near & far sighted focus. (Liz along the way)

It's been 5 months since I updated this blog. It is officially a year behind in the things i want to add to it.
I haven't taken as many dramatic trips places. Most of my travels have been short relatively local ones. I haven't really left the northeast. However those little adventures certainly add up.
I've been really good about knowing what I'm doing and what I'm up to in the short run, but it's taken a year to be ready to look at the full picture of what was occurring in my life.
I am good record keeper though. I have CD playlists from each month that tell me where my head was at, and I've been posting my adventures on facebook. In some ways this is even more helpful because I have friends who are better with cameras than I am.
I think the gestalt of what was going on was a little hard for me to comprehend, so it's fitting that the mandala I'm drawing was started a long time ago. I don't actually remember when, but I took it out again and added to it when I went to Jamaica plain to hear two of my friends play in the basement of a bookstore, I think sometime in April, and I'm finishing it today.

My life has been pretty in-the-moment busy. My focus has been very much near sighted. At the same time around February I started writing poetry, a lot of which was very much an examination of my own personal history and goes back pretty far
Somehow in the middle of having a very near sighted focus on what was occurring, and
a very far sighted retrospective focus on what had happened in my life I wasn't really able to focus on the past year and what it meant.

There was lots of procrastinating, and let me tell you there is always something to distract yourself with. Today however I am diving into this. I don't know how much I will get caught up, but I'd like to get up to the next Liz along the way post before I stop. We shall see. I think it is time to zoom in on this level of focus, and see what i can draw from writing this.

Last week I was in a discussion with people who were reluctant to claim themselves as artists because of fears as to how others would judge the quality of their work, or how they themselves judge the quality of their work.
I said "I think it is okay for people to call themselves artists as long as they are engaging in the practice of making art."
This is me putting my money(time) where my mouth is, and finishing a mandala drawing for myself, and putting in the writing practice to be able to speak about my life.

The drawing for this one is an eye, because before I can change the world, I need to have a vision that focuses on the right places at the right times.