This weekend I had the great pleasure of attending a birthday dinner for a friend. It was at a local Chinese food restaurant, and not only was it delicious (two thumbs up for the Ginger Chicken!), but it was also a whole lot of fun. Maybe it was the wine and company, the festive nature of birthdays, or the mere fact that it was a rare night for me go to out, away from my children, but we were having quite a lovely time. Until the cheering started.
You see, the restaurant was divided into two spaces – a larger, main room which housed a Chinese wedding reception, and a smaller, anteroom which housed everybody else (I came to think of it as “the white room”, but I digress). Every so often, amidst our own cheerful conversations and humorous menu decisions, there would be a bubble burst of laughter from the other room. The tin roof rain of tinking wine glasses. At one point, the sweeping crescendo of a look-at-you-being-all-naughty “woooo” even.
The Anonymous Happy Couple.
Now, you might think that that sort of thing would be highly disruptive to our party. Nothing like having to listen to the tipsy ramblings of a distant relative at some stranger’s wedding – in a completely foreign language no less! But it was quite the opposite, in fact. Each and every one of us couldn’t help but get carried away with the pure joy radiating from the other room. Instead of drowning out our own experience, it elevated us above and beyond what was already a wonderful time. Cheers to the happy couple, indeed!
This got me thinking about what an emotional sponge I can be sometimes. It’s actually gotten to the point where I will often avoid people who are perpetually negative (like my Eeyore-ish mother) because I don’t like who I become when I’m around them. I try to surround myself with the kinds of people that I would like to be, recognizing that we all have our “off” days now and again. And so far, it’s working out rather nicely. Thanks, peeps! (P.S. If I haven’t seen you in a while, I’m really not avoiding you – just ridiculously busy these days…probably.)
It also got me wondering about the whole activity factor. Kind of like when you get a “gym buddy” to help motivate you to get your butt exercising. I am finding that by merely looking at the blogs of people like me, I am getting motivated to keep going with my own work. It’s reassuring and inspirational to find other moms who started out small, and relatively inexperienced, and who are now full time “artists” or successful “contributors” of one kind or another. I guess that’s what having a mentor would be like, don’t you think?
Anyhow, I decided to put this “momentum piggybacking” to yet another use today. After constructing a set piece for a friend’s show, I decided to make use of my already warmed-up sewing machine. I’ve been meaning to recover my office chair, so today, I did.
My cheesy IKEA office chair transformed.
The “walkabout” motif on a former tablecloth from Australia.
Let’s hear it for riding the wave! Oh, and for those of you interested, the Scrapbooking pages have been constructed and uploaded to the Gallery. Enjoy!
Tags: emotional sponge, inspiration, momentum, motivation, piggybacking
I just got home from “work club”. A friend who is doing her Ph.D. and I have decided that writing near each other is for some reason easier than writing alone. And it is. It’s because you imagine that the other person is more focused, inspired and tireless than you. So you pretend to be like that, too, and somehow pretending makes it so. Piggyback momentum, indeed.
Dave was just saying how working with Tony and Rob on The Correctness (thecorrectness.com) has made him way more productive than he would have otherwise been. Why I never caught on to this phenomenon before is beyond me. =) K