die, adjust or migrate

Secrets 6 & 7: Saboteurs and Guides

In our on-line blog book group run by Jamie, we are currently working on chapter 7 of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women by Gail McMeekin. I never managed to post last week for the chapter on saboteurs. I thought a lot about it and put notes all over the margins of my book but never sat down to put my thoughts to paper or to screen as the case may be! So, I thought that this week I would tackle my saboteurs along with my guides as I really see them as two sides of one coin and on both sides is an image of me!

I am my own worst saboteur. I am really my only saboteur. It is not what others say about me or to me that sabotages my efforts; it is how I react and interpret their spoken and unspoken messages. I choose to give what they say (or what I think they are thinking) weight and this sabotages my efforts. I can blame them and vent my anger towards them but it is essentially my own choices that create the feelings of less within me.

The section of chapter 6 about Joanne Rossman and her inability to ever have money in savings resonated strongly with me. Money is an ongoing issue in my life (as, I expect, it is with many). I live in a city where the cost of living is very, very high. The combined incomes of myself and my spouse just barely cover the basics of rent, bills, food, retirement savings and clothing/caring for our daughter. I so appreciate the feeling of never having enough money; as I write this we have $6.37 in our bank account and no money coming in for a week. This panics me. There is nothing to fall back on in case of emergency. I hate feeling that there is not enough even though I know in my heart that we have all we need to get through this week. There is food in the fridge, clothes for our bodies, a roof over our heads. We do not need more but I want the peace of mind that comes with knowing we have more if we did need it.  I know in my heart that my negative, worried energy about money helps to keep the money from flowing in; it keeps us from being in a place where I don’t need to feel the panic and stress.

I know that I am choosing to feel this way. What I need to believe in and focus on is the abundance and wealth already in my life in order to have money come to me.  I need to stop feeling surprised when someone buys one of my pieces from the gallery. I need to take the risk and try to get my work out in the shops here in town and stop feeling afraid that no one will want to carry my work because “it is not good enough”. I love the quote from C. Diane Ealy where she says that “once we clear out our negative messages, we are free to reconceptualize and redefine money, embracing its spiritual aspects. Money then becomes a partner on our journey toward expressing our unique creative selves.” I want this for myself. I want to silence my inner saboteur and move forward in a positive way.

The other fear that totally resonated with me in chapter 6 is the fear of having it come too easily. I experienced this years ago when I first tried to write a novel. The writing came to me so easily. I would sit at the computer for hours and  the writing would flow out of me and through me and, before I knew it, I had over 400 pages written. And then…I stopped. I became afraid. I was writing too much, too easily. There was no way what I was writing could be good enough. No way that any publisher would want it. No way it would rank up there with the writers I so admire. The novel has sat, unfinished, on my computer for the past 5 years. Whenever my husband suggests that I work on finishing my novel I literally get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I no longer write anything more than a blog post or a lesson plan. I have channeled my creativity into other, less scary, areas such as my jewelery making or sewing. There is still some fear in these activities but there is a much greater since of control and, therefore, of safety.

A huge part of my fear came from the feeling that I was the conduit for this novel - and that truly terrified me. How could I be writing this? How could what I was doing ever be good enough? This is what Elizabeth Gilbert is talking about in her live lecture about creativity. The idea that there is something greater than myself out there, something that channels creativity through me is very scary to me. But I have experienced it! It was an amazing feeling and a truly, truly terrifying feeling at the same time. I have experienced it and yet I can not accept it willingly, I fight against it. I am not able to just let go and allow the creativity to flow through me without judging the work I am doing. I am not able to take my self out of the picture and to just let it be. I am not able to accept that there is something greater than myself at work here. I am my own worst saboteur.

As to guides in chapter 7, I do have people in my life who encourage my creativity, who praise what I do and my efforts to do new and different things in my art. They are few but they are ever so important in my life. I appreciate these people greatly; they are guides of the flesh who help me move along my chosen path. I cherish the times I get to spend with them being creative, talking, connecting with each other. However, I also know that, as I am my own worst saboteur, it is I who have to be my own greatest champion. It does not matter how wonderful someone says my work is if I do not believe it myself. It does not matter if they encourage me to spread my creative wings, to fly beyond where I have gone before, if I can not see for myself that I CAN fly without crashing to the rocks below. I can produce piece after piece but, if I do not welcome my own creative process, I will never be happy. It will never be good enough. If I am unable to believe that I am a PART of my creativity, a part of the whole but that not ALL of it comes from me, I will forever be trying to live up to my expectations for myself instead of accepting that I have done the work of spirit and that the work is exactly what it is meant to be. There is a void in my life where spirit resides; the door is shut tight and I am the one piling the furniture in front of it to keep it from being able to open. I am afraid.

