Woman. Blanket.

Woman. Blanket.

I totally feel like cuddling up in some warmth right now. I dream of knitting ponchos and socks for the whole family. Maybe I will....

Love!

fragments.

I have this really strong impulse to take selfportraits right now. Portraits of parts of me. Fragments. I have been feeling a bit embarassed about it, as if I ought to be ashamed to want to picture myself. As if these fragments are too banal, too poorly executed. That I am such an amateur and why would anybody want to look at it.

And then I had this conversation with my sister. And she said that she understood the lack of connection I sometimes feel nowadays since I always get interrupted and have to get up and take care of something. She said she thought my existence must feel so fragmented.

And of course that is it.
My need to take pictures of parts of me are of course a way to put my feeling of fragmentisation out into the world. I just had to laugh out loud at how well she nailed it down :).

And allthough the word has negative connotations, taking the pictures make me feel happy and a bit more hole. So I will continue.

This last pictures is of marks baby L has given me. She bites!

I will be going away with the kids for a week to visit my father and his wife and I don't know if I will be able to post in during that week. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to do some textile art that B is fabulous at. If I don't get to talk to you, then take care and have a great week!

All my love to you!

finally.

It took abslutely forever, but now it's done.

Nothing special. Just a little "thingy". I meant to make it available as a PDF, but since I don't know how to do that yet, I decided to post it in the form of a number of images here. I think it's a cartoon.

I read a tiny e-book about finishing projects, riding the wild donkey, just get things done, by Leonie Dawson, and found it highly inspirational. Download it here if you want to. It's free. She completes projects like this one in a couple of hours. It took me a couple of weeks (mister P just a little bit irritated at watercolours, pencils and papers floating about in the apartment for over a month...).

The colours didn't come out great, but here you go!

All my love!

A realization.

I just realized something.

I know what it is that I want to do, right? In terms of actions. Easy. I want to draw, sing, act, make music, write, somehow work with interviewing people and analyzing interviews. Clear.

I know fairly well how. I have my own business, because I don't want to be part of a strict hierarchy, and I don't like when other people tell me what to do, how to do it and then stand behind my shoulder watching me do it (I have only once had this kind of boss, so it's a little unfair to bosses...). I also want to decide for myself when and for how long to work. I would like to have at least a part of my business online so I don't get stuck geographically.  But I don't want to work in solitude, I want to be part of a team of some sorts. Actually this may also have come true allready. I am now part of a network called Subtopia - it's for creative entrepreneurs of all kinds - lots of circus artists, writers, film makers, actors etcetera. I was just accepted into their hub, and will have free office space for a year, access to some coaching and workshops and of course I will be part of a (hopefully) fabulous network. Hooray!

And still I have this feeling that I am so unstable in all of this. I find it hard to focus. I don't finish things. I become easily distracted. But why? And it dawned on me that my goal is so unclear. I don't know where it is I want to get to. Me and P are discussing what we want to do with our life, where we want to live (have to move since I don't have an income), what we want to do for a living, what kind of everyday life we want for our children etcetera. And I am surprised at how difficult it is for me to answer those questions. It is like I have a number of ready answers, but when I look inside my heart, I am not sure I feel those answers anymore. You know? I don't feel the weight of their truth anchoring me inside.
I am not saying they are no longer my truths, I just don't feel it clearly.

And I don't know why I want to do all those things. Why do I want to act? Or sing? Or draw and write? What do I want to achieve? What place do I and my business have in the rest of the universe? What do I want with my business? I have fun and feel aligned with the universe when I do all those things, but is that the Reason for my business and me?

My vision is so much unclearer than I thought it was.

Partly because I am so tired of course. There may be a reason for not starting your business two weeks before having a baby.... At this point I just want to sleep. I just want to f*ing sleep for more than three hours in a row. The other day I almost fell of my own feet falling asleep standing up in the kitchen. And if this is the problem, then no worries. This phase of motherhood is soon over. Probably within six months. And that's not so long in the long run. Problem is I can't wait that long. I have to start make money now. Not at all stressful :). So, if you see links to Amazon for example - it is me deciding to pick up this thing with linking to products and getting a small financial thank you if there is a sale. I have been a bit reluctant about it, since I don't like ads and such. The Goddess Circle I have a link to here is of course an ad - and I put it there because it is something I love being part of, and would like to see more people join so I can connect to more wonderful beings there. But, I might still do it - become an affiliate to Amazone that is. We'll see.

