Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Oh yeah! "Time may change me - but I can't trace time" (thanks David!)

And boy have there been some changes around here! I certainly can't trace the time because everything seems to happen so fast. I think it was possibly the week before my birthday, on a laid back Sunday afternoon, that I suggested to the mailleman that if there was work available in Australia that would benefit our situation - then it might be worth looking at.

Within 3 days we'd gone from suggestion to reality & by the Wednesday evening that week he'd been given a date to be there - 3 weeks later on the 21st July. I'm still not sure what happened to talking about it, making fixed plans & weighing the pro's & con's - there simply wasn't time.

I pretty sure that my head was spinning from the speed of it all over the next 3 weeks, although the mailleman seemed to be his usual chilled out self about the whole thing - on the surface anyway ;)

I'm not entirely sure what I was worried about, it certainly wasn't being alone here, so perhaps it was the potential for the huge change this could mean for my entire family. I dithered, I went hot & cold about the idea, which was in fact already reality & I couldn't settle or focus on anything much....again.

In the meantime I watched as people still obsessed about every little aftershock & wondered what had given me the ability to chill out about & become objective about all the earthquake related stuff that is still going on. The answer that came to me was quite simple - creating, primarily with glass & in between times pounding metal. I realised that since I had started thinking about glass again my focus had shifted. Later when I was cautiously trying to pick up where I'd left off  it was the sole time that my absolute immersion in something was so intense that I thought of nothing else.....well, apart from the times we've had a decent aftershock when I've been mid way through some scrollwork.

That in itself has been educational. Initially as I'd feel a mid size one start coming, the fight or flight response would kick in - my body would tense, heart pounding in my chest & I'd be halfway out of my chair stringer in one hand & bead in the other ready to move. Very quickly I learned to read those pesky aftershocks a bit better though (hey, I hate wasting glass!!!) while sitting as still as one tends do at the torch. The heart still thuds - but the body doesn't tense up until those nasty suckers feel like they are going to keep building, before which I've had time to take the stringer out of the flame, pass it into my bead hand & reach down to turn off the propane.

As my focus has slowly shifted back to glass, first sorting it & reorganizing it, then later sitting there melting the wonderful mesmerising stuff for brief periods of time I have realised how utterly absorbing & cathartic it was.

So when I felt myself getting a little stressed about the mailleman leaving,  & starting to get uptight about all that seemed to need sorting & doing before he left I made myself a visual reminder..

So far it has worked...

You can go here if you want to generate your own Keep Calm poster. Try it - it's fun! This was just a quick effort a few weeks back, but they can be fully customised to include your own logo on the website.

If you want the full sized version of the one I created - go to the site & use the search image function - the key words are Flameworkers Mantra ;)