This is what I want to focus on in my creative life. I want to give myself permission to let go, to stop holding everything so tightly in my fists that I am, essentially, crushing it beyond recognition, to breathe deeply and allow the spirit to work through me. To move the furniture from the doorway, to welcome spirit without judgment or fear but with joy and happiness. Just the writing of these words feels frightening. Knowing that I am both my worst saboteur and the portal to my own most profound guide is difficult for me. Each day I wake up and choose what I am going to follow; comfort or the unknown. I know that most days (pretty well all of them really) I choose the safe, comfortable path of the saboteur. He is not always very vocal , he may say nothing at all that day but I know that is the road I am on. I am not on the road of spirit, of the unknown, of the slightly uncomfortable. Today I picture myself at a fork in the road and, I hope with all of my heart, that I will choose to travel more often the road  of spirit and open myself to the possibilities. That I will begin to follow the words that I collaged here (scroll down to see) on a daily basis.

Beautiful Blog Giveaway

Monica over at Hands and Hearts is celebrating her blogoversary and giving away a beautiful piece of art! Check it out right here! Take the time to check out all of the other wonderful creativity on her blog. It is really a cool place to hang out!

OWOH Winners!

Okay, here are the lucky winners!!!!

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

106

213

Timestamp: 2009-02-12 15:34:14 UTC

Number 106 on my list is Jill Thomspson!!!!

Number 213 on my list is Kath K!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

I have already emailed both winners and await their mailing information. If I don't hear back within 48 hours I will choose another winner. This was so much fun! I can hardly wait until next year!

One World One Heart is almost done for 2009!

Well, it is almost time for the One World - One Heart giveaway to end. I am going to close my comments at 11:11 pm PST. This is my daughter's favourite time of day. When we happen to look at the clock and it is 11:11, everything stops for the minute while we take a moment to reflect.

I will pick my winner early tomorrow morning before I go to work. I am going to use the random generator thingy. Don't forget to check and see if I have gotten in touch with you!

I have had such a great time visiting all of the different blogs. I actually made it all 911 of the blogs (am I the only one who finds it weird that there are 911 blogs considering the significance of that number to so many?!?). I found so many amazing blogs that I definitely want to go back and revisit in greater detail. It was so inspiring to see all of the wonderful creative work out there in the world. Well done, everyone! And a HUGE, HUGE thank you to Lisa Swifka for coming up with this idea. At the rate this is growing we should have over 2,000 blogs next year! I hope that Lisa is ready for that!!!!

I look forward to getting to know some of you better through our blog worlds. Thank you all for visiting me here and for all the kind and encouraging words you had for my jewelery. It truly means so much to me to have you all validate what I am doing.

Wishcasting Wednesday

Today Jamie asks us What do you wish for yourself?

I wish for health. This year I have had cold after cold. I feel sluggish. I want to sleep A LOT! I turn too often to the quick fix of caffeine or sugar and not often enough to the slow, continuous healthy choice of eating right and exercising regularly. My weight loss efforts have stalled out after losing 14 pounds. I still have at least 25 to go to have a healthy BMI but can not seem to break through this plateau. So, I suppose I also wish for continued motivation to pursue healthier choices on a daily basis!

Secret #5 - Committing to Self-Focus

This week we are talking about self-focus in chapter 5 of Gail McMeekin's book 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women. This blog book group is being led by Jamie. I have been reading some of the posts in response to secret #5 and find it interesting that there seems to be a generational theme emerging. I think it is fairly true that many women in my mother’s generation were not given as much leeway in their creativity; that their families would have found efforts to be creative to be selfish in the negative sense of the word. I am fortunate that my mother was not a follower, she made her own path (against all odds and her family’s wishes) and has been an amazing role model for me. Yet, I also see many women in my age group struggling with this as well. The focus for so many of them is to get more, have more, do more that they are unable to see that sometimes we just need to be. My generation, unlike my parents', wants to have it all right away. They do not understand the concept of attaining bit by bit. When I look back at photos of my parents house when they first bought it, it was filled with big rooms with very little furniture; they had to save over the years to add the pieces that they now own. When I go to my friends' houses they are all "done"; new furnishings, filled cupboards, no empty spaces. They have bought their current life on credit in the quest to be like the Jones's. This focus on having it all right now seems to keep some of my female (and male for that matter) friends from following their creative dreams. They do not seem to value creativity for its own sake but rather need to see it adding to their financial income. I think this is the result of our consumerism mentality but I am not sure. I know that I am not like that. Our home is filled with back lane cast offs, hand me down furniture and lots of love. Looking around me as I write this, I can see that the living room in which I sit is filled with creativity. The chair I recovered, the barn door I turned into my art table, the bits and pieces that I have used to create a unique but happy home.

