One of the things about working for myself the vast majority of my career is it is very difficult to separate work from the rest of life. My work is my life. My passion is my work. It all blurs together. Yes, I have struggled with doing profitable work, but I have never struggled with doing enough. I find it hard to imagine choosing to clean my house or goof off. I have to make effort to clean my house or goof off.

Today I am doing something else. As I write this I don’t know what it is because my husband told me to block off the time and we would be doing something for my birthday. He runs his own business also, and has no separation between life and work either. So this isn’t normal behavior. I’m curious, but I’m going along with it. Who knows what adventure awaits? I suspect it will be low key, since that’s the thing that is most difficult for me. Relaxing? What’s that?

Birthday celebration discounts for you

The birthday discounts continue. 5 of my favorite prints for 50% off for my 50th. Five different ones everyday for 5 days. Here are the five for today.

They are available in a variety of sizes, all professionally printed. You can see options when you click the buy button. Here is the special page for today’s selection. Enter the coupon code 5/50/5 in the cart. It will expire at midnight Pacific Daylight Time, USA.

Tune in tomorrow for the last 5  images.

Another part of turning 50 is looking at what is important to me and how I define success. Starting to look at what kind of impact I want to have in the world in the next phase of my career. It’s really clear to me I’m most interested in figuring out ways to take my strengths in visual communication and make it accessible to others. In several ways. First, make the tools easy to use. Second, to align with others content to make it stronger.

Visuals can be an end to themselves, but I’m not as interested in that as using visual content to help make other topics deeper. I’m fascinated by the stories evoked by visuals, how people interpret them differently, and how they can be used to get beyond the stories we always tell.

I’m interested in making impact in alignment with others. I want to work alongside my customers, colleagues and clients. I have no interest in being the expert, even though I have a lot of specialized expertise.

How could I help you?

I have some ideas, but maybe you have better ones? How could my insights into how visuals work help you do your work better? What could I create? What could we create together?

Birthday celebration discounts for you

The birthday discounts continue. 5 of my favorite prints for 50% off for my 50th. Five different ones everyday for 5 days. Here are the five for today.

They are available in a variety of sizes, all professionally printed. You can see options when you click the buy button. Here is the special page for today’s selection. Enter the coupon code printsafter50 in the cart. It will expire at midnight Pacific Daylight Time, USA.

Tune in tomorrow for 5 more images.

The continuation of my 50th birthday week.

Social media has changed birthdays for me. Now I get messages from all over the world, from a wide variety of  family,  friends and colleagues. Some on Facebook, others on Twitter, forums or email. Some still face to face and snail mail. I like it, it feels warm and fuzzy in a multi-medium kind of way.

Along with noticing the different types of communication, it also has me noticing how incredible the people connected to my life are. I mentioned it yesterday, but thought a lot more about it over the day. My friends and colleagues blur together, so many use the VisualsSpeak tools. They use them in an incredible variety of ways. I started thinking about how honored I am to be able to contribute in some small way to help them do what they do better.

Then I started thinking about how many people we collectively reach. When I send a tool out into the world, one individual reaches hundreds of people with it. Multiplying that by the hundreds of customers who use the VisualsSpeak tools, I get to indirectly touch tens of thousands of people around the world every year, maybe many more.

It’s so easy to feel insignificant. To see only the places where I fall short. This birthday is bringing me the gift of feeling my place in the interconnected web. Seeing how each little corner of the web matter.

Birthday celebration discounts for you

The birthday discounts continue. 5 of my favorite prints for 50% off for my 50th. Five different ones everyday for 5 days.  Here are the five for today.

They are available in a variety of sizes, all professionally printed. You can see options when you click the buy button. Here is the special page for today’s selection. Enter the coupon code prints4fifty in the cart. It will expire at midnight Pacific Daylight Time, USA.

Tune in tomorrow for 5 more images.

Today I turned 50.  I exceeded my goal of riding my bike 50 miles on Saturday in celebration. OK, really to prove I could do it. Depending on which odometer you believe, we rode 57.5 or 62 miles. (I’m going with the 62, then I’m off the hook for another 12 years.) Portland Oregon sure is a beautiful place. We rode through wetlands, along rivers, on bike paths and bike lanes.

One of the best parts has been hearing from friends, which is reminding me how amazing the people in my life are. Each one contributes to the world in a unique way. I am truly blessed.

Birthday celebration discounts for you

To celebrate this milestone, I’m offering 5 of my favorite prints for 50% off for my 50th. Five different ones everyday for 5 days. I figure it takes a while to get this old, so the celebration should go on for a while. Here are the five for today.

They are available in a variety of sizes, all professionally printed. You can see options when you click the buy button. Here is the special page for today’s selection. Enter the coupon code something4fifty in the cart. It will expire at midnight Pacific Daylight Time, USA.

Tune in tomorrow for 5 more images.

I’ll be 50 on Monday. It’s got my attention. I’m reflecting on things I have learned and how I have changed. Three overarching topics keep bubbling to the surface as the key lessons of my 40′s.

