retinal perspectives

a sense of trust, volume 16

{my attempt to capture 52 photos that represent trust - my word for 2011}

trust seems to involves turning inside for my answers, instead of always turning outside.

a miracle

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."

- Buddha

the user experience

i am now the happy owner of an iphone (which i adore and have named cleo, after cleopatra) so i've been thinking a lot about usability.

a year or two after i started working, i read a book called the inmates are running the asylum. the author explained that high-tech products are driving us crazy because they are designed by engineers who design products for users who are just like them; they don't realize how hard the products are to use for the average user. the book was fascinating. the behaviors familiar. and in it, i found my passion.

that passion drove me for many years. my eventual goal was to get into a group that focused on the user, even though i didn't have one of the typical degrees. i read and learned about usability and user-centered design. i learned how to run usability tests. i worked even longer hours so i could volunteer to do fun side projects related to usability for the products i worked on. i conducted informational interviews with people who had related jobs so i could learn what else to learn. i even wrote an essay - purely for fun - about how i had found the perfect thing for me and how it connected all my interests and how lucky i felt to have found my passion so early.

and then that passion faded. right about the time i discovered reiki.

when i quit my job to be a reiki person, a part of me was so very confused (as, no doubt, were many people i worked with). how could i work so hard for so long for something that i thought was my dream only to abandon it for something else. something that, truth be told, didn't seem to have the same level of passion behind it. (well, this may or may not be true. i think passion has many forms.) what if that really was my dream and now i was even further away from it.

after months of angst and confusion, i found my way to the truth.

the reason i care so much about how things work is because our experience with devices or applications or web pages is often full of frustration, pain, hopelessness, powerlessness. we feel like we must not be smart enough. we feel like we can't be trusted to make the right decisions. i've been there. we've all been there. i wanted to help make those experiences better.

the essence of user-centered design and usability is the interaction - the relationship - between the user and the thing they're using, whether it's a device or an application or a web page. when that relationship works, it is full of qualities like trust and sovereignty and permission and ease and safety and support and beauty and hope.

i still care about all of that. only in learning to listen to myself, i realized how very much i care about the interactions - the relationship - we have with our own self, our own body, our own life.

it turns out that i didn't lose my passion. it was there all along, waiting for me to realize it. oh, i suppose it's possible that someday i might decide that i want to help make applications that work. for now, i find it comforting to know that the thing i cared so much about is still the thing i care so much about. it just changed form a little.

yogi the pup

the other day, atlas moved into an effortless downward dog. while he was still in the pose, he let out a groan that sounded EXACTLY like "ommmmmmmmm". it was the best thing ever.

a sweet treat or two from around the web

a blue bird from marcie scudder

love will find you out from jen lemen

your beauty from julie daley

monday poem from madelyn mulvaney

and in case you were thinking about it, just a reminder that there are a few days left for the april reiki specials.

happy tuesday, my friends!

every day is earth day

i tend to skip "happy holiday" posts. partly because i am learning what holidays or events are meaningful to me, instead of just celebrating things because that's what i think i'm supposed to do or because that's what i've always done.

i did, however, mean to do an earth day post. i like to remember to do something nice to celebrate our home. clearly i forgot my plan when i was writing friday's post.

on the bright side, it occurred to me over the weekend that really, every day on my blog is earth day. because of the pictures, yes, but also because i care about love & kindness.

i absolutely believe that as it gets easier to extend more and more love & kindness to our own self, it gets easier to extend more and more love & kindness to others, and then it gets easier to extend more and more love & kindness to the planet we live on and to all its inhabitants.

love makes the world go round.

a sense of trust, volume 15

{my attempt to capture 52 photos that represent trust - my word for 2011}

i am learning to trust that i am enough, exactly as i am.

mi burro

atlas dragged me all around the tulip fields. he was not interested in the pretty tulips. no, sir. he was looking for something else. eventually, i realized what it was.

there were two girls posing by the fence with the burros for a photo. until atlas arrived. the burros walked out of the photo to come meet atlas and they all sniffed each other happily through the fence. it was very sweet.

painting without painting

painting without a paintbrush - in the tulip fields.

i can't believe i am lucky enough to live in a state with tulip fields. well, i think michigan had them too - i remember singing, "tulips are blooming in holland, michigan" when i was little - but they would have been hours and hours away from me. i can't believe i am lucky enough to live less than an hour from a tulip field.

a world with tulip fields is a wonderful place. i feel so lucky to be alive in it.

if there is such a thing as past lives

i must have picked up some seriously good karma in my last life, to have the wonder that is atlas in the everyday of my current one.