Hi Reader!

If you were with me back in June, you might remember a newsletter where I talked about my main cycling event for 2023, a century bike ride in Red River, New Mexico, getting cancelled due to road construction. While I was bummed at the time, I tried to take it in stride and practice a little positive reframing and focus on the opportunities not training for a bike ride might allow for. Overall, the lack of a major event to train for meant that I had a little more breathing room during the organized chaos that is summer camp. It also meant that once summer camp ended the first week in August, I could say yes to a weekend hike rather than having to decline because I had to put in miles on my bike.

Taking time outdoors is a major way that I recharge and an important way for me to gather inspiration for my painting practice. Since I did not have a bike ride to train for on the weekend, Vasya and I were able to do an 18 mile hike from Monarch Lake to Crater Lake, which is outside Granby, Colorado and about two hours from where we live. You can learn more about that hike and how I think about photographs as inspiration for my practice in my recent blog post Painting Inspiration | Crater Lake. I love how being outside gives me the space to rest my brain and enjoy my surroundings.

While I no longer had a bike race to complete, I still had a weekend away booked in New Mexico to look forward to and I reframed it as an anniversary weekend for Vasya and I (yay nine years of marriage!). I'm not sure that Red River would ever have been on my list of places to go. I hadn't even heard of it before registering for this bike event, but it is the cutest small mountain ski town about forty-five minutes north of Taos, NM. True to our style, we spent lots of the long weekend outdoors, completing an eleven mile hike to Lost Lake just outside of Red River one day and then hiking almost ten miles to the top of Wheeler Peak, which at 13,161 feet is the highest point in New Mexico, and the highest elevation I have hiked in 2023 to date.

It wasn't quite the weekend I was originally expecting, but it was great to visit somewhere new and spend time outside.

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Painting Inspiration | Crater Lake Read article

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What I'm Reading

I recently re-read Amy Porterfield's book Two Weeks Notice, which is one of many business and entrepreneur books I am reading this year. Many of the themes of her book are not entirely new to me, but her book helped me figure out how to organize my time, prioritize creating content in a sustainable way, how to take my social media presence seriously but not personally, and how to recognize that I’m just in my starter idea phase and the point is to do something rather than worry about the end goal. If you're interested in more about Amy Porterfield, you can read more in my blog post 3 Female Entrepreneurs Inspiring Me.

What I'm Watching

With the conclusion of my The West Wing obsession, I was in search of another political drama to keep me entertained while painted. Enter Madam Secretary. I LOVE this show. I remember watching the first season when it started, but then I moved to Colorado, stopped paying for cable, and more or less forgot about the show. Now I have six glorious seasons ahead of me (I'm currently on season two). I love that the characters are so smart and dedicated to their work and the family dynamics.

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Until next time!

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