1. Life is too short to be controlled by eye bags

I’m done with eye bag obsession

About the time I turned 40 I started having a new experience in department stores. Suddenly as I walked by a cosmetic counter some young perfectly made up thing would run out and ask me if I was concerned with eye bags. It was like I had a neon sign on my head: 40 something with eyebags on aisle 4.

Of course I was concerned with eye bags, I  was starting to look like a raccoon. Early in my 40′s I still had hope. If only I spent enough on miracle cure #157! So I had getting conned into buying expensive cream phase.

I could have bought a lot of paint with that money.

Then there was the if I only learn about makeup and find the magic concealer phase. Except there was no concealing. Not only were the eye bags dark, but they were puffy and adjacent to skin with freckles. It was more like spackling. It would take an hour to get all that crap on. Who has time for this?

Painting is a lot more fun than putting on makeup. And faster.

Now I’m in the I have eye bags and its way more time efficient to accept it phase. The make-up women don’t come up to me anymore. I probably look like I’ll bite them if they even dare suggest their wares to me. Nearing 50 has made me really ornery. Now I just hope the frame of my glasses distracts from the mess.

2. Accept chunky, go for healthy

I was really thin in my 20′s, average weight in my 30′s, then my 40′s arrived. Looking back I consistently gained 5 pounds a year, it’s just that I started so thin that it took many years for it to tip into a problem. There were a number of factors that aligned, from being less active to not having ever learned where the calories were from not needing the info.

I had been around enough chronic dieters to know I did not want to join the ranks of the calories obsessed. I already ate pretty healthy, so I didn’t have lot of junk to cut out. I figured I better go the exercise route, so I joined a gym. So then I had firmer fat. Or a nice layer of fat over firm muscle.

I knew I needed to stop the 5 pound a year gain. Which I have. What I have come to realize is it takes a lot of deprivation and work to lose weight with a side of dedication and discipline. I’m not particularly interested in applying those skills to weight since I need every ounce of what I have to run my business. So instead, I am focusing on being healthier chunky.

I eat as much local organic food as practical. The core of my exercise has become riding my bike, since its the exercise I enjoy the most. This weekend I am riding 50 miles, which will be my longest ride ever, to celebrate turning 50. I’ve been working up to it all summer.

3. Do I stay or do I go takes too much energy

My 20′s and 30′s were all about do I stay or do I go. Relationships, where I lived, what I did. Everything was in constant flux and open for re-evaluation. I had no idea how much energy it took until I turned 40 and stopped. I decided to get married. Really decided. Wouldn’t actually commit until the moment to be sure it intuitively felt right. The first thing out of the ministers mouth was ‘she actually did it.’

I’ve lived in the same house for all of my 40′s. I don’t like the house, but I decided to accept this is where I am going to live anyway. I’ve made a whole series of decisions to make a choice that isn’t in my dreams what I want, but I’m going to do it for now. Making active compromises. Calculating differently. What is important to me now is very different.

Turning 50 is about living self acceptance

I can’t count how many of my already 50 friends have asked me how I like not caring what other people think anymore. I find myself accepting my path more, realizing there are very few right or wrong choices, just options to explore. I still have spells where I hate my eye bags, hate my fat, hate my house, and hate where my business is. But they are shorter and spread apart more. There are many more moments of compassion for myself and others.

I’ll be back next week, older and perhaps more tired

I’m having a 5/50/50 celebration next week.  5 prints, 50% off for my 50th.

From Sept 6 until Sept 10, each day I will have prints of 5 of my favorite paintings on super birthday special of 50% off. Each group will only be on sale for 24 hours until the next batch is released.

Tune in next week to see if your favorite is selected.

Part 1: Sending Visual Tools to Africa
Part 2: Adjusting images for Africa
Part 3: Stories from Africa

Part 4: Safe Passage to Motherhood 2010

One woman started teaching Home Based Life Saving Skills (HBLSS) in 2009 by training 15 people. One year later those 15 have reached 10,000 people.

The clinic in Bware

But really, what does that mean? Did the people who heard about the program actually learn something that will make a difference? The over arching goal is to reduce infant and maternal mortality. The numbers are alarming, everywhere from 1-13 to 1-22 risk of dying in childbirth in Africa. Many of the deaths are from complications that can be treated if the risk is identified and the woman gets help.

Going to the clinic

One of the core teachings in the HBLSS training is identifying the signs that a mother needs some kind of assistance in her birth. Most women birth at home, so the clinic is a place where women go who need some skilled assistance.

The year before HBLSS, there were 53 births at the clinic.  There were 166 births in the clinic in 2009, 90 already in 2010.

There have been no maternal deaths in the last year. Up until then, there had been 2-3 a year.

Spreading the word to other villages

The Safe Passage to Motherhood (SPM) team knew the biggest challenges the trainers in Kenya were facing from the VisualsSpeak session they did with the group.

