I haven’t posted here for months. Writing has been temporarily replaced by my venture into …
abstract art . acrylic pours . fluid art .
I invite you to my new accounts:
Instagram: @lindapaupstart
Facebook: Linda Paupst ART
QUOTATIONS that Motivate & Inspire Me
First, before I delve into the subject of quotations, let me say that I am so grateful. I realized this afternoon that I have 905 followers. That is a huge increase from the last time I wrote. I am bamboozled, pleased, and so thankful. To show my appreciation, I will endeavour to write more consistently. Thank you and please drop a line, share your thoughts.
Today would have been my mother’s 99th birthday. She was my biggest fan and my inspiration. I miss you Mom.
Evelyn King Robertson, August 27, 1918 – February 13, 2007.
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QUOTATIONS
That Motivate & Inspire Me
I am a compulsive quote recorder. Words spoken in a documentary, movie, book or anywhere, suddenly stop me in my tracks & a little light flickers in my consciousness & I have to pause and jot them down. Some inspire. Some justify a belief system I have developed over the decades of my life. Some simply make me feel good. Whatever the feeling they evoke, I now record them in my Mac ‘Notes’, but in the previous millennium, I filled notebooks with other peoples’ ruminations.
“Choose to be happy. ” That bit of advice was groundbreaking for me in the 1970’s. The thought that happiness is a choice was mind blowing to me! This altered my way of dealing with the bad bits. Everyone’s life is filled with every possible emotion – with sadness, tragedy, success, failure, but it is how we choose to live our lives, despite any and all of those, that defines us.
I think most everyone wrestles with thoughts on religion, spirituality, the meaning of life. I know I have gone through massive and meaningful changes in my belief systems over the years, resulting in an about turn from the religious teachings of my youth. I have not thrown out the proverbial baby with the bath water, in that I still believe in love, the golden rule and so on, however, my views on many issues, including afterlife, have altered dramatically. (Many of my posts touch on this subject, but specifically see, “An Oak Tree and I”)
Following are some quotes I have recorded. They make me think, make me laugh, inspire, encourage, illuminate:
“Who sets my course,
Determines my values, my right, my wrong,
Gives me strength, or succumbs to weakness,
Judges me,
… the Person in the Mirror”
– unknown
“If we are all alone, we are all together in that too. Realizing that helps me sometimes.”
– Kathy Bates’ character in the movie, ‘P.S. I Love You’
“Don’t Believe everything you think.”
– Jan Arden
“Above all, do not loose your desire to walk. I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
– Kierkegaard
“I have decided on a destination; the path is but a detail. I have begun my walk.”
– Richard Paul Evans, ‘The Walk’ – Alan Christofferson’s Diary
“She’s not really gone. She’s still a part of you. What part of you is your choice. She can be a spring of gratitude and joy, or she can be a fountain of bitterness and pain. It is entirely up to you.”
– Richard Paul Evans, ‘TheWalk’
“Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There’s a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.”
– Leonard Cohen
“I’m FINE:
Fucked-up,
Insecure,
Neurotic,
Egotistical”
– Louise Penny, ‘Dead Cold’
Buddhist Quotes
“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
ZEN-BUDDHISM – a wee primer ….
. ‘Buddha’ is a title, ‘one who is awake’ — in the sense of having ‘woken up to reality’.
. Buddha has great compassion which is completely impartial, embracing all living beings without discrimination.
. Buddha developed a practice and way of life that he called “The Middle Way,” a path of moderation – away from the extremes in every aspect of life. By “middle”, Buddha essentially meant that we need to embrace both spiritualism as well as materialism, just like the front and back sides of a sheet of paper. . Zen embraces the two opposites and integrates the two to bring about a condition which can help an individual reach the highest dimension, mushotoku.
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REHABILITATION & RECOVERY for My EATING, My FOOD, My HABITS .
“WEIGHT LOSS IS NOT LINEAR!”
Hearing this gave me a whopping-big ‘light bulb moment’.💡💡💡
Breakfast
Lunch . Water, Pork Tenderloin
I am committed to bringing myself back to some semblance of health. This Monday, week #2 of my new life focus, I went for my weigh-in, confident I would be bamboozled with triumph. After all, in week #1, I lost 4 pounds. Since then I have been positive, tracking religiously, keeping my ‘eating and recipe diary’, drinking and outputting water every two hours, and eating only 900-1200 cal per day. All that without feeling hungry or craving.
And, I lost only one miserable pound.
I was emotionally crushed, even tho’ intellectually, I knew I shouldn’t be. But I could not ‘buck up’. Instead, I ate a container of Helluva Dip, dill flavour (yum) with sticks of celery, crawled into bed with my iPad and played Solitaire for nearly two hours.
