Solace
Summer sunshine
Saskatoon-stained fingers
Silent remembrances of you

Here’s some great evidence-based ideas for creating healthy workplaces: http://bit.ly/kE0nhl . Connect. Be Active. Take Notice. Learn. Give. How/does your work environment regularly support these ways of staying well at work? One or two, almost all of these ways? Could you make your work environment better by trying some of these yourself or by recommending them to administrators/managers? So many people don’t enjoy going to work. Now some will argue that supporting health and happiness is not the responsibility of an organization or company – that’s what families, friends and communities are for. Well, given the economic data about sick leave time taken for depression and anxiety, I’d have to say it should be a priority even for the most profit-driven companies.

Just discovered this site.
What a great way to prime the creativity pump. This a challenge I will do sometime soon. Perhaps I’ll challenge the students I’m working with in the Creative Expressive Media in OT elective to do this too?

I have been thinking lately about creative occupations that bring me great joy but don’t require too much time or skill and allow me to make something I’m proud of. Now, because these are my occupations (personally meaningful, located in time, aligned with my purposes and life situation, etc.) rather than just occupational forms, the experience of the two art forms I’ve discovered lately will be different for every person that tries them and somewhat different for me each time I do them. I’m also not saying that these can’t be forms that require large investments in practice, time and/or equipment to make something exquisite – like the pysanky that Christina Palamarchuk makes and showed me last night.
The two things I’ve done lately that have been sources of joy in the midst of difficult times are making fused glass jewelry and my first venture into pysanky making.
Making fused glass jewelry requires compatible glass ( and in my case, often the flashiness of some dichroic glass ), a glass cutter, jewelry findings and tools, watchmakers glue, kiln wash or fusing paper and a kiln. The kiln was something I have for making beads but if I hadn’t had one I could have used one at the local glass art studio. The tools I mostly already had. So for the earrings I made, I cut pieces of glass and stacked them in a pleasing design, arranged them on the kiln paper on the kiln shelf, turned the kiln on and watched until it reached 1300 F, opened the kiln then to bring the kiln temperature down to 1000 and then closed the kiln and let it cool overnight. The fusing process took an hour and meant I could spend time in my studio doing a few other things while keeping an eye on the temperature read-out. Then I cleaned the pieces, roughened the back of the glass with a double bastard file (the name alone makes me smile), used watchmakers glue to attach findings, let that dry for an hour or so, then attached the ear hooks and voila! Beautiful and unique earrings for a friend going to the south of France. I will definitely do this again!
In a second post, I’ll describe pysanky making.

What a great idea – reflecting on the year just ending and considering what to manifest in the new. I’ll be joining this year.