HEART STRINGS

Thank you everyone for giving me time to reply and space to explore. I am doing what I want when I want. A little preface. I like to write my thoughts down or talk them to someone. Thats just how I am. I am a sponge and when squeezed info comes out whether I want to or not haha. So I am reading this small book, but as I do I am taking it page by page and letting me learn from it. Not only learn from it let it take me to stories in my life and thinking a little deeper on his ideals written.

STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST BY AUSTIN KLEON NOTES.

"What is orignality? Undetected plagiarism." - William Ralph Inge

Excited to dive into this book a good friend (who I have never met in person just instagram sent to me. She gifted me this book about mature artists stealing and not thieving. She saw I was struggling with that putting my art so openly in the world. So thank you Chanel. My baby artist brain needed this. 

"You possess features from both of them, but the sum of you is bigger than their parts.

You dont get to choose what family you are placed in or the parents you are given. But leaving the home everyday you are given people. Teachers, friends, co-workers, bosses. We are in control of who we decide to surround ourselves with.

Sometimes when we are not in control with who we need to surround ourselves with, we have a choice to pass judgement on them or we can love them. That doesn't mean I have to LOVE the person I don't know sitting right next to me right? Wrong.

There have been times like all of us (if something is up in my life) I decide to judge that person for their differences. And how sad is that. Flip that on me, what if that person judged me for having something wrong with me. We will never know what we are all thinking about eachother in a negative way. But I hope we can hear the positive things we think about eachother. I want to say this girl's shoes are really cute - and only because I stand behind that belief. But in my world why have I held back on giving a compliment? Honestly, its always because if I say something to her I'm so afraid she will feel the need to look at me and find something she likes.

No thank you, I would rather me give the compliment and we move on how ever her or I feels the need to. If something so surface as giving a compliment needs more analyzing, its time to slow down or stop all together.

So back to that idea of choosing who or what we place around us. I have Bobby by my side. I sometimes do things without him but if its something I am SO excited about we are naturally want to bring our "bobby" along yeah? Sometimes no. And guys, this is coming from a place where all my closest friends are distant because I have pushed them away for multiple reasons.

So I have learned to sit by myself a lot. Almost too much, girl time or friend time is too much fun to pass up. So its nice to stop reading my book to invest in a conversation with a friend or invest in working out with a buddy because honestly haha I hate working out alone. 

"You are the sum of your influences"

I chose yoga at a very young age. I chose to ice skate at a very young age. I chose soccer, painting my bedroom, drawing with chalk all over my bedroom, painting in mature, splattering paint in a paint war with friends (i gotta facilitate that again haha), I was being a kid. Some of these things I had to CONVINCE my parents I had to do it, other times I gently or not-so-gently went behind their backs because I saw someone or something I could learn from and I knew they would probably say no. But I came home to them every night to talk about what I learned that day. For ages they didn't know I was learning about how our bodies worked when it came to nutritional food or stuff we put on our skin. But as their little strange 14 year old girl I became a colorful sponge. Haha poor them I put them through the wringer of confusion.

One night I basically forced my way down into our spare room just because. Actually I know why. I decided that my dark brown room was too dark for me / I was too lazy to paint a bunch of layers on it to fix it...so as it was I had to move to a different space. Downstairs I went and I painted it light blue cause I was happy and content and needed a bedroom to match. I was probably going through my teacher training so Im 16 in high school and just absorbing this free-spirited kind of way of thinking. Doing whatever I wanted to do. Music was my main motivation that night. I was blasting songs and singing loud while my parents were gone...hahah cause that was something I probably didn't feel comfortable doing when they were present. 

Then I got an idea. That idea grew like a helium balloon or a kite and a ran with it. I let it take me somewhere. It was a blast hahhah. 

My dad came in cause I was singing the lyrics to a song I didn't even know the meaning to and he came in to find me on the ladder with my whole room chalked up in a bunch of different colors with rainbows and whatever was coming to life in my head. Like what? Why don't I do that anymore? Cause I am channeling my excitement into surfing, droning, yoga, sleeping whatever I want. At that moment I let myself be free. Until The balloon string was cut. I wasnt allowed to play that song anymore. That's what my dad came in to tell me. So snip goes the balloon and there goes my idea to draw with chalk. Bye bye idea. 

