 I wish I could show you the camera setup. It's hilarious. You're on a box of tissues and a can and propped up with an eyeglass case, so you're not tilted sideways. Hello, everybody. We're here for another episode of Explorations of Me for July. So this month, according to my notes, hang on, we are here to discuss how do you move through life? What gives you peace, comfort, and joy? That's a big subject. So I try to move through life with grace and compassion always. There's a reason I have merch that says be a decent human, don't be an asshole, be a rainbow, all of those things. So just be a decent human is pretty self-explanatory. Just be nice. There is no reason to be a jerk. There is no reason to not lend a helping hand when you can to those around you in need to smile and say please and thank you. There's just no reason not to do that. I once met a lady at a creative retreat that her luggage got lost on the way to the retreat by the airlines. And we all were commenting her on how nice she was to the airlines about it because they didn't get her her luggage until the retreat was almost over. And she said, you know, something I'll never forget. She says, you know, I just really believe in killing them with kindness and you catch way more flies with honey than you do vinegar. She's not wrong. I just don't believe in unless the situation is extreme and calls for it being anything but decent to people. That doesn't mean you have to go out of your way to be super friendly, but you don't have to go out of your way to just be a jerk. And don't be an asshole. It's just a more crass way of saying the same thing. Be a rainbow. I know a lot of people with the month of June having just passed think it has something to do with Pride Month. It doesn't, yes and no. For me, it has more to do with just being your true authentic self whatever way that is that you need to be whatever fashion that you've created for yourself, whoever you are inside by race, religion, sexuality, nationality, political beliefs, none of it matters. Just be your true authentic self and be the best at that that you can be. And I really like the idea of moving moving forward with what is left of the rest of my life, which hopefully is a long one, with those things in mind. So I try really hard to do that. I do find a lot of comfort and joy and seeing others get that message and trying to go forward with being their own true self and spreading the word of kindness and compassion. I love that. When times are tough and we all have those times, I also find comfort in having a few people that I can trust that I can vent to. We're not, nobody's perfect. And although I don't want to spread any messages of hate and I don't want to intentionally be mean or cruel to anybody, I do sometimes get beyond the pale frustrated and being able to vent to people in a safe place is invaluable. And if you don't have people, at least I, and when those people aren't around or available, or maybe they're just not getting it, being able to vent in one of my journals, whether it's daily pages or it's one of the art journals, or it's a negativity Smackdown journal, being able to just get it out, having it just be in your head and dwell in your head, that's not good for anybody. So I believe in getting it out. I also believe in if you can getting out and getting some fresh air, stepping away from the situation that you're in and getting a clean perspective. Now I know that some of you out there, like my friends Cindy Utter, aren't super mobile and you're like, I can't get out. There's a lot of things you can do to get out and get fresh air that don't involve actually walking when you have physical limitations. Don't be ashamed or afraid to get out there in your scooter or your wheelchair. And who cares what people think? That's the other thing. You know what? I'm going to be 56 this year and I wish I had learned in my 20s what I know now. I don't care what people think. I mean, you know, I hope they think I'm a good person sort of, but I'm me. I, you know, if I'm out in public and I'm wearing all my tattoos are showing and I'm wearing my don't be an asshole t-shirt and somebody doesn't takes offense. I hope they don't. But if they think it's weird, I mean, okay, nothing I can do about it. You know, it is what it is. So anyway, all of those thoughts in mind, we are going to go to the table and I am going to use some of what's on the table. There's a lot of randomness on the table right now. And I pulled out the art journals that have some random background pages in them. Let's see if we can pick one of them and let's see if we can make a journal page expressing just going through life as a decent human, not being a jerk. And let's see what happens. All right, I'll be back. Let's go to the table. Okay, I have a stack that way of sort of half finished journal pages where I've just taken randomness that's on the desk and I've just randomly glued pieces down waiting for the time when I need to or want to do a journal page and then I can just look through the stack for inspiration of a background that suits what I want to do or the message I want to convey and then I can just go from there. So I look through the stack and I actually found this one and immediately