Curriculum Revised

Spring Semester Curriculum 1/24/11 – 5/13/11

Sunday-Friday 30 minutes writing, 30 minutes dance is required.  On the 7th day, I rest.

Monday

9-10 am Morning Pages.  3 pages of free form writing, can include my dreams to practice lucidity, fears to clear cobwebs

10:15-11:15 Drawing. Reading Material Drawing with the Right side of the brain change to Feng Shui book Feng Shui A Practical Guide for Architects and Designers and why I am changing classes.

Drawing uploads are due February 18th, March 18th and the final project is Due May 8th.  Final project to be determined.  Read exercise for 30 minutes, draw for 30 minutes each class.

–change  projects to Feng Shui our current house

Take 5 pictures of any way that I used Feng Shui and write about how it helped me grow.  February 18th, March 18th and May 8th.

Final project is final plans to be submitted.  This is a two semester project.  Feng Shui photographs will be due at the end of construction and along the way.

11:15 – 12:15 Creative writing. Write the first draft of my piece for that day.  Reading is the little book on writing, which name escapes me at that moment.  Shula’s Brother gave it to me.  I just googled it and found something else also helpful How to Write With Style.

I got my next clue for next semester I will read The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White recommended by Kurt Vonnegut, thanks!

12:15-2 pm Break and Recess (all emailing or facebooking is to be done at this time or prior to class.  Never during class hours)

2-3pm Finance and Math.  Required reading for this class is Money Maturity.  This hour will be spent doing the exercises in the book.  Its due at 3 pm.  I will post few exercises to my blog.

3:15-4:15 Fix the writing draft and upload it by 4:15 pm.  The writing has 4 hours a week, plus the required 30 minutes a day.  During the 4 hours of class time, I will be working on my script.  This time will also be used for the production of the script.  The final project is Due May 3rd.  It will be a 13 minute Pilot of the show. (Ohh scary commitment, I know nothing about pilots).

4-5 pm Time to work on any unfinished creative projects of the day and answering Olia College related emails.

Yura has Class Monday nights this semester so after I put Isaiah to sleep at 7:30 I have from 8-10 pm to do any homework left over from class.

Wednesday

9-10 am Morning Pages

10:15-11:15 Dance Class Zumba

Other days Dance is open.  Make sure to prepare your iPod selections.  Dance can be Solo or an actual class in the neighborhood.  I will have a performance piece and upload the video to the blog.  Dance pieces are due March 30th and May 1st is the final.  The final project is to write about that experience.   Final video will be submitted with my final writing.

Thursday

School meets work. Today I start my morning going to GAS half day of school, half day of work.  It turns out it’s the only way I can do two full days of class.

9-10 am Morning pages

10:15-11:15 am Finance and Math, Money Maturity

11:15-12:15 First Draft Creative Writing

12:30-4:15 work on Olia Designs.  Looks like it’s a 4 hour week.  I need to read that book, I think it can help me now.  I literally will have a 4  hour week.

Tuesdays and Fridays during Isaiah’s nap I will work on Olia Designs as well.  Tuesday and Friday 1:30-2:30 pm, Olia Designs.

Thursday nights, Yura has school so I will work on Olia College homework  8 pm – 9 pm.

Otherwise Tuesday and Friday, I am all Isaiah’s!  Mama Time!

Tuesday and Friday Nap time do first draft of writing and house chores.

Weekends are leisure time.  Saturday no writing.  Sunday writing.  If I did not do Friday writing, I do it on Saturday.

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Feng Shui for Me

11:32 AM

Today is my official second day of college.  I did my morning pages.  They revealed a lot.  I am confused about my college.  I do not know what it is yet.  I made a schedule that is not working.  I will be changing my curriculum.  I made classes that I do not want to go to.  Like drawing, just not feeling it.  I made requirements, I cannot maintain.  Dancing, I have not had energy after my cold.  I am disappointing myself and you but I have not danced in 5 days.  I have to cut down to three times a week.  It will take time to figure out a system.

