The Porch Postscript

Start again.   Find your path.   Look beyond the now.   Learn to grow.   Trust your inner self.   Find courage.   Step away from comfortable.   Seek your own peace.   Be your own light.   Move past the fear.   Accept the compliments.   Be confident in your own skin.   Accept yourself.   Seek your heart's truth.  Find creative peace.   Build the path one stone at a time, remember Rome wasn't built in a day.   Who said that anyway?   Stop being someone's afterthought.   Build the success you desire.   Open your own doors.   Use your passion.   Learn to satisfy your personality.

Good morning.  Are you sitting down?  Do you have a good cup of coffee?  I hope so because this is gonna be a little long and maybe a little deep. I know it's been months since I wrote a post, and I'll be honest, I'm not gonna apologize.  I've been working on some personal growth. At the beginning of the year, I did something I've never done, I picked a phrase to lead me through the year - "Inward Acceptance."  When I picked this phrase I really didn't think it would impact my life that much.  I was wrong.  It's five months later and I'm in such a different place.  I've been exploring a lot of things, so of which are a bit more personal than I want to share here, but good things have happened and are continuing to happen. I dropped a lot of things and opened myself to my own talents and started telling the world I'm an artist.  This was a HUGE step for me.  I've spent several months drawing, painting and working on things,

January is drawing to a close, and I'm reflecting.  Reflecting on the direction I'd like to take all three of my blogs.  Reflecting on where I want to take my creativity.  Reflecting on my journaling journey. Three blogs, it's a lot, but it is what it is.  I needed separation with this new blogging journey.  In the past, it was all dumped in one place and in the end, it just didn't work.   Here on The Porch Postscript , I've built a place for me to purge random thoughts and ideas about my life.  Things will wax and wane here, some spurts being longer than others.  You might also notice there are times of crickets here.  Not all my thoughts need to be public.  Trust me! Stacy Petersen Photography is just what it says it is.  It's my photography portfolio.  The words are limited here.  I share photo title and the place and date taken.  I haven't put anything new up in a while, but I'll get back to it when the weather gets nice again.  I'm

It's been a while since I wrote, and some of you might be wondering why.  The answer is simple - I've been holed up in my studio creating, which is by far my most loved thing in the world.  When the desire to create hits, the desire to do much else disappears.  I love making things, and while I have dozens of crafty options, paper is my first love. Over the weekend I listened to a few episodes of Crafty Chat on YouTube.  There were a couple of episodes with the CEO of Hero Arts that I really enjoyed, probably because it took me down memory lane.  Back to the days of mail order rubber stamp catalogs, before the big scrapbooking trend and way before mixed media was a thing.  It dawned on me, I've been doing this for a really long time, nearly three decades, a quarter of a century. I wandered down this path when I was in high school when a rubber stamping store opened in my hometown.  Rocky Mountain Impressions was a tiny little shop, lined with wood mounted stamps.  It

I don't think people realize how healing creativity is.  No.  Really.  I've been creative my whole life and as I have gotten older and struggled through rough spots in life I've realized that my art and creativity help me get through those bumps in life.  It rebuilds my momentum and fills up the spots in my soul that stress and daily life drain out and empty. I've spent the quite a bit of time in my studio creating and working on new cards, the last few days.  Trying new techniques and looking for myself in the lost chaos of the daily grind.  While I have a day job that I love, but it's taxing on my mind and sometimes my emotions, often times stressful.  Being creative helps refill all those places.  It gives me time to let my mind wander and be free.   Right now I'm focused on exploring mixed media and learning new techniques to stash in my mental closet of card making skills.  This is where you picture that hall closet that is stuffed to the max and

Are you ready for another round from the well of my deep thoughts?  Yes?  Well ready or not, here we go, down the rabbit hole of Stacy's wandering mind. The past couple of days I've really begun to wonder where have all the manners gone?  No.  Seriously.  Do you know?  When did we become such a rude, self-obsessed, self-serving bunch of knotheads? In the past few days, as in since Monday, I've been called names, hung up on, and yelled at for things I can't and don't control.  I've had people just walk in and interrupt meetings, without even a blink or apology for the interruption.  Again I ask when did we become so rude? When did it become acceptable to talk on the phone while mailing a package, ordering food or doing business at the bank?  When did it become acceptable to talk back to the customer in a demeaning tone?  When did rudeness become the norm? I was taught - You give the janitor the same respect as the president of the company .  In high sch

Are you a societal failure?  WOW!  Did I just opened a big can of worms, didn't I?  Yep.  Get your coffee and let's talk about this. I'm a societal failure!  I don't fit the mold on so many levels.  What's more, I'm proud of it!  How have I failed in the eyes of society?  I don't have a degree, I got married later, I don't have kids and I'm an artist. Let's start with NO COLLEGE DEGREE.  That's right, I don't have a degree.  What's more, I don't want one.  Now, let's put things on the table right now.  I'm not against college.  I work with college-bound students five days a week.  However, college isn't for everyone and it shouldn't be forced on anyone, let alone someone who is still trying to figure out what they're interests are. We start asking children what they want to be when they grow up once they're  old enough to talk.  They tout things that don't always fit in the box society has built