Crabby Celebrations and Discipline

Sometimes you just have to Celebrate! With a New Year crab of course, it being the season for it and all. And when you're done digging out all that succulent meat, it is hard to resist making something out of the leavings. Let's just say that the cats were following around a certain someone for quite a while after this funny picture was taken. I was worried they'd be pouncing on him during the night and chewing on his fingers.. Turns out it is hard to get the crab scent off the skin once you've donned the shell and worn it around the house for a while. Never boring around here, letmetellyou.

I did make my traditional lentils and sausage (the Italian version of blackeyed peas for New Year's Day), but it got eaten up too quickly before I remembered to snap a picture. It wasn't particularly beautiful, but it sure was yummy. The lentils represent coins, aka abundance, bounty, lots o' moolah. Sounds good to me!

The other tradition for New Years' around here is blindly choosing a word out of the bag and then concentrating on that word for the year to come. We have this list that we got from Lunaea years ago, and all four of us choose a word. Mine this year is DISCIPLINE. Everyone else got nice and easy fluffy-bunny kinda words, not me man, I'm all about the hardline, hard-core stuff this year. I was feeling kinda negative and down about it really, like I need any help whatsoever beating myself up with my slack-i-tude and sluggish production...Then my friend and sister-priestess Rue posted her new year word with the visual thesaurus. Wow did that ever turn me right around. I hadn't thought to look up the word at all, just went with negative immediately, and I was really glad to have investigated the meaning(s) of the word.

Yes, of course there are some negative definitions to the word discipline (punishment, correction to gain control or enforce obedience). There are some neutral ones like system of rules. But then there are some much more positive leaning defnitions such as training (by instruction or practice) field of study, bailiwich, branch of knowledge and my favorite training to improve strenth or self-control. Well who doesn't need that?! Of course I do, probably everyone does, right? So, armed with a new spin on things I'm now much happier with the word that will help define and shape my year to come.

Luckily I had already signed up for Gabrielle Swain's Creative Sparks class which runs for the first six months of the year. And she strikes me as someone who really *gets* discipline as it applies to the life of an artist. Already she's got me working in my studio everyday (must show up!) and that is a huge deal compared to last year let me tell you! So I guess I was already primed for this year to be one founded on discipline.