The Universe Never Gives Us a Straight Path In Life....

Another Christmas is over and a new year is just around the corner. I am not one to make New Years Resolutions as they never seem to work. Though this year I have sat down and have written my goal list for 2017 with dates to reach my goals.  While I am sitting quietly and reading a beautiful book called "A Woman's Shed" by Gill Heriz, I feel my innerself being stirred up to think back to when I would sit and paint for hours on end, and only feel like I had been painting for just minutes. Times when I would sit and do stitcheries for quilt tops and cushions. The feel for maybe getting back to these is coming fore front to my mind. The inner creative is seeing what I have left behind when I felt like I had failed something.

So much has happened over the past 12 months. With foot surgery and not being able to run ever again, to thinking about selling my second bike. Then hubby loosing his job for an extended period of time and the financial stresses alone was hard to deal with. Saying good-bye to our beautiful 13 1/2 year old Golden Retreiver to cancer, and saying hello to a beautiful 2 year old German Shepherd in such a short period of time. I have come to feel settled a bit more. My writing of my first novel is going well, even with a bit of a break, as work was busy and time has been exceptionally limited.

With the beginning of 2017 just days away, it is time to make my own space, my own creative space and turn a crappy 2016 into an awesome 2017. I want 2017 to be a year of creativity in many areas, writing, painting, producing my own range of journals. Its time to come home to the inner creative.

Take time before Jaunary 1, 2017 to see where you wish the coming year to take you, or where you want to go.

Have a great end to 2016 and I hope 2017 brings you all you wish and dream of.

Hayley xx

Life Can Challenge Us.

It has been a while since my last post, and a lot has been happening, most of it not good, though dealing with each day as it comes. It has been interesting to look back over the last 10 months and realise so much has gone wrong and how stressful my life has been. I have been very lucky in that I have had my health through it all. Though my mental status has been pushed to breaking point more than once.

I have come to see so many changes in my life, ones that are good and exciting, though some that I have questioned more than once. I have always for as long as I can remember always used exercise to sooth me when I am stressed out. For the first time in my 40+ years I have done the opposite. Running was my favourite go to, and that has been taken away from me, since I had foot surgery back in March. I haven't been on my bike in more than two and half years. and I spent every spare minute in the previous 12 months swimming preparing for a marathon swim. I have spent most of my spare time over the last 6 months writing the first draft to my first novel. I have enjoyed the quiet time more than I thought I would. I have though found it a little, almost scary that I have come to find more happiness in the quiet times of my life than in the noise of sport.

Life puts challenges before us, its up to us to deal with those challenges in the best way we can. Those challenges can also show us the changes we need to make in our own lives to live a more balanced life, and more fullfilled life. I can say my life over the last ten months has changed significantly, from a sports-aholic to an aspiring novelist that enjoys the company of her books, note books, pens and trusty lap top, compared to being out training every day or other day. My new reality even though there are challenges allows me to run away to another world of my imagination a place I never really went to from my early teens till my early 40's. Now my imagination has permission to run as wild as it wishes.

Take care everyone

Hayley xx

November 2016

This week I start Nanowrimo, this is where people from around the world spend the month of November writing 50,000 words for a novel. Each person downloads their word count of what they have writing each day and by the end of the month you hope you have reached your goal of 50,000 words. My daughter has done nanowrimo a few times and loves it, and as I have started writing my first novel and am already 20,000 words into my first draft, oh and the 20,000 words I have already done don't count, thought I would have a go. The bonus to doing NaNoWrimo is that if I get the 50,000 words done I will only have another 30,000 to go to finish my first draft. Plus it will push me to make sure I get some writing done each day, or if I don't get one day done then I know I need to make the effort to catch up as much as possible, so more than anything it keeps me accountable to my goal.

