A Craft Fair Addict's 4-Step Guide to Enlightenment

Today's practical wisdom comes from scrabble tiles, buttons and woolly socks. Conscious crafts.

A Four-Step Guide to Enlightenment

(Glue-gun may be required)

1. Be creative.

'Cuz you just don't know how life is going to unfold -
and as it does, you might have to rearrange your letters.

 2. Dream.

And don't be buttoned-down about it...

3. Love. It's a verb.

Fly the 'love' banner. 
Not just another good idea. It actually makes the world go round

4. Connect.

Wherever you go, go with friends.
Find your tribe.
(And when you do,  have some fun monkeying around with them.)

Photos by Vicki McLeod
Bunting by Barnesgirl
Pillow by Michelle Taylor 'Giraffe and Bunny'

If you love craft fairs and are keen on vintage cool, then you're a kindred spirit - check out the Fieldstone Vintage Market on December 3. I'll be there, like all good seekers.

#ElectMR: A Happy Ending

Here's the thing. I think I have a pretty okay life. Sometimes, even excellent. I look around at the lives of my friends and neighbours and I'd say they have pretty good lives, too. Comfortable homes, plenty to eat, good schools, safe streets...you get the drift.

My Town, a pretty typical North American suburb, has some typical problems, too. Housing costs are high, traffic gets congested, and maintaining the dynamic balances between sprawl and density, residential and commercial tax rates, farming and industry, green space and built space pose ongoing challenges. And, sadly, some folks are hungry.

Still.

Life is good.

This weekend, my community goes to the polls to elect civic leaders. There's going to be some change. (Generally, change is a good thing in my opinion - so is stability, by the way, another dynamic balance). But here's the other thing - as we get closer to E-day, the debate is getting a little frenzied. A little frantic. Intense. And kind of out-of-focus and lacking in scale. Following the current political conversations, online and off, gives me the impression that circumstances in My Town are dire and that a misstep in the voting booth could be cataclysmic.

So, in the midst of the frenzied final countdown to the polls, I'd like to offer this: Thank you.

Thank you to the Mayor and Councillors who've served conscientiously and well. Thank you to the candidates for running, whether you get elected or not - I appreciate your contributions to the good life I enjoy. Thank you to civic staff and community volunteers who collectively keep the whole thing functioning. Thank you to engaged citizens - for caring and for voting. An advance thank you to those to be elected - I'm confident you, too, will offer the best that you have to make good lives better.

And in return for my thanks, I ask only this: Relax. Everything is going to be OK.

photo: minksmusings

I'm Voting YES on the Happiness Ballot.

No, there's not a referendum going on (although I do like a good referendum now and again). In my town, there is a civic election going on. Yes, I am an avid poli-watcher. I think we're so very lucky to live in a time and place where any citizen can participate in government and where we are free to speak out and vote safely. But lately I've noticed a tendency in myself toward aversion when it comes to local politics.

As I was trolling around my social networking sites today, one of the candidate's posts caught my eye. He is suggesting that new candidates, or those who don't get elected, create a collective list of their best ideas and present them to the new civic Council in December. On so many levels I like this. It's collaborative, it's positive and it suggests that other candidates have good ideas, too. 

This, though, is the line that grabbed me: "Let us use social media to sort out the cranky ideas from the practical".


Okay. I'm a social media advocate, so I love the idea of using the tools to collaborate further (he had me at social media) but it was the word cranky that was the real snagger.


I am so bone-weary of the politics of negativity and so utterly filled with longing for a different kind of dialogue. Even though I am eagerly engaged in local issues, have a heartfelt and almost obsessive passion for community, and nearly always vote in the advance polls because I just can't wait,  I find myself avoiding the general crankiness (and, dare I say, sometimes downright snarkiness) that surrounds much of the online and offline debates.


In my systems coaching work, we have a tenet: "Everybody is right. Only partially." 


I am looking for candidates to stretch into a framework that allows for a diversity of 'rightness' (or even leftness :) - that embraces the encouragement of good ideas from any source, that celebrates joy and shared success, that seeks wisdom rather than scores points. 


So I'm voting. I'm voting yes for happiness, yes for joy, yes for collective wisdom. And when I stumble across candidates who share my platform - why, I'll vote for them, too. 


Don't get me wrong. I get cranky. Sometimes I even get the blues. I can be negative. Human. what interests me is the choice about where I take action from - do I act and speak from my crankiness and negativity? Or, do I act from my joy - from the place inside that is untouched by circumstance? There is power in choice. Freedom. Something a little like voting. 

If you live in my part of the world and you vote in Maple Ridge BC, click here for info on where and when to vote. See you at the polls. I'll be the one at the front of the line with the 'Vote Happiness" button on.