How much is too much?
Thoughts on too much, too little, and the acceptance of both . . .
Monday, March 2, 2009
I wonder how many of you can identify with any of this:
It sometimes feels like your head will spin right off your neck because of all the ideas mashing around in there.
You cannot resist buying a new art supply because of the creative possibilities it suggests, even though you haven’t actually used a lot of what you already have.
Your days are as full of “stuff” as your art space is and when evening comes, you can’t believe you haven’t gotten more done that day. Life feels a bit chaotic.
Because of one excuse or another, you don’t do enough art - according to you.
You are behind, you have no time to create, and you feel squished flat by your to-do list.
You are almost never “in the moment”, can’t remember what you had for breakfast, nor the last time you felt relaxed in your world.
These feelings can really get to you, because they give that inner “critic-of-the-artistic-lifestyle” all kinds of ammunition. And the critic tells you that you are frivolous, disorganized, self-indulgent, lazy, and you have no ability to follow-through. None of that feels very nice!
So you try to stay out of the art and craft stores until you have used up your art supplies (ha!), and force yourself to finish a project that has lost its energy for you and has been sitting untouched for a long time. It is not fun and you still don’t feel satisfied with it, and it still doesn’t get done.
This feeling leads you to think if you just ran out to the art store and got that other shade of red paint, the whole thing would work. But wait. You aren’t allowed to go to the art store.
You join some “art every day” challenge to force yourself to create - and use your supplies. By Day 3, something else gets in the way and you can’t fulfill that promise either. Another failure!!
You wallow in a big bowl of guilt. Now you don’t feel creative at all. You may as well go sit in the garden and eat worms, as my Grandmother used to say when I would whine about something.
It’s ALL too much
The truth is that we are right-brained beings trying to survive and thrive in a completely overwhelming environment. What’s the right brain got to do with it?
Left brainers have a fighting chance because they can at least try to take on one thing at a time. Men are particularly gifted at this, you may have noticed. Just try to get your DH to multi-task and see what happens.
The right brain tries to make sense of the big picture all at once, and the big picture these days is too darned BIG!
In a world that is so crazy-full of input, ideas, opportunities, obligations, and overload, trying to keep all that in an understandable “big picture” is just plain impossible and we need to give up trying.
Understand your silly self . . .
You are OK the way you are because you are the way artists are. You can prove this to yourself through the 50 arty Yahoo Groups you joined to see if anybody else was like you - or the 50 thousand artists’ blogs where shared angst abounds.
We are what we are and we think like we think because we are what we are. Just because that is not like others are, does not make it wrong.
So, it’s ok to feed your creative soul by shopping for new art supplies, it’s ok that they’re not organized, and it’s ok to look at them more than you actually use them. It makes you think and it makes you joyful and what is better than that?
Get off your own back and accept failure.
Wow, we hope the self-help police don’t chase us down for that headline!
One of the multiple and dismal definitions of that word “failure” is “the omission of expected or required action”. That’s a lot more friendly than “lack of success”, so we’re going with it.
The truth is that while others can criticize you for not lining up your ducks at your day job, only YOU can set up “expected or required action” when it comes to your art, and you can set that up in any way you want.
Set yourself up for failure.
OK, now the self-help police are right on my door step!
But, if you set up your expectations and requirements for your art with the understanding that they may change, re-prioritize, or simply not happen for one reason or another, you have a Get Out of Jail Free card and have redefined “failure” as simply “flexibility” or “omission” - which hardly hurt at all.
Just thinking about this, you may feel your Muse start a happy dance.
A Blog Post Every Day in March
Don’t laugh too hard, but this whole post originated when I realized that I have not touched my blog since February 4th! So I felt like going out in the garden and eating worms.
I really love blogging and wish I did it more often, so then I decided to challenge myself to a post every day in March. This was yesterday. Life got in the way.
So I have already missed the 1st day of March, and there is already a “failure” on the books!
But that failure actually frees me to try this challenge. If I make the rest of the month, I will be happy. If I miss some days for one reason or another, I’ll still be happy. I love my garden but am sick of eating worms.