thought of words that I want to put on this page to convey the message I want, one of which is already on here and I love that this little tap is just hanging off the edge. So I have a We Are Memory Keepers word punch and it comes with the whole alphabet of letters and then a thing to hold them. Let me get it. Hang on. Okay, it's a little bit on the bulky side and I'm not a huge fan of letter punches or stamps for that matter. I have a few single words in my collection of stamps including the ones I've designed but they're generally not sentiment stamps. They're usually more, I mean sentiment words like congratulations or thank you, not that there's anything wrong with those but for me they don't necessarily work very well. They're usually inspirational words like dream, inspire, create and that sort of thing. I like this because I can punch out of cardstock, oops words. I usually use the colored cardstock. I'm using this board which has 10 spaces so 10 as much as a 10 letter word and then it's got the whole alphabet of letters and so you just put the letters in, you get the idea and you spell the word out that you want and then you slip the paper in and you put this down and you punch it. So I usually when I have it out I usually do a bunch of words at once and this is one of the words I punched out at one time. These are the letters, the sort of waste from the words. Sorry about that, my battery died, had to change batteries. Anyway, so I glued the letters randomly on the page, a piece, a couple of pieces of washi tape and then I put this word wander on here. When I was looking through the books for a page to work on I immediately thought wander was purpose because really that's how I like to move through life. I like to move through life with a purpose, wander with purpose, wander with intention, move forward through life with intention, the attention of being a better human, doing my small bit to make society a little bit better, using less plastic, creating less waste, being kinder, all of those things that you think of. I try hard to be them. Am I perfect at it? Oh hell no. But I try and when I get frustrated and get aggravated I don't hold it in. I get it out in a healthy way and I try to get out and get some fresh air, get a fresh perspective and then come back to that situation with hopefully a fresh eye and a fresh opinion and hopefully a solution. So that's my intention. So I'm going to express those things on my page today. I do think it's going to say wander with purpose and I am going to finish creating this page. I'm going to speed forward through the process and I'll be right back. There you have it, wander with purpose. It's still a little wet so the typing paper is a little bit transparent but there you go. It'll pick up a little bit as things dry. I love the way this page turned out. It was quick, it was simple, it was easy. Art journaling doesn't have to be always about some fine masterful piece of art. It can be about that if that's what you want but in general for me it's just about expressing myself and how I'm feeling. Sometimes that's with the painting and I'll sit and do an acrylic or watercolor painting in my journal. Sometimes it's just about sort of a messy collage type of journal page. Usually my pages have some sort of movement with them. You'll see almost always I don't usually worry about filling up the whole background of the page and I almost always work in some kind of a journal or at least I am more joyful about working in some kind of a journal like this old moleskin planner from 2017 I think. I don't even know, let's see. Yeah, 2017-2018. I like the sort of random calendar-ness of the background pages. I don't worry about covering them up. It just adds another layer of texture for me. So anyway, think about how you can express your journey and purpose through life, the direction that you choose to take and see how you can express that in your work this month. We would all love to see what you do with that. I will link the videos for the other people that are participating in explorations of me with me this month in the description below. So please go check them out. Show them some love. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. If you want to follow me on social media to see what I do with my almost daily art practice unless I'm crazy and flying out of town at 4am and back into town at like 10pm, yes that does happen. Those days you probably won't see too much art for me but almost every day I do some kind of daily art practice and if you want to see what I'm up to with that you can follow me on social media or if you want to support the free content here on YouTube or over in the art groups over on Facebook. You can find all of those things out by clicking on my link tree list of links in the description below. My happy mail address is down there too and a bunch of other stuff so check it out. If you have any questions, comments or concerns please leave them here on the video. I will respond. I promise I do that every single day and that's it for today. Go out and create some fun art, wander with purpose, move forward in life with intention and be the most authentic you you can be. That's it for now. I'll see you all later. Bye guys.