“Learn to accept the possibility that the universe is helping you with what you are doing.” Julie Cameron, The Artist’s Way
Just when I was wishing I knew somebody familiar with my blog software (WordPress), my son’s First Grade teacher dropped out of the sky to help me. It had been a decade since my eldest had been a student of his, but here Paul was, making a difference in our lives once again.
I don’t pray to a separate, external deity, but I do trust fully that the universe is programmed to help me out as long as I’m listening and doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Today the universe sent me Paul, who is not only a gifted teacher, but also the web master of a fantastic blog, Virginia Wine Time. The two hours we spent at my kitchen table this morning resulted in the new look you see here (more changes are sure to come down the road).
The universe also helped me out today by bumping the temperatures up to 104 degrees. I had a vision for my book cover and blog header that required a pretty wide patch of sand, a rake, and a soccer ball. Since I hadn’t come up with the idea yet when we were at the beach a few weeks ago, I needed a sandbox. And I needed it to be empty, since I would be raking designs in the sand. (I ignored my younger son’s admonition to “Just Photoshop it, Mom!”)
I headed to the park we frequented when the boys were tiny. My hunch was right — the steamy playground was empty save for one mother talking on her cell phone while her son scooted around in an overheated Playschool car. The sandbox was empty.
Not surprisingly, the mother kept her son at a distance from me as I raked my sand designs to set up the photo for the new blog header. “Lunatic” must have crossed the minds of more than one driver when they passed me, sweat dripping down my temples and soaking through my t-shirt.
Today’s final product is in the blog’s header image. It’s not perfect (I wondered if Buddhist monks had to pick out a lot of twigs and leaves and pieces of bark from their sand gardens). But I’m over perfection, after being a slave to it for so many years. I could have kept sifting through debris and re-raking that sand the rest of the day. But I didn’t. I let go and told myself “good enough,” a new skill I’m still honing.
What do you think of the new look?
