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This blogging stuff is an interesting business. What started as a cathartic process to help ease the long days of my boy’s chemotherapy treatment, then evolved into a creative palate and idea platform, and has occasionally merged into community-level public relations spots for clients of my studio.
Turns out my blog page, An Untamed Life On Purpose, has a small following. With the number of daily visitors ranging between 20 and 40 folks, I am grateful for your time and especially appreciate your thoughtful comments. Mainly though, who you all are is a mystery to me, and I enjoy the surprise when someone unexpected reveals that they are a reader!
The other curious wonder about this blog is which posts elicit more attention and responses than others. I was convinced back in mid April, that what people most enjoy are short thought-provoking quotes accompanied by photographs, like “A Simple Quote.” Nonetheless, the last three entries in April (the three part letter, A Lifetime Love Affair, to my daughter) and May pieces such as, “Standing Fast” showed me that audiences are equally enthusiastic about reflective writing. Other May favorites have included “Supporting Folks We Believe In” (thanks to all Stella’s friends in Palmer, AK for dropping by), the whimsical and mildly interactive “Summertime Checklist” and the purely visual “And Later That Day.”
When I started actively blogging, on Monday, January 11th, I committed to post on weekdays for ninety entries. Today marks the 93rd blog post for Martha Phelps Studio since that day.
Thoreau said, “Things do not change; we change.” I know this wisdom to be true. It’s no coincidence that as I approached my benchmark of ninety, I was offered a part time job that will, among many things, encourage me to tap into my skills as a writer and creative thinker. It’s part time, which is just right for this juncture. It’s for a local company I respect and admire, which makes it easy to be passionate about. My new “boss” wants me to learn and grow, which makes me feel very happy. And my schedule still gives me freedom for m.l.p. studio clients and the art-making that occurs here during the summer months.
Outside of taking time off to travel every now and then, I’m going to hang in with this blog for as long as it makes me happy. I hope that my readers will hang in too, as well as share it with friends. If there’s something you’d like more of, please let me know. I like a good healthy challenge on occasion!
All will be well, mlp
For any and all you who may be interested, I have a public Facebook Page whose purpose is positive, unusual and thought provoking quotes and the subsequently interesting exchanges inspired by said quotes. Please visit and become a "Friend" to the page!
As has become a part of my pattern, since we're within the first few days of the new month I'll offer a couple thoughts and links about the past month's postings that were "highlights.”
March was a full month, even with a two week hiatus from active posting. There were over 375 unique visits to the Martha Phelps Studio blog page and the visitor counter is starting to push toward the 1000 mark! Thank you all for the honor of being a part of your busy days.
I’d have to say that my favorite post this last month was one that didn’t even appear on my own own blogsite, but the site that was created as a community venue for sharing information about my son’s experience with leukemia. Day One Hundred Ninety-One shares the news and reality that is nearest to my heart and our family.
The posts Faith, Cartoon Sampler and Simple Monday Message are meaningful to me because they include a wide variety of artwork - from images that come through the camera lens to some of the painting I’ve been doing this past year to the whimsy of a quirky sense of humor conveyed through very rough computer-mouse generated cartoons. Making and sharing visual images is a joy.
Once Upon A time in Luning scratches the surface of the journey that was made to Death Valley, CA - and there are more stories yet to unfold from that adventure, while Extending Life’s Radius was an extremely personal revelation that I took a risk in sharing, but what the heck - how else do we all learn, except by showing up and showing who we truly are?
This whole public journal is a part of the commitment I have made to continue to reinvent myself, even at 47. I loved getting Seth Godin’s blog today, Accepting Limits, where he succinctly talks about this very notion. I hope you’ll take a moment to check it out,
and I hope you’ll continue to look in on what is happening here with An Untamed Life On Purpose.
Those of you who are fans through Facebook, thanks for inviting your friends and companions to also become followers. I mainly use that page to post my blog, but also offer regular interesting quotes and (hopefully) provoking questions.
This photo, a new profile shot, was taken by good friend, Jim Schlight. Yes, I really am that happy with a camera in my hands! I hope you all have work and play that make you just as content.
Have a wonderful day. ~ mlp
Two days ago, I was contacted via Facebook by a woman who was one of my dearest high school companions. We shared some incredible adventures thirty (oh lordy, I hadn't done the math lately) years ago. Sometime when I'm plowing down memory lane, I'll post a story about skipping econ class my junior year to go drink black coffee with Pat in her always sophisticated high heels. At seventeen, she claimed that a woman wasn't truly complete unless she wore pumps, but I digress...
This morning I get a perfectly-Patricia message. It is brief, witty and delightfully demanding. In her message, she encapsulates her life since we last saw one another (1997), into sixty-three words and then challenges me to do the same "speed catch up."
Ack! Those of you reading this blog or knowing me for any length of time know that I can't do anything in 63 words. Nevertheless, I've given it a go.
Before you read on; however, indulge me. First, this exercise was sobering. To reduce a decade that I believed was significant, changing and full of dimension into a quickie paragraph rather brings one up short. It feels as though there are several thousand words missing. Then there's the reality that my life, after re-reading the allotted statement, I judge to be somewhat...shall we say - humdrum? I don't know what I expected. I mean - I'm perfectly clear that the last thirteen years have not included the long dreamt of retreat to Greece, the Grand Canyon trek, a published collection of poetry, learning to play the banjo or even the purchase of a new television (my kids have been offering to pool their savings -- it's actually that bad), but I digress...again. Needless to say, the life of glamour that we envisioned all those years ago while delinquently sipping bad coffee transformed into something all-together-else.
So, Patricia Rae, I’m digging in the recesses of my brain trying to recall how old my kids were when you passed through Ashland with a very big, rambunctious dog and a bottle of vodka in your trunk. I’m pretty sure it was 1997. Had I run the Portland marathon yet? Sarah, then my youngest, would’ve been two years old. Reid David was seven, and I was still a brunnette. Yikes! Thirteen years chronologically in the space of a classified ad. Ready?
“Single mom, English teacher, met man, took risk, married man, millennium delivered Virginia, stopped teaching, worked non-profit foundation, kids thrived, eldest child graduated AHS-moved out-started college, continued my art & writing, began dabbling in photography, separated from man, middle kid started AHS, youngest in 4th grade, working freelance studio, eldest child fighting-surviving leukemia, now very different strong-loving single mom.”
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