But back to my mother, my amazing, wonderful, doesn't do empathy for all the tea in China mother. My mother followed her dreams. Granted, they were in science and not anything I would want to do (who wants to dissect birds on a regular basis?!?) but she never wavered. I know that looking back on her career she sees opportunities missed and wishes that some things had been different but, from my perspective, she taught me to do what filled my well. And, she had the fortune or wisdom to marry my father who supported her both financially and emotionally through the years. I do not have any memories of my father ever treating my mother as less because she was a woman. He may have expected her to deal more with the bulk of the housework and child raising but he also went outside the norms for men in that he was the cook in our house. Sundays meant dinners with food like roast beef, Yorkshire puddings and green beans. Foods my mother still can not cook to this day! Evenings were spent with my father playing the piano (his “selfish” time to unwind from his day teaching at the university) and my mother playing solitaire, knitting or doing needlework (her “selfish” time). I never begrudged them that time and never saw it as the least bit selfish. It just was. To this day, my mother’s life reminds me that I can do what I need to do to fill my well and that it is okay. I can only hope and pray that my example has been enough for my daughter to get the same message.

I found myself constantly writing comments in the margins disagreeing with what Gail McMeekin was saying. I don’t feel selfish pursuing my art, I do have a strongly supportive spouse (who is like a crow in that he is constantly bringing me bits and bobs he finds on the ground or elsewhere to incorporate into my art. Last week it was a slightly broken, 20 pound, cement elephant but that is another post!), I never feel like choosing my creativity makes me a bad mother. My creativity and my art are a part of me just like my hair colour, legs, arms, etc., I have no problems putting myself first and making myself number 1 on my priority list, I don’t feel that I have to do certain things around the house because I am a woman (my hubby does most of the cleaning) or that I have to follow certain expectations due to my gender. I could not relate at all to so much of what she was saying.

I so do not connect with her talk about patriarchs and how women are only given the time to create when everyone else is taken care of. My note in the margin reads, “what about men who have to work in jobs that they don’t like, feel stifled in or don’t fill their wells simply because it is expected of them?” My dh comes to mind. I know that given his choice he would be working in acting, making very little money most likely but happy as a clam on a wet, sandy beach. He has had to make many sacrifices over the years to supplement our income as money has become tighter and tighter (I am the main breadwinner as he was stay-at-home dad for many years) and I know that he regrets not having the opportunity to pursue his art in the way he wanted to when he was younger. I regret that my teaching does not pay enough for him to be able to do that. I am lucky enough to get my well filled at work and in my art. And, yet, even though he has not been able to always pursue his own creative joy, he supports me 150% in following mine. He wants me to go on artist’s dates, work in my studio, browse artsy blogs and feel creative. He supports that side of me more than anyone else in my life. Since the day I met him almost 17 years ago, he has been the one person in my life who consistently believed in me (even more than I believed in myself) and my abilities as a creative person. I simply can not relate to what she says about men and their support. It isn’t my reality and, for that, I am so very grateful.

As to honouring my style and setting boundaries…been there, doing that. I follow my rhythms very well and have no problems telling people I am unavailable for something if I have scheduled studio time for myself or if I feel I would rather stay home and create. I have the support systems in place that I need to have in order to pursue my art. I have a husband who wants me to make art, a daughter who thinks it is great that I am so creative and friends who enjoy making art with me. My creative life is good. I give myself permission to make art all the time. In fact, I should probably be giving myself permission more often to clean the house or do the school work I brought home or spend more time with my family. I am learning to find pleasure and see the domestic creativity that is a part of what I call the pesky details of life (like grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, you get the idea)

So, basically this chapter made me realize how very much I have for which to be grateful. Our home life has been going through some rough times as of late and this acknowledgement of all that I do have and how lucky I am is a welcome one. I am blessed with so much and know that not everyone is so fortunate in their creative journey. I end this post with a prayer I say to myself each night before going to sleep,

All is well in my world, in the name of Gaia, Amen.

