This is just another one of those weeks where things have flown by. I seem to keep saying this every Friday – maybe one day I’ll learn and stop being so damn surprised that 5 days is a helluva lot shorter than I thought when it was when I was a kid.

So this week hasn’t been very exciting. Exhausting and busy, but not too exciting. Except of course, for this one thing:

But one super awesome thing did happen

I’m painting again. My creativity is definitely back and I’ve been painting every single day this week for at least an hour at a time.

Every day.

Even better? I’m good. Rather, I’m in flow. I’m not fighting anything anymore – the painting tells me what it wants and I obey. No fuss, no fighting, no struggle. I just do it. And you know what happens as a result? The painting doesn’t look like crap anymore. My ego has finally gotten out of the way, and I’m just working.

That’s the key – my ego has finally shut up, and I’m just back to quietly, meditatively working away. I have nothing to do with how a painting turns out.

And that feels good – there’s so much less pressure if you’re just showing up and putting paint to canvas. It’s not in your hands. You’re just a conduit, a conductor of creativity. Like a conductor of an orchestra attempts to create beauty and harmony from the music flowing around him, I attempt to create beauty and harmony from the paint flowing around me. It’s all there, jiggying around in the atmosphere. As far as I’m concerned, my only job is to sit down and catch it somehow, usually with some honey.

That was my problem before – I railed against it so hard, and got so frustrated that I lost the connection with myself. I was trying to catch the flow with vinegar and acid, instead of chocolate cookies and tea. Now that I’ve calmed down and started being nice to it again, everything’s smoothed out and I’m much happier.

Now somebody make me reread this next time I’m struggling, okay?

Replanted

So I realized something horribly tragic today – you’ve never met my cacti!

It all started when I was 13 and wanted some plants. My parents decided that a couple cacti would be appropriate and easy – it’d be almost impossible for me to kill them.

So, so wrong.

They rotted from the inside out. One day, they just collapsed in on themselves – whoompf. It was tragic, and I was sad as I placed Freddie and Frankie in the compost heap.

Fast forward 3 years. It’s my 16th birthday and as a joke, my father purchased me a brand new cactus, whom I named him Ben, and that was the beginning of the end. After that, people just give them to me, and now I’ve got 7 of them that keep me company. I like cacti, probably because like me, they’re prickly, but it’s their hardiness that I love. They were put in this harsh climate and they adapted to not only survive, but to thrive. Ever seen a desert after a storm? It’s beautiful.

However, the pots that cacti come in from the greenhouses leave pretty little room for a cacti to grow and flourish in and for months now, I’ve been searching for a pot large enough to fit most of them in. Finally I found one. This morning I repotted my cacti, which was actually one of the most painful things I’ve ever done, even with thick leather gardening gloves.

But for me, this repotting was more than just kindness. It felt symbolic. These cacti are a part of me, especially Ben, and it was like giving them and myself more room to grow, breathe and flourish in. It felt good.

Here they are, in their new home – a gigantic, green and blue striped teacup.

1. Ben – 5 years old and still going strong! He grows 20 or so little pink flowers every spring and summer.

2. Speedracer – yes, I love that ridiculous old TV show, and yes, I saw the movie with Emile Hirsh.  And yes, he was named ironically, because he’s like the biggest, slowest looking cacti I have.

3. Emily – a gift from Jesse, she’s the only girl cactus that I have.

4. Captain Manny the Octopus – he looks like an octopus. I don’t think I need to have anymore explanation than that.

5. Strongarm Wilson – he’s my tiniest cactus. Of course I named him Strongarm.

6. Hippo – Hippo is a prickly pear cactus who was totally abused at the greenhouse and is all wrinkly and depressed, but hopefully in new soil he’ll pull through.

7. Willy E. Pyneapples III – Jesse used to work in a call centre, and once had to help a man by this name. How could I not name the freakiest-looking cactus I have the same?

Alright, that’s it for me for this week! I’ll see you all on Monday!