Do you ever feel overwhelmed by everything? When all that needs to be done, or decided upon, or fixed, or tolerated, or accepted whirls around in your brain endlessly and the enormity of it all overwhelms you?

That’s where I am at the moment.

There’s so much to attend to. I’m not talking about Christmas – ours is usually fairly calm and simple. No, this involves life decisions; trying to create work that will bring in an income, while at the same time trying to live on considerably less than we have earned in the past, wrestling with all that needs to be fixed in this house and wondering where the money will come from, worrying endlessly about my parents and sometimes feeling so sad about them that I cannot bear it.

I tend to live in my head and that isn’t always good.

I’m a firm believer in the simple truth that we create our lives. That thoughts have power and that sending out positive thoughts and visualizing the end results we want to see in our lives will ultimately create those results. What you send out comes back to you. Simple, but profound.

But sometimes I get to a place where I am caught in a whirlwind of my own jumbled fearful thoughts and try as I might, I can’t find my way to the place I need to be.

What do you do when this happens to you? How do you break away from worry and take action? Any advice? I have a feeling I already know the answer but I’d love to hear your thoughts, my friends.

Welcome to Reality Shot Thursday. I just have to say that we have had simply spectacular weather lately. Brilliantly sunny, warm temperatures – so nice after all the rain, hurricanes and freak snowstorms of late. I’m really loving it.

If you haven’t noticed, my blog’s URL has changed. It’s still hosted by Blogger, but it’s now www.mockingbirdhillcottage.com. If you link to the old address, no problem, as it will immediately be rerouted to the new address. But the new address is shorter and easier to enter, so go for it!

Anyway, back to Reality Shot Thursday. This is the time that we post a little peek behind the scenes, go beyond the pretty photos we all love so much, or simply show the reality behind that pretty shot. Here’s mine:

This particular photo is one I’ve shared before, in some variation or other. This is part of my studio. You can see the vintage feedsack shoe bag that I use to store things in, a vintage horse show ribbon, some of my embroidery projects, a photo of Don and one of me when we were both about 6 years old, a dress my mother wore as a little girl, some pretty wrapping paper and a silk parasol from Japan. Right below the shoe bag is a beautiful set of Chinese nesting baskets that I store fabric in. I’ve taken many photos of this area and it’s even been part of an article in Studios Magazine.

What you don’t see is this:

The ugly paper shredder that I store right in the midst of all this prettiness. I hate shredding things so I would hazard a guess that there’s about a year’s worth of paper in there.

There’s nowhere else to put it. When it’s time to take a photo of the studio, out it goes for the shot. But it lives right next to my pretty Chinese nesting baskets and right under my mother’s sweet dress. Sad, but true.

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I don’t dye my hair. The dark brown that you can see near my neck is my hair color. Or was my hair color. Since my brown hair has lots of highlights in its natural state, when the gray started to come in it looked like just another highlight. Everyone thought I’d had it done professionally. I just left it alone. No dye. No rinse. Nothing.

Sometimes my hair looks brown and sometimes it looks gray. Depends on the light. If I venture into a public bathroom with overhead lighting, I am shocked at how gray my hair looks. The photo above shows a lot of gray hair as there is a skylight directly overhead. Most of the time, though, it looks like what it is: a combination of brown, gold, a bit of red and gray. But the gray has begun to win out.

To be brutally honest, I’m too cheap to spend a lot of money on my hair. I can barely remember to get it cut. I can’t imagine trying to keep up with my roots. I’d rather spend that money on something vintage (and I don’t mean me) or a good book. I’m quite comfortable with my gray hair. I’m in my late fifties…I’m not a young thing anymore.

So tell me: why did I react with shock and horror when I saw a gray eyebrow hair the other day? One in each eyebrow. I stood there, peering into the mirror, absolutely sure I was imagining things. But no, there they were. Intruders. I was appalled. Out came the tweezers and pluck went the offending hair. Somehow I drew the line at my eyebrows. I realize that I won’t be able to pluck those gray hairs away indefinitely; I’ll end up with no eyebrows. But for now, I have put up a sign that says “You are not welcome here.”

I’ve accepted my gray hair. I can’t accept the eyebrows. At least, not yet.

It makes perfect sense to me.