Secret #4 - Surrendering to Creative Cycles

I am late getting this post up partly because life has been hectic busy but, mostly, because I have been blog hopping like a crazy woman trying to get to as many blogs on the One World - One Heart Blog Giveaway as I possibly can! I entered one of my pieces and have been having such an amazing time visiting so many wonderfully creative artists in so many parts of the world. My folder with sites to come back to later and check out at my leisure is overflowing! I am so thankful to Lisa Swifka for creating this world wide blog giveaway. It is truly awesome!

This week in 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women we are looking at creative cycles and how we deal with the ups and downs of those cycles. I have to say that I never really think too much about my cycles of creativity. I know that I am far more prolific in my output during the summer months when I am not teaching, that I can only do so much before my carpal tunnel gets really bad, that I may feel like being creative one week and then not make anything for a month. It is just the way I am.

I can honestly say that I never really feel like I am in a void. The closest I can come to that experience is when I had to create three pieces of jewellery to a theme for a gallery show last Thanksgiving. The theme of the show was A Murder Of Crows and Other Crimes. Let me tell you, it was not an easy thing to create jewellery that would fit with that theme! I felt a little out of my element and knew that I would have to work with colours that are outside of my usual colour palette. Blues, browns, golds and silvers just didn’t scream murder or crows to me. I ended up going to my local art store, De Serres, and buying a whole bunch of beads in black, red and grey. I find that often going shopping for new art supplies is the motivation I need to get moving and get out of the funk of not knowing what to create. I came home and forced myself to start puttering around with the beads in the studio. Within a week I had three necklaces and two bracelets ready for the show. I would love to show you what they looked like but, silly me, I forgot to take pictures and some have since sold (yeah) so no pictures are to be had.

I have now been invited to participate in a series of shows at the gallery over the coming year. The first show has the theme of love and this is a no-brainer for me. I already had two pieces made that I could send over right away to be included. These are the two pieces that I have entered. One is called Unlock the Mystery and the other is called Praises of the Heart. 

But the other shows have themes like Around The World, Beautiful Beast and Light at the End of the Tunnel. What do I make for those? I am already freaking out internally trying to figure out where my inspiration will come from and whether I will be able to produce anything. The quote on page 63 from C. Diane Ealy really speaks to me about the way I am feeling. She said “The realization I had a few years ago is that when I am feeling fearful about something in terms of my own personal growth then I know I’m on the right track.” I totally understand what she means by this; I am fearful of how I am going to create something that not only is true to the show’s theme but that will also appeal to the buying public. I have my work in the gallery, after all, in order to sell it. But, I find that within that fear is a small but significant speck of excitement, of a chance to stretch my creative wings, of an opportunity to prove to myself that I can do something out of my comfort zone.

I have been trying to think of times when the creative juices really flowed easily, the brighter times in my creative life, as Jamie suggested. The bright spots really have been when I am feeling balanced in the other areas of my life. When my day job, my relationships, my personal energy is good then I have the energy at the end of the day to sit in my studio and tinker with a variety of projects. I am open to inspiration and my creativity has the freedom to move in any direction that it wants to. When I am out of balance, all I want to do at the end of the day is sleep, to avoid daily tasks, to steer clear of my studio. I learned the hard way that I also have to have my studio in the thick of things. The one year we managed to live in a three bedroom apartment I turned the third bedroom into my studio; it was my least creative year ever!!! My studio is now firmly in place in my living room where I can sit and create while enjoying my music, my favourite tv shows and my family. It wouldn’t work for everyone but it works for me!

The other thing that really stood out for me in this chapter was when Diane Ericson was talking about her dream where she was holding these bags and trying to get through the doorway. She kept trying and trying but the bags made it impossible to get in no matter how she twisted and turned her body. Until she heard a little voice telling her to “drop the bags” and, with that, she walked through the door which then disappeared and she found herself in a beautiful, wide open field filled with all that is rich and abundant. What a powerful dream image! Do I have bags that need to be dropped? Am I holding on to things in my creative life that hold me back from discovering my potential? Am I ready for the richness and abundance that will come to me if I drop those bags?

I love that the chapter ends with the idea of keeping our faith in the cyclical pattern of creativity. I have been thinking a lot about that word - faith - and what it means in my life. I feel that I need to nurture my faith - not only in my creativity but in other areas of my life as well. I need to rediscover what faith means to me. Some days when I think about my one little word for the year (my word being CHOOSE), it occurs to me that perhaps what I need most this year is to put that word in front of other words. CHOOSE FAITH, CHOOSE LOVE, CHOOSE ME.