In an Octopus's Garden:

One thing at a time . . .

I've been re-reading one of my all time favorite books, "Long Quiet Highway" by Natalie Goldberg. It mostly is memoir about her finding Zen meditation, and how it affected her creative life.

At one point, her teacher tells her she either should be a Zen monk, or a writer, but not both. I found this hard to hear, because I always seem to wear many hats. Having three kids, grad school, then working outside the home, then working at home, at many different jobs, I learned that it was a luxury to think I would ever only have one thing on which to focus. I did learn to only do one thing at a time, and to be fully present for whatever I was working on. (at least to try to do that.)

The idea of Zen seems to be fully present and aware, and to understand how fleeting all life is.

I was at the beach at the Outer Banks recently, and my journal pages reflect the calmness I was feeling there. I turned off my phone (mostly) and ignored social media for three weeks as a digital detox. I was falling into the trap of checking my phone/computer/ipad multiple times a day, and obsessing over answering messages and comments, returning and deleting emails.
Instead of being in the moment, I was thinking about photographing and sharing the moment on Facebook. The time away from social media was very good for me, and now I can spend much less computer time, and more being alive time.

and the idea that we need to be just one thing? I think we need to be the one thing that we are at the moment, and if while we make art we think about the chores we need to do, or while we write, we think about the art we should be doing, or while we teach, we think about the studio work piling up, then we are not fully in the moment.  At the beach, I was at the beach. I wasn't spending all my time sharing the beach on Facebook or Twitter. It was a nice realization that this computer time has a way of taking us out of what we are doing.  I want to be present, not thinking about sharing the present all the time.

One teaching in the book is about putting a horse on a horse; that riding a horse is hard enough, why would we ride a horse on a horse? Which to me means living life is hard enough, why would be try to observe and analyze it while we are doing it.   My over active mind tends to worry and wonder and speculate all the time on what I should be doing, rather than what I am doing.   or how I will share what I am doing on social media.

I am working on not doing this, on not riding a horse on a horse. On being fully present.

and a few journal pages from the beach:

and the beach colors, aqua water and turquoise sky have inspired this:

"To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders."  Zen Proverb