Time to take a breather...

~ 17 October, 2016 update ~

If you're just stumbling across this blog, or perhaps you discovered it through searching or on a blogroll somewhere, I AM still writing and blogging! I just do it over here now, instead. 

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I first began this blog back in 2008 as a way to promote the animation I was working on. It quickly became a way for me to share my other creative projects and in many ways has been a wonderful tool for inspiration. As I used it to share my art I started to realise that what paid the bills wasn't necessarily what fed my soul and that nothing but my own limited ideas would keep me from living a life I love.

The life I love consists of a vast amount of creative energy, loads of curiosity and wonder, and great enthusiasm for whatever might come up. 

Over the years this blog has evolved as my attitude to my own life has evolved. Through this blog I've shared my work, my contemplations, the things I've been reading, the music I've been listening to...with great joy and simply for the sake of it.

It has become a solid part of my life and it was only recently that it occurred to me that maybe, just perhaps, it's no longer needed.

As my regular readers will know I always have a number of projects going on at any given time. I'm a polymath so I'm always learning something new, playing with a new material, planning another event or trip - always.

The thing is, I reach maximum capacity and every so often I need to assess everything I'm doing and planning and plotting out to see what is ready to be left behind.

Late last year I was accepted as a student by Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel. My Buddhist practice has always been pretty full-on but it's definitely intensified and with that so has my self-awareness and therefore, awareness of my purpose and function in life.

I love to teach. Not in the sense that I think I know anything and have something to pass along but in that I love to help people connect with their own curiosity and wonder. I love to teach and have a great passion for it in everything I do. It's why I started the Dharma series, it's why I wrote 'Wise at any Age' and it's why I've written any of the manuscripts I've written.

I also love to learn, which is why I asked to be Elizabeth's student. Because I never want to stop learning and sharing what I discover from that.

So I've been thinking about this passion and drive I have and realising that there are so many different ways I can express it. And one of the things that's come to me is having a Podcast. A weekly recording that's there to inspire, to engage, to encourage.

I've been mulling this over for some months now, along with other ideas, and I'm fully aware that this is a rather large undertaking. It's a big project, no matter how you look at it. And it will feed other projects, just as 'She Smiled the Widest Smile' has done for so many years.

So in a few weeks I'm beginning something new and in the mean time, at least for now, this will be it for 'She Smiled the Widest Smile.'