In ancient times, when the Greeks traveled abroad, they had a ritual or practice of bringing a portion of their home fire with them as a blessing. A reminder of the linkage to the past and their homeland.

Consider our modern times ritual of Opening Ceremonies during the Olympics where this tradition remains alive today, the torch our eternal symbol.

This firey ritual also found its way into women’s lives—as the virgin bride left her mother’s home to be wed—she brought with her a sacred flame from her mother’s hearth.

Imbolc & Wicca

The First of February, or Imbolc on the Wiccan calendar, is said to belong to Brighid, a Celtic goddess of healing & the hearth, who was later sainted by the Catholic Church. She was powerful protective figure, also known as the Light-Bringer, blessing the flow of milk that heralds the return of the life-giving forces of spring. Ground Hog Day is actually a descendant of the pagan Imbolc celebration (Feast of Brighid) because the goddess Brighid was a diviner and able to “see” into the future.

Vesta & Astrology

In western astrology, we have the asteroid Vesta, goddess of the hearth and keeper of the sacred flame. Said to bear influence over the signs Virgo–the virgin, and Scorpio–associated with sex and passion, Vesta is a predictor of both your devotion and/or fanaticism.  She influences the path one should take to fulfill their dharma, or life’s mission, without which they can become frustrated and unfulfilled. The word Hearth in Latin means focus and so she also influences our ability to concentrate on a specific task or goal. In every city & home of ancient Rome, there was a sacred fire made to Vesta that was protected & not allowed to go out.

Kundalini fire. Holder of ancient secrets. Bringer of light. Power through transformation. Sex as a Divine Service. Great Mother Goddess. Protector of our Eternal sacred flame.

“Come in, Brighid, you are a hundred-times welcome!”

Today & throughout 2012, may your home fires burn brightly with nurturing safety & creativity. And may your internal passions remain ablaze in Divine soulful service.

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1. Surrender

When you’re an artist, noticing & nurturing your creativity is vital. I’ve
discovered it helps me feel whole. Especially the more forms of creative
medium I engage with.

Because art invokes feelings & emotions, it’s heart-based. At least for me. Which is a beautiful compliment to the heady-stuff I get into being a web designer & technology integration specialist & astrologer.

Next week, I start an online photography class. I’m already getting revved up. Last weekend, I think I shot some my best photos yet (see my website footer for a peek or connect with me on Flickr.) I want to tell you why they were some of my best and to do that, I need to be really super candid.

I know, you’re shocked.

Last weekend, my girlfriend & I discussed what it would look like to not be coupled up (see? it’s difficult to even write the words.) Yes. Fucking scary! Evoking deep emotions connected with security & home (full moon in Cancer) which poured through me, often times uncontrollably.

It was challenging walking down the boardwark of Venice beach or Pismo’s pier with tears streaming down my face. But I did. She with her DSLR & iphone. Me, with my Thunderbolt.

It’s a very soothing thing that happens when I shift my focus into seeing life through my Thunderbolt. Moving my body, experiencing nature & other people, gave me such tremendous relief from the emotions that flooded my entire being.

I think about the brain here because when we are in different emotional states of being, it releases different chemicals on que. When we’re really frightened and experiencing a lot of anxiety about what’s going to happen next, the brain will do its thing and release chemicals that produce the fight or flight response. Or if we’re falling in love, it releases all the dopey stuff that makes us see stars & stuff like that.

And what happens for me—where the wholeness comes in—is when I’m creating. Even though I can feel extremely disconnected from Source (the negative emotions I experience indicate this), I re-connect to myself (Source) through a creative medium.

Design. Writing. Photography. Cooking. Music. All creative outlets. That when I give them my attention, heal me. Balance me. Providing this beautiful temperance. During moments when I think & feel like I’m falling apart.

Artists generally lean toward the deeper side of life. Our lives—a canvas of human experiences—drawing us together or apart, for our own growth & expansion. These rich experiences actually fuel our fires, our passion, stimulate new thoughts & ideas, give us meaning for being here—when here is often a difficult passage.

I’m using my creativity to sooth my soul & give myself the space to process, grow & learn. With each creative movement, tapping into more of myself, and bringing it forward into the light.

I invite you to consider your creative outlets, which ones you nurture. Which ones want to be noticed & nurtured a bit more? What might tapping in produce in your life? Or for your business?

Next week, I go deeper into my creative soul using technology. Me & my Thunderbolt join Bindu Wiles’ The Photo Essay Project – Level 2 (beginner’s are welcome!) for what promises to be more deepening, more wholeness & healing, more unfoldment of the mystery of my own humanity.

