NURTURE WITH NATURE!!!

As we journey through life, feeling our way blindly each day with a proverbial white cane, we have so many obstacles to cross, much like an athletic high jump.  We can choose to trek this journey in several ways, i.e., we can live in the past, ultimately experiencing utter depression and regret; we can live in the future where we are sure to experience nothing but total frustration and stress; or we can exercise the one guarantee that God has given us…we can live in the here and the now.  If we are fortunate to wake up each morning, then we have been gracefully granted another day to experience life…to wipe the slate clean from the previous day and start anew, creating the day we wish for.  Now, while you may not think that you have any control over how your day turns out…think again.  You are the one orchestrating the tone and the outcome.  If you choose to live in the moment and for the day, you can choose to make time for a walk, one in which you smell the flowers, look up at the sky, feel the breeze on your skin and listen to birds and other beautiful nature sounds.  What’s that?  No time for a walk?  Really?  Wow, I used to think that way also, but then I realized, there are 24 hours in each day we are given so yes, you CAN make time, but it is up to you to kill off the excuses you make and start putting more importance on the beautiful things in life and way less importance on whether the bills or paid or the house is clean or a job whose only purpose is to make sure the bills are paid.  What a vicious cycle society puts us in.  Then we go home telling ourselves how tired we are and that there is no time for a walk because we want to sit and watch t.v. or veg on facebook while eating junk food and other processed foods which nurse the toxins building up in our bodies, minds and souls…just like society has planned for us…next stop? probably cancer…if not physical cancer, then definitely mental and spiritual which are just as debilitatingly devastating if not more so.  Lately I have been walking 3 to 5 miles each morning and not just for exercising my physical body, but for exercising my five senses and my soul.  If you live in the negative your life will produce negative results.  If you live in the positive your life will produce positive results.  There is no such thing as perfection (that so many of us strive for) and there we are not built to have happiness 24/7, but what we can do is to take stock of the things that occur each day, all the little triumphs and happy moments and make those count for more than the bad stuff.  In this way you can achieve happiness every day.  Journaling and writing about the glass being half full as you recall your day can have a huge and positive influence and effect on you and the tone you set. 

I have also been diving back head-first into my art, my writing and my poetry, which for me is a huge and important way I need to nurture.  Below I have displayed some of my work.  I ask that these not be re-posted anywhere out of respect for my copyright and I thank you for that:

CHANGE

By

Kimberly D Miller

(c) 10-2014

Change is life, life is change;

Our situations rearrange;

First we're here, then we're there,

We must accept it everywhere;

Time and tide are constant spans;

Life just happens, don't make plans;

Control's an illusion to ease the mind;

No map to follow, will you find;

Walk the path you’re meant to tread;

Not ever a second should you dread;

We are here, no matter the test;

To pass them all by doing our best.

My photography is a huge part of who I am and now, so is walking on the beach.  I love writing messages in the sand and leaving them for whoever comes along and is meant to read them before they fade.

This is a picture of a notebook I bought but I love the art and the message.

These beautiful, giant evergreens make me feel like the small and insignificant cog I am in the grand scheme of things and I like that…it’s good to realize that the world does not revolve around us and that we share this planet with so many living things.

We have a mama and baby who have taken to hanging out in the back yard all day every day.  They don’t even flinch when you go out to talk to them.  They just prop those ears up and listen.

This is one type of art that I am getting back into…this is a greeting card that I made and inside is another flap that contains more art.

Awhile back a very good, artistic friend of mine who resides in Ohio, introduced me to Zentangles.  This is basically a form of art in which you do elaborate doodles and while you are working on them the “zen” or the relaxation of creating them sets in.  I am now doing them on canvases instead of paper and incorporating some of the paper into the canvases.  Very fun.

This is the cover of a book using gel medium to imbed metal bars into a cutout over the top of a picture.

I used the lid of a box to create this fall piece.

This is a bad picture but it shows how I used wooden letters, painted them and decoupaged them to create a beach theme in honor of my dream of living on the coast once again, coming true.

More Zentangles

This is my first watercolor in a long time.  It is not finished by far, but I wanted to show you that I am headed back into all forms. (picture is a bit blurry).