"Vacation"

I went to the grocery store and the girl behind the counter bubbled over with friendliness.  I gave her a look of "I just got off from work and could care less. Get me out of here so I can go home and eat."  She was oblivious.

She's never been on a plane, never been anywhere, but she's going to California!!  Have I ever been?!  Did I like it?  Is it wonderful?!!  I sighed defeat to her friendliness.  I heard all about her plans and watched her half-assed scanning of my food.  I'm pretty sure she scanned some of it 3x in her uncontrolled jubilation.  Talking to the effervescent cashier made me miss a friend in LA and think about getting a plane ticket... ?

I've been thinking of friends a lot lately.  I brooded and kept staring at a 2' x 4' canvas that I've been carrying around the house for about a year.  I'm sure I had a plan for it at one time, but whatever that was is anybody's guess.  I decided to make a friend painting after my friend Korki suggested a zen painting where you just paint lines, and every line is "right" because it's there.

What resulted from her suggestion is clearly a for-me kind of thing that veered from the original suggestion.  I painted names of every friend I could remember -- which looked like a pre-teen autograph book.  I journaled around the edges and over names.  I had awesome insights and wrote over older entries.  I put subtle dots over all of it, covering some people and more entries...I started seeing patterns in my friendships.  zzzzZENnnnnn and growth.

I came to some decisions, or maybe it would be better to say affirmations/intentions.  I want to hang out with fun people.  Kind, caring, interesting, supportive, creative... and avoid people who don't foster those things in me.  I want to focus on good people, and there are a lot more of them than the bad ones.  I started feeling bad memories fade away in the sunlight of good people's influence in my life.

Things I know to be true:  It is always right to love.  I don't have to justify loving anyone to anyone else.  It doesn't even matter if they love me back.  Having an open heart is the most important thing.

I put the most influential "friends" in the row of whitest dots.  Friends is in quotes because they include exes and siblings, but those kinds of relationships are friendships too.  Each of these people taught me a major life lesson(s).  It was hard to limit this list because there are other people who also matter a lot.  If you're on the list, thank you.  If you've been my friend, thank you for that too.

I think I got about 5 years of therapy out of one painting.  The center color is the same as my living room wall.  I wanted this to be a subtle thing I see every day to remind myself what I value.

When the friendly cashier bubbled over at me I had to remind myself that I'm open to friendliness.  New lessons, new optimism, positivity!!  More fun!!!  More exclamation marks!!!  I walked out of the store chuckling and shaking my head over her exuberance, and grew some more.  I'm going to do more of this kind of painting and recommend it to everybody!!!