Recently I bought three books on Feng Shui.  I want to learn Feng Shui because my husband and I are renovating our first home.  I have read one short book on Feng Shui years ago.  It is faint in my mind.  For a while used the concepts.  I made intentions, I moved furniture, I cleared clutter, I organized, I placed objects to symbolize things I wanted to manifest in my life, it worked every time.  Creating energy in my outer spaces consciously allowed my mind to have space.  I need more now.  We will be moving walls soon.  I want those walls to move consciously.

I was due to Draw 10:15-11:15 am but instead I picked up my Feng Shui A Practical Guide for Architects and Designers.  I am on page 11 and already I highly recommend this book (especially to you, Lisa).  It is grounded and smart.  A synchronicity happened on the second page.  The Feng Shui author started talking about Left and Right brain.  That sounded familiar, since my drawing text-book was Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain, I flipped the page and there it was, a reference to the Author of Drawing on the Right side of the brain by Betty Edwards, the very book I was supposed to study in my canceled drawing class.  It turns out she also has a book on Feng Shui.  This was a synchronicity not to be ignored.  It said, switching my curriculum is ok.   I am attracted to the same concepts, no matter what book I pick up.  Or they are attracted to me.

As I sat reading my book this morning, I was asking myself, what is it about Feng Shui that I love so much.  Why am I drawn to this subject.  The answer came quickly as I read the fundamentals.  Feng shui is a healing art.  It is seemingly about arranging space and furniture and cleaning your room but that is like saying yoga is about having a nice body.  If therapy works from inside out, Feng Shui works from outside in.  I can look at my environment and figure out my inner world.

Somewhat consciously, my husband and I created the space around ourselves in our current apartment.  In our creation of our first real home I want to be as conscious as I am in undertaking any new project going forward.  I want to know that every bit of energy I exert is for my own highest good and therefore for the highest good of everyone around me.  I want my home to be a sanctuary.

We went to see a renovation of this couple’s house in our neighborhood.  The wife  said that she wanted her home to be a sanctuary.  I cringed a little bit.  It sounded pompous to me to have such high aspiration.  But then I thought about it.  A sanctuary just means a place that is safe and sacred to you.  I am not about to put the Virgin Mary statue inside our house but I will be putting objects far more sacred to me, like Isaiah’s crib.

My first semester is to clear myself from inside out AND from outside in.

11:06 pm

Dance Day 9, Back to School

9:55 pm

I wrote my post in my diary and now just have to rewrite.  Yura was using the laptop so I had to wait.  My mind is exploding with things I want to write about.  I want to tell so many stories.  Stories of today, the past and the future.  I am not sure what happened today, it seemed so normal.  Beach, Lola came over with Max, swam in the pool, lunch, swam in the cold ocean (cold swimming better than no swimming), beach at sunset with Isaiah and Yura, danced on the empty beach for them, compliment from the guy taking away the beach chairs, “You are the best dancer on the beach”, Thank you, dinner, bedtime, cleaning, laundry, journal, discovery.

I was going to write about poor vs. rich.  I was going to write about synchronicity continued, telling stories about the synchronous events of my life.  I was going to write about college and how Marina, Lisa and I always wanted to write a show together.  I was going to write about swimming in the North Sea (naked I think) with my sister in Sweden.  I was going to write about the importance of travel and how it is always spiritual.  I was going to write about my own ongoing journey from cynic to spirit (to answer the question that Corinne was asking).  I was going to write about the meaning of friendship and how confusing it is (best friend, can you have more than one.  Can you call two or three people your best friends).  My mind was just going through stories today.  Anything I did, my mind was writing.  It was fun but too much, I needed it out of my head.  I wanted to focus on my day because it was not a day to escape.  It was another perfect Miami day.  I love Miami!

Then I started writing, and this is what came out.

Olia College of the Finest Arts

Spring Semester Curriculum

School starts at 9 am.

9 -10 am Write down or audio record your dream from the night before and put it online (inspired by Mommy Theorist).  Post to blog by 10 am.  Everyone needs rules.  Olia College has deadlines.  If I miss the 10 am deadline, my grace period ends at 10:15.  If I miss more than 3 grace periods, I will have to publicly revise my Curriculum to fit it my current needs.

Classes are 2 full days a week.  I will do Mondays and Thursdays.  Classes run 9 am – 5 pm with a 2 hour lunch and recess.

