You, This

Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.

At the moment, I am heading into the unknown. Things have been extremely stressful, so I’ve been doing my best to take care of myself and stay as regulated as possible…

I find that a little distraction can help my mind, so in the middle of all the moving chaos, I decided to start this blog.

My second book is in its final stages of creation. I’ll need to introduce it to the world soon and everything says I need an ‘online presence’ and a new website. Being an artist, my mind adds ‘and a tough skin’ because historically I haven’t been great at getting ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ or whatever the kudos of popularity that proves social success.

Honestly, I moved a lot as a kid, and I never really figured out popularity. Some places I fit and had a lot of friends, some places not so much. Sometimes I’m in a social mood, often I’m in a solo creation time warp. I love people, I don’t always get them. Plus I’m weird, (again with the artist thing).

I have been blogging in secret until just the other day. At least I thought I was. I showed it to my coding engineer son hoping he could teach me how to connect Instagram and a website.

Imagine my surprise when he told me this IS a website! He helped me get a domain name and was actually impressed with my efforts. He showed me that somehow it was out there getting read and being LIKED!

Wait. WHAT?! I’m sooo excited to be officially blogging. Wow!

A little more history. I’m an abstract painter.My paintings are different and my style is not everyone’s thing. I had to make friends with that a long time ago. I have good friends who are supportive and kind. So I’m buffered from harsh opinions for the most part. I once had a studio in a public building with other artists. We were basically on display while we painted and oh my the comments about my artwork! I traded that for collectors and artist friends who understand and supportive kind friends who love me.

So to be liked without first being liked was a fun surprise! I’m excited that I have a website and my toe is in the door! So excited for positive feedback. So excited to be a blogger with a website and a book I think kids will love!

The Tough

When the going gets tough, the tough get going—-to figure out their options.

Life can include some challenges. Weather, people, situations, not everything can be positive and supportive. I have learned that I have the option to choose a response or not to. I also have response options.

If I get mad, I can choose to stay mad or I can choose to look for ways to feel the way I would rather feel. I used to think that my responses were automatically decided for me and I had to wait for something to change in order for my feelings to change. If the rain would just stop, if that person would just be nicer.

I used to spend a lot of time waiting, blaming and feeling powerless. Often, I was mean to my own self! I was a self blamer and it was rarely helpful.

I like knowing that I can choose to stay mad if I want because it might be appropriate. Feeling sad or mad might feel right. The power is in the choosing.

It’s important to be my own support person first. It’s okay if no one else is mad that it’s raining. It’s okay if no one agrees the meal is disappointing. It’s okay to be feeling sensitive or upset. If they had my perspective, anyone would feel like this. It’s helpful to be on my own side first.

We can always have our own back. I had to learn to this. My old response was often to wonder what’s wrong with me? Why is everyone else doing fine and I’m not? I had to learn that these are not helpful questions. I had to learn some helpful ones to use instead.

When we initially feel hurt or sad, or even angry, we can respond compassionately towards ourself. We can decide to let the circumstances mean what we want them to. We can decide that anyone would feel that way, that of course it’s hard, but we can do hard. We have before. We are strong and capable. Hard things come and go. We are tough enough to handle tough things.

We can ask better, kinder more helpful questions like what do I need right now to feel a little bit better? How would I like to be feeling? We can suggest a walk, a cup of tea, or to call a friend. We can take some slow deep breaths.

The problem doesn’t need to be solved, I learned, in order for me to feel better. This is its own relief, and actually, if I can get myself to feel calm and grounded, I’ll be much better at solving the problem. Problems are part of everyone’s life. Approaching them in a regulated cool headed mindset is so much more optimal. Having tools and knowing I have choices gives me some power in every situation, This makes me tough.

You Can Still Change Your Mind. Thanks, Tom

Tom Petty may have been the first to tell me this. He also told me I didn’t have “to live like a refuge” or “back down”.

Back then, I don’t think I thought it was optional. Changing my mind was, for too many reasons, impossible

Okay, I take that back. It could be messy and complicated and made everyone mad. I was a pleaser so it FELT impossible and still does sometimes. For other reasons, when I was in a state of mind, I thought I had to wait for things to change around me. I guess I never felt like I was enough in charge to change my mind.

How is changing my mind on a matter, different from changing my state of mind? They both are about preference and thought. They both invite a settling feeling. They both require a decision. Maybe they aren’t so different at all. When I know its in my power and also my right, I feel safer, stronger and calmer. When I thought I couldn’t or shouldn’t, I felt a lot of anxiety and powerlessness.

