Encourage Your Kids While You Can

I was thinking today about encouragement and how important it is to receive it during childhood. I don’t have kids. I did want them but I wasn’t blessed with them. But one thing I was thinking about as I was having this conversation was how important it is to really encourage kids. I know that my parents loved me, but I don’t think they encouraged me all the time like I needed to be. I think they thought they were. But I didn’t feel encouraged to try things and pursue things.

As an adult I am finding I am better at things than I realized. I didn’t pursue education in these things. I just kept doing them because I liked them. Thankfully some of it worked! While my writing isn’t Pulitzer quality, it is therapeutic for me and some people do enjoy it. While my art isn’t on the same level as Van Gogh, I did a painting inspired by his “Irises”.  Below is my painting. I hope you enjoy.

The point to this blog is that I hope parents will watch their kids and see what their interests are and encourage them. It may not be something you have any real knowledge about, but you can encourage them and help them learn more. Maybe you can even learn more with them. Kids need encouragement. It helps them know they can do something. So often we are plagued with others telling us we can’t or we hear our own inner voice telling us that things are impossible. If we have the people we love the most cheering us on, then we can achieve more. This even works in adulthood. Who doesn’t need a cheerleader?

Artistic Inspiration

As you know from my blog, I like to write. But I also love to paint. I found that I loved painting a few years back and I kick myself for not doing it sooner. It amazes me that something so dear to my heart came at such a late point in life. I feel such a sense of freedom when I paint. It doesn’t have to be this way or that way. It just is what it is or what I want it to be. It doesn’t have to look like anything in particular. It can be colors blended together in harmony.

I have had some people ask me where I get my artistic inspiration. For my painting I get it everywhere. I love to paint landscapes so I just look outside and see what is out there. If I don’t see anything I like, I look online. The internet is a great tool for finding inspiration. Sometimes I will go to Google images and just randomly type in words and see what pops up. It is amazing to just look through the images with keywords. For instance, I love to look at pictures and paintings of fire. While fire can be dangerous, if you ever look at it closely, it has a beauty to it. The colors in it are amazing. It has red, orange, blue, yellow, and even some white. Those colors blend so well together. I also love trees. I love the shapes and colors of trees and I love the movement of them. I don’t have that many trees where I live and typically when I am thinking about trees it is a little dark to go looking at them. So Google assists me.

The inspiration for my writing comes from every day life. Life is quite interesting, whether it is mine or someone else’s. And sometimes writing about it just makes me feel better. There are so many things going on in the world that I don’t think they could all be written about. I do creative writing as well as opinion writing and humorous (I hope) writing. I like to laugh at what I call the absurdity of life. Life can certainly throw us some curves and they come in all forms and fashions. Some of them are so ridiculous that you have to laugh. Creative writing is a combination of things I make up and things I have seen. It is quite rare that I take anything real and put it into my writing. I may take a situation I have heard about and throw it into the mix but it usually is something not affecting people I really know. As for the opinion stuff…well, I have lots of opinions. Mama raised me to think about things quite a bit and formulate my own opinions. I still do it and I often just say it. Some people like it and some people don’t . Personally, I don’t care. Just don’t condemn me for using my brain because I don’t tolerate that.

If you ever get bored, try some of these artistic inspirations. They are helpful. I promise. People do wonder how I can entertain myself so easily. This is how. I know how to find things to make my brain’s wheels keep turning. I love looking at beautiful things. I love writing about life and making up lives. You might find that this is a fun way to entertain and inspire yourself as well.