Sometimes life gets a little challenging: that's when you fight back.

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. – Bernice
Johnson Reagan

Try the best you can

Music [or anything creative] is really all about experimentation and lots of trial and error. It's just mind-numbingly boring until you hit on something that works well. – Martin Gore (Depeche Mode)

(brackets mine)

You can try the best you can
If you try the best you can
The best you can is good enough

You can try the best you can
If you try the best you can
The best you can is good enough  

Just getting back on track

Wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. – George Eliot, Middlemarch

Watch clip until 3:34

Crossroads - Gotta Choose

Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us and a collaboration with events occurring around us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live and to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives. – Frederick F. Flack

and then nothing turned itself inside out...

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it. Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted, a seed, possibly from the Absolute. - Rumi

 Clouds from Eloi Collective on Vimeo.

Enough nonsense

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

What are you waiting for? Jump.

You've been walking in circles, searching. Don't drink by the water's edge. Throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst end. - Jeanette Berson

Fast-typing Fingers of Fury

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. – Isaac Asimov

Sand the Floor

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

- Galileo Galilei 

 

Aim Higher; Fly Higher

Those who have achieved all their aims probably set them too low. – Herbert von Karajan

Yeah, that's right. I went there.

What did you say?

I know that you think that you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. – Robert McCloskey

 

 

Keep on keepin' on

When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place. ~ Unknown

 

Tiny Steps

Even a little progress is freedom from fear. – Bhagavad Gita

 

And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring...
And love is not the easy thing...
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong

Walk on, walk on
What you got, they can't steal it
No they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight...

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't deny it
Can't sell it or buy it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Home...hard to know what it is if you never had one
Home...I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home
That's where the heart is

I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress up
All that you scheme... 

You are your own obstacle

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

A healthy dose of cynicism

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too. – Chuck Palahniuk

Get past/over yourself!

You yourself are your own obstacle, rise above yourself. - Hafiz

Procrastination: the cornerstone of accomplishing nothing

Putting off an easy thing makes it hard.  Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.  - George Claude Lorimer

Don't Lose Your Shot

The real work is the change

I am fascinated by the processes that are happening in nature, over time connected to the sun, the light, the tides: growth. The real work is the change. – Andy Goldsworthy

Goldsworthy montage

To just go off into the woods and make a piece of work roots me again, and if I don't work for a period of time I feel rootless, I don't know myself.

Recovery avec les French

Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile. – Jean Giraudoux








St. Gemma Galgani, who my grandmother is named after

Easy Like Sunday Morning... but Sunday morning doesn't stick around.

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy. – Scott Alexander