When I was a young mom, I made up rules. This was a power move. I would look at my kids falling apart, getting upset with each other, or about to get hurt doing something and say ‘it looks like we need to make some rules about this”. Consequently, I would walk in on them whisper arguing, someone saying “Stop! moms going to make a rule about this!”

Knowing I have the power, the ability and the permission to just change my mind, is one of my most liberating life lessons. Young moms today give their little ones lots of choices. Choosing is powerful. I love this. The only way to get good at something is to do it a lot. The more I practice changing my mind and mindset, the better I get at it. The more in charge of my mind that I feel I am, truly the more power I feel in my life.

I look like I was 12, easy to see why I needed power moves back then.

Grand

Where did your name come from?

My name is Andrea J’Neene Team. My grandfather called me Andie. He was the only one who got away with it. We moved when I was nine, and Andie got lost in time.

J’Neene was my mother’s middle name, and the one she went by. I liked the weird phonetic spelling and I passed it down to my daughter. For a while I used it as a last name and signed my art Andrea J’Neene.

I recently decided to resurrect Andie for a few reasons. To honor my grandfather, who I adored as a child and lost touch with when we moved. There were visits, but our relationship changed and sadly was never the same. My identity as Andie fell away.

My grandfather was one of the very best parts of my childhood. He embodied summers at the cottage. The carefree days of freedom and fun. He taught me to ride a motorized mini bike at age six by letting me operate it, then jumping off the back. By seven I was whipping through rows of corn on the little Honda 80. He saw me as capable.

He grew a garden. He taught me how to pick everything in it at peak ripeness. The rest of the year we ate canned vegetables, but at the cottage we shelled peas and shucked corn and ate the most delicious toasted tomato sandwiches with one thick slice of a perfect tomato. If a zucchini grew too large, he sliced it thin and fried the big rounds dipped in egg and then flour.

At home our kitchen was small, my mother prepared meals while we weren’t around, she was a solo cook. My grandfather, however, was fine with me shadowing him. I followed him everywhere. I loved going into town with him. I still love hardware stores. Watching him cook, changed how I saw cooking and influenced the rest of my life. I spent years trying to find those tomatoes again and finally grew my own garden. ( I even got a little famous for my version of his toasted tomato sandwiches).

One birthday he gave me a subscription to National Geographic Magazine. It seemed odd to give a little kid a magazine subscription, but I LOVED it. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive, then poured over its thick photographs for days. I fell in love with everything African and much much later travelled there. That trip changed me.

I grew into an awkward teen, then an adult. My grandfather lived 2000 miles away where my cousins stilled resided. They had changed his name from Grandpa to Papa Frank and still had an active relationship with him. For me, the distance combined with the turbulence of my mothers relationship with her family, caused a rift. I sadly became estranged and lost touch.

I think I also lost touch with that capable little motorcycle riding, carefree kid who my grandpa called Andie.

Andie wasn’t fearless, but she was always curious and willing to try. My grandpa was the first person I felt seen and known by. He jumped off the back of the motorcycle when I wasn’t expecting it because he had ridden with me for weeks before and knew I could do it. He sent me to pick corn and beans tomatoes for supper because he trusted me to pick out the ripest and most ready vegetables. Before I knew I could do something, he knew I could.

So it’s Andie for him, because I may not know if I can do things, but I somehow believe he knows I can. My newest book about Beatrix Butterfly is for my grandpa and for my own grandkids, because there is something magical and wonderful about being a grand.

Mind Altering

I realized that my mindset did not fit my life.

Have you ever lost or gained weight but kept wearing the same old ill-fitting clothes? I’ve done this. Or maybe you bought a dress off the rack and it didn’t quite fit your shoulders or bunched at the waist. Besides being less flattering, clothes that fit wrong can make us feel uncomfortable. Most of us would eventually get around to shopping for new clothes, but if it’s a wedding dress or a new suit, altering is usually part of the sale. They say there is nothing like a well tailored suit. On movie sets clothes are always altered to fit the shape of the actors’ bodies. This makes everyone look better on camera.

I can tell you that walking around in an ill-fitting mindset is a little like walking around in clothes that don’t fit. When my mindset feels off, I feel off. Whether its my outfit or my thoughts that are wrong, I end up feeling less like me.

