Week One Challenge: Making Lemons Into Really Tasty Strawberry Fizzy Lemonade

COPYRIGHT MARGOT POTTER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This is my diary from the 8th grade.  It was a very, very tough year.  It's a very, very funny read.  What is fascinating about this diary is that I don't really talk about the things that made it a tough year.  I talk about the boy I was obsessed with, my best friend, being in the school play, what I got for Christmas.  Somehow in this very, very tough year, I survived by not focusing on the tough parts.  That's not to say I ignored them, I just chose not to get stuck in them.  They were too painful to write down, so I wrote around them.  This diary is so dorky, so funny and so wonderful.  When I'm feeling really beat up, I read this little message from the 13 year old me and I immediately feel better.

At some point we can no longer wallow in our pain, at some point we have to roll up our sleeves and mold it into something new. Sometimes a mud pie is the best therapy going. Sometimes we have to let go and laugh out loud at highly inappropriate things. Sometimes it's about making lemons into really tasty strawberry fizzy lemonade. Sometimes it's about pouring enough glitter on the nasty thing that it starts to sparkle in spite of itself.

If you've got something dragging you down right now, what can you do about it?

If you can't change it, can you change how you look at it?

Because unless it's going to kill you, and even if it is, as long as you have a breath in your body you don't have to let it define you. Let's face it, folks, none of us knows how long we have here. We can choose to be miserable or we can choose joy. It isn't always an easy choice, in fact it can feel impossible. Personally, I am finding it difficult this week to stay on the sunny side, but galdangy I am determined.

So the challenge for this week is to take that thing that is blocking your joy, write it down. 

Look at it. 

Look at the thing that is dragging you down. 

That little old thing? That giant monster? Which is it? Are you going to let that define you?

Or are you going to tear it up and make it into something new?

Make a collage out of that torn up word, turn it into something pretty. Add some paint, glitter, buttons, beads, whatever makes you smile. That's your challenge. I'm playing too.  No, you don't have to be an 'artist' to play, it does not matter what your collage looks like. There are no grades here.

Next week, meet me here. Leave a comment and tell us about making your collage.  If you want to post it on your blog you can leave a link here for us to go see.  Totally up to you.  Maybe one of you? Maybe more? Maybe just me? No matter. This has to start somewhere...and so here it begins.  Stop by this week though, I'll have a little message of encouragement for you every day!

We’re gonna all hang out and while it’s there we’re gonna bedazzle the crap out of it. Woo hoo!

Craft on with your bad selves,

Madge