Feast or famine. It’s a common enough phrase used to describe how there are times when there is an overabundance of food, and then times when there’s virtually no food.

This can relate to activity as well, how there are times when your calendar is empty, and then times when you’re totally swamped. If you ignore the fact that some things are just cyclical (schools will always try to cram as many end-of-the-year concerts, assemblies, and events as possible into what? Yes, the end of the year.) it seems like there’s more to it, like some unseen natural cyclical time force makes things work this way, similar to how gravity is a force and it makes things fall down instead of up. (Just go with it, folks. It will make more sense in a minute.)

You could say feast or famine is somewhat related to this weird coincidence, called the frequency illusion, that thing when you learn something new and then all of a sudden you see it everywhere? Yes, that’s a real thing and there are reasons for it.  Nice to know you’re not making it up, right?

In another related thread, my family used to talk about what we called the theory of convergence. I’ve now learned this was really a misnomer and the true theory of convergence has to do with the development of societies. In psychology it relates to mob mentality.

We used it in a whole (wrong) different way, but you’d never have known that from us because we were so convincing in our confidence. …So basically we stole the term and changed it entirely.

…As one does.

We swapped out it’s actual meaning and redefined it as this: you can be working your tail off on projects or goals, seeming to get nowhere, and then all of a sudden you’ll have a bunch of breakthrough all at once.

OR

…an alternate meaning was that you might be going along fine and then a bunch of things happen all at once and the only way they are related is that they happen to YOU.

For negative example in a homeownership situation, you might arrive at home to discover your garage door is stuck shut, the water softener has leaked all over the basement and your refrigerator died. No actual reason for any of these things to happen on the same day or time period, except THEORY OF CONVERGENCE.

In a positive light you might have a deadline for a big project you’ve been developing for many months at work, and that deadline just happens to coincide with a great opportunity to volunteer for a big conference when you can demonstrate art journaling to huge crowds, AND it’s all around one of your kids’ birthdays. Just as a hypothetical example.

The THEORY OF CONVERGENCE (albeit the wrong, not scientifically accurate version) — it’s a real thing.

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This is what I’ve been working with for the past month or so, this theory of convergence. It’s been great but pretty busy and you just can’t say yes to all the things, as much as you might want to. So things here had to quiet down for a bit, but I’d love to share a few photos with you about what’s been going on.

Over at Get Messy, we’re still in the season of kindness, so I’ve been creating pages semi-related to that theme.

Today I have a tutorial up on the  Get Messy Art Journal website. If you want to see the whole thing, it does require a membership. Maybe you should consider joining? We have so much fun over there. Here’s a little peek at what I made:

I’m going to do a round-up of the Season of Kindness in a couple weeks, so check back for that!

Here are a few examples of things I’ve been working on.

Demonstrating how to art journal

Earlier this month I was invited to demonstrate art journaling at a local conference. I drastically underestimated the size of the conference, and the interest people would have in my demonstration! Holy moly people were into it! I had prepared 60 small handmade journals and at the end of the first day I only had 15 left. It was a great problem to have.

It was a great experience and I was so happy to connect with so many lovely people.

Four (lucky-duck) folks also won small mixed media pieces I had created for the event. This is one of them…

Almost too much fun

On top of all this, the kids had spring break, one of the kids had a birthday, AND there was a deadline for a huge work project. So much activity, so many good things, why must you happen all at once? Even if I have been using the wrong definition for theory of convergence, my meaning works to describe the layers upon layers of opportunity and possibility lately.

A wise man once said, “Enjoy the process”, and I’m going to try to do that in the moment, rather than being overly concerned with what develops out of it.

Hope you can do the same!