Which is your humanity also.

And most certainly tons of creative rev that I’ll be channelling into this brand new 2012.

If you’re into photography or considering a new creative outlet using your iphone or android device, find out more about Bindu’s photography course here. I’ve worked with Bindu on & off since 2005. Her perspectives on life, art & creativity offer ways to connect more deeply so that you can reshape your current reality in a powerful, transformative way.

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When to expect communication, commerce and your normal day-to-day grind to breakdown and/or come to a screeching halt.

• What the heck is Mercury Retrograde?
• What to expect during Mercury Retrograde
• The best way to handle a Mercury Retrograde
• Get Astrologized

Mercury Retrograde 2012

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2. Mercury Retrograde Happenings
3. A Universal Time Out
4. Harvesting Business Clarity

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” asked Piglet, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?!” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.

Back to my roots. Back to me.

It’s been over 17-years since my cousin, Layla, said, “Here… you’ll love this!” and handed me Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh.

I was in Oregon. On sabbatical. During the long ending to my first marriage that lasted eight years.

I had returned to my roots. My home. Mostly because my family is there. In the Rogue Valley. And have been for most of my life. My mother’s life hop-skotched my brother & I back and forth between there and mostly, Hungtington Beach, California.

The first born of four grandchildren, my Aunt Val still calls me Pooh to this day.

So many things happened on that Sabbatical. On my About page, I talk about being introduced to Marianne Williamson while watching an Oprah show. That afternoon happened during this Sabbatical.

On this Sabbatical, many many books were read. I had my first & only out-of-body experience or something like it.

On this Sabbatical, I felt myself open. Even more strongly than I did right after my daughter was born.

Like a flower, looking back over those 17-or-so-years, I have & did. And continue to.

2011 has been the year of (re)alignment. To say the least.

This past fall, when I put my entire personal library of important books into donation boxes, this one was held out with the handful of others I’m visualizing will live onboard the boat.

Irony. Psychic ability. Either way, I had no clue in the very beginning of last year when I decided to write for 40 days about the topic of alignment, what rippling effects it would have on the rest of my year.

Live. Learn. Still loving. Definitely more deeply. More deliberately now. Thank you alignment & 2011.

This year, I’ll reach again. Taking my own medicine from Web Presence Essentials about Entrepreneurial Leadership.  I’m reaching more deeply inside. Reminding myself of the most important commitment. Holding no other or thing before it. Making this my idol of worship.

My joy. My love. My thriving life. Me.

Every season. Renewal. Rebirth. The eternal promise of nature. And so, my soul.

2012 begins with nurturing and strengthening my roots. The Pooh Way.

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I’ve got two days to go. Two days until I press publish. Again. This time it’s different. This time, it’s birth & rebirth. More expansion, optimysm. A bigger baby.

Here’s something I’ve learned about myself in this process that I thought might be helpful for you but mostly, selfishly, I want to remind myself for when I do this again.

You’ve got to set a date.

Create a short-term goal. Or you’ll never do it.

Think about your life for a minute. All the times you’ve done something really big. There’s always been some kind of driving force… usually time (a deadline). The boss needs it next week. The client needs it tomorrow. Your kid needs it today!

To do something significant, for yourself—create a web presence, write an ebook—you must commit to it like an athlete commits to achieving Olympic greatness. You must play out your greatness, over and over in your head until eventually you find that you’ve begun living it.

This is not my epic by any means. No illusions of grandeur here. This is a mere sixty pages of sunshine. But it is a step in the direction of my epic. Which means it resonates, gyrates, shakes & shimmies with lots of good vibrations. That I can feel. This is the storytelling place I’ve been hangin’ out in.

Oh & also hanging out in the satisfaction. On the 24th. Oooooooooooo, Sweet Jesus, the satisfaction.

The other thing I remind myself about is… it’s not the content that’s most important. My heart & soul are on those pages. Which is important. To me. Trusting myself. The words. What I got to say. Period. I remind myself of these things each time I open up Word and finish another section.

To finish on the 24th is the win. What happens after the 24th is really none of my business.

The only thing—right here, right now, that matters—is the next step.

What’s left to write, polish & smooth?

Two days to go. And the storytelling continues… “I’m sitting so frickin’ pretty. I’m so so close. It’s nearly done!”

There’s no struggle here. There’s no crazy, “I got so much left to do…” beating myself up. Stressing out and asking my family to re-arrange their lives. Or putting Christmas on hold. They know what I’m doing and support it. But I’ve chosen not to make it a big stressful production out of it.

