But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?*
(Quentin Blake)

Paradoxically, a self-centred self cannot become more complex, because all the psychic energy at its disposal is invested in fulfilling its current goals.**

I’ve been playing with a single blog that has altered a little each day.

I’ve included the quote that caught my eye and set up the doodle I’ll be working on through the week.

If you’ve tried doodling through the week, how’s yours been working out?

One of the things I’ve been learning is that what I want^ isn’t where I thought it would be, I had to move to somewhere different if I was to get there: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually – something that I had to learn along the way.

Of course, the place I wanted to go to changed as well.

Who knew what I wanted wasn’t what I wanted?

I’m still learning and moving, with lots of course corrections.

That’s okay, though. T. S. Eliot declared that old men should be explorers. (Women too, please.)

In mapmaking, there was a time when cartographers would fill spaces they didn’t know anything about with sea-monsters.

Then things changed. 

A group of map-makers came along who said “we’re just going to leave areas blank that we don’t know anything about and we’ll fill them in as they’re explored and we know what’s there.”

There are three things I realise I need more of, though, if I am to be an explorer. 

Hope: to move me from here to somewhere out there.

Courage: to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

Seeking: to fall into the exploring life and never stop falling.

Here are three more words I need when things go wrong:

Failing: because I do, time and time again.

Starting over: there’s always the possibility of a new beginning.

Confession: a word to insert between failing and starting over because ‘fessing up not only makes a new beginning possible, but is likely to place us on a mightier way.

*From Quentin Blake’s Angel Pavement:
**From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow;
^I have just been reminded that want can also mean lack.