I realized this is not a ‘diet’ I am on. Rather, it is – what do they say now, “a lifestyle change’. But that lofty term does not accurately portray the concept of weight loss and what the challenge really is.
I mentioned to my husband, Greg, my pitiful but entirely natural bout of depression the previous day.
Greg replied that, since his recent knee replacement, “despite working my butt off, some days I feel like crap – my recovery, like your weight loss, is not linear, even tho’ my exercise regime is”.
That is when lightning struck⚡️! Developing my new food prep, food plan and attitude is neither a lifestyle change nor a diet.
No! What it really is, is ‘Rehabilitation & Recovery’ from my 3 decades of over-eating. And to expect my R&R to go smoothly every day or every week is unrealistic.
OK! That I get! As a registered nurse (retired), I can relate to that. I can finally see my next months for what they really are – REHABILITATION – with ups & downs, success and failure, happy and sad, just like all of life.
I will take this new vision with me to my weekly weigh-ins, hopefully diverting a sulk, despair or depression when the scale is not saying what I hoped for or expected .
Weight loss is not linear! Nor is rehabilitation and recovery, from any illness, trauma, surgery. Nor, indeed, is any of our life-journey linear.
So, I tell myself, “This is my rehabilitation! You go girl! Remember: water, protein, vegetables.”
‘To Go’
🤗 I’ve got this! 👍
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PURITY of PERSPECTIVE .
PURITY OF PERSPECTIVE
In ’The Weight of Water’, Anita Shreve wrote, “I CAN HARDLY DESCRIBE TO YOU THE JOY OF THOSE EARLY MORNING WALKS TOGETHER, AND IS IT NOT TRUE THAT IN OUR EXTREME YOUTH WE POSSESS THE CAPACITY TO SEE MORE CLEARLY AND ABSORB MORE INTENSELY THE BEAUTY THAT LIES ALL BEFORE US, AND SO MUCH MORE SO THAN IN OUR LATER YOUTH OR IN OUR ADULTHOOD …”
I so remember the excitement and wonder I felt, as a young child of five or six years, walking the five blocks to public school and seeing, really seeing, blades of grass, an ant or caterpillars (of which there were many), a stone which caught my eye, the shapes of leaves rustling in the trees, a crack in the cement sidewalk, the gravel between the sidewalk and the road. Each day was a new, anticipated experience that made me feel so incredibly alive. Being so much closer to ground than an adult, gave a magnified view, a more immediate perspective to nature. The old-fashioned perennial gardens right smack at my eye level were magic with their bleeding hearts, roses, peonies, and a multitude of other bright and beautiful blooms and fragrances.
I dawdled on my four daily journeys, to and fro’ in the morning and again after lunch, loving the experience of examining my world. In between the walks, having to sit quietly and still in the classroom was an impossibility for me. Filled with thoughts itching to be expressed and bubble forth, my chattiness resulted in reprimands. Then came the inevitable long minutes in the hall, waiting to see the principal and suffer the strap on my little hands. None of that deterred me. My thoughts, ideas and experiences persisted in being expressed.
The one punishment that gave me pause was the notation about my talkative nature in my report cards. A gentle admonishing from my parents resulted. I hated disappointing them.
Authority figures in school were another matter. Their opinions did not impact me as much as did Mom and Dad’s. My quiet rebellion at school continued into my post grad nursing program where I was always in trouble. I did try harder with teachers whom I liked and respected. But even as a young child, I tended not to respect anyone who did not like or respect me.
I don’t know where this ingrained belief system came from. Perhaps it was knowing my parents not only loved me, but trusted and respected me. Adults who did not live up to that mark in my eyes, experienced my talkative, waywardness, my only method of exerting some control over my own life.
I was an only child for the first eight years of my life with no peers to share my wonder of the world around me. Perhaps that influenced my desire to talk in school.
Whatever the reason, I remember with great affection, the magic of my childhood and the magic of my small, happy world. And such memories keep me feeling like me, despite the wrinkles and limitations of age.
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LIFE STAGES . TRUST THE JOURNEY .
TRUST THE JOURNEY
“She wakes up each morning feeling like she has nothing to do. No routine. No purpose.”
Lisa Genova: ‘Love Anthony’
I read these words this morning and thought, that is exactly ME. That is me when I wake without that feeling of excitement about hurrying to a sewing, writing or art project, or without an appointment, or wanting to return to a novel that is drawing me with the power of the tide.
I do enjoy sitting, apparently doing nothing, but my mind has to be engaged in creative thought for me to relax.
I keep a pile of six to eight library books on hand to alleviate the desolate feeling of nothing-to-do. Mind you, there is always housework or organizing a closet or room, but at this stage of my life – been there, done that.
Our journey thro this life is tumultuous with its constant ups and downs, its real or imagined slights. We all barter, in one way or another, to maintain a relatively consistent feeling of well being.
