We’ve reached the end of our first monthly focus on beauty. We’ve explored beauty in the home, in marriage, in special moments, and in old objects. The Female Yoda gave us an insightful guest post on changing our expectations of beauty, I honored my mothers in a beauty-centered Mother’s Day post, and dipped back into the world of cancer with a post on beautiful scars. In other words, we’ve run the gamut on the subject of beauty, and that means it’s time to move on.
What I learned this month: 
1. Seeking beauty is much like seeking gratitude or happiness. It’s easy to find once you start looking, but you need to make a conscious decision to find it over and over again. (In other words, a habit.)
2. The way you focus on something may not be the way you initially intended. I’d planned to expand my horizons with beauty this month- find new nature walks, buy some inspiring photography, delve into societal beauty issues- but I found myself sticking to simpler things. I took walks in my usual places, but took off my headphones and absorbed more; I changed my screensaver several times to landscape pictures I love; and I tended to my home instead reaching out into the world.
3. The focus on beauty was intended to inspire writing about beauty, but they acted in symbiosis instead- if anything, the need to find something new to write kept me on track with re-thinking and experiencing beauty.
4. I wish I had spent more time focusing on my own beauty. Writing the post about finding beauty in my scars was very cathartic, and it led to the opportunity to write a second one as a guest post for a writer who publishes a blog and books specifically about scars. That post should be live later this week, and I’ll link to it here. I wish I’d dug a little deeper into body-image issues; my scars are really a very small issue for me, compared to other things I’d sometimes like to “fix” when I’m not in a good place.
5. It’s hard to continually write about something like beauty without sounding overly sweet and sappy. And that can get annoying to me, so I’m guessing it got annoying to you, my readers, as well. I’m looking forward to my next focus, which will be more grounded. I’m all about focusing on the positive, but you can’t live permanently on a higher plane.
What I’m choosing next: June’s focus will be PARENTING. (You can’t get more grounded than that, can you?) I’m really excited for this series, as I’ve already got a notepad full of ideas that I think will appeal to parents and non-parents alike.
To close, some quotes about beauty:
“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” -Anne Frank
“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.” -Louisa May Alcott
“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god- the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!” -William Shakespeare
“I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.” -Drew Barrymore
On Friday: Book Round-Up for May, everything I read this month and more!