My writing has become such a central part of my life, as I take time out from marathon swimming and stay doing short course swimming instead. But as our Spring has been still more of an extended Winter the want to swim just hasn't been there, the drive for swimming hasn't been there either. Writing has become some where I can take myself to an imaginary place and life of my characters, feel their sadness, their joy, the laughter, and so much more. I can sit in my favourite coffee shop and plug in my computer, drink my coffee and allow myself to go, to leave my reality and go into an almost parallel world and be someone else for a little while with words, I can feel free, or restricted or just someone else for a few hours. Usually after a writing session I have this light feeling. Happiness that I have made it through another 2000 plus words and the story moves on and new characters arise, some leave and new things can happen. The hardest part of letting your intuition give you the words to write and the visuals of the story (well that is how it happens for me), is to let your mind get out of the way and let the deeper inner voice speak and show you what is possible.

As we step into a new month, and for some a month of trying to write 50,000 words for a novel, and others its the start of maybe a new job, a new dream, a new goal, what ever it is chase it with all your heart, hope, faith and believe that you can catch it with both hands and your heart. Have a wonderful week and be true to yourself.

DoryBlu

Enlightenment or inner understanding...

Over the last week I have felt a change in myself. I won't call it an enlightenment, more an understanding of inner quietness. For most of my life I have needed to have a lot of noise around me to stop myself from thinking. I have not been one to like thinking to much as I would always have my mind running over all the hurt and negative things in my life, not the positives and the happy things.

Currently I am reading an amazing book, "The Power of Now", by Eckhart Tolle, Its interesting to read a perspective as Eckhart Tolle's in the way he describes what enlightenment is, "your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form." For me I was and have been for many years so focused on my appearance and what others thought of me. I was wrapped up in being something, thinking there was more and was always searching outside of myself for the material and emotional needs. I never looked for it with in myself.

I have come to feel an inner change, one that looks for the moments of quiet, to be able to sit and ponder from with in myself, not to search the outer world for answers to feel happy or beautiful. I am my own person, I am unique, I am creative and I am me. I now love the moments I can sit in my garden, my mind quiet and being able to truly listen to natures whisper. Its been interesting also to begin writing my first fictional novel. Its wrapped around a garden and the relationships that it entwines with people who visit and work in the garden. Writing my novel has also spilled over into my reality, I have been spending my weekends weeding, clearing new garden beds and planting new plants. For this summer I am planning to be able to sit out under my patio and write, enjoying the birds singing, the breeze on a warm day and watching the butterflies, insects, lizards and more wonder around the garden and around me.

For me I wouldn't use the word 'enlightenment', I like better the use of Inner Understanding, the understanding that the material world isn't going to give what the soul needs, the soul needs us to be in quietness from our minds to be able to hear the soul, for its needs and solutions.

If you have the chance to find "The Power Of Now" please take the time to read it and find with in yourself just how wonderful life can be, once we start quietening our minds to be able to listen to our soul and in turn I believe our lives will be more fulfilling than what the material world can give us.

Hayley

What do we live by?

For so long I thought I was living by the words above. Well how wrong was I! These actually were the words I should have been living by, but instead, I was living a life full of what if's? I'm not good enough, my passion was in the wrong line of thought, my presence was always looking either in the past or to far in the future and not in the now. I had no clarity at all, I had compassion for others, but it might have been for my own gain, I hated the thought of being vulnerable, I had my moments of being creative, but in the wrong place. So where did I change and start living by the above mentioned 10 Words Everyone Should Live By...

That moment or moments that you realise that you can't control every aspect of your life, and you just need to let go of certain expectations of people and I guess in some way yourself, and believe that the universe has everything in hand and it will only give to you, what you can handle to learn from and experience. We fear the unknown in life, because of our need to have control, once we learn to let that fear go, and feel that we are worth so much to ourselves, we will take everyday that we have on earth to learn the lessons we need to, feel the experiences we can and feel every emotion under the sun. This is called living, not just existing, but really living.

Today I registered for a swim event for next February (2017) and for the first time I can say I am doing it because I want to and it will be fun, not because I have to, to keep my weight off, or its part of further training for a bigger event. Just for the pure fun that I know the event can be, for the place that it is held and for the atmosphere that is there on that weekend in February.

Its nice to finally be in a stage of my life where I am happy with myself more than anything else, that I am following my dreams and chasing my goals and even better living my life with purpose, not because of a mental illness, or emotional pain. Just because I am truly happy and loving life, even with some difficulties that are in it, but life isn't meant to be easy.