Instead, I’m basking in how good it feels now. And letting that jettison me right up to the finish line. Knowing full well, it’s never finished. And it won’t be on the 24th.

It’ll be perfect though. It’ll be just what it’s meant and supposed to be.

Like me. Like you. Exactly where we’re supposed to be, doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing with exactly whom we are supposed to be doing it.

There is enough. Once you begin seeing that, you quickly realize just how much enough there is.

That no one owes anyone anything. And it’s really all up to you.

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Take a break & create.

Meet Wordle. Using words from a website URL, blog or RSS feed; create your own custom “word clouds”. The more times a particular word is used, the bigger it becomes. Word Clouds can be tweaked according to your preferences using different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Word Cloud images are yours to use however you like. Post them to your WordPress blog or Tumblr, print them out for a vision board, or save them in the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Take breaks to be creative. It frees you up for what’s next.

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Several months ago, I went on a Twitter diet. Probably connected to the Facebook re-alignment thing I did just before that. And, the overall shedding of things, that’s been a movement in my life, since October of 2010.

This movement (and it’s been just that), or desire for change, came from within. Although I did have and continue to count on, Universal aides and Divine prompts that grab my attention so that just for a moment, I can hear myself clearly say, “Yes, I want that.”

This movement was about alignment with my best me. And the excuses I’ve heard myself say countless times when I dreamt about my tomorrows and how I wanted them to be. About my healthy, fit body. How happy I am. How in love with life and myself, that I am.

And I decided to just get in line with it now. Why the fuck waste any more time? People we love drop dead every day. And that reality screams at me to live and cherish every moment.

So I said Yes to now. Literally. And figuritively. That was 40 pounds and a 3-bedroom-condo-full-of-furniture ago.

When you clean out, you clear up.

Simple as that.

One day not too long ago, I looked at my Twitter stream and it felt bloated. And often challenging to get any good stuff from any of you because it was such a fire-hose of constant flowing information.

I know the “rules.” About Twitter. And following everyone who follows you. It’s customary. Considerate. All that.

And I’ll tell you straight up, I’m one of the kindest people you’ll meet. Sweet too. Most people say one of those two words after knowing me for a moment… or millenia (up to the karma I guess).

But after all the purging, I absolutely prefer lightness & clarity.

So I turned my Twitter fire-hose into a softly dripping faucet that whispers inspirations and reminders for helping me focus on the stuff that really matters.

Which is me. Or you, in your case.

So no offense when/if I don’t follow you back. Really.

Makin’ a list.

Many of you, have landed on a list. A useful way I’m organizing & building my own network of people, resources, friends using Twitter.

• I have a list for potential Virtual Assistance in this new entrepreneurial revolution we’re all apart of.
• A list of other groovy web designer people like me.
• A list of web tools I use everyday.
•  Inspiration.
• And awesome peeps who expand me, my thinking, how I see & feel about myself and my life.

I love Twitter. I believe in technology and the innovation that is Twitter… and I’ve learned how to change the rules if they don’t fit. Which is being an innovator for myself.

You can too.

Don’t be on Twitter if it doesn’t feel good. Don’t worry about Facebook right now, if it doesn’t light you up right now.

Focus on you and what makes you feel good.

Twitter definitely makes me feel good now. I can actually take you in. And really appreciate you. And your contribution to the conversation.

So please do join me. And the rest of us. When you’re ready.

And whenever that is, say hi. I’m @myndemayfield.

jsyk

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Beginning today, Mercury, the ruler of communication, commerce and basically your normal day-to-day activities, will appear to begin moving backward in the sky, continuing to do so until December 13th.

It is the universe’s “time-out” for all of us. Hall passes do not exist here.

Except if you were born when Mercury was retrograde. Then this “curse” becomes a keen superpower from practicing living and operating as-if Mercury was retrograde throughout your entire lifetime, rendering one immune to Mercury’s influences during its retrograde cycles.

Mercury retrogrades for three-week durations (really 5 ½ weeks if you count the Shadow Period). This happens at least three times and sometimes up to four times, each and every year.

For most of us, we will experience a range of communication, commerce and day-to-day activity interruption, resulting in a build-up of frustration and impatience due to Mercury’s backwards motion, introducing anything from inconsequential delays to complete breakdowns; communication, mechanical, technological.

Find out more about what to expect during a Mercury Retrograde cycle, or what exactly Mercury Retrograde is, and on my yearly Mercury Retrograde calendar review the dates & times for Mercury mishaps including the Shadow Period which for this cycle ends New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31st).

