Hiberation Responses, i.e.; Job Hunting in A Chilly Economy

Let this be a winter of creative resourcefulness. The down-turned economy is a good opportunity to move away from the corporate paradigm, into work that holds meaning and emphasizes craft. Ways of using the brain, the eyes and the hands that feels better, more intelligent_ natural.
Like a monk practicing sitting meditation, the most radical ways to continue to wear away at the ownership by the elites moving one's inner life toward conscious freedom, is to quietly do what brings each one true "Happyness!"

I am an artist, and I have always approached the world of work laterally; cultivating work skills by taking on new areas of employment that also fuel my art interests. After three decades, I have a skills-rich résumé that reveals a plethora of discipline, thus providing me multi-directional opportunity in the market-place. I can use this hand-built foundation fluidly, depending on what is going on in the marketplace. Course, I have a solid center to my varied expertise: that of a visual artist. Meaning, I keep focused on how any job opportunity may feed my artistic skills, as I venture out into the big world of employment-search "buffets." All employment is much more choice-centered!

Health-wise, to there more successfully this winter, I am yearning for more soaking time! Today, I am posting about making one's own bath salts and enjoying what this blogger has to say, about making various possible "job-hunting relief" recipes.

Here's to more healthfully steaming out, all those job hunting aches and pains, as we move forward into a new year, a new administration in Washington and renewed changes-for-the better for-all, in this country... ah-h-h-h-h.

Unctuously Good Taste Or Good Marketing? Does it Really Matter? You decide!

Can happiness be bought? To find out, author Benjamin Wallace sampled the world's most expensive products, including a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, 8 ounces of Kobe beef and the fabled (notorious) Kopi Luwak coffee. His critique may surprise you.

Benjamin Wallace is a journalist and author of The Billionaire's Vinegar, the true story of the world's most expensive bottle of (possibly phony?) wine. He's been a contributor to GQ. About Benjamin Wallace

The Ginger Path Back

I seem to be making steps back from the abyss of homelessness; a hard lesson in beginning to own other neglected facets of my own personal power. I am not quite 100% back on my feet, yet simultaneously amazing acts of kindness and generosity keep showing up each time I renew my commitment to this developing stage of conscious attention to my own life. This has included a stay in the rural-side to doggy-sit my commission portrait subject, "Rufus." Yes, I have painted and made more progress on his portrait! I will upload photos of this stage in the painting when I can get a camera to do so. Meanwhile you can visit my main art blog here.

I will add that my life is ready to face my needs for engaged, meaningful, healthy friendships, and indeed online, this past year has seen some of that develop. I have traveled a long way on my own for way long enough now. Some of this history reflects flat-out wrong choices I made in earnestness and naïveté. I can say that I am more than ready to change this now. Stay tuned. Make contact. Do let me hear from you, won't you?

A New Design Assignment & The New Aesthetics

EPEA Vision

The Cradle to Cradle Principles:

1) Waste equals food
2) Use current solar income
3) Celebrate diversity

Cradle to Cradle Vision

Imagine a world where human industry operates exactly like a blossoming cherry tree: Every factory, every building and every product is as giving as a cherry tree with its flowers.

Imagine a world where our buildings are like trees: They cover their energy needs by harvesting solar power, produce food and oxygen, create habitat for other species and change with the seasons.

Imagine a world without pollution and waste: Products are made from materials that are beneficial for humans and their surroundings.

Imagine a world where humans can be glad that their actions benefit those around them and the constraints to reduce, minimize, and decrease according to the current "Cradle to Grave" paradigm are a distant memory.

This is the world that Cradle to Cradle offers. And it is a matter of design that starts with the intention to apply conventions found in Nature:

* Waste equals food
* Use current solar income, and
* Celebrate diversity

Forget reactionary doubts like: That's too expensive. That's idealistic. That would never happen. Because it is happening as these examples show:

* Product cases

* Service cases

***Between my love for healthy, organically grown food and all things aesthetically conscientiously made_ ever since I listened to the Monticello Dialogues on New Dimensions Radio, I have been completely won over by what Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart are up to!

I HAD to...

Borrowing from my newest food blog find here, I had to post this image for those of us pure of dietary intention, and those of us who struggle from time-to-time say, with money!

How would you reproduce THIS luscious recipe in the raw? I know it can be done!
This sort of a treat occasionally, is near perfect!

Andy Goldworthy: "Rivers and Tides"

Over a long period of time I have occasionally sat with a Zen sangha in the town that has been my home for twenty-eight years. Over nearly the same number of years sitting, the group has become progressively more connected to one another via the Internet_ sighing, I call this contradiction, spirit in the technological age.
What I am grateful for today, is the arrival of a newsletter item announcing the sangha's showing of a documentary film on the ephemeral nature-centered artwork as created by the artist, Andy Goldworthy.
I add here the clips of this documentary as found on 'YouTube,' in order to share and talk about what many artists do_ particularly the artist writing this blog. In each one's unique way, to utilize all media around an artist to create a person's whole life, is tantamount to one's engagement with reality however that may be possible. One small example, is how I use the Internet to share my current life-transition in a 'web of blogs' of my own organic design as a bridge for now, to what my life as spirit, female, artist, single-mother, etc., is to become after child-rearing!
For my part, there have been years of preparation, thinking and seeing in holistic models, ways of being, experiencing and expressing what constitutes a healthy life for me as individual. Now, I embark on how I might effectively express as artist out in the world in order to hold up examples as it were, of what a healthy lifestyle might 'look' like. My preparations have been laterally-centered, anticipating what material, social, and financial navigation of the forces of change and resistance we all are currently living in. My web-building/networking skills to other people, are still taking on connection and clarity after many years living in specifically-focused social isolation!
Watch the clips on the artwork created by this artist, and listen to the timbre of his voice as he speaks in the present moment, what living/creating now is for him.
My impressions of his working process are that they are rich with what reality can be when one chooses to wake up, see and understand the true nature of self_ then, consciously live one's own life moment to moment!