Slowing Down

Wishing ~ 7" x 9" oil on canvas panel

BID NOW

75% of the proceeds of this painting go to the Hunger Project Charity. Help me help an African family build a sustainable life...and you get a painting!

Today I awoke to the sound of my computer powering up...I guess when you put your computer to sleep it lasts exactly 12 hours, and then the monitor wakes itself up again?! I didn't know that...I thought there was a ghost in my room:P, Lol! But that means I slept 12 hours! Crazy! (I only had four hours of sleep the night before, in my own defense:)

At any rate, what did I do? Rush over to check my emails, start surfing, before you know it I've got like, 12 tabs open and I'm switching back and forth, not even finishing one post before my attention is snagged by another, my brain full of images, factoids, quotes. All before my morning coffee! What!? 

And I realized, not for the first time, that I hate, and I love the internet. For it has created this fast paced society, where we're not satisfied with only one thing at a time, but we have to be speeding through, gleaning bits and pieces, and never fully absorbing anything. Looking for instant gratification, but never satisfaction, because something better or more interesting might be around the corner. It's become a necessary part of my business, but also a huge distraction and mode of procrastination.

So today instead of going for my morning run, I decided to walk. 

And what I saw, and smelled, and thought about, was truly amazing.

Did you know the forest in summer in Quesnel smells like cinammon?

I saw hundreds of deer tracks, and behind them, little mini deer tracks, telling me the story of a mama and baby following the same route as I...I wonder where they went. Are they hiding, watching me pass by? My thoughts wandered, about things important and unimportant, about things sad and happy, I acknowledged them all, and followed them around, asking what they meant to me, but allowing myself to just observe them.

I ate wild strawberries (didn't know they were still out), found a huge saskatoon bush (delicious and juicy), and peeking around the corner of a new path I saw a clearing and I found it filled with wild raspberries. So I had my breakfast, growing wild, a tasty gift from Mother Earth. 

I made a decision to try to do this every day. Acknowledge and absorb the beauty around me, get away from the computer. Be in the  moment.  Appreciate the abundance around me, because I have so much more than these people that I want to help.