For now: I must get back to tending my sick kids - one of whom is getting mighty unpatient with me...

Love!

focus. follow through.

I was out running.
I do that to rinse myself free from negative and aggressive energy. To clear my mind. And to challenge myself. As soon as I get a tiny bit tired the voice inside tells me to stop, that I can't make it, that it doesn't matter in the long run if I don't push myself so hard this time etcetera. And I practice continuing anyway. Pushing myself a bit further, to see what I can really do. Not what that voice tells me I can do. I get out and run to show myself again and again that I have more strength than I give myself credit for. That I don't have a "give up gene". And I practice allowing other voices inside to be stronger, to grow and take up their space in me. Like the voice telling me: Woaw! My body is great! Look at what it can do! Or the one saying: I feel fabulous today! I just love the way running makes my body feel. I must look absolutely gorgeous!
For example.

Anyhooooooow.... I was getting really tired, but hadn't reached my normal goal of running for thirty minutes, and I kept repeating to myself: just focus now and finish it, follow through. Focus. Follow through. Focus. Follow through. Until I finally hit the timegoal, and some insight as well.

This is something that applies so much to everything I am doing at the moment. Focus. Follow through.

I have probably twenty ideas that I try to make happen and all that happens is that I dance around without getting anywhere. And it wears me out. And so I know I have to listen to myself. I cannot do it all at once. I have to pick one thing, focus, follow through. Then to the next. You have no idea how big a challenge that is for me. I was furious with everyone who tried to suggest I do this, because I felt it was a restraint on me and my free creativity. Except that a creativity that never gets anything done or produces anything is not really free at all, is it. All along I have been fooling myself I've been taking care of my freedom and diversity, when all along it was just another way of making sure I don't make it.

The mind is a funny thing.

So. I have to quit Robin's Playground. I love the idea of it still. But it is a stress for me right now and I get irritated with the project as I feel it gets in the way of things I really need to get done. Because if I am going to run a business I had better produce some products, no?

So my main focus right now is actually going to have to be something that I believe has a fair chance of actually selling. Which is an ebook (or physical for those who prefere it). About what? Well, I sat down to try and see what I know enough about to be able to write something without having to do a million of hours of research. And since I am a psychologist I figured I probably know a thing or to about how to change behaviour, thought patterns, emotional scripts etcetera that have remained unresponsive to change efforts before. In a sense that is all psychologists do - help people make the changes they want or need (or both) to do. External or internal changes. Changes of behaviour. Changes of attitude. And so I am writing a tiny workbook to be a companion with some ideas and excercises and some theory. Wrapped, I hope, in a playful colourexplosion. This is a beginning of what the front page will look like:

The text sort of disappears so I will work on that. And I think the blue is a bit too dark. But I'm not sure.
My aim is to have this finished in september, when I will nolonger recieve money for staying at home with my kid (since she is going to start going to daycare). The draft is all done in swedish. Probably 60% has been translated into english. I have done sketches for a number of pages. And the front page, as I said, is almost finished.

Phew!

Focus. Follow through.

Love!

Greatest vernissage ever coming up this october.

So, if you happen to find yourself in Stockholm in the beginning of october, you should absolutely come to Bageri Systrarna Andersson. It is a bakery/café at the crossing of Karlbergsvägen and Birkagatan. And it is where I will have my first exhibition ever! For three weeks my super illustrations will embellish the walls there and hopefully bring joy and thought to the (mostly old) people having their coffée and daily chat there :).

I am a bit proud of myself for asking if I could hang my things there. Not that they have very high standards (they don't judge the material, just check that it isn't extremely offensive). But that I took the time to prepare the few sketches I have and go show them. Instead of what I have too often done before:

Think to myself that I could do at least as well as the artist whose paintings are currently there, go home and dream about having a supergreat magic vernissage, feeling ashamed of myself and not do anything about it. This time I thought: I could do as well as that in my way, I went home and started dreaming of a supergreat magic vernissage, decided to invest in giving myself a challenge (finish enough drawings until october) and some fun and booked the caféwalls for three weeks in october.

And that is a big deal. Me not feeling ashamed of myself and my art. Me supporting my own grand dreams - even if it is in a small way.

It is still a start! Horray!

What could you do to support your dreams today?

Not quiet finished, but almost ;).

Love!

sun.

I haven't had much time.

Like usual.

But I played around a bit, and a scetch I made looks allright I guess :).

