Why balance pose?

The first four or five names that I came up with for my blog were already taken, including my favorite, "Big Muddy Blog." We call our property "big muddy" because of the way it gets in the winter and spring with the rains. The property is one big slope, and the water drains down through the sandy soil until it hits the clay soil, and there the drainage is so poor that we get big standing puddles of water. When the rain is really coming down, other parts run like a river.

You may or may not know that "big muddy" is a nickname for the Rio Grande, and we live nowhere near the Rio Grande. But someone who does already got my first choice of a blog name!

Balance pose was one entry in a long list of brainstormed names. As I crossed off the "definitely nots" and got down to a few possibilities, balance pose became more and more resonant. My life is a balancing act -- at times I am successful at keeping everything I am juggling in the air, and other times it all comes crashing down around me. That's a little overly dramatic: at times of frustration I feel I'm doing nothing very well because my attention is so divided. But, I really don't know how to function any other way, and I'm not sure I would want to. I love all the things I do, and at this point wouldn't want to eliminate anything.

I was a little concerned that people would assume this was a yoga blog. And then I realized, what people? Yoga IS one of my interests, and I take classes with a wonderful teacher, Rhonda. I practice some on my own but for some reason not as much as I wish I would. I practice balance poses every morning when I get dressed, as I put on various articles of clothing and balance on one foot and then the other. I've actually gotten better and better at this...you know what they say about practice!

Some of the interests and activities that I balance are making art, teaching art, and looking at art; Master Gardener activities; buying and selling antiques and collectibles at Bluebonnet Square Antiques in Huntsville, Texas; setting up a shop on Etsy and trying to learn all about selling online; training and playing with Sparky, the crazy border collie mix dog we acquired last spring; having fun with my wonderful husband, Martin; maintaining relationships with friends and family who are dear but not near. My intention is that this will be mostly an art blog -- sharing my own work, my teaching, and art that I go look at -- but I know at times I'll be focused on one of these other areas of my life. And now I have a new interest -- blogging!