It takes a lifetime to understand what you want

On February 28, 2025March 25, 2025 By Inese, visual artist, writer and life sciences bloggerIn goals, green living, health, life, success, values16 Comments

It’s time to pick up myself and get out of the wintery lethargy. It feels today that we are definitely getting closer to spring. It’s like waking up from an extremely long snooze. I didn’t enjoy winter even as a kid. It is tolerable until Christmas, but when the days are so bleak, dull and grey, I have no desire to do anything. I still painted, spring especially, and read numerous books.

Generally, I am like a tree. I shed my beautiful leaves in the fall, with huge regret so, I must say, and I am overwhelmed by the dread of the nearing winter. At this moment, end of February, I am starting to feel that life juices will be running through limbs soon. Once the buds start to open it’s not long till the first leaves and blooms come. Then it’s up to maturity and harvest in the last warm sunshine. That’s my natural cycle of the year.

While this place where we reside isn’t very suitable for growing anything indoors, I do that nevertheless. There are plants which do fairly well and even very well in half-light. Some plants can survive without any direct light. I do love my African violets; they have a small extra space at the South looking window. It’s a tiny space, but enough for my violets. The purple one is 20 years old. Isn’t that amazing?

What do I want from life at the moment? More stability and predictability, less worries, less pain. What happens to the huge goals? Well, I have come to conclusion that doing one’s best is definitely enough. My goals are very realistic; sell more paintings, give more art classes, make a decent living out of that. That’s within my reach and pretty much happening already.

All the best and thanks for visiting my blog which was left unattended for a while!

End of October, the last of colors

On October 31, 2023September 8, 2024 By Inese, visual artist, writer and life sciences bloggerIn autumn colors, healthy habits, life, lifestyle, poem, poetry, writing23 Comments

The angry clouds

And sunny gaps of heaven

The gold of leaves now turning into rust.

Ghosts of the past, they love this weather

When days just crawl along.

It’s only memories which linger

Among the shadows of our broken dreams

And wings are put away for winter.

Getting older is like watching seasons change – late fall can be quite tolerable and even enjoyable at times. The last of golden days will be gone tomorrow. It’s very obvious why poetic people like the slight melancholy which comes with the decreasing sunlight and everything becoming grey. Less and less color, until the white of snow covers up all struggles and dirt.

We often live in waiting – waiting for Christmas, waiting for the New Year which might bring something better, waiting for spring, for time when everything becomes perfect, waiting for wedding, waiting for kids to grow up – endlessly. Quite often the waiting is more satisfying than the actual event. Quite often the beauty is in the fact that all good things come with waiting. On the due time.

Nobody is waiting for old age. Lots of people see it as a dread and disaster. However, if you are privileged to experience it, you should be already happy. As somebody who’s spent many decades researching medical issues and finding out how absurdly complex each one of us is, I often wonder how we just slide over and past all diseases and cure what’s curable. I wonder how we still are with all what’s happening around.

Old age is wise and knows what we tried to figure out many decades ago. There’s so much we learn over our lifetime! Consciously or subconsciously, we are aware of what’s ahead. Many books mention how somebody feels scared and old when they are 40 or 50. No need. In my experience 50-60 is a fantastic time. The saying “If youth knew, if age could” is attributed to quite a few wise men. I don’t care who said that, but that briefly descries how we evolve and, regretfully, are unable to carry out what we know is necessary when we reach really old age which I haven’t yet.

I knew this quote always, cannot remember from where, but I recall it here and there. Therefore, I don’t think people around 20 – 30 can be experts. In science or their occupation, sure, in life – no way. Things change drastically, and only decades later we realize what we did right and what were the crucial life-changing mistakes. No point suffering from regrets. Everything becomes experience – every step, every discovery, every loss and gain. I love myself just as much as when I was younger. I’m looking forward to many more years, I’d love to spend this time just as my parents lived – busy, always doing something, always staying firmly on the Earth.

Wishing you good transition into late fall and early winter!

How to get ahead with your life: encouraging and warning signs

On October 18, 2019September 8, 2024 By Inese, visual artist, writer and life sciences bloggerIn faith, gratitude, happiness, life, lifestyle, values17 Comments

Can you change events which happen in your life?

Yes, you can if you are observant and if you pay attention to directions and hints universe sends us and makes us aware of.