Getting life to feel right might just be a few small changes. Less of this, more of that. Trim at the waist, add more length. Like any edit, you’ll want start with some observation and some reflection. What doesn’t feel right?Where is the balance interrupted? What needs to be added? What needs to be removed? Which things are working and which things are not?

Basically slow down and notice. Then make some choices. Then form some habits. It’s never too late to tailor your thinking to better fit you. You will be more relaxed in a well tailored mindset. More regulated and calmly confident. Same as in a well fitted outfit. It’s worth it to treat yourself to a good fitting life.

Fortify Terrain

Create an emergency preparedness plan.

I think my best defense has always been a strong offense. I’m not a die hard sports fan, but I love a good sports metaphor. Still there is much I don’t get. Like when the home team is losing or things get tense, the fans in the stands always chant ‘defense ‘defense’ and I wonder why don’t they chant ‘offense’?

Being defensive has never worked for me. Pushing on, stepping forward, moving toward something gives me a much better feeling than holding tight.

Most of the emergencies Ive lived through were extremely unexpected and had surprising variables. What helped me the most were things like staying calm, thinking outside the box and listening to my own intuition. Rather than hunkering down or listening to anyone panicking around me, I’ve done better by acting calmly with purpose and attention.

My best preparation has been to fortify my own inner and outer terrain. When I practice staying in a calm state, when I do yoga, when meditate regularly, I am preparing for all unexpected life occurrences, some of which are emergencies. The way I prepare is different than when I was younger, before I lived through things like a school shooting, a baby in nicu, divorce, loved ones battling cancer and ,addiction, losing a home, losing a business, losing work, a global pandemic, financial crisis etc. I know that by taking the time to ‘sharpen my saw’ (as the saying goes), in this case the saw is me, I will be as prepared as I can be to confront whatever I have to.

I used to be all about flash lights and canned food, water and matches, hidden cash etc the usual kind of physical preparedness, but on top of those things, I regularly exercise my mind and body so I have some amount of mental and physical fortitude to rely on.

My friend calls them cosmic 2x4s. They usually don’t show up when you are ready, at least that has been my experience. Emergencies tend to surprise us.

We moved our family across the country in late fall of 1999. Y2K was sending many people to preparedness training. Since then I’ve come up with my own version of preparedness training. I think being prepared is a very independent, everyone is so different, needs are complicated, personal strategy. I wish everyone luck with their version.

Hope

What brings you peace?

I’m going to approach this question backwards. (Apologies for my artist brain).

When I think about what the opposite of peace is, for me, I would have to say it’s fear. What brings me the most despair and mental dis-regulation is the fear of bad things happening or hardships worsening or relationships falling apart. Basically the opposite of hope.

Hopefulness. Confident calm hopefulness is the most peace I can imagine. When I feel hopeful, I can keep going, confidently walking all the difficult steps. Life can get pretty hard but if I have hope, I will keep trying.

When I first watched the movie ‘the Biggest Little Farm’, it left me with such hope for the future. I can’t even describe how elated I felt. Balance CAN be restored, even after it looks like all is lost! The earth has a beautiful rhythm and it can come back at any point. Where there is hope, peace of mind can come forward. Where there is hope, fear will fall back. Where there is hope there is potential and possibility.

Hopefulness is my peacefulness. When all is not lost. When a glimmer of hope is alive, life is good. If I lose sight of that glimmer and feel hopeless, all feels lost. Meaning ceases, nothing matters. Fear rushes in.

Fear is the sidekick of a hopeless mind, it’s evil cousin is despair. Paralyzing fear and hopelessness are the opposites of peace.

Peace knows everything is going to be okay. Peace grows confidence. Peace is calm and enduring. Peace is grateful and gracious. Peace is compassionate and seeks to understand. Peace is charitable and kind. A peaceful life is a loving life. True peace to me feels like gentle improvements and confident matter a fact evolution, like nature. No wonder I feel peaceful on a nature hike. I think the earth knows what I’m talking about…

Minding my Mind

My mind can trick me into believing things. Sometimes it can be very convincing and start me thinking that things are not going to be okay. When this happens, I need a strategy to trick it right back.

The last thing I want to do is to let it get away with it. I KNOW that I can’t predict the future. Most people can’t, but my mind likes to pretend otherwise. It doesn’t help when I read those quippy quotes about believing or not believing because my mind can, at times, be cunningly pessimistic When I’m off balance and dis regulated, my mind left unchecked, will start right in on me. At the worst times, it wants me to believe the worst things!

