21 Days to Creative Abundance - Day 16

Estudia

Weird Story: Many years ago, I attended a Consciousness & Business conference in Puerto Vallarta. While there, I met a Mexican guy who recommended a Siddha Yoga group in Santa Barbara, where I lived at the time. I really liked it and went to their New Year’s celebration weekend.

One day, after getting up early for meditation, by mid-afternoon I was ready for a nap. Just as I was falling asleep, a word popped into my head and I forced myself to write it down and then went to sleep.

When I woke up, I found the note and the word was “estudia.” At the time, I knew a smattering of Spanish, enough to know that it meant “study” … or could mean “es tu día,” it’s your day. I thought it was interesting but just tucked it away as a “who knows?"

The challenge I worked on for today was about creating a visual reminder of a resolution important for our art. Since I had already decided that studying Spanish a critical skill for my art, I decided that needed to be the reminder piece.. 

I have long loved Mary Oliver’s line, “One day, you finally knew what you had to do and began …,” so I started playing with those words, stripping them down to their essence and turning them into Spanish, changing tenses, adjusting the person, trying to find the right look and sound. For most of the time, I was using the infinitive for study: estudiar. Then I decided it had to be a command and looked up that tense only to find: estudia.

Suddenly, in that moment, that nappy word on a scrap of paper came back to me. Weird? Coincidence? A message from the Universe or just a word? I’m choosing to take it as a confirmation that I should be studying Spanish and, perhaps, it has just taken me a long and winding path to get here.

This post was prompted by Sebastian Michael's "21 Days to Creative Living" and "Photoshop Artistry" programs. More information here.