You could prevent a situation which potentially could cause you stress and trouble.

As I mentioned before, what happens with us and our life is the result of our belief, emotions and things we are confident with. That also includes everything we are strongly convinced about. We come from different internal states: from anger or joy, from hate or love, from grief or satisfaction, from envy or feeling well. The dominant emotions and believes will quite frequently dictate your way of action.

The surrounding world reflects us

The surrounding world is our world which we have created together with other people, nature, other constituents of universe and God. The world in our direct vicinity reflects us as we are, what we think and what we believe in. This also refers to things we do not believe in, we do not assume as worthy or true and we do not think about.

Not knowing that something exists doesn’t make it non-existent. Therefore, if you are not aware of the importance your subconscious mind has, it doesn’t mean, the subconscious mind loses its role in decision-making and preferences.

Universe wishes us well

The world, God and universe wish us well. The only person, who can punish us, is we ourselves. It’s not fate; it’s not God and definitely not the universal mind and the universe itself. Help is always within a reach. Whether we get it or refuse to take it, depends on us. That also depends on the part we have assigned to us: do we choose to be a victim of circumstances, bad luck and other people or do we choose to step in and start doing something to change the flow?

Signs we receive

We receive encouragement and warnings on a daily and even hourly basis. Do we pay attention to them? Do we even know what to pay attention to? It’s most likely we do not. When somebody is addicted to scrolling through numerous stories and pictures, they lose the understanding of what matters and what doesn’t. Rushing from one place to another and one task to another doesn’t allow taking distance from events. It becomes a flow of events and situations that can be so overwhelming that we lose ourselves in this flow. We basically get where we are taken, and that isn’t always the place we intended to be.

Encouraging signs

What are the signs that notify us about events in our life? There are many and all kinds of them. They could be categorized from very distant and approximate to very close and direct.

When somebody close to us or somebody at our workplace is doing well or getting promotion, we should be happy about it because that means good things are in the way for us also.

How do you react when your colleague gets promoted, but you do not yet? Is your pleasure genuine or you rather bite your teeth and hardly congratulate? Is there a shadow of envy in your eyes or are you proud about him or her? The reaction might change the flow of future events. Universe might get that you are not happy with that, and that means it is either not important for you or you do not want that.

When somebody around you is doing great, that means you are also on the right path, and being happy about their success will attract luck and good outcome for you also.

Destructive emotions

If you are envious and feel frustrated that your success did not happen, you just push it farther away. Grudge and envy, especially, if they are present frequently, destroy a person from inside. Internet facilitates feeling that we are not doing fine by putting in our face all the achievements the humanity has managed to accomplish while you just slept for the last 7 or 8 hours. We cannot go down that path. Our way is what we have chosen and we have to stick with our personal plan.

Warning signs

There are also numerous warning signs. They come in all shapes and through all kinds of means. Many people see dreams and these dreams sometimes are very bright and impossible to forget. Nightmares do not fit in this category because they are caused by some interactions in the brain of rather chemical or mental origin.

There are warnings delivered by situations and people we meet. Every person we have met has been placed there for a reason: to make us understand something, to make us change our mind and similarly.

Trusting our guts or subconscious mind

When we are facing some bad issues and terrible outcomes, it is often that we knew this is going to happen. We just silence the internal warning system or shut it off completely by alcohol, strong medications or drugs. It is so that you know clearly something is on its way, but you do not dare to believe or admit that. We sometimes get a chance to change the chain of these events, but sometimes it is too late.

Do we have to break the wall with our forehead?

No, we shouldn’t because there is a door not far away. We might not notice it yet, but sooner or later we will. If we have a problem, that means we have to take some steps and change our behavior, the way we assume others and our tasks, or we might need a whole new strategy and approach. Things which are not happening right indicate that something is wrong not with us, but with our goals, intentions and the methods we have decided to use for pursuing them.

Post Scriptum

I had taken a longer break from blogging because I had to straighten out house after moving, plus, all art classes started and that is a big undertaking with sorting out hundreds of packs of materials and almost 1,700 of my own paintings, small and big. There was a need to rearrange and find new desks and other furniture, set up classrooms and showing rooms, deal with garden and plants which have to come indoors and other daily chores. I hope I will be posting more regularly as the weather gets cooler and I will have more time.