Category Archives: chance

78 and counting…assemble yourself

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

ASSEMBLY is a paper assemblage, 8×10, acrylic, collage on canvas board

Happy first Monday of the newer year! This is not a blog about Ikea, (assembling something to eat or sleep or sit a lamp on). It is about you and me, putting ourselves back together again after a year when everything we thought we knew for sure was turned upside down, lost, broken, bent out of shape, damaged or disrespected.

I am going to try to accept a clean slate this week, on which to re-assemble the things that I will make right this coming year. The things I will cherish, or not…..the habits I will keep and improve upon, or discard. The ways I will spend my precious leisure time in the last chapter of my life, and the frivolous idiotic ways of wasting time that I will now refuse to fritter away on meaningless pursuits. I am going to try and be more discriminating about what I do and how I do it and who I do it with. I want more quality in my days. I want substance. Accomplishment. Pride in what I do with my time and what I produce.

Blah Blah Blah, you might be saying. Well, ok. I will do my personal best. It might not be perfect but I will raise the bar higher than it was before. At this over-70 age, urgency is a common condition for you and me. If the entire past year has gone by, with everything crammed into it, without it seizing our complete attention and without us feeling that it should be used for some deep introspection…then perhaps we missed a very large boat. This was a damn serious year. Certainly it occurred to you that while you were cooped up and restless, feeling like a caged animal at times, it might be a good idea to look inward and become a better, more self-aware person. Might be a good time to go deep, since we could not go wide.

I want my shot! That line is repeated in the hit stage show HAMILTON quite a few times and has its own song as well, but with a much different meaning. All of us do want our shot at life – we want our rightful chance to do something meaningful. Something that will make a positive difference. The year 2020 was your unfortunate excuse to not take your shot due to the multitude of unforeseen circumstances. This year will probably be different. Once we are all out from under covid it will be as if life has given us a Get Out of Jail Free card. A whole new chance for doing good things! A blank canvas upon which to create a bright new color scheme, a fascinating composition and a focal point of great meaning. Age is of no importance whatsoever – never use it as an excuse for not taking another brand new shot at life.

The new parlor game – “What will be the first thing you do when you and everyone else in your circle of family and friends have had your vaccination?” You can begin to assemble yourself right now. Get yourself ready for that new day. Make some plans and begin to dream some dreams. Put your parts together in a brilliant new way and go for it. Life is not just one more shot – it is a series of opportunities. Step right up and accept the next one!

Jo Ann Brown-Scott – The art above is priced at 75.00 including shipping

More of my art is now posted on ETSY under the title Jo Ann Brown-Scott ART

ART WEBSITES – www.artistjoannbrown-scott.com

Prints of my original art are available at https://fineartamerica.com/art/jo+ann+brown-scott

NOVEL – www.acanaryfliesthecanyon.com

NON-FICTION BOOKS – The Creative Epiphany, gifted minds, grand realizations

and Your Miraculous, Timeless Creativity, the care and feeding of your creative gifts

Books are available on Amazon and Kindle

INSTAGRAM – The Creative Epiphany

All of my previous blogs can be found in my Archives.

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78 and counting…timing is everything

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

“Lovers don’t finally meet someone; they are in each other all along. Rumi (1207-1273), 13th century Persian poet, mystic and spiritual teacher.

If you are not yet acquainted with the poetry and wisdom of Rumi, the 12th century poet and mystic, I highly recommend that you read some of his writing because it is still, after all these centuries, relevant to our modern lives. You will be surprised at how lovely and graphic his words can be in a world far different than his own. He will teach you what you thought you already knew.

My two previous blog posts have discussed the fun, the adventure and the pitfalls of online matchmaking websites. For those of you who have dived right into that cold water pool, I imagine by now that you are thoroughly soaked and having some crazy fun or you are shivering and can’t wait to jump out and catch your breath. There is no shame in going dormant for awhile as you regroup and sort things out in your mind. It might not be the right time for you.

In life, and in love, timing is everything. In your soul you are aware of exactly what you are searching for. You were born knowing. That knowing percolates to the surface of your consciousness and unfolds as you travel life’s journeys and become more worldly and wise. You begin to know what you are searching for in a life partner…a lover…a friend… a companion…a confidant.

Do not ever close your mind to the possibility of finding that special person. There is always the dream of finding a soul mate, and you might cross paths with several who seem to fit that criteria in your lifetime. People will appear, all shiny and attractive, seeming to understand you and appreciate you and fulfill your wildest dreams as you make your way around this world. But sometimes those people will disappoint you, having merely disguised themselves as the one. It is your mission to uncover the layers of faux perfection and find the reality of the person. Sometimes you can cut to the core truth of that person in a relatively brief amount of time, sometimes finding the core takes a very long time, especially when it is being purposely hidden. Then, if a person is revealed to you as being the wrong person, you learn to more clearly define your search, you appreciate the lessons you learned and you evolve. Your intuition matures.