Have a wonderful week...

Hayley

Making True Changes

It has been a few months of roller coaster riding in life, though with small changes I have been able to deal with the negatives easier than I would have only 12 months ago. I have been spending plenty of time reading novels, and technical books, plus writing my own novel and spending more time out in my garden.

My husband and I have a half acre of land with a great house on it, though we have let the gardens go a bit over the winter, and so over the last three weeks I have spent a lot of my weekends out in the sunshine and pulling bucket loads of weeds from the around the place. I have managed to get three garden beds completely ready for mulching and new plants. I have a love a roses and I would love to have more cottage plants in my garden beds,  but our summers here are harsh and we are usually on water restrictions through out summer, so we plant more native Australian plants that flower at different part of the year and once they are established need less water, than an English Cottage Garden.

As well as my gardening I have spent time organizing my study, with new bookshelves and re-arranging the furniture and making it more comfortable and inviting to spend time writing here, and not going to the coffee shop all the time, even though that is great fun and fills me with lots of coffee and amazingly tasty caramel slice.

I am also going back to things that I loved 12 years ago that I left behind when my life became hard and side tracked with dealing with an eating disorder and way to much exercise. I went for my first meditation session yesterday and I can say, it was wonderful to be able to fall back into such a calming way that has helped clear my head and heart.

My days are going to be heading down my life's path, no matter what the universe puts before me, I know I have the strength and determination to meet each hurdle with a positive attitude, and take every experience with gratitude for what I learn and keep moving forward.

Being a Free Spirit

A couple of months ago I walked into one of my favourite local shops, Ambrosium, it is full of wonderful crystals, books, figurines and more. I was taken by a particular book, while looking for another book on Faeries (Fairies). The one I was drawn to is called Bridges, Ancient Wisdom Revealed (Esoteric Philosophy for the Seekers of Today). I brought the book home excited to read it, though left it on my desk for a couple of months longer, until yesterday I just picked it up, put it in my bag and went to my favourite coffee shop to start reading.

It was interesting to remember the day I bought the book, and yesterday when I started reading it. I have been very tired with work, home and not sleeping particularly well, with every night this week dreaming. When I dream, especially this week I have remembered ever dream that I have had and with a lot of detail. I am a strong believer that when dreams are extremely vivid, and when remembered on waking have messages from the universe.

Bridges, has got me thinking and already questioning so much about life. I hear regularly people saying, "you only live once!" do we really? could there be some truth to reincarnation? or are we not ready to comprehend the idea of life after death? For me I believe we can have contact through the 'spiritual' world with deceased loved ones, whether with help from a 'medium', meditation, dreams and other ways. I guess what I am trying to say without getting to deep with this is, are we living our lives with curiosity or are we just going day by day through the motions?

Over this past week I have become more and more aware of just how much time I have wasted due to my illness (eating disorder) and my obsessions with sports and wanting to be so good at things and pushing myself to hard physically and mentally in the wrong direction. I have had some amazingly wonderful memories flood my mind this week from when I was a child, playing out doors and really enjoying the simplest of things in my life then. From playing 'mud pies' with my pets and 'invisible friends' (I would have been between 5-8 years old). Riding my BMX bike around the back yard, finding wonder in the butterflies that played in the garden, the goanna that would hide in the garden and my golden retriever barking at it but never brave enough to go any closer. Being 'free spirited' I guess. Then as I got older things in life changed, you have more chores to do around the house, you have homework to do, you have expectations to meet, and the list goes on. As we get older we forget what makes us truly happy, or what makes us smile, and I mean smile from our hearts.

This week I have come to see that I can make the changes that are necessary for me to truly enjoy my life, be curious about life, about the universe, about so much around us. I understand my 'purpose' in this life and every day I am taking steps to fill my life with my purpose and to share that with others around me.

If you could take yourself back to a time in your childhood that you felt like a 'free spirit', truly and genuinely happy, would you like to be able to feel that everyday as an adult? I have decided to find something everyday that brings a smile from my heart, and something that makes me curious about life, and my life that I am surrounded by.