Welcome back to Day 2 of the A to Z Challenge, Dear Reader, and the letter B!

B Is For… Beginner’s Mind!

What does that even mean?

A beginner’s mind is a curious one. They know they don’t know, and so they stay open to new information, ideas, things, people, places… I could go on. Point is, a beginner is someone who is new, and who knows they are new; because of that knowledge, they become teachable.

When we allow ourselves to be beginners in this way, we give up the need to control the situation. After all, we are beginners, and we aren’t IN control, and so we relax and allow things to happen and unfold naturally. In turn, this allows our stress response to calm down and gives us a chance to experience something without all our preconceived ideas getting in the way.

Sometimes we can sneak into a state of Beginner’s Mind when we move very fast into something. For example, “I think I’ll do the A to Z Challenge.” Rather than stopping and examining the idea, we allow it to take us, and we think, what shall we post for A? and for B? and so on until Z and the challenge is done. By allowing ourselves to be beginners (after all, we’ve never experienced April of 2023 before), we allow ourselves to BE. This “in-the-momentness” allows us to be completely present in the moment, which is where, they say, enlightenment lives.

What about you, Dear Reader? In what would you like to be a beginner?

Yes!

I said it. Yes, I’ll do the A to Z Blog Challenge this year! Yes!

Am I glad that I did?

Yes!

Am I glad that I asked the folx who come to our weekly craft gathering, A Good Yarn Craft Salon and Makerspace to do it with me?

Yes!!!

Did we create something amazing?

Yes!

Did we do more than we thought we could?

Yes!!

Would we do it again?

Yes!!!

There’s something magical about challenges – National Novel Writing Month, Month of Letters, the A to Z Challenge, Month of Letters, the A to Z Blogging Challenge… They focus our attention on what we can DO. Not on what we are reading, or consuming, or scrolling. But what we, as ourselves, individuals, just you and me, can actually DO – write, or make, or speak, or say, or move… And by doing that, we remind ourselves of our inherent birthright: we are meant to be creative.

I’ll say that again: we are meant to be creative.

And when we, each of us, make something, just for a moment, we are reminded of our inner power and sometimes, even, a spark of our own inner joy.

And that, my friends, is why I continue to do challenges. Not because they’re challenging, though they are; not because they’re kind of silly and made-up, because they are; but because, for the duration of the challenge, I’m reminded that I can DO this. And together, WE can do this.

One more day of the challenge, friends; check back tomorrow for Evey who will take us home with Z Is For… Zombies!

Did your high school use the “V – V-I – V-I-C-T-O-R-Y” chant at football games? Kind of corny, I know, and nowhere near what some of the immensely creative students are doing these days (like my nephew, say). But ya gotta work with what ya got.

I, apparently, have got no mas el spoons.

What the heck does that mean?

For those of you that haven’t heard the term spoons before, let me ‘splain. It came about in the chronic illness community as an illustration of what it meant to be chronically ill. Each day you wake up with a finite number of spoons. You can’t borrow or trade them, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Some of you know I am a child abuse survivor and have complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. And if you didn’t, now you do. The reason that’s relevant is that I’m working with a therapist on a new-to-me modality called EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s an amazing treatment that uses emerging learnings from brain science and I have found it to be one of the single most effective ways of healing past traumas that I’ve ever tried.

We started a new “target,” or memory, about two weeks ago.

I didn’t realize how much work it was taking until I looked up and it’s already the 29th of April and I’d lost track not only of my own posts, but of our guest posts. So sorry!

So why is my post called Victory, then?

Because, my friends, some days it is a victory to accept where we are, stop and say “Oops,” and pick ourselves up to keep going. And that, friends, is what I’m doing today.

Resources

Find an EMDR therapist: https://www.emdria.org/find-an-emdr-therapist/

What Is *A* Makerspace?

A makerspace is a place focused on science, technology, engineering, art, and technology all come together and where members can come to use shared tools to make new things. Sometimes called hackerspaces, they can be places where computer folx gather to make technology do things it wasn’t originally designed to do. The history is democratic and distributed, meaning there’s no one body with authority to say what is and isn’t the “way it is;” I’ve heard some say that the hackerspace movement goes clear back to the 1950’s with people working on bicycles to create human powered conveyances of incredible complexity and intricacy.

Makerspaces in pubic libraries and other public shared spaces tend to have expensive equipment that an individual wouldn’t necessarily own, such as a laser cutter, 3-D printer, etc. Collaborative shared  spaces have things like metalshop, woodshop, science labs, programming groups working on functional tech like Raspberry PI, ceramic kilns, sewing areas, and even weaving and spinning. Some have kitchens where members can practice food and fermentation science.

What Is *Makerspace*?

When I say “makerspace,” I mean the shared space we create together when we put the focus on making. Whether that “making” is craft like knitting and weaving, or cooking, or home design, or coloring in a coloring book, the focus is on the act of creation and creative expression. To hold space for someone is to sit with them with whatever they’re feeling or thinking, without judgment and without offering advice. Giving them the space to be. Therefore, makerspace is holding space for us to be creative, together, and to support each other in that process.

Why Is It Important?

We are inundated with information. We have smartphones, tablets, smart watches, laptops, computers, televisions, and even smart refrigerators. We are surrounded by constant noise. This is not healthy. It floods us with inputs and drowns out our own, innate, inner voice. We can literally no longer hear ourselves think.

To step out of this, to set purposeful space and time aside from it, is not only healthy it is by its nature a radical act. All acts of creation are radical acts: the saying to the Universe, I don’t accept what is, I create the new. When we get caught up in the flow of consumer data and algorithm-driven input, we forget how to do this. Deliberately creating makerspace can help us to gradually remember how, and teaches us how to hold space for ourselves.

What we focus on, grows. The act of paying attention – think about that word, paying – focuses our minds and hearts on something specific. If we focus that on negative inputs like algorithm-driven news and infotainment, we are not, in fact, learning. We are numbing out to what is real – and worse, that negativity grows within us and we see more of it. If, instead, we focus on making, we begin to find opportunities to do so more and more. Try this: close your eyes and think of the color red. Think of flowers and paintings, the sunset, red lips, red nail polish. Think of strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, and apples. Hold that in your mind for the space of at least ten breaths. Then, throughout the next week, see how often you notice red in your environment. Look for it, and note it – even write it down.

The results might surprise you.

How Can I Play In Makerspace?

At Writer Zen Garden, we host weekly craft events on Saturdays from noon to 2:00 P.M. Pacific time. If you would like to join us, hang out and make something, drop your info in our handy form and we’ll include you in our next invite.

You can create your own makerspace by inviting some friends to gather. In the time of pandemic, when it may not be safe to gather in person, (or all your friends are on the internet), you can schedule a Zoom or Google Meet session and try it out.

You can look for events in your community, either by looking up “community calendar” with your community’s name, or check out meetup.com.

Humans are wired for community. If you can’t find yours, make it. Invite folks. Like they say in the movie, Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.”

Together, we can make it happen.