.  I’d been answering these questions all along but now that I’d named them, I had more clarity.

Whether it’s the River Bend Lane Art Walk, the Kimberley Friends Art Collective, our new Flix@64 film society, bookclub, a coffee date with a friend, an art retreat, traveling, hiking, doodling on a page, or any kind of gathering at all, the theme is the same: Create, Connect and build Community.

Which brings me back to this blog…writers without readers are simply screaming into the void.

So writing, a creative act, connects me to readers and builds another type of community. Check, check and check.

This world is harsh and hard and achingly beautiful.

Let us do our best to right the wrongs and focus on the beauty. We bid this year adieu and with open hearts do our best to greet our future…whatever it might be.

Wishing everyone good health and a curious contentment.

May we all strive to create, connect and build community and may peace prevail.

Love Colleen