Tag Archives: Now

Now Is When We Work

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“If I’ve learned anything in my shaky life as an artist, it’s that you must stop talking and spinning and whining and start making your thing today. Pick up a camera. Pick up an easel. Open your laptop and turn off your Internet connection while you write. Find a starting point. Ignore the voices. Ignore the critics. Reward yourself for having ideas by valuing them enough to believe in them.”-Shane Nickerson

This. No one will do it unless we do.  It’s our job, those of us who chose the arts, or were chosen by them. It’s our calling. So easy to get caught up, wasting time, worrying. Instead, how about we make things? Create – on our own, or in groups.  Long term projects that require lots of planning, and short term spur of the moment things. You want to encourage some kind of social change? Go for it. You want to entertain, make people laugh or cry? Get it done.  Do both. Do something more than that. But stop waiting. This is it – this is all the time we have, use it!  Use it to connect people. We are in the arts to serve people: to make their time here, all our time here, better, deeper, richer. Make LIFE more than just the days on the calendar. Our world is shaped by our actions, and our connections to the people around us: make them count. 

Today is the day

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Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most. – Buddha  

Waking up on a Sunday morning. Daylight savings gave me an extra hour of sleep, that was nice. I wake, and listen – the dogs are stirring, no one else is awake. A car goes by outside, and out my window a couple more leaves fall to the ground.  

I get up – let the dogs outside. They run, crunching through the leaves in the backyard, and the cool crisp breeze raises goose flesh on my arms. What a wonderful smell the autumn morning has. Take a second – breathe it in again. Go to the kitchen – start a pot of coffee. 

Right now is the moment I get. This is it. Make it count. 

Yesterday is a memory – cherish it, learn from it, but it’s done.  

Tomorrow is just a possibility – plan for it, but it may not come. 

NOW. Now is all that’s guaranteed. Squeeze it, savor it. Sniff the air, listen, taste, look around right now:  The things and people I’m grateful for?  Acknowledge them, embrace them, stop and breathe them in.  Take note of them: These are the things to hold onto. These are the things that, if I’m lucky enough to get tomorrow, I need to be worthy of.  

The smell of freshly brewed coffee fills the room. 


You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.   –  Henry David Thoreau

The passing moment is all that we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it…  –  W. Somerset Maugham