So here is my sun:

Now that I have my scanner I really have to start using it. End of these crappy photos (except this one turned out ok). Old habits dy hard...

Love!

selfportraits.

I was feeling really low.

Like a saying in hungarian: under the frogs ass. Because how much lower could you possibly get?

Anyways I had that annoying critic babbling away in my mind: nothing you do is valuable, you are a fake and a fraud, nobody cares about you or what you do on and on.

So what?!

So what if nobody cares? I care.

So what if what I do has no value for anybody else? It is important to me.

And if I'm a fake and a fraud, than ok, that's what I am then. I'll be a good one :).


And I felt an urge to just capture myself as me, the one I am in this (and this and this and this...) instant. No more no less. Confused, happy, fragmented, sad, philosophing, empty, full of love.

We are all so much.

There is no such thing as a fixed I. We are all made up of millions of fragments, shimmering and dancing, like the sun's reflections on moving water.

Everything changes. All the time. And that is frightening and wonderful at the same time.

And so that was me yesterday.

Who are you right now? How would you picture yourself? How would you like to see yourself?

Love!

The sentence I picked and how I continued it.

Today I went to the library. We had an appointment at the doctors, but had to wait for over an hour (hooray for my doctor who gives you a time estimate when you get in line!). So I took baby L across the street to have a cup of coffee at the library café and she fell asleep on the way.

In the café there was a sale of books that had been sorted out from the library and I found a book by one of my favorite authors. Naturally I bought it. I closed my eyes, flipped the pages and put my finger down on a sentence (the book is in swedish, and I wrote it in swedish, here is my attempt to translate it):

But Jenny came and sang...


She sang so the evening sky paled. The blackbird who always filled our early evenings with his homey chirrups and twirrels sat down by the rail of the verandah to listen. His black suit floated out into the dark shadows around him, but the lights from inside made his eye twinkle. His shiny eye and my dry eyes met and fell into eachother until I no longer knew who was the observer and who was the observed. The I in the tale. All that happened that evening - was it my or the blackbird's story?

The others were watching Jenny of course. Actually she was rather inconsiderable. The hair of no particular colour and her skin was sensitive and therefore filled with blushes and dry spots. The eyes were filled with some sort of light, I guess, but they weren't more beautiful than average. Besides, her lips were thin and pale. But when those lips parted, and she sang - then everybody forgot how inconsiderable she was. Like tiny lit candles they all sat turned towards her, shining. Their faces full of glow and wonder. Some were smiling. Some closed their eyes. Some cried. Only my heart closed. Filled with blackbird feathers.

Maybe it was my hatred that made her fall on the stairs. Maybe my slippery kindness found it's way under her petite shoes and made her lose foothold. I don't know. Strangely enough neither of the shoes fell of. She lay there with her skirts spred out like a fan, a growing shadow around her hair. The beautiful tiny slippers still both on their foot.


Also, I played around with my image from week two a bit. Not great, but here it is :).

Robin's Playground. Week three.

I almost didn't make it this week. I kind of didn't. I only have a sketch, almost, to show. I will have to post the finished picture later.

I imagined the lamps with dreams and thoughts pooring out of them and onto the tired woman at the bottom. Will post it when I'm finished... My children were both sick and I have had almost no sleep so I decided to go easy on myself and not stress the project. It's called Playground for a reason :).

Ok. The second week we were inspired by an image or a small piece of an image. This week, we shall do something similar, but with words. Pick a book - from your bookshelf or a friends, or at a library or wherever - randomly open it and write down the first sentence your eyes fall upon. When you have a small chunk of time, like maybe 15 minutes (or more of course), look at it again and write what ever poors into your mind. Continue the sentence like a story, or a poem, or a manifesto :). If you feel called to draw something as a continuation to the sentence - do so! That would be wonderful as well.

I am sorry if this post is a bit on the short side. I really, reeaaalllly need to go to sleep :).

I leave you with the best hairdo ever (just woke up):

Love!

Robin's Playground. Week two.

This week has passed so fast I can hardly believe it is time for me to hand out (and do). I wanted to get the video working for this week, but I am just going to have to accept that I don't have the time for anything else than the absolutely necessary right now. And that does not entail swearing over machines I don't know how to work :). Hopefully I'll figure it out further ahead along the way.

