"Don't Wait. Start Stuff"...Richie Norton

The books on my desk challenge me to get off my butt. "Daring Greatly" by Brene Brown starts off this way: Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly. "The Power of Starting Something Stupid," by Richie Norton, exhorts me to start something that everyone, make that me, says is stupid and then run with it. These two books popped into my life within days of each other, and thanks to Amazon Prime, soon I began flipping their pages and found important lessons.

Yesterday I spent the day working on cards and bookmarks for an October open studio tour. The colors are lush, and it's the first time for me to sell little signed art works (suitable for framing), well, to sell my art work at all. Another set will feature my drawings. I'm terrible at mechanics. I don't cut straight, I don't plan ahead, and I figure if I waited to get that perfect part moving in my life I'd be standing still. The challenge for me is how to market them as they are. Open Studio is one thing, but getting them out there is quite another. If I'm to believe Brene's and Richie's lessons, I need to start. Start anywhere. Just start. Any Etsy fairy godmothers out there willing to spread fairy dust?

Meanwhile, I'm having a lot of fun in the doing. I'm thinking creating packages of "Bookmarks for Bookgroups." Here's the rub for many of us. Great idea. Now what! I'm planning on learning that as my fingers turn the pages of my current consultants' books.

Now, the next lovely piece is definitely in the angry teenager phase. It's my second assemblage. It started life as a torn lamp shade stripped to it's form and painted red. Then all those little bottles came into my life, and I wired them to the frame and they bounce it fun ways. I like the idea of people writing messages to fill them up, but not throwing these bottles into the sea. Oh, how about creating the bottom of the sea. OK. Got that. Now how do I make it hang together? That's why it's sitting in a corner, and if gives me any more trouble, it's going under the desk for a time out.

Baruch ata adonai...I am having so much fun with this stuff. I'm asking myself how important it is for me to sell it. It seems to me that there is a next step, and it's not keeping it in my studio so I can admire it forever, and it's not giving it all away, which I love to do and have done in the past. The next step is for me to go public with it. Help me to be bravely vulnerable. I am so grateful to be doing this work and sharing it with others. Amen and Amen