A common manifestation for all during times of Mercury mayhem, and why I refer to it as the universal time-out, is a shift in all our activities from one of go-go-going to slowing down and re-evaluating.

The standard Mercury Retrograde advice encourages us to engage with all words beginning with “re” and since my move last month, my new normal has been filled with many of these types of activities:

rejuvenating, relaxing, re-engineering, realizing, re-aligning, reposing, refreshing, relieving, recessing, recuperating, recreating, retreating, recovering, reclining, releasing, reprieving, reacquiring, reforming, redressing, reassembling, refuge within myself…

You get it by now.

I hope most of your holiday shopping is complete. If not, I’d wait until after the 13th, unless you like standing in the return line.

Slow down. Take a breath. And remember to smile. Mercury is known as the trickster so you can bet he will be!

Happy Thanksgiving!

With love & levity,

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If you’re in my inner circle, you know, what’s been going down with my sailboat plans.

Which is this… I don’t know shit.

Really.

And I am in the dark, as much as you.

All you need to know (and that I keep reminding myself) is that I have a dream. And I happen to believe that if I can think it, the means to create & fulfill it are freely available to help the dream take shape and become a physical reality.

The Death of a Dreamer

Steve Jobs. Here’s what I think when I think about him.

To do things differently. To stand outside one of your normal tribes. Whatever tribe you belong to at the moment. Just pick one.

Believing before we know all the facts. Believing whatever we need to believe, moment-by-moment, and then simply taking the next step.

Instead of worrying about step number 325.

Where, in your life, do you let step 325 take over? Going on auto-pilot from living your dream because you can’t figure out what you’re not supposed to know yet?

Trusting. First something. Anything. The great mystery. Ultimately though, learning it all pivots on trusting yourself.

To stop kicking your own ass. To start loving the living day lights outta life beginning the moment you open your eyes in the morning.

To fuck it up. And be ok with that.

Or give yourself the time you need to find your way back, however that looks.

To have a plan. A hope. An ideal. A dream. And completely let go of it.

Trusting the process of transformation. That that is your essential nature.

To laugh again. Because you’re realizing one more time that it never turns out the way you thought it would. Or plan it. Never.

What happens is usually better.

I’m dreaming.

I am a dreamer. Born to dream. And make manifest.

Which is the part I think we’re missing. Kinda lost in our peripheral vision. Until we’re reminded (thank you Steve) we’re here to do more than dream it.

It’s the life you create. It only starts with the dream. And then moment-by-moment, with some focus, and tender loving time & attention, we choose.

The next step.

You do what’s easy. What feels natural. Reminding yourself to say thank you to each step. Thank you to everything.

To need only ever look back at the past to bless it and say thank you to it.

I came to live my dream. Not just dream it.

Living the dream is taking Today’s next step. Maybe a couple or even a few. But mostly, just what’s next.

Living the dream is trusting that I know enough for today’s steps and I’m content in any uncertainty that’s left.

Living the dream is the practice of remembering who am I.

A creator.

A thinker. A be-er. An enjoyer.

A knower… that it’s all for me. Trusting.

There is no sailboat yet. There are many sailboats all around me though. And very soon, it will be the next step.

For today, the next step is to downsize. To be ready to go. To act in faith.

It’s trusting my heart. Trusting intuitively how it feels when I dream the dream. Trusting myself to pivot out of each uncomfortable moment.

To be patient with myself. And kind. In the process.

In about a week, I’m letting go of my accumulated possessions that make up my 3-bedroom condo in Orange County, California; consolidating, minimizing into a bedroom & a bathroom.

Since the universe is conspiring to help me achieve this dream, it turns out that my first ex-husband sits in a large empty home after being wiped out by his second wife (yes, it’s one of those stories).

So now most my living room, my daughter’s bedroom, my dining room and most of the kitchen stuff has a custodian. This makes me very happy.

Or, how I looked at my 8 boxes of books, CDs and DVDs that I no longer wanted and wished that they go someplace useful and then learn about the breast cancer book drive donation box that arrived in the lobby of my girlfriend’s office building this week.

Or, while finishing up this post, hopping up in a mad dash hearing the street sweeper outside, remembering that my car (usually in the garage which is cleared out as a moving staging area) is parked on the street! Opening the garage door, I see the street sweeper is stopped behind my parked car, with street sweeper police truck directly behind him and I think “Crap! I’m too late!” The street sweeper driver looks at me, nods and points to my car. And I run across the street in my jammies & slippers, hop in and take the miata for a spin around the block, counting my blessings and screaming “Yes!!” at the top of my lungs, “I can see you conspiring with me Universe. I can see you!!!” And avoiding a ticket.