Anyways.... I hope you had fun creating your hands. I saw a lovely example of what one of you have been doing on my facebook page, and it filled my heart with joy. I got plenty of more ideas of what I want to do with the theme, but now it is surely time that I present the next theme:

Elaborate! Maybe that is a good name for it. I'm not sure. What you do is this: cut out a picture or a small piece of a picture. Glue onto a piece of paper (or onto something else if you would rather make the image on something other than paper). Elaborate = use the picture as a part of your own picture. Be inspired by it. What could it be? What happens around it? I don't really know of a way to do this with words, but if you do - feel free to do it =).

I am now going to post a crappy example of what I am talking about. I think these "instruction examples" are all going to be like that. Made in the last minute. Taking no more than a minute. Good for my impro skills! Here it is:

Ok I got carried away. Maybe a little bit more than a minute. More like ten. Just like last week I will post what I do as soon as it is finished. Feel free to post on the facebookpage or on flickr! Thank you so much for being here.

Love!

My hand.

Okey, I've made a version of the assignment/theme now....

I wanted it to look like my hands making the om-sign. Because I need tranquility, and to remind myself that in the larger span of eternity, five minutes of whining really isn't that much to be bothered about :). Started a little bit to far towards the middle, and so one hand is cut off a bit abruptly, but there you are. I like it anyways ;).

Week one of Robin's Playground.

Hoooooraay! Today we start! I am both excited and a little disapointed. Excited, because it is going to be great, and disapointed because I have suffered a humongous video failure this morning. I had recorded a video so I could talk to you, but I can not get the audio and the visual to sync. And there is no way that I can figure out now to only upload the audio. So we shall have to do with my writing instead.

And so here goes. Welcome all you lovely souls to this project!!! Once a week I will post a prompt, or excersise or theme that I will and you are welcome to create during the week. I will post what I have done as soon as I'm finished, and you are all welcome to post photos or texts in the comment section. If you prefere you can post a link to your flickraccount our some other place where we can go see what you do.

My aim for this is to create a playarea - hence Playground name - where we can create things for the mere fun of it. I was inspired by Julia Cameron's Artist dates (if you haven't read Artist's way, and you are an artist, then by all means - read it!). I figured out, why not do something like that, but in a group where we can inspire and learn from eachother?! So here it is: Robin's Playground. I would like for this to be a warm, welcoming and positive area, where there is no right and wrong in creating, no good or bad, no goals to be met or failed at. Just the play and the fun that creating can be. Just the exploration.

You can follow by popping in here whenever you like, or sign up for the newsletter and get the prompts in your mailbox. Whatever is best for you!

And now let's get to it:

This weeks theme is: My Hand.
Why on earth this? Simply because one of the great masters of painting (I think it was Leonardo da Vinci, can not be sure though...) started up every day be drawing his own hand. So I figured it could be a good first excersise. Now, you can do exactly that - draw your hand as it looks. Or you can draw it symbolically - what is your hand to you? Or you can write down what ever pops up in your mind when you think of your hand and then make a poem or a word collage. If you are very pressed for time: here are some really quick tips:

Draw the outline of your hand on a piece of paper:

If you have time you can fill it in with colours, collage it...
Or do it many times:

Dip your hand in paint (feels good!):

Lovely feeling indeed, so do it many times:

I was aiming for tree, but I don't know.... Hehe.
Ok. Let's get to it! Hooray again! Let me know how you are doing.

Oh, I just realized it is not possible to leave a photo in the comments here :(. How about keeping that exchange in the Facebook area? I have a page there too:
http://www.facebook.com/RobinHasADream?ref=tn_tnmn

Or if you have any better suggestions that I, as the very analogue person I am, don't know of , just let me know ;).

Love!

one layer a day.

I haven't quite been able to make one layer a day, and post it here on that day. But I have been continuing - and here are some pictures of the progress:

I hope to see you here tomorrow for the beginning of "Robin's Playground"!

Love!

guestblogging. oh, and an illustration.

Today I am over at www.karinas-inner-space.blogspot.com, writing my first guestpost ever! She is one of my fellow sisters at the goddess circle,. This is a wonderful community where you can meet creative and/or entrepreneurial women from all over the world. Or just simply kind, genereous souls. I love being part of the circle and totally recommend joining. Follow the link on the right (a circle of sisters waiting for you) to check it out. If you find it is something for you and you decide to join via my link, Leonie, the creator of the circle, may send me a generous thank you.

Anyway, I also met Karina, who is also swedish, although she lives in France, for a long cup of coffee the other week, and she is a lovely person and I am so happy she wanted me to write something for her blog.

And now to something completely different....

The first illustration is finished! I think.