I used to be gullible. I used to spend long sleepless nights worrying incessantly about the pessimistic future my mind would invent for me.

Now I’m onto it. When I challenge it, my mind might try to scare me with some misremembered evidence from the past. I counter with positive past evidence, because there is that too. It’s pretty obvious which is more helpful, but my mind, though it might be trying, is often not helpful .

I have learned that I can separate and observe the mind chatter with all it’s theatrical inventions and not become caught. I can let go and NOT believe. (In yoga they call it monkey mind, and if you know monkeys, they are clever little tricksters)

I can question the logic, I can suggest other possibilities. I can use my imagination to invent a favorable future. I can actually trick my own mind into considering and believing some good possibilities. Did you know that if you stand with your arms open wide for two minutes that your brain will think it’s more confident.? Or that smiling will fool your brain into thinking it’s happier.

I’m only suggesting that if my mind can try to make me feel sad and afraid and terrible, it’s only fair that I counter with tricks that help me feel better. Feeling calm and confident makes more sense. It makes me more productive. It helps me be more open to enjoyment and fun. I have a better chance for positive outcomes when I’m not sidelined believing my nay-sayer mind.

I don’t know why my mind chooses to worry when I’d rather be falling asleep. Even if I did know why, it wouldn’t probably stop. I’ve been a habitual worrier since childhood. For years I didn’t know that I had any power over this. I used to think thoughts came from what was happening, what happened or what was about to happen. Now I see that I have an internal commentator who swings the ‘facts’ into meaning all kinds of things, (not unlike some popular news stations). If my unconscious ‘agenda’ is to scare myself, then of course worry makes sense, but if I want to show up calmly confident, I need to pay closer attention and sternly question my monkey commentator. When she isn’t being helpful, it’s time for me to be strategic.

Quality Treats

If I’m going to have a treat, and I am, it’s going to be the best one for the moment. I’m not just talking about sweet snacks. In fact, As I let myself include larger non food related treats, I think what I choose actually helps me define me. It has helped me to better know who I am. Where I used to crave, sometimes in a sad or tired way, starchy sweet treats pretty much daily, I now try to spread out and elevate the things I treat myself to. I even choose adventures as treats that I look forward to.

I’ve never been a billionaire, but if I was, I likely would have done most of the same things (maybe in more style, but I don’t regret the gritty finagling I had to do on my tighter budget)

My more memorable treat experiences, have taken me quite outside my day to day comfort zone. Going to the opera comes to mind.

I didn’t know a single fellow opera fan. I treated myself regularly to listening to Pavorotii loudly in my car, alone. Venturing out became a whole thing. I ended up talking a friend, her son, my son and four additional teenagers into taking part in an opera out reach program. It was affordable, (the kids were free) ended up being educational and adventurous in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Opera is a weird thing, I’m well aware, but I love it. Going to a live performance was breath-taking and fun. Even the kids had a good time.

It’s fun to have something to look forward to. It’s fun to include other people. Sometimes treats even become celebrations, but they don’t have to. A simple well steeped tea, sipped lazily by yourself can be a luxurious treat.

Life has plenty of treat options. As I look around ideas just pop up. What do I like? What do I enjoy? What gives me pleasure? A trip to the grocery store for ingredients to make a delicious supper or a dessert can be a treat. A trip to a craft store, or thrift shop or book store. Often other people’s ideas are treats we wouldn’t have thought of

My treat today is a less that successful fishing trip with some people who like fishing a lot. After a fairly successful garage sale, I found it relaxing. The overcast day had a gentle breeze blowing, the sound of water lapping the shore, pleasant company, I didn’t know fishing was a nice treat and a great way to unwind. I would never have thought of it on my own!

I’m hoping to be open to more and more ways to be treated, because there is nothing like a good treat to help me feel satiated and regulated and ready for more of what life has in store for me!

A Lovely Experience…

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

My shop would be all about experiencing loveliness. It would be minimalist with clean lines and only the best design elements.

Inside, there would be everything wonderful, from artwork to fashion to home decor items to specialty books all arranged beautifully with indulgent treats (coffee/ tea and pastries) (champagne and craft beer).

All of the finest products would compete to be featured and all would receive the best online and in store display.

Just looking at our catalog would feel indulgent. Visiting my store would be a whole event. No one would leave without feeling buoyed up and special.

Walking in would be a feast for the senses. I love the idea of a shop with beauty and good smells and items that make you happy in the moment and for a long time afterward. Form, function and wonder…