1. Transport
2. Umbrellas, rain boots, shoes
3. Bag for carrying materials
4. Money for transportation
5. Badges and uniforms

Walking to nearby villages

All of these things relate to spreading the training to nearby villages. The team in Bware walk to do their work. For hours. In all kinds of weather. Carrying all their materials and supplies. The villages they go have limited resources, so there were times they were not even offered food and water.

Given all of this, the SPM team needed to go to the places the group considered trained, and see what those communities really knew about how to offer assistance to birthing women. They set off walking to the remote sites.

What helped communities learn

The results from the communities were mixed. When the trainers went and simply talked about HBLSS and the steps people could take to assist in birth, people did not remember enough detail to be able to take effective action. When the trainers went several times to the community and did the interactive training that involved role playing the interventions, the information was remembered.

Similar to my experience training with a wide variety of people in the US, lecture didn’t stick and experiential learning did.

Balancing empowerment and effectiveness

There is a certain amount of power in standing before a group to impart knowledge. SPM saw that empowerment in the Bware trainers. Some of it is really important, and shows new levels of confidence. As developing educators, we also need to guard against putting too much emphasis on ourselves, and serve the groups we work with. I know at times I can feel almost lonely facilitating a particularly dynamic conversation. Everyone else is fully engaged and I almost step back to allow the space for it to happen.

The work continues

SPM brought a lot of information back from Bware that is still being tabulated and analyzed. I know there are a lot more stories coming. The group plans to continue working with Bware, but also dreams of working on projects in other part of the developing world. Like so many others, funding is what limits their abilities to do more. If you’d like to help, I’m sure they would put your donation to good use.

Jim Denevan Sand Paintings

Here’s some large scale earth drawings that get washed away with the tide. Certainly solves the ‘where do I store all the artwork I’ve accumulated over the years’ problem.

Drawings by Stephanie Bergeron

Here’s a delightful creative project, line drawings that integrate with a shaped book. I particularly like the way Stephanie has integrated the outside edges with the subsequent pages. Wouldn’t it be a great coloring book? (One of the ones for adults that come with really nice colored pencils.  OK, forget the pencils, I’ve got plenty.)

drawing by ©Stephanie Bergeron Art

Art inspired by William Morris

I adore William Morris. I had a portrait of him in my high school portfolio. As a textile major in college, I poured over his designs for wallpaper and fabrics. So I was really interested to see what Hllary Pfiefer is doing.

She’s being inspired by the forms in Morris’s work, creating them as jewelry from found objects, and installing them on a 100 square foot wall. If you click over to the Kickstarter site you can see a short video about the piece.

I was also excited to see she is in Portland. I want to see this!

More info about her work can be found hilarypfeifer.com and on her blog hilarypfeifer.blogspot.com

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Many roads to choose from

In the version above, the images are digitally put together. It’s available from my online gallery in an interesting format called a fotoflōt. The image is printed onto a surface that does not require framing and allows the image to stand by itself without a frame around it.

The images are also available separately as shown below.

I’ve been visually exploring the ideas around many choices, how many roads we have to choose from. I’m not big into regret, I think we do the best we can at the time given what we know. It’s just hard to see where all the roads might lead. In this one I was also thinking about how things look different in the day and night.

I like to hear your comments and stay in touch. I have new things coming soon. To be the first to know about them, as well as specials and other news, sign up to be on the Explorer list.

This is my first year purchasing a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)  share. We chose Sun Gold Farm on the recommendation of friends, alignment with their sustainable approach, and convenient local pick up. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. I enjoy visiting the farmers market and growing my own vegetables, but the idea of someone else deciding what I would eat? Made me nervous.

Each week we get one bag full of veggies. Quite unexpectedly, the surprise aspect has been one of my favorite parts. It has absolutely inspired me to eat more and a wider variety of vegetables than I would chose on my own. I think I can safely say I have eaten more cabbage this summer than in several years past put together. I’ve tried kohlrabi and all sorts of new kinds of cukes and squash.

The thing I have been most fascinated with so far is in bunch in the center of the photo above. It’s fresh garbanzo beans. We got a bunch of stalks with pods all over them. Inside the pod is a green bean. I’d only ever seen them in dried or canned form. They have some crunch to them, and are really tasty. Much better than the ones from the can.

Sun Gold sends a newsletter out each week where I learned most of the garbanzos are grown in hot climates, but they discovered they were able to grow them here by testing growing them from a bag of dried ones from the supermarket. We’ve enjoyed snacking on them like edamame as well as tossing them into salads.

The newsletter tells us what we are most likely to get in the bags for the week. It has stories about the farm and its history. Sometimes a recipe. We’ve started feeling connected to the place even though we have never seen it. We also follow reports on Facebook which talk more about the planting, watering, hay crop, and getting up in the middle of the night to protect the greenhouses.

Discovering any interesting vegetables this summer?

I’ve been interested in paintings that align to form a larger whole for many years. This is the first in a new series I’ve been working on. Prints of the individual panels are available on my online gallery in a variety of sizes.