Calligraphy Art:Trust – your answers are inside you
Walnut ink, Ziller ink, steel pointed pen on paper
3.85″ x 1.85″
Sometimes you just need a reminder that you really do have all the answers inside you.
Anonymous
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
How does anything get done? Step by step, that’s how.
Whether you’re talking about overhauling a website, growing a business, healing from major knee surgery, learning to play the ukulele (hmm… does this sound like someone you know?) – anything, really, it’s always step by step.
Or as I like to say, baby step by baby step.
Sometimes it feels painfully slow, or even as if you’re moving backwards, not forwards. (That’s certainly how my knee feels right about now!) But really, with enough baby steps you can climb mountains.
One of my current mountains, now that I’m making art on a regular basis again, is getting my art out into the world where people can see it and buy it. This weekend I made a great start, installing a new shopping cart and getting the beginnings of an actual store up. The Universe gave me a nod that I was moving in the right direction when I sold my first print less than 24 hours later! (Thanks Dianne!)
Always a good sign.
Today I added something else: a brand new newsletter! I’ll be adding new art to the gallery as I create it, but I wanted to give my fans the opportunity to see my work as soon as it’s done, without having to check in on the shop.
Hence the new newsletter, the “Daily” ArtFix. Or the “Daily Art” Fix.
Technically, it’s not going to be a daily newsletter, but it will be showcasing the art that emerges from my daily Creative Sandbox time. Just new art, as soon as it’s created. With a minimim of words. Or maybe a modicum of words. Whatever – fewer words than I usually use here (which, if you think about it, really isn’t saying much… But you catch my drift I hope.)
Just new art, like the piece shown at the top of this post, which started as a section of a big sheet of watercolor paper. You can see its beginnings on the lower right in the picture below:
I got three more finished pieces out of that sheet, plus some possible pieces that are still in the brewing stage. I’ll send those out in the newsletter one at a time, so sign up if you want to be the first to see them!
Meanwhile, I’ve still got a mountain of art on my hard disk to load into the shopping cart, but step by step I’ll get it done.
PS – In case you didn’t notice the snazzy new button in the sidebar, I’m now hosting free monthly calls to help you chart your own course to the creative life of your dreams. Click here for more info and to register to get reminder emails the day before each month’s call.
So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?
Holy moly! It’s been a full year since I started posting these weekly reviews.
Although I’ve made great progress in some areas over the past year, planning ahead is apparently not one of them, since I’m pulling a blog post out of the air past midnight yet again… Sigh…
That said, I have made progress, if I stop and think about it.
Naturally, I’m way too tired to do a good job cataloging all of my progress from the past year, but let’s take a look what I’ve done in this past week, shall we?
A year ago, my imaginary audience was entirely imaginary. One year later, I’m not ruling an empire quite yet, but I did just bump over into triple digits. In fact, in the past week I grew my subscriber base by over 16%!
(100+ Club members, watch your inbox for a link to a hi-res PDF of Tapestry of Life, the piece pictured here.)
Oy vey, this one has been soooo long in coming. Oodles of research, and countless times with my finger hovering over the “buy now” button for various e-commerce solutions. Finally, just yesterday, I bit the bullet.
In fact, I ended up installing the free version of Cart66 (affiliate link) – yep, you read that right: free – and I must say it’s rather nifty.
Artists, take note! With a free plug in you can turn your WordPress site into a store! Without having to make a new PayPal button for every single freakin’ item in your inventory.
I plan to write a review when it’s not quarter to 1:00am, explaining why I chose Cart66 over the other contenders, and what it’s like to use. (In short: pretty damn easy.)
Wanna see it in action? Check out my new art page!
If you have a blog or website, you know it’s always a work in progress. There’s always something new you want to do, a different look and feel or navigational structure you just know would make it exponentially better.
Rather than massive overhauls, though, changes to a blog are kind of like changes to one’s self: you do what you can, a little at a time, and are mostly aware of what you wish you could change but don’t have the resources for. You might get an occasional major remodel, of course, but mostly it’s just a tweak here, a tweak there.
Sometimes those tweaks can make a big difference though. Like those Martha Stewart-ish “give your living room a face lift with fabric remnants” tips. A simple font change and a coupla new graphics and voilá! It’s almost like refacing the kitchen cabinets.
Or maybe it’s like coming home from the hairdresser with a brand new ‘do and nobody notices… (That’s your cue to tell me what you think of the new ‘do on the blog. Ahem.)
And that, dear reader, is simply going to have to suffice for today. ‘Night!
1) You muck around in the Creative Sandbox, feeling like you’re making no more productive progress than you would be in an actual sandbox, moving sand from point A to point B.
2) With enough mucking (over a period of minutes, hours, days or even weeks), eventually something “catches,” and you feel that inner switch flick on. Your pulse speeds up a bit, your breathing speeds up (or maybe slows down?) perhaps your pupils even dilate.
All very well and good, but the piece that is emerging is not fully baked yet. Now what?
You’ve reached that spot in the process when the next move you make could make or break the piece. Sure, a mess-up can be altered, and the end result can be even better than your original intention – you know this – but still you’re momentarily paralyzed.
