I have slipped back into this blog with such joy, because...

I have spent so much time blogging and I spend so much time online that I just can't seem to keep up with a handwritten journals anymore which shames me no end having taught journal classes for 40 years and filled over 400 journals. Sigh...

Finally, instead of not keeping an online journal because I am pretending to myself that surely any minute I will start using the 1001 journals of every sort that I buy and never use I am just going to do what I know is going to work for me, at least for now. The journals, if they are suitable by any stretch, will be used as sketchbooks and I am going to use this blog as my journal. Not private things, I do as much of that type of writing as I am willing to share on my main blog, Maitri's Heart on my website. No, what I want to do, and what is important for me to do with 5 mental health diagnoses, is to keep track of my life and days. This will be very different than the way this blog started but it is what I need to do today and I just love this little blog. It feels like a real knockabout sort of journal, not fancy or pretty which makes it comfortable to just slap stuff in, collage it a bit, maybe art and mostly just notes as I travel through my days. It just needs to be this way, for now, so I don't lose myself and so I remember the things I want to remember. As you can see I have written a few today, these are my Notes, Quotes & Flashing Thoughts, this is how a mind works, any mind, mentally screwbally notwithstanding our brains are just always on the move no matter what shape they are in. I want to capture things I love, things I'm planning, books, things I am obsessed with.

I am currently obsessed with Amanda Palmer. I don't mean in a creepy way, no, I just seem to have gotten on the A.P. tour bus late, but I saw her TedTalk and it-just-knocked-me-(and about 8 million other people)-OUT! Watch it, please, you don't want to miss it. 

Then I was excited to find that she had a book of the same name coming out in autumn 2014. I bought the book for my kindle, but they had a deal to get the audible book cheaply at the same time so I bought it. I have listened to it 3x so far -- I love books read by their own authors -- but this one is so special. Every time I listen, because I move about taking care of pugs and things and miss parts which is okay because I didn't miss anything the first time, I find something else to love, something else that really helps me in my life right now, something that helps me understand my life right now, even though that's not what the book is about, but it is about living as artist among many other things and that is where I am right now. So I will get around to reading the kindle version but right now I am listening to it as if on a continuous tape loop. 

THEN -- wonder of wonders -- again, last one on the tour bus and all -- I found out that Amanda is married to a writer who just delights me in a thousand directions, Neil Gaiman. I just couldn't believe it. I have been in love with him since I heard the amazing commencement speech he gave that also went viral like Amanda's Ted Talk. It is referred to as the Make Good Art speech and I have lost count of how many people I have shared it with and listened to it myself. Oh you DO NOT want to miss this one... MAKE GOOD ART, by the adorable Neil Gaiman.

So I will end this here as it is nearly 10 p.m. and I have not eaten dinner. I am angsty and edgy tonight and I haven't been able to settle down and the kitchen is a disaster. I will get to that somewhere between tonight and tomorrow. I need to eat, and, make good art.