How are you?
I mean - really - how are you?
I have found the last few weeks to be utterly grim for reasons that I won’t bore you with today*.
I have been reading some favourite inspirational quotations recently and I thought that, for today’s post, I would share them with you:
“In spite of everything, I shall rise again; I will take up my pencil which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.” - Vincent Van Gogh
“But actually, to practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. Dance on your way out of here. Sing on your way out of here. Write a love poem.” — Kurt Vonnegut
"Writing is facing your deepest fears and all your failures, including how hard it is to write... When it totally sucks, pause, look out the window (there should always be a window) and say, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing." ~ Rebecca Solnit
“If you don’t know what to do, there’s actually a chance of doing something new.” - Phillip Glass
“Don’t judge it. Just write it. Don’t judge it. It’s not for you to judge.” - Phillip Roth
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” – Dolly Parton
What inspires or comforts you? Let me know.
Take care,
Meredith
*Mainly because they are genuinely boring. And I hate that. Every life has its ups or downs. If I have to go down sometimes at least let it be for reasons I can make a good lurid story out of.
ah yes, we can't have the highs without the lows huh?.. it makes sense but with the world focused on 'putting our happy faces on' (Strictly Ballroom quote), we have few role models leading the way on the off days/ weeks/ years. i find nature in all her glory never fails to lift me up, only living next to and rehabilitating our part of the Merri creek, I see nature struggling to make sence of the tiramasu of landfill created by 'colonial progress'. so when the bigger picture reality of who we are and how we came to be hits hard, i seek magical moments of human kindness in a strangers' smile (often with a hint of surprise as I wear rainbow eyeshadow that never fails to impress the good ones)- the light is always more powerful than the darkness.
Other creatives inspire me. Thinking of my father’s mother, how she struggled alone with 4 children after her husband died, that keeps me going. And my best friend, he believes in me.