The wisdom of age tells us you can have it all, just not all at once. AND, you don’t really need it all so, be discerning about what you accumulate and what you spend your time on, not to mention WHO you spend your time with. Magic happens every day however you must control the creation.

Fresh off of several early May celebrations, I am grateful for my ethical friend group, who are there in good times and bad. It’s not the number of people you spend time with but the quality of the personalities. I am surprised at how many people think the number of people you can pull together in one big group and the ways in which you can persuade them to spend their money is somehow, a victory. I am counting myself fortunate on many fronts because I try to NOT cost my friends extra money, while being there for good friends as they go through surgeries and family duty challenges. Making their lives easier is the reward. Not controlling them. If only our top leaders could figure that one out. I am going to post an image in the header of this article that is not mine. I took it off the “inter webs” as we jokingly say.

Having finished my mother’s portrait, I am looking forward to varnishing it soon and letting it sit for a month or so before framing it. That frees me up to start my next painting that will be mixed media and will be on the topic of intentions vs. actions. I am not posting a lot of my original art, only portions of it and the crafts, at this time. I know that although this site does not have much traffic right now, and I’m okay with that dear readers, I know how things can blow up all at once. I want my originals to be seen in person in a showing, rather than online.

On the streamlining front, I am streamlining my digital footprint and backing up important data. Just in case those mineral mining, ocean ecosystem killing folks accidentally cut one of the tens of thousands of cables running on the ocean floor and all of the iCloud photos magically disappear. Yes, folks, it could happen. Just like our 100 year old electric grid that we’ve piled energy sucking A.I. queries onto – can fail.

I was amazed the other day at how much I enjoy data transferring and clearing. This is a mindless task any computer set up to batch process could do, and yet seeing all of the data and images that I had forgotten about and choosing which ones still have value to me was really, really fun! And it reminds me that another reason I am backing this data up on external drives is… I LIKE TO ORGANIZE THINGS MYSELF, thank you very much A.I. Unfortunately the men who run things and can’t organize well at all… have handed it all over to A.I., and expect the rest of us who CAN organize, to be grateful. Nope, nope, nopety, NOPE. Doing it myself. Thank you very much.

Organizing for a museum or library would also be fun if I found the right group of people to work with. So that’s a window I am keeping open for the future. Until then, I hope you all have a great week. This post was delayed for Mother’s Day rest and another family birthday. So surprise! Early week post is your gift. Peace and joy to each of you. I’m off for a little maintenance.