March 2018 – Sarah Collin

Hello! Kel here, with a cool new thing: the Creativity Forum!

We promised this at the end of last year’s Spring Retreat and it’s taken a while to sort out the tech end of things, and then to sort out a time to release it, and then I lost my password and had to reset it all and, well, you get the idea. It just kept falling off the list. But it’s here! And it’s ready!

The basic idea is this: during the last retreat, I joined Sarah to run a session on creative writing. People enjoyed the process and wanted a way to commit to doing it regularly, so they’d have a space to contribute and other like-minded people to play with in this creative writing space. We decided that an online forum might be the way to go.

How to do it:

Go to sarahcollin.com (you’re already here, if you’re on the main blog page, but not if you’re reading this as an email)
In the top right corner, you’ll see “Members”, “About Me” and “Contact”
Hover over “Members” and select “Register”
Fill in your thing
Then you can hover over “Members” and select “Log In”
Do that
Now where before it said “Members” (top right), it says “Creativity”. Hover over it
“View posts”: Click on the image to read what people have written about it. Write your own contribution in the comments
“Create a post” to upload another image and words

If you got in but are not sure how to contribute or what to say, read the one that says “Please Read” with a photo of a blue coffee cup and a notepad. If you have creative writing questions, ask them in the comments to the blue coffee cup post. I’ll check there on a roughly-weekly basis.

If you can’t get in and the instructions above didn’t work, comment under this blog and I’ll help you out.

For now, just contribute to the images there, and add one of your own if you want to (please make sure you have the rights to use the image – you can’t use most images from Google). Once we have a group going, we’ll set up a roster so someone puts a new image up each week 🙂

I hope all that makes sense. This weekend, sit down with a cup of tea or glass of wine and see what happens!

Happy creating,
Kel

I chose the theme of extreme self care because last year I declared was my year of “Slow Living” and that manifested some potent keys that I intend to continue exploring. I feel like I need more time with the slow living concept as I know I need more of it. It was that feeling at the end of last year, of wanting more time, that sparked my realisation that I could do with some serious self care. It was a full on year and finished on a high but left me a little tired!

So I’ve been exploring options of how to fit nourishing activities into my way of life. I realise that this self care need is not fleeting, nor will it be fixed with a few pampering treats. It needs to be deeply nourishing on all levels of my being for the long term.

Firstly it took some soul searching as to what had brought me to this point, not just one busy year but decades of being many things to many people! I did a bit of an audit of what I had achieved in the past forty years, including what had really challenged me, how many times I had moved house, how many jobs, how many study courses, how many roles had I played in that time and who had been in my life, who still is and who has moved on. Phew! That was huge but really valuable in getting the bigger picture and also getting a sense of how far I have come. The ages and stages of life that shape us to this point.

In this process I realised that if I died tomorrow I would die with no regrets, happy in the knowing that I lived a full, rich, often messy life but one that has, through its challenges, given me so many gifts. Having said that, I do intend to live a very long, fulfilling life so I reckon I will be around for some time to come; I have much still I would like learn and share!

The first step on my journey of extreme self care is to simplify everything! I have started with a big office cleanout, throwing out old course material, course books, and industry books that I had been keeping just in case I went back into that field of work. In this process I came across work I had completed on various topics, courses I had delivered, notes from people who had benefited from something I said, did or shared. It was an amazing process to be able to look at piles and piles of files, books and notes and realise how much I have done and how much I know. It was also very freeing to be able to throw it all out with the confidence that I know that stuff and no longer need to hang onto this validation of what I have done.

Since then I have gone on to simplify more areas like consolidating bank accounts and accounting processes that are all making life lighter and freer.

I am applying this simplifying to as much as I can. In my kitchen for example I am throwing out surplus and coming back to basics. I’m bringing my pantry to order by only storing whole foods and not keeping things that might be used one day in the future but will probably still be hanging around years later! I am putting some order in place that makes everyday life easier.

The other big one is putting boundaries around my time and being really clear and strong in not letting “my time” get eroded by work, people, demands etc. The more I claim the time I am making for myself to do things like gardening, being in nature and connecting with friends, the more I feel that this year is going to be one of great insights as I lighten up and allow space for the wisdom to emerge.

So your challenge this month on the theme of extreme self care is to see where you can simplify your life, what can you throw out, where can you create space for “more being” rather than “more doing”?

I look forward to sharing this journey with you and please share with me your experiences of bringing in more self care.

Namaste

Sarah

It’s FINALLY HERE! New Creativity Forum

My year of extreme self care!

Archives for March 2018