Sometimes you ask yourself–”Why Bother?”

Why bother trying to create again, or practice a hard technique, or make work no one sees, or summon the courage to pursue an ambitious dream like having a show or selling your work.

And too often, your self doesn’t have a good answer back to that question, because your self and your doubts are in cahoots.

Well, I have a lot of thoughts about this, as you can well imagine, but I think Martha Graham said it best, so I’ve created this  8″ x 10″ reminder, using her inspiring quote.

I want you to click on that image, read it, and then print it out.

After that, you must stick it on your wall, tuck it in your purse or keep it on your night stand to read last thing before bed.

Click here or on the link below to get the PDF (or after you’ve clicked on the image to read it, just right/click to save it (if you’re on a pc) or control/click (if you’re on a mac) to save it.)

Either way, print it out. I mean it. It’s the best answer to the question “Why Bother” that I’ve read yet.

PDF version of Keep the Channel Open

Big Hugs…

Or maybe you plan on making something tonight when you get home from work, but by then, you’re tired or not in the mood.

This is a very natural reaction to adding one more thing to your busy life. And the busier you are, the less “ready” you can feel for anything that’s new or hard or requires your focused attention.

The only thing is, this one more thing is your creativity, and it really matters to you.

The hard part about weaving creativity back into your life–or upping the ante and going deeper with what you are doing–is that it has to come from within.

Because it’s committing to yourself.

Which is a lot tougher than committing to other people. It takes more self-esteem. In addition, everyone understands and applauds committing to others, so it’s safe and the feedback’s great.

Which is why society or your family or your boss aren’t going to carve the time out for you.

So it’s a risk and it’s up to you. Of course you don’t “feel ready”.

Do it Anyway

Here’s the thing–nobody is really ever ready.

I mean, you read about people having epiphanies and suddenly turning their lives around and living their dream, but that’s rarely the way it happens.

If you want to start creating again, if you want to dig deeper and get bolder with your work, if you want to live your life as an artist, you have to start now, even if you’re not “ready.”

In fact, one of the greatest gifts that you can give to yourself and your creative dream is to realize that you can create even when you’re not ready or in the mood or feeling inspired.

But it’s hard. And scary. And maybe a little lonely. And did I mention hard?

Yup, you’re right. It’s all those things.

But that’s where I come in.

Structured Support

Because the creative life requires so much internal commitment, my goal here at Make Great Stuff is to provide you with structured support systems to see you through.

That’s what the 20 Minute Club and the Creative Breakthroughs Collage Tele-class are all about.

Do-able systems to help you create and build your creative momentum so that your artistic, creative essence is as important as all your other facets/roles that currently rule your life.

So that the dream of having a show or selling your work on Etsy or writing that novel or fill-in-the-blank can become a reality.

To live your life as an artist.

Don’t Wait Until You’re “Ready”

You don’t need all the supplies on the suggested materials list to sign up for the next Creative Breakthroughs Collage Tele-class. You just need a speaker phone or an earbud.

You don’t need to re-read how it’ll work, we’ll have fun even as you feel your way through the process.

It’s okay if you’re eating dinner at the same time or still gathering stuff and filling your water container at the start of the call.

Making time to create is about giving yourself your self back.

It’s about remembering how fun it is to play and immerse yourself in something artistic without having time to self-censor or the ability to compare yourself to others (because we’re on the phone!).

It’s about letting yourself try something new or make something ‘bad’ because you’re committing to the artistic experience and (practicing) not judging yourself all the time.

Because even though it’s hard, you realize these two things are a requirement of hanging in there for the long haul as an artist.

Creating Momentum

In addition, the tele-class dove-tails perfectly with the 20 Minute Club.

Because your unfinished or almost finished collage pieces are wonderful reasons for setting the timer for 20 minutes here and there (even when you’re tired or not in the mood) and responding and fixing and thinking aesthetic thoughts.

You’ll start to realize that when each of those 20 (or 30 or 40) minute sessions are up, you feel less tