The Motorcycle Diaries

Have you read The Motorcycle Diaries?

I bought it ages ago

(well, the end of November)

Because my sister and cousin and I 

made big plans to motorcycle 

across South America 

in approximately the year 2017.

But I just started reading it yesterday 

- the timing was perfect - 

and I absolutely love it.  

Confession: I cried while reading the introduction.

Let me give you a few of these beautiful phrases that made me smile so hard my stomach burst:

"...he filled his whole life with youthfulness and matured his youth without diluting it"

"...with the sole purpose of getting to know the world..."

"our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner..."

"having the spirit of a dreamer.."

"never to give up until we had realized our dream"

"the enormity of our endeavor escaped us in those moments; all we could see was the dust on the road ahead and ourselves on the bike, devouring kilometers.."

"i felt myself lifted definitvely away on the winds of adventure towards worlds i envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations i imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be"

"an expedition has two points, the point of departure and the point of arrival. if your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means - because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as manymeans ars there are different ways of "finishing." that is to say, the means are endless."

"...when in reality we had only just begun..."

And a picture of some of Che's observations of life, of injustice, that pricked my heart, pinched my mind:

"...we will see whether some day, some miner will take up his pick in pleasure and go to poison his lungs with a conscious joy."

"...the need to build schools that would orient individuals within their own world, enable them to play a useful role within it..."

"the need to change fundamentally the present system of education, which, on the rare occasion it does offer Indians education (according only to white man's criteria) simply fills them with shame and resentment, rendering them unable to help their fellow Indians and at the severe disadvantage of having to fight within a hostile white society which refuses to accept them..."

"The semi-indigenous features of the curator, his eyes shining with enthusiasm and his faith in the future, constituted one more treasure of the museum, but a living museum, proof of a race still fighting for its identity."

Oh. Oh. Oh.

The Inspiration Room

I have a room in my flat that I like to call The Inspiration Room.  It has housed craft supplies, magazines, empty paper towel rolls, etc. from the day I moved in.  At the beginning, I could craft on the floor. Before long, its use as storage [how uninspiring] pushed my workshop into the living room.
But in October, I resolved to change that.
I emptied the inspiration room, washed down the walls, cleaned the floor.

And then...it sat empty.
And I pondered what I could do to make it inspiring once again.

In December, I went to buy my Christmas tree [aka bamboo ladder] and wandered next door to the carpenter.  His shop seriously looked like Santa's workshop to me.  It was beautiful.

I took out a piece of twine that I had used to measure the width and height of my inspiration room, and I asked if he could make me a shelving unit and a wide sturdy tabletop board.  He could.  I picked it up a few days later, and enjoyed the special bonus of being introduced to the carpenter's 3 goats as well. Lucky me.

The makeshift desk moved immediately into the inspiration room, and it fit. Yippee!  I moved all the craft supplies etc. back in, and was oh-so-excited.  In the holiday rush, however, I hadn't had a chance to appropriately prepare the inspiration room for use.

So today, in honor of my New Years Resolution to be intentional in setting time aside for creativity, I listened to some music (Elton John and the Dixie Chicks, if you really wanted to know).  I put up some pictures.  I lit some candles.  This is what it looks like now:

And then I did a little bit of painting:

Behold!  The first finished "work of art" to come from the new and improved [and inspiring] inspiration room!  2013 is off to a brilliant beginning.

What has inspired you so far this year?

Resoluting

I love resolutions.
I love setting goals, making plans, and proving to myself and anybody else who cares that I can achieve them.
I love how making resolutions forces you to reflect on your life, to live consciously, and to continue to challenge yourself and keep on growing.
I love that it often means you are starting over, starting fresh, beginning anew.

But I never make New Year's Resolutions.
Instead, I make birthday resolutions.  My birthday is at the end of January, so I have about a month to see how the new year is going and make thoughtful and meaningful resolutions.

This year, however, something got into me.
I think I left India in a bit of a flurry;
a lot was going on, and I was feeling like things were flying from my grasp.
I realized that I needed to be more organized.

And there I had it: a resolution.
Which turned into another one
and another one
and before you know it,
I had resoluted quite a few things.
And yes, I am completely aware that the verb is "resolve"
not resolute.
But I like resolute, so I shall keep it that way.

My resolutions?
My resolutions are all about intention.
Being intentional.
And being the type A,
concrete sequential person that I once was
(I'm recovering)
I know that all goals (resolutions) must be
SMART
and won't be accomplished without a plan of action.

So.
In 2013,
Let's be intentional.

I'm going to be intentional about
1. Being organized
    (Got a planner...and I'm using it!)
2. Living healthily
    (Bought a blender so I can get my fruits and veggies!)
3. Saving money
    (Made a budget...and I plan to keep it!)
    (I also may join my super awesome best friend in resoluting to not buy any new clothes this year...thoughts?)
4. Doing more art
    (Dedicate time each week to writing and crafting)
5. Falling in love with Jesus, heart mind and soul
    (Check out this scripture memory plan from Ann Voskamp! Want to join me?)

Yup, 2013's the year of being intentional.  And although these 5 are at the foundation, the action plans will likely become webs of thought and activity.

So thankful for a new year!  What hopes or resolutions do you have for your 2013?