So much more. Around every corner it seems. Right down to learning last night of Steve’s passing. Thinking the thoughts I thought about that. Watching the impact on my world. Watching how the word dream and dreamer are being elevated in the conversation.

Joining in on that conversation, sharing my dream, with you here on my blog. And taking Today’s next steps to align with it.

Loosely paraphrasing something I heard from Steve… or somewhere in my conspiring Universe…

If you died tonight, would you be happy about the things you accomplished today? About the items that make up your to-do list and what you checked off?

Yeah, that’s what contentment feels like. And, living your dream.

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Time, energy, attention. Really at the bottom of everything. The biggest reason why something gets done, or doesn’t.

Focus. Your magic beam of creativity, or death. Your world is either expanding or contracting. Depending on how you wield your light sabre of focus.

Productivity. For me, being productive is about optimizing processes and systems in my life & biz that help me maximize my TEA + FOCUS.

Let’s have TEA, shall we?

If you haven’t read Charlie Gilkey’s Unconventional Guide to Freelancing, well… you should.

Personally, one of my biggest opportunities for growth and learning has been the entrepreneurial self-scheduling bit. Beyond just organizing my life & business for sane living, Charlie has also helped me honor my own creative thrive-times, or peak periods of my day where I’m aware I’m at my most creative and do my best work.

Knowing your own thrive-times is key to living happy. Setting things up to nourish you and nurture your creative thrive-times is strengthening for you & your biz. 

It’s for you and about you. Really. All for you. If we could just get that. Instead of turning it into a bunch of should’s & have-to’s…

Leveraging technology to improve your creative thrive times.

Several weeks ago I implemented a system in Gmail for automatically responding to client emails using a Gmail lab called “canned response.”

By creating a “client” filter in Gmail, each time I receive an email from a client, the following message gets automatically sent to them.

In an earlier post, I explain how to map all your other email accounts into one, unified email box with Gmail using POP3 or IMAP. However, in order to get canned responses to work, I got to un-do all of the POP3-ing and simply forward emails from Godaddy (the service provider who manages my other email accounts) into my main Gmail account.

That was over a month ago. The question today is, am I really using the system the way I planned? Am I really only checking my Gmail at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m?  And, am I getting back to my most important emails within my 48-hour time frame?

This part has been challenging. In the beginning… like, the day after implementing the canned response lab, my productivity looked pretty much the same as it did the day before.  Still using my Inbox replying to client emails during “non-reply” times (at 6 a.m. or 9 p.m.), pretty much defeating the point of the my automated message; and allowing my personal self-care boundaries for nourishing my creative thrive-times to collapse. Fundamentally, my Inbox was in charge of me.

Until yesterday morning.

Hedge your creative thrive-times with ActiveInbox.

ActiveInbox is a free ‘better Gmail’ plugin (also for Google Apps), that installs into Chrome & Firefox, which helps you manage your email tasks and projects, and do faster email. There is no new system to learn, it just uses Gmail labels. Check out ActiveInbox here.

Using ActiveInbox’s fancier Gmail labels, I created two new labels called Action-10 a.m. & Action 4 p.m. Now, if my Gmail tab is open and I’m babysitting it like I’m wish I wasn’t, I quickly scan my incoming emails with the following practice.

1. If I can answer it in under 2-minutes, I do it. Using another browser extention called Boomerang, I can schedule the email to get sent to my client later or at a specified time.
2. If it can’t be answered in under two minutes, I apply one of the new labels (10am or 4pm) and archive the message so it’s outta my inbox. Applying the ActionInbox label essentially marks the email like a “task” which I can review from the new “ActiveInbox” sidebar in my Gmail left-hand navigation. I can manage, edit, assign the email to a project and when I’ve completed the assignment/task related to the email, I mark it ‘finished’ and it’s removed from my “to-do” list in ActiveInbox.

(full screen image)

My current inbox now looks like this. Yes, just one email (with the Preview Pane Lab enabled). If you don’t know what a Gmail lab is, I’ve written a post about the 7 Gmail labs you should be using. And this morning, I added Preview Pane to the list after I did a David Blaine on my Inbox thanks to ActiveInbox.

(full screen image)

I’m already feeling 1000% better.

I’ve layered in another system. On top of some already-working-for-me systems & processes in place in my business. That’s how you do it. One layer or piece or bite, at a time.

Now that I have a system in place to organize my shizzle and one that helps me create and honor my personal creative thrive-times, I can get on to doing what I love… helping women on the mission of sharing their creativity with the world.

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