My son goes back to school on the 22nd, and at that time, I am going to begin work on my novel once again. My intention is to work on my novel during the week, and then continue my art development journey on the weekends. My intention is to have a polished draft completed by December 31, 2018. I’m posting that here as a way to keep myself accountable.

It’s interesting how quickly I have already gotten myself out of the habit of creating daily, and how much longer it takes me to complete an art project because my days are filled up with other things now. But, I’ve made a lot of progress on a personal level integrating meditation and journaling back into my daily routine. I’ve also incorporated some dancing into my daily routine. It has become quite clear as of late that I have not been including fun as a daily requirement. Even those things that were fun, I have hijacked and made into something serious. I’m working on changing that.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been working my way through Elizabeth Foley’s Art of Spiritual Living Online Retreat session with Tamara Laporte. The session was to create a self-portrait in a mindful and meditative way, and I loved it. I used a slightly altered quote from Anne Lamott’s book Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith which I just finished reading for a second time. It was even better the second time around!