Holiday Vacation

Hello Moment Artists!

I will be taking a break from blogging until after the holidays. Until then, I urge you to please continue your Daily Moment Art practice. It will do you nothing but good.

When in doubt, remember that it's impossible to do this incorrectly.

I will be monitoring the forums and posting my own Moments whenever possible, so if you need me, you'll know where to find me!

Until next time, Happy Holidays!

-SRT

Some Amazing Moments

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

You may find yourself in another part of the world

You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife

You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? – Talking Heads

For most of us, setting realistic long-term goals can be a frightening concept. Nevertheless, most of us have had our eyes set on a specific dream or two for many years, perhaps one that we never even considered possible or likely. Maybe there’s a dream that we’ve forgotten entirely, and are currently stranded on the road toward. Or maybe we’ve just found ourselves in the middle of a tortuous maze, with no idea how we got in, or how to get out, with no clue when or where the Minotaur will appear. When we begin to think about these goals, all the steps left to be ascended, and all the blocks remaining to be stumbled over, we can easily find ourselves in a state of anxiety or worse: overwhelming panic.

Sometimes, the closer we come to realizing our dreams, the farther it seems we are heading from them. Time never stops escaping; more and more requirements appear that we never considered; the kids need to eat and the dog needs to be walked and the baby needs to be fed and the groceries aren’t going to purchase themselves and before we know it, deadlines are arriving and we’re still standing on the same stepping-stone as we were the week before. We know where our goals are, but how do we get there?

The experts will tell us to buy a day-planner. They will tell us to make a list. They will tell us to buy their new hardcover entitled: Proper Time Management and You. They will drive us to Crazytown by telling us how to live our lives according to how it works for them.

Well, we are not them. We know what day it is. We don’t need to comfort ourselves by checking little boxes. We may be momentarily off track, but we are strong-willed, highly capable people who have laid a course of success and if we weren’t, then we would have laid our dreams to rest long ago instead.

So again, how do we get there?

We get there by continuing to do the best that we can do, because that is all that we can do.

When we always do the best that we can do in each moment, some amazing things happen. First, each stumbling block that we come upon will, to us, become only a grain of sand in the future. Second, when we reach the top, our goal and shining moment, we will look down upon the steps that we have climbed and the roads that we have taken and feel the awe, the sublimity of accomplishing something that we, at one point, never thought possible. Third, if we do our best and are still unable to accomplish that certain feat, we will then be able to gracefully and humbly bow out, knowing that we went the distance and that there’s nothing that we didn’t do at our fullest potential.

So in honour of ourselves, and our inherently amazing abilities, we will draw some mazes to play as our Moments this week.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to get some graph paper. If you don’t have any available, you can print some out from here. Or, if rigid Cartesian coordinates aren’t your thing, you may print out polar coordinate paper here (Note: these websites allow you to change the number of lines per inch, so be sure to play with the possibilities).

The next step is to create an entrance and an exit. At the exit, draw whatever it is that you are seeking. Be it gold, a better job, a college degree, or just enough money to cover the mortgage this month, your exit is your goal.

Now, draw the walls, and here’s the key: you can make this maze as complex or as simple as you wish. You have the power here. You can decide how difficult you wish to make this journey. If you like a challenge, then make this maze as twisted and as obstructed as you can. Throw in some monsters, some walls, some dead ends and traps at every corner. However, if you’re tired, thoroughly exhausted from your trek, then this is the time to make your journey simpler. Give yourself a straighter path, and equip yourself with Ariadne’s thread. This is your odyssey; this is your Moment.

When you are done with your Moment, then by all means, play the game! Start from the beginning, and diligently search every corner for your way. Or, place yourself in the middle, lost with no compass or clue. When you’ve finally reached the end, take a long and deep breath. You’ve worked hard, and you’ve earned it. Now, slowly rise and be on your way; you have many amazing things yet to do.

Now to be fair, here's my Moment:

Ink, Acrylic applied with carpet pad, graph paper, gaffer's tape on brown paper bag.

-SRT