Martha Beck
Finding Your Own North Star
I began this blog as I was just finishing a life-changing book. It is Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to put some real time and energy into creating the life they truly want. It is a well-written, personable, and funny book that guides you on a path towards realizing your dreams with the right balance of dreaming and good ol’ hard work.
In the book, Martha talks about 4 main parts, or “squares,” to making your dreams come true. They are:
- Death & Rebirth
- Dreaming & Scheming
- The Hero’s Saga
- The Promised Land
As far as I can tell, I am in “Square 2″ right now. Square 1 is some kind of departure from your old life. For me, that came from having a lull of work in the summer months (I’m a creative writing teacher) and having a lot of time on my hands to really think about how I’m living my life and what kinds of changes I’d like to make in it. With the creation of this blog, I stepped into Square 2 and began to dream. That dream has been posted here for all to see, and now it is time to “scheme,” or make a plan of action for realizing that dream.
One of the first realizations I had in starting to scheme was that there are several dreams within my dream. So, if I want to break that dream into manageable steps (or what Martha calls “turtle steps”), I’ve first got to break down the dream itself into its different parts. As I looked over my dream more closely, I decided that it centers around the desire to start an “Art 4 Justice” company. Here are the different pieces of that company:
- WEBSITE – I want to create a website that brings together already-existing resources, artists, and organizations that are doing some form of “art for justice.” This would include reaching out to those people and organizations and building a strong community of artists dedicated to justice in the world.
- EDUCATION – This would involve writing a curriculum and teaching “Art 4 Justice” classes. It may also include writing a book about it for publication and sales.
- PERFORMANCE – This is the part where I would build a performance group (music, poetry, etc.) dedicated to bringing about justice through performance.
So, I’ve begun to gather resources into I-Web on my MacBook to create a website. I’ve started putting resources into a folder on my computer also as research for a curriculum and possibly a book. And my new a capella group and poetry workshops are my first “turtle steps” in the direction of a performance group. How exciting is this?!? 
Links
For more on Finding Your Own North Star, go to: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812932188/1n9867a-20
For more on Martha Beck, go to: http://www.marthabeck.com/
On Tuesday evening, I went to my 2nd MuseDaze at Bar 35 with Evelyn and Sarah. This time, Darron Cambra led the free poetry workshop. It was really fun. Evelyn can’t make it this week (tomorrow), but I’m looking forward to hopefully going with Sarah again.
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Slam Poet Bridget Gray led the workshop this week. (I understand that it might be someone different each time.) The performance exercise she had us do, which was to say the dialogue she gave us with the emotion of something we’d just written, was uncomfortable, but I suppose many new and different things are! She gave us a bunch of interesting writing exercises, too, and at the end, we all read something we’d written.
People with a lot of money don’t always know what to do with it, and they end up wasting it on extravagant material items that they think 
will make them happier (and never do). If I have more money than I need, I will give it to organizations that are working hard to make a positive difference in the world. In one of my blogs here I will make a list of some of the organizations I have found thus far that I think are really worthy of support. My intention is to always live within my means, not to create a life of luxury for myself while so many others in the world are going hungry and dying of very curable diseases. I want to put that extra money to good use and help those in need. I have been blessed with a relatively rich life, and I vow to try to make things more fair for all in the world, whether I have a bunch of money to help me do it or just my imagination and dedication.