10-11 am Dance alternating with Drawing.  Monday Dance.  Thursday Drawing. TBA which days.

Dance is open.  Make sure to prepare your iPod selections.  Dance can be Solo or an actual class in the neighborhood.  Once a month I will have a performance piece and upload the video to the blog.  Dance pieces are due February 28th, March 30th and May 1st is the final.  The final project is to write about that experience.   Final video will be submitted with my final writing.

Drawing.  Drawing is the same as dance.  Drawing uploads are due February 18th, March 18th and the final project is Due May 8th.

11-12 pm Creative writing.  Write the first draft of my piece for that day.

12-2 pm Break and Recess (all emailing or facebooking is to be done at this time or prior to class.  Never during class hours)

2-3 pm  Finance and Math.  Required reading for this class is Money Maturity.  This hour will be spent doing the exercises in the book.  Its due at 3 pm.  Posting the exercise to my blog.

3-4 pm Fix the writing draft and upload it by 4 pm.  The writing has 4 hours a week, plus the required 30 minutes a day.  During the 4 hours of class time, I will be working on my script.  This time will also be used for the production of the script.  The final project is Due May 3rd.  It will be a 13 minute Pilot of the show. (Ohh scary commitment, I know nothing about pilots).

4-5 pm Time to work on any unfinished creative projects of the day and answering Olia College related emails.

I want to go to school.  My friend Jamie is going to Kansas.  She just got married in July and lives in Milwaukee.  She is about to go to school for 2 years for Drama Therapy.  Hi Jamie.  She will, most likely, be having a long distance marriage with her husband.  This is courage.  I talked about envy before, as my friend Blue said it best, a clue to “I want that”.  I don’t envy Jamie, it is her own adventure.   I don’t want to leave my husband and Isaiah and I cannot.  But, I do envy the school for two years part.  All the dots are starting to connect.  All the seedlings are sprouting.   All the fruits are ripening.  The eggs are starting to hatch.

I wanted to take a Sabbatical year to write.  Yury’s friend, Brooke is on a Sabbatical.  She is a tenured professor.  She has a baby almost a year older than Isaiah.  What I am trying to say is, she is young.  I kept bumping into her.  It feels like everywhere I went in the neighborhood, there was Brooke, catching me off guard.  In Celestine Prophecy it says that if you bump into a person on your path, you should ask them if they have a message for you.  She had a message.  I don’t know her very well, but enough to have a small chat.  I think 6 months ago, during our bump in, she started telling me about her Sabbatical year coming up.  A year that she gets to work on whatever she wants to work on with whom ever she wants.  I said, “Wow, that’s great!”  I asked some questions but inside, I was thinking “Wow, that’s great!”  Really great.  You can only do it if you are a tenured professor?  That’s not great.  I want to do it.

Since then, I’ve been rolling the idea over and over in my head.  What is a Sabbatical for me?  What would I do?  Would I just become a stay at home mom?  That’s no Sabbatical, I hear.  I love the Sabbath.  I want a Sabbatical.  Olia Designs has officially been in business Since April 3, 2003 (the day I left Salomon Smith Barney; April 3rd is also the first day that the main character in 1984 starts to go against the “Big Brother”, it’s probably a lot of other things, but I only connect those two).  I know my business can run without me.  Corinne and Satomi ran it for 6 months when I was in Miami.  They ran it when Isaiah was born.  Nobody noticed.  I can still design my collections, it will just have to be less.  Less is more, I learn that everyday.  Right now I have hundreds of great designs that need only slight updating to get them just right or 2011.  Plus, I am almost done with my Spring/Summer 11 collection, which is half the year already.  I will be expanding on my new piece the Orchid.  I released it early for feedback.  I got it.  Its an instant hit, everywhere I brought it, it sold.  Spring/Summer 2011, done.  The Fall/Winter 2011 I can do during my summer break.

I will set up my College because I need structure.  Structure is important.  Without structure, nothing can be built.  I have two more pages to copy but I am about to run out of my grace period.

Spring Semester starts January 23rd.  Thanks to the mall across the street, I already did my back to school clothes shopping 🙂  I will be going to Olia College in style and with red lipstick on.  (Thanks Christine for that tip).