Now I know what you are all thinking. How sad. No. Haha he was just being a smart dad not letting his daughter fill her head with songs with bad lyrics. Little did he know I was kinda oblivious cause the song was pretty not-so-straightforward to me. I was innocent at the age of 16 in that moment and that song meant so much. So I sat in that room after my dad left and just looked around and enjoyed it. Soaked it all in. It was amazing. It wasn't beautiful to anyone else's standards but mine. You would see it and be like that wasnt art, that was just doodles on the wall. To you they could be doodles, to me they were everything that night.

Soon after my dad saw what wreckage I had caused on his bedroom walls, my mom appeared soon after haha. I was kinda excited. I enjoyed pushing their buttons (poor them haha). I was testing her. I wanted to see the look on her face. Want to know the type of expression I was looking for? Excitement and surprise. Trust me I got surprise from her face for sure haha. It makes me laugh just thinking about it cause I was pushing the button on her forehead when I wanted to be pulling on her heart strings. She came in and lets just leave it at...no more chalk. And that it needed to be cleaned up right away. So for a week I just lived in that room. She would remind me, and trust me I knew to clean it up just wasnt fully ready to let go of the rainbows on my wall. But then it didnt fully come off. So painting over the past drawings was something I didn't even want to be present for.

CONTINUED...

"Garbage in, garbage out."

As people we like to collect thoughts. The author says the word artist so he can relate to anyone picking up his book. If I had picked up this book ten years ago, everything in my universe (friends, school life, church life, family) would have told me I was not an artist in any way shape or form. I mean I was an ice skater. Does that count universe? Yes, yes it did. But i don't need to be called an artist to make myself feel better about myself. I am actually not writing this stuff to make myself feel better about myself. I am just doing it to get it all out, because it makes me feel. So yeah better, worse, happy, sad, whatever I am doing its just to feel something.

Feeling is why we do the things that we do. I collect plants because they make me feel happy when I look at them. I hug a friend because we both kinda need to give each other our mini bundled up burdens. I dont every say bobby's name, I call him love. "bye love, i'll see you later" I am starting to notice where these patterns in my life were leading me to help me find pure joy again. All my loved ones have seen it, nobody knew I would explode. haha. Garbage in, garbage out. I gotta learn bobby's name and take in him as a husabdn, person, lover, sad artist, to know he needs to hear me say love all the time. And YES i want that from him in return.

Or for example just now, I am type in bed as Bobby is figuring out something with his art thing, and I got hot. I could have taken the lazy path and yelled "I'm HOT! take off this blanket" but I am learning hahah that I am fully capable to do it for myself. I am in control cause he is busy. So simple but something I wouldn't have done in the past at all.

I am going to end this post post here. Not here like now, but here are my last tad bits before I get off this screen and tap into something else. I can't get too abstract so I am going to tell you how it is.

• Bobby and I just had a conversation about wanting to go surfing because its a warm morning in Hawaii. He said "I'll film you Bree." So by him saying he wants to film me, I got excited (because who doesn't love footage about themselves? not me film me all day long haha) - but now I gotta acknowledge the fact that even if he were to film me, I might not post anything about that day from my surfing. But maybe I will, and because I have this insta-journal I probably would post a photo or video of me surfing because it would make me happy to put it out there to everyone, like hey guys look at what a fun experience I had today. That is all I'm attempting to do. Just putting it out there into the "social-media world" just like I would tell Bobby I love him just because I love him to put it into "Bobby & Bree's world". 
• I hope I didn't lose anyone, but if I did I'm okay with that. I'm the type of person that I don't read long captions of people on instagram. I will if I care about them on some personal level (so thank you for reading this today because if you read this post you are showing you care), but some days I am not in the mood to read, or go on instagram, or sometimes I just want to mindlessly scroll instagram just to scroll. I am just being who I want to be in the moment.
• Peace out everyone, thanks for reading, love you (in all senses of the word). I'm gonna go finish this book.

P.s. just gotta get this off my chest, if you are a 16 year old girl in minnesota, you reading this post means just as much to me as my grandfather who loves me very much reading this post. I am grateful and humbled you took the time to read this today.