Deepening the vision

 I am taking a course right now that is all about finding the next step in life. It is called "Pathfinder." I am hoping it will help me clarify where I am headed and find myself on the path to full time work.

Part of the course is that I receive prompts in my in-box five days a week with activities to help me focus in on what I am passionate about, and what I could imagine establishing a career doing. For the past couple of days the exercise was to gather materials to create a vision board. I had just made a vision board with a women's group that I am a member of a couple of weeks ago, but interestingly, the last two weeks a lot has starting shifting in my life, so I actually had been feeling as though the vision board I made two weeks ago already felt outdated (is this a sign that they work? I am thinking it has definitely contributed!)

Tonight I gathered together everything I have been cutting out of magazines and printing out off of my computer, and put it all together on the board I bought earlier today. I couldn't fit everything I wanted to stick on my board on it -- my life's vision, I am quite relieved to discover, does not fit onto a board...

I am really pleased with the result, and am hoping that by this time next year many of the images will have become a reality in my life. Have you made a vision board lately? Do you have dreams and goals that you are working towards? I invite you to give it a try. All you need is a sheet of poster board, as many magazines with pictures as you can find lying around (and do not mind cutting up!), scissors, and a glue stick. You can also use stickers and coloured pens if you like, but that just makes it flashier. I just used cutouts from magazines and photos of myself and friends to illustrate things that I want in my life. For example, I have a cutout of a body in the middle of my vision board. Inside the body are all sorts of beautiful growing things. To me this symbolizes cultivating beauty on the inside -- spiritual beauty, and my ability to shape my own reality and experience in this world. In the bottom left corner of my board I have a photograph of myself and my former employer and friend on his farm back in Canada. To me this symbolizes my love of farming, and desire to own my own farm some day. It also symbolizes how important a strong sense of community is to me, and how much I want to build a community around myself wherever I am living. The swans on the far right symbolize partnership and family. I am not sure if it is true, but I heard once that swans keep one partner for life, and that is what I am searching for at the moment, so I thought I would include them to help remind myself of the kind of partnership I am looking for.

How about you? What are your goals/dreams? If you make a vision board and feel like sharing please do be in touch. I would love to see what you create!

Have a great Thursday, friends. See you here on Friday!

In the beginning

In the beginning of anything new it takes a lot of hard work for very little reward, sometimes for a very long time. Last week I planted seeds in the youth garden that I volunteer in. And yesterday, after I finished a morning on the farm teaching 6th graders about tomatoes and peppers and harvesting with them, I walked over to the bed that I had seeded last week to see how everything was doing. From a distance, nothing. But up close:

This week I worked on three tea descriptions that will be printed on packages of tea for a small company back on Prince Edward Island, in Canada, and a story about a local artisan chocolate producer here in Sacramento for Artisan's Table, an online site that connects customers to artisan producers all over the country. I know my food and travel writing is slowly improving, but it feels like I am taking such incredibly small steps towards my goal at times that it is hard to imagine my writing career reaching maturity and bearing fruit in the way I envision.

Fortunately I have farming. Farming gives me hope that all the attention and energy I am putting into my writing will pay off in the long-term. That I will complete my research and finish a first draft of my novel, and that it will someday be published, read and enjoyed.

When I got down on my knees on the earth path between rows and saw the tiny seedlings pressing up out of the soil I felt my entire body breathe a sigh of relief. Somehow the growth of the plants made all the uncertainty in the rest of my life right now alright.

The pump was down yesterday, so I hand watered everything, watching the soil get dark and the water pool in the areas where the bed was slightly lower than the rest. The sun shone through the spray, radiating rainbows into the hot air.

Being able to see progress in the garden tells me that there is undoubtedly progress happening on all fronts, even though I cannot see it.

Last night my dad and I walked home from a restaurant we had gone out to dinner at. It was a lovely evening, the sky was crisp and clear, and the moon was big and luminous, spilling her light through the oak trees, over the black asphalt, the cracked pavement and the wet lawns in front of every house on the street. Watching the moon I felt this deep sense of peace and rootedness. I was on the pavement in Sacramento, but I was also sitting inside my own house back on PEI looking out my huge windows on new year's eve two years ago making a wish that led me west while the moon flooded the living room, and climbing the terraces on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel on the last night of my pilgrimage with the cool stone beneath my bare feet and the sound of fountains bubbling, water streaming past me down the mountain, the call to prayer from a nearby mosque and the pale moon the colour of sun-lit wheat above me, keeping watch as I climbed up towards the Shrine of the Bab.

It is Friday afternoon. Many of my friends are attending a conference this weekend in Moncton, New Brunswick. I did not realize how much I wanted to be there until today, when I started noticing that my heart was just not in my work, and then found myself checking out plane tickets to Moncton -- leaving today. Yeah, I know. Flying across the continent for a weekend with one day's notice...totally unrealistic. I spent the rest of the day struggling through my work, and challenging myself to stay present even though I so wanted to be on the last flight that would have gotten me to Moncton by tomorrow morning. It left at 2pm this afternoon.

This year has included a lot of sacrifice of good times. Travel. Conferences. Dinners out. But more importantly it has included lots of opportunities to learn that in order to succeed, my body and my mind and heart all have to be in one time zone. For example today my heart really wanted to jump that 2pm flight to Moncton. But it would have been leaving my body behind, and how enjoyable would my company have been all weekend with my heart on the opposite side of the continent?

So instead I am staying put. Watering the garden. Going to a devotional gathering. Doing yoga in the park. Talking a walk with a friend, and doing some reading and writing. My life this year has none of the international jet setting that is my norm. Most of what I do fill my days with right now falls way below the socially exciting radar. But there is growth happening. Humble, ordinary, gradual and slow, but growth nevertheless. And I am thinking that is what I need right now, as much as I fight it.

Beginnings require a lot of focus and energy. A lot of TLC. They are a lot like these seedlings, really. Lots of potential, but none of it will be realized if we stop watering them daily at this point. 

Are you working on developing something new in your life? A new relationship/career/journey or even Fall garden? How do you go about nurturing it and staying committed in the initial phases of growth when the proportion of energy going into it is much greater than the perceivable results? 

Have a great weekend, friends! See you on Monday!