One of the constant battles for me as a visual designer has been the attempt to keep up with all of the coding necessary for creating working websites. If you factor in all of the reading, training, and struggling time it would quickly become apparent that I have been essentially paying clients for the privilege of getting them online. That is, until recently.
Not long ago, I discovered Artisteer. It is a drag and drop web design tool that serves me really well.
I don’t know exactly what the block was, but I spent 2 years studying WordPress theme development, and I still couldn’t get it. I’m an intelligent person. I certainly purchased and read enough books to at least get a BA in WordPress, however I would have flunked out. No go. Then I found Artisteer. Voila!
In less than 1/2 an hour, I had designed a WordPress theme with custom graphics I had created for a client. It would easily have taken me two weeks on my own, and I am not sure that it would have functioned. Suddenly, I AM FREE to do what I am truly good at, without the struggle!
Somehow, through the ethers I guess, word got out that I could custom design for WordPress, and I got a new bunch of clients.
Even more exciting, I discovered that I could change into a template for here on Blogger, or a regular html site template with all the good css built right in. (How many hours did I pull at my hair in not so silent struggles learning that?!) Now I use Dreamweaver for the meta tagging and little tweaks that Artisteer may not include, but I develop the Look and Feel in Artisteer.
I have up til now avoided the affiliate thing, but I am sold on Artisteer, and they have a great affiliate program, so I signed up. If you are an artist/designer first, and a techno-geek last, check it out. I think you will be pleased.
Nowadays, I am doing what I love: my art, illustration and visual design!
So many times I have let the shoulds and have-tos take over my life, so that there has been no time left for the it-will-make-my-heart-soar-with-joys. Luckily, there is a huge part of me that recognizes that this lifelong habit is out of balance, so I consciously seek and become aware of individuals and circumstances that will remind me to once again follow my hearts bliss, such as Melissa Dinwiddie and her Thriving Artists project.
My last entry on here was last April. It was around that time I started working at our local raw food restaurant – The Green Boheme, which I dearly love. I wasn’t just working there for many hours each week, I continued my graphic design and art businesses as well. I never knew candles had that many ends! Even though it was the beginning of another joyous joyourney, my time became even more premium and I pretty much stopped all of my personal blogging (except, of course, The Daily Napkin, although even that slowed down for a couple weeks).
Today, I got an email from an inspirational acquaintance of mine, Barbara Lopez. I followed links in her newsletter, and ended up discovering her Daily Joy blog, as in DAILY for well over a year. She says in her introduction:
“In January 2010 I set a resolution that I’d find joy in every single day. In the small, and not so small things. But how do I know I’m doing that? By blogging it. It was such a fun and worthy project that I’ve decided to do it in 2011. Hooray for joy!”
Okay, I’m inspired. I rededicate myself to acknowledging my Joy in Life. I do some creative (preferably art) project every day, I allow Spirit’s inspiration to write the Daily Napkin just about everyday my husband goes to work, and I will share my joy here. YES! Life is good. Life is JOY FULL.
(NOTE: It is now December 24, and I have not kept up this intended project. Aw, well! I HAVE been experiencing great joy!)
I was just clicking around the internet from my facebook page: Peace-Love-Happiness, to find like-minded facebook pages when I came upon the Joyful Heart Foundation’s page, which led me to their website. Wow! It seems to me that out of our darkest hour we can emerge with joyous hearts. It is the naming and the claiming and standing up in the midst of our shadow experiences that we find the bright light somehow. Therein lies the strength. And in that emergence, great joy can be discovered.
I wanted to post this because I believe this is great work that these people are doing. My heart aches for all of the children that have been and those that continue to be abused. Here is an effort to heal:
At Joyful Heart, we envision a community that is strong enough not to turn away from the epidemics of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. We envision a community that endeavors to shed a light of healing, hope and courageous awareness into the darkness that surrounds these issues. We envision a community that says to a survivor, ‘We hear you. We believe you. We feel for you. You are not alone. And your healing is our priority.’
May each and every being on this planet find the joy from the healing of their wounds.
I discovered something miraculous a while back when I was not having such a wonderful day. It’s a simple tool that has paid off in many joyous moments.
For many years I battled an invisible “dark cloud.” It would descend on me whenever I fled into that dark place called victim. I did not realize at the time, of course, that that was what was going on. I just felt weighted by this sense of doom and I did not know how to escape it.
I worked on myself with counselors and the ongoing help of many twelve step fellowships for most all of my life. Somewhere over 30 years ago, the balance tipped. I began having more “good days” than “dark days” and that trend has continued and expanded since then. I just don’t even have a “dark hour” hardly ever any more.
The discovery of the gratitude tool has freed me of even that. At even the slightest hint of doom and gloom thoughts or the heaviness that accompanies their energy, I remember gratitude. I start listing what I am grateful for. As I focus on the task of listing my gratitudes I shift back to the “half full” glass.
Granted, it’s pretty simplistic. Still, it works. Everytime, it works. I shift into grateful joy.
Along with the daily practice of creating something, I have expanded my means of expression. Besides my recent dedication to daily painting or drawing, I keep up a virtually daily practice called thedailynapkin.com which begins as a meditation which leads to a poem or something like that on a brown, unbleached napkin slipped into my husbands lunch bag every day he goes to work. It is an act of love, and a ritual we have both come to appreciate since I began the practice the first day he went to work after we got married over 6 years ago. He’s been typing them up and emailing them to the blog for the last year and a half.
Recently, my husband was trying to find a song to sing for a local church which he plays guitar and sings at once a month. It had to be about something specific: receiving. One of the napkins turned out to be about receiving, and I heard it as a song as I wrote it, but I didn’t mention that to him. Several people that he sends the napkin to asked him if it was a song, and he had perceived it as one as well, so he allwed it to cook, and ended up combining it with anothers day napkin into a really nice song. It was well-received when he played it. What a wonderful thing to collaborate like that!
I am really liking the results of allowing creative expression full rein. And my graphic design keeps improving as a result of the increased creative productivity too. Win win and all of that!