I thrive on passion – for opportunity, creativity, my family.
The alternative to feeling purposeful is, for me, depression. So, in order to ward off that monster, I always have a multitude of projects on the go.
Early in my marriage, it was one project only – needlework. Then I needed a new interest and, for a few decades, it was researching and publishing our genealogy. With that completed, I felt lost, until my creative juices latched onto sketching with pen and painting in watercolour. Florals are my thing.
Gradually, after several years, I began to feel I had said all I could in that media. My search was on for new artistic horizons.
I don’t know if it is because I am now in my early 70’s, but I now seem to flit from one project to another. Whatever it is, I am artistically all over the place – a true jack of all trades, master of none.
But there is nothing as satisfying and addictive as waking to a passionate urge to create.
That is what keeps my juices flowing and keeps me loving my life.
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Creative Juices . quilting . sewing . knitting .
So, I have been sewing a little, and quilting, and knitting (a very little) and most recently have been hooked on practising lettering – modern calligraphy. My creative juices are all over the place at the moment. But I love the excitement of waking with design ideas rolling around in my head. That is what I have been missing for a year or more.
I love waking, making a coffee, and hurrying to create. It is exhilarating.
Sweetie loves her ‘toy sleeping bag’
This is all a huge change from watercolour painting, which I will return to eventually, but fresh creative motivation is what I seem to crave now. I tackled quilting and sewing projects for each of our five children and their families …
above ~ Andrew’s Hudson Bay patterned table runner
above ~ Carrie’s quilted BoHo table runner
above ~ Jo’s quilted table runner
Some of my quilting is a little wonky as I am a novice, but loving it!
Steph’s decorative linen pillow cases
Sew, that is what I have been up to the past months. I am finding that, for me, choosing colour and pattern is the most difficult part of these projects. More about that next time.
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SPRING in WASAGA . Poetry .
SPRING IN WASAGA
Alive.
Sun
warm on my face, glaring off the pages of my book, casting artful shadows on the greening grass.
Birds
visit,
tweet songs from bare old maple tree.
Breeze
fresh and gentle, kisses my neck;
demands slow, deep, restorative breaths;
lifts wisps of my hair in a dance.
Lazy drone of small private plane, skims thro’ azure sky,
not a cloud in sight.
Winter is only a memory.
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The Dirty Secret about CPR in the Hospital (That Doctors Desperately Want You to Know)
A few things have changed in medicine over the last few decades. Okay, a lot has changed, and most of it good. But along with the improvements in patient care there has been an exponential increase…
Source: The Dirty Secret about CPR in the Hospital (That Doctors Desperately Want You to Know)
NOTECARDS from INKNPETALS .
From Inknpetals
Soon Available …
a
new selection of notecards
from original watercolours
by
Linda Paupst
available February, 2015
Poppy, Neon
Raspberry Sorbet (Poppy, Pink)
Poppy, Orange
Magnolia, White
Magnolia, Pink
Magnolia Branch, Fuchsia
Peony
SAILBOATS, Armstrong Beach, Trout Lake, North Bay
Doodley Do – Dr. Seuss’s Garden
“Your Life Is This Moment …”
Doodley Do – Garden Wall
Doodley Do – Pink
Friendship (cyclamen)
Hibiscus – 2
Darleen’s Tulips
. . .
Back of Each Notecard Size – 4.5” x 5” with white envelopes.
Prices
$3.50 each
$3.00 each for 10 or more
To Order, contact:
Linda Paupst at INKNPETALS: lrpaupst@gmail.com
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South Georgian Bay Watercolour Artist Linda Robertson Paupst
Linda’s ink and watercolour paintings have a stylized look which compliments traditional or contemporary settings.
Colourful florals predominate. This is a natural extension of Linda’s roots in North Bay Ontario where she grew up in her family’s greenhouses, florist and garden centre.
Linda’s paintings have been described as:
* ”Beautifully & elegantly drawn.”
* ”Sensitive work. You capture the spirit of the flowers.”
* ”Refreshing, inspiring, moving.”
* ”You capture the strength, beauty & fragility of flowers – here today, gone tomorrow.”
* ”You have such colour, form, movement”
. . .
INKNPETALS – http://www.krop.com/lindapaupst/
Images are not to be copied in any format without express permission of the artist.
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WINTER WATERCOLOUR .
It has been snowing here the past 24 hours – I mean it is a windy, gusting, noisy blizzard – a perfect day to stay indoors.
On our front porch, my birch bark wreath wore the snow like an elegant white fur cape. That inspired me to sketch it and paint in watercolour.
The inspiration and the result:
Since I have not painted for almost two years, this was a feel-good accomplishment.
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inknpetals 