As we were riding around Dallas, TX trying to find some good places to shop for vintage clothing, my husband and I passed a high school with some remarkable artwork on its walls. I didn’t even write down the name of the school, or on what street it was located. All I know is that the students painted this artwork of different faces. Now isn’t this a lot better than graffiti? I imagine that the kids were so delighted to be able to share their artwork that they now have no desire to junk up the walls with spray paint.
I wonder if these were self portraits? The artwork was very large, so I’m betting that they had fun splashing paint on such huge canvases. Wish I could remember where it was!
You may not enjoy modern art. That’s alright. The beauty of the exercise I am going to ask you to do, is that you don’t have to like it to see the good in it. This is a wonderful exercise to train our eyes to look for the good in the world around us. We have to be trained, you see, because we get accustomed to seeing the negative side of life.
Forget negative thoughts for just one moment, and tell me Only The Good. THEN, I want you to take this exercise one step further!
I’m betting that in your life right now you have something that is bothering you and making you irritable. If you don’t, congratulations (but are you human?). Perhaps you grouse that your spouse leaves underwear in the middle of the bathroom floor. Maybe you have a teenager who is driving you up the wall. Have you got a project that bumfuzzles you? Or, a co-worker who makes you gnash your teeth and want to rant?
Stop and think about that “irritant” for just one moment. Try to think of one thing that is good about it. Just one thing. If you can see one good thing, perhaps it will help you deal with the situation. You can comment about that if you would like, or go write a blog post about it. Then, breathe in, breathe out, and move on.
If you’d like, you can visit some other sites that participate in this exercise at Inside Mo’s Mind, Life in Westcliffe, Lives Less Ordinary, and Miscellaneous Matters.
Are you looking for a topic as a prompt for a post? Inspiration Bit has another Group Writing Project going on right now. She asks the question:
* Are you juggling a busy family life and career?
* Are you working full time and still manage to blog?
* Do you have your hands full with multiple projects but succeed in keeping all of them under a reasonable control?
* Can you still find time for your favourite hobby despite the loads of work and tons of daily responsibilities?
If so, write a post to tell us your time management tips. The deadline is Wednesday, September 26th, 2007—that’s tomorrow (sorry for the late notification!). I’ve been trying to claw my way out of a hole I had dug for myself, and remembering all the organizational tips that worked for me a long time ago. I hope to get my post in just under the wire. I participated in her last group writing project, and got a lot “hits” from it.
The Parent Bloggers Network is having a writing contest, with the prize of a portable dvd player up for grabs in a random drawing. This was in the e-mail they sent me:
How to participate?
1) On Friday, September 28, before midnight PST, write a post about your family vacations – past, present, or future. Title it creatively and descriptively.
2) In the text of your post, link to PBN (http://blog.parentbloggers.com) and PickPackGo (http://www.pickpackgo.com/family).
3) Send us the link to your post (email to parentbloggers@gmail.com).We’ll round up all the posts on PBN and draw one winner at random (http://www.random.org is the website we use) who’ll get an 8″ Sony portable DVD player that you can use whether you travel by plane, train, or automobile.
Are you feeling lucky?
Any of y’all who enjoyed the Dear Abby Writing Contest should stay on the alert. I will open it for postings on October 23rd, but you will only have 48 hours to make your entry. I’m looking forward to some more good laughs from you, and “Abby” is honing her advice skills.
Y’all go out and have a good day. I’ll see you on “the porch” another day.
Other posts you might enjoy:
{ 8 comments }
Thanks for the promo, Shelly. I do hope you’ll get your post with Time Management tips up in time, but if you can’t, I’ll extend the deadline, just for you, so let me know how it goes. Vivien.
Thank you, Vivien!! The post is mostly written, but I’m trying to tweak it…and figure out if it’s good advice! I look forward to reading all the entries! You have such great ideas for writing projects.~skt
Nice to see something about Face that isn’t about breasts and FaceBook. So here’s my one good thing about my irritant: I breast fed my babies, and Facebook can’t take that away!
I love happening across things like the faces you photographed. I don’t necessarily like the style enough to hang in my home, but I think art projects like that are fascinating. I love looking at them. I’m not into abstract art/sculpture, but I love looking at public sculptures too.
I’ve always been interested in how others think, and seeing the art a person produces allows me to see a little bit of how their mind works.
The faces fascinate me, they all show personalities and emotion of some kind. To live rather than just exist a person needs to feel emotions, so the artists were ‘living’ and not afraid of color.
And as for emotion, Leon is definitely alive this week with all the work and frustration it causes on a few days, grin.
Beautiful artwork, though I must admit, if those are self-portraits, those students appear to be angry and/or depressed. Beautiful nonetheless. Why do we always find beauty in the bad stuff? Perhaps because we’re human, I guess. As for finding the good in the bad, the preschool teacher just told me that she and the speech path will be observing my daughter for the next 30 days because (in a nutshell) they think she might be more autistic (not that they can diagnosis it) and may or may not benefit from a different class. On the bright side, I did read an article once that found lots of genius-type people have autistic children. So, um, maybe I’m a genius? ;p In all seriousness, on the bright side, my daughter is perefectly capable of interacting in social situations, so regardless of an autistic or otherwise diagnosis, I know she will be capable of functioning in society.
If they seem angry or depressed, perhaps it is because they are teenagers??:lol: Genius type people do have autistic children, and some people with autism are geniuses on another level. There is a bright side.~skt
I really like this photo, Shelly! I love the freely expressed colour and line of the paintings which is juxtaposed against the rigid, regular brickwork. It seems to signify that no matter how much conformity and homogeneity is encouraged by our society, that there are still free thinkers out there. That makes me smile!
Yes, Amy. Free thinkers are a good thing! I liked the brickwork behind the art, too. The wild colors speak to me.~skt
I see a lot of emotion and a lot of promising talent in those portraits! I love the bold colors and that fact that the paintings are bold as well. It speaks of someone trying to convey a message through their art, and that’s a GOOD thing.
I was pretty awed by the works, myself, Nancy. Wish I had that talent! Sigh.~skt
When is artistic expression not a good thing? I love the shading and use of colors. These artists crossed the line of expected and ventured into the unexpected, and it worked. Great post! Thanks for the link love.
You are welcome for the link love. Thanks for the kind words. I do love these works. The kids may be artists of note someday.~skt
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