3) Alas, the brilliant, “right” solution is not forthcoming. So you stew. Maybe you go back to step 1 above and muck around some more on something different altogether.
4) You try stuff. Maybe pulling the same old tools out of the same old hats. But nothing works.
5) Then, maybe even without thinking, you randomly try something else – and YES! That’s IT! It’s nothing like you were expecting or planning, but it works, and you can tell by the look of inevitability that it’s right.
Or maybe the whole thing is totally ruined and you’re back to the drawing board.
The thing is, the mucking about is always part of the process. There may be more of it, there may be less of it, but it simply cannot be avoided. It’s a natural law, so the key is to get used to it, and don’t let it stop you.
Hooray, hooray! I’ve hit the triple digits with my email subscriptions! Big thanks to Skaja Wills (@skajaw) for pushing me over the top, and to the flurry of subscribers who’ve signed up since then. You make my day!
My original thought was to give the art giftie just to members of the official “100 Club,” as I’ve taken to calling it – just the first 100 subscribers.
But then I thought, why limit it? Why not share the love?
And because I’m dictator around here, I get to make the rules, and the rules are these: Anyone in my subscriber database when I send out the link gets the giftie. So be it.
But, you ask, what exactly is the giftie?
I mucked around all weekend, and for the past few days (in the wee hours of a few insomniac mornings, as it happens), trying to come up with a piece worthy of gifting to you, and I spent more time in step 1 above than I would care to admit. (Can you say “pressure”? Oy!)
It wasn’t until this morning that I finally hit paydirt (insomnia seems to play a disturbingly positive role in my art production). Four pieces, not just one, emerged, and I need your help determining which one to convert into a hi-res printable download for the 100 Club (or, more accurately, since I’m a generous and benevolent dictator, the 100+ Club).
I know which is my favorite (actually, two of them), but I’m not going to tell you – I want to hear from you which one you would like as your very own.
Keep in mind that I have no control over how these will print out over in your part of the world. (But if you really like a piece you can always buy a print or the original – until I get them posted for sale just email me for details.)
So, without further adieu, here they are, in no particular order (and yes, all but the top one were torn from the full sheet shown in the pics above). Vote for your favorite in the comments:
Contestant #1
Contestant #2
Contestant #3
Contestant #4
So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?
Once there was a young couple who were very much in love. They had so much love, in fact, that they wanted to share it, and they wished fervently for a baby.
But the years passed, and no baby came. Finally, after five years went by, the young couple decided to adopt.
Then, lo and behold, a miracle – the young woman became pregnant! The couple couldn’t believe it at first – they’d been trying for so long with no luck. But it was true, and in 9 months’ time the young woman gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.
The couple was now a family, and they were happy. They loved being parents, and they hoped for more children, though they believed this might not be possible. After all, it had taken 5 full years to conceive the first time.
But they loved their baby boy, and life was good.
A year passed, and the young woman – now a young mother – took the baby boy in to the doctor for his one-year exam.
Suddenly, things went from fine to terribly scary: the doctor felt a lump in the baby’s abdomen, and within hours the baby was in an operating room, having his abdomen sliced open from side to side to remove a cancerous tumor on his spinal chord.
Imagine the couple’s terror: their beloved baby boy, faced with a life-threatening disease, being cut into on an operating table. They were in shock, paralyzed with fear and anxiety. Their lives were turned upside down in the space of a single day. All they could do was cling to each other, and cry, and pray.
Thankfully, the baby boy came through the surgery, then a course of radiation treatment. “We don’t know,” the doctors said, “how this will affect his growth, but we have to be sure all the cancer cells are gone.”
What could the young couple do but hope?
A few weeks later, much to their surprise, the young woman discovered she was pregnant again.
Imagine, if you will, the atmosphere inside that household. The intense and conflicting emotions that the young couple must have felt:
Joy and excitement that the second baby they’d long wished for and never thought they’d have was on the way.
Fear and anxiety about their beloved baby boy, who was still recovering from surgery. Would the cancer come back? Would he heal and grow normally?
It was into this household that the second baby was born.
I’ve known this story for years, of course. I grew up with it. I remember the special treatment my brother got every year when he had to go through the annoyance of a week-long urine test, to make sure there were no stray cancer cells in his system. As a child, I didn’t really get the ramifications of this annual test, but you can imagine the anxiety and fear if must have provoked in my parents.
This story has always just been another part of my family legend. Like the story of how my parents met. Or how the German shepherd they got as a puppy long before we were born used to guard our bassinets.
It wasn’t until Friday, though, that the ripples of this particular part of my family history on my current life started to make sense.
Let me be clear: my parents left no doubt how much they loved me, and how wonderful, talented and smart they thought I was. Why, then, did I never feel enough? It’s always left me mystified.
Why the desperation to be extraordinary, amazing, The Best, perfect? Why do I, even now, decades later, after years of therapy and co-counseling, feel this constant urgency to prove myself? To do everything to the nth degree? Why the irrational fear that if I don’t, I’ll be left unnoticed, unappreciated, forgotten? That somehow, unless I do extraordinary things – kinda like all the time – I don’t matter?
It never made sense to me.
On Friday, my wonderful life coach, Susan, used an NLP exercise to help uncover the mystery. Certainly, part of my pattern can be explained by birth order. Second children tend to feel “less than” their older siblings, who can of course do more than they can, by virtue of human development. And they’re usually allowed to do more too: they can stay up later, play different kinds of games that the baby doesn’t get to. (Especially if the older sibling is a boy!)
But in my case, of course this was amplified!
Susan stood me at the center of a timeline, had me fill myself with the feeling of not-enoughness that’s plagued me all my life, then step backwards in time, to my earliest memories of feeling this way. And further back, to the time before memory.
Then off the timeline, where we watched the drama unfold, as if far below us. The young mom and dad, the baby boy, and little baby Melissa entering the scene already in play.
Some people take their feeling of not-enoughness and turn inward, hiding from the world, afraid to show themselves at all. Little baby Melissa quickly found a different survival mechanism: she learned to be a good girl. And not just that, but to be remarkable, outstanding, extraordinary.
As if her life depended on it.
Do more. Do better. And don’t ever stop, or they might just forget about you.
That was the irrational fear that got woven into my makeup.
The beautiful thing about human beings is how resilient we are. Our pasts do not define us – or, rather, we have the power to define ourselves. If we choose to.
On Friday, back on that imaginary timeline, Susan had me imagine a different history. One in which that terrified and traumatized young family I was born into had all the support they needed. Where little Melissa, already very much loved and wanted, was showered with all the utterly focused, undistracted, relaxed and fully present attention she needed and deserved. Unshadowed by fears of sickness, loss, death.
Imagine, Susan prompted, how it would have felt to know, deep inside, that I was completely whole. Fully enough.
I filled myself with this feeling of enoughness, of wholeness, as I stepped forward on the timeline, through each memory I’d stepped through on the way back. Watching the scenes change, filling myself with the knowledge and deep feeling of wholeness as I moved toward the present, and projected out to the future.
How different would my life be now? And how different into the future? Freed from the sense of urgency and desperation. Knowing, with every cell of my being, that I am whole. Complete. At peace with myself.
I don’t expect that Friday’s revelation will suddenly transform me from “overachiever” (a word I’ve always hated, by the way, implying as it does that the achievements are actually beyond your ability, rather than within them) to laid-back surfer dudette. I do think, however, that it will have an effect on me, though time will tell exactly what that effect will be.
I don’t think I’m going to stop wanting to be outstanding, and I think that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be outstanding.
The problem is not the wanting, or the questing, but rather the urgency and desperation that attaches to it. And perhaps that’s loosening. We’ll see.
I know that this story plays some role in my not playing as big as I want. You’d think a desperate urgency around being extraordinary would result in my playing big, but my relationship with bigness is conflicted. On the one hand, I want it desperately. On the other hand, I get stuck by fear, just like everyone else. And not feeling good enough keeps anyone from playing as big as they could.
And then there’s the… er… rather inefficient use of time (shall we say) because my desperation to be extraordinary pulls me in so many different directions at once. In my attempt to climb the mountain, I’ve spun my wheels at least as often as I’ve had real traction.
One way to spin ones wheels is to go from course to course, staying always in learning mode, never in doing mode.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with learning mode. It’s a good thing. But it can also be used as an avoidance technique. You know that guy who’s been getting his Ph.D. for the past 15 years? Or that woman who’s getting her 19th certification, but she’s never actually practiced any of the skills she studied?
Or how about buying or downloading every internet marketing course you can get your hands on, but never putting them to actual use? (Sound familiar?)
Which is why I’m under a self-imposed moratorium right now. No more online courses until I’ve gotten value out of all of the ones currently on my hard disk! (Ha!)
There are two courses in particular that I’d love to do right now:
• Tara Sophia Mohr’s Playing Big (affiliate link), which looks absolutely amazing,
and
• The ARTbundance coaching certification program, starting up in late April, which I have been sorely tempted to apply for, despite my moratorium.
But then I reminded myself that:
So I sigh and put the coaching program on the back burner. Maybe in the fall…
Here’s the rub: maybe I can trust that I’m actually enough just as I am. Yes, I can add new tools, read more books, take more classes as I move forward. But more courses are not the solution to my not feeling enough. That feeling can only come from inside. It’s good for me to practice knowing I’m good, right now, in present time.
Intellectually, when I can “step outside the distress,” as it were, I can see the amazing work that I do. I know I’m an excellent teacher and an inspiring, intuitive coach – my students and clients tell me as much, and when I’m working with people, I can tell.
I know I’m a good performer, and the songs I write entertain people. I know my wedding artwork has made an impact on 100s of clients (maybe even 1,000s by now), and I get emails all the time from people who resonate with my Creative Sandbox art and my writing here on the blog.
Of course, feeling enough – really owning it – is not going to happen overnight, or all the time. But in a calm, relaxed, non-urgent/non-desperate way, I’m working on it.