In life, you might find the right person at the wrong time, or the wrong person at the right time. Either way, it usually does not work out in the long run. Timing is everything. Finding the right person at the right time is rare and oh so wonderful. I only know a handful, a small handful, of people who have had the good fortune of that golden, incandescent experience. Sometimes if the person is right but the timing is wrong, you can make it work by waiting a bit of time to fall completely into love and begin making long-term plans…delaying gratification…altering your plans to make some time adjustments, and then it works.

But persuading yourself into believing you have found the right one, at just the right time, as you trick your intuition and forge ahead anyway, while gradually discovering that it is a doomed relationship, is a whole other thing. Some people can actually maintain the illusion of near perfection for a very long time, when an event or an argument or a career change will uncover a side of that other person you had never seen before. The wrong person reveals the exact profound extent of the wrongness, leaving nothing to the imagination and no room for excuses. Having learned, you must move on. Faking it into a future with the wrong person will not work.

This is precisely why you must give relationships an extended period of time to unfold and reveal what they are really based upon. An excellent matchmaking site is just the beginning of your research. Hopefully after narrowing down the field of possibilities the two of you will begin to meet in person. Face Time calls and emails and hours spent on the phone will not take you to a place of truly knowing a person. The conversational expressions and humor and long eye-to-eye glances are lost in all of those written and vocal types of communication. You must arrive at a place of comfort by meeting each other in person. See that person in 3D. The length of time it takes for that to be arranged differs greatly, especially now in the time of a pandemic. But it can be arranged in a matter of a couple weeks – just suggest it. Sit outside somewhere, distanced from one another, wear a mask but reveal yourself to each other for a few minutes, then cover back up, order a pizza and settle in for the afternoon. Smile at each other with your eyes. Laugh out loud. Drop all pretense and reveal yourself as the person you authentically are. Ask a lot of questions of each other, and answer them because the reason you are there is to begin…the process…the discovery…of what makes the magic happen. Invite the possibility of romance. Be open to knowing. To adventure. See what happens.

Above photos are from an epic trip to Singapore and Bangkok, Thailand

Jo Ann Brown-Scott

ART WEBSITES – www.artistjoannbrown-scott.com

Prints of my original art are available at https://fineartamerica.com/art/jo+ann+brown-scott

NOVEL – www.acanaryfliesthecanyon.com

NON-FICTION BOOKS – The Creative Epiphany, gifted minds, grand realizations

and Your Miraculous, Timeless Creativity, the care and feeding of your creative gifts

Books are available on Amazon and Kindle

INSTAGRAM – The Creative Epiphany

All of my previous blogs can be found in my Archives.

Excerpt – A CANARY FLIES THE CANYON

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

medtur

Have I mentioned that this novel is a love story? Well it is…on several levels.

Annie, the book’s heroine, is a born artist. She was just that way, 100%, through and through from DAY 1 and she knew it from the very moment she could think vs. the kind of artist who gradually grows into art and suddenly realizes one day that she is indeed going to deliberately become an artist. Annie had no choice; she fell in love with visual art long before she ever loved anything else including ice cream and Santa Claus. But she also falls in love with three men as she matures into an accomplished fine artist and a wise human being. Each man brings lessons she needs to learn; each love affair brings her closer to the total person she was meant to be.

Along her journey of life she realizes that timing is everything and rarely does a person stumble upon the perfect pairing of the well-timed opportunity and the freedom to grasp it then and there at the exclusion of every other option. The universe works in wild and wonderful ways; it often tempts us at the wrong times, offering us what we thought we wanted but with strings attached, just for the fun of it to see what we will do. And so we agonize, trying to choose between what we really really want and what the more practical choices are.

Then there is the element of chance; throw that into the mix and suddenly what we really really want seems to have come to us out of the clear blue sky and we view it as almost a miracle; a rare gift; even a coincidence, if there is such a thing as a true coincidence. We wonder if it is going to be our only chance, and we think that maybe we should grab it up while it is still hanging out there, looking so tempting and so grab-able. Maybe we’ll never have another …chance.

What is a chance? Is it a random opportunity sent our way by the universe? But is anything really “random”? Is it a test, to see what we’ll do? Or is it all destiny, written in our stars long before we ever had an independent thought?

In my new novel, which is quite contemporary and current, I placed a bit of my own somewhat ageless and traditional verse at the beginning of each chapter, for contrast, meant to clarify what the message is:

Here is the first one, for the PREFACE,  page vii:

Mankind is on an eternal march;

a trail of humanity driven by instinct

and perhaps divine inspiration.

Although we are at times directionless,

straying randomly from the path

an internal compass guides our way

and we are actually at one with the stars,

purposely aligned and aware

of our place in the universe.

Book available on Amazon.com

http://www.acanaryfliesthecanyon.com

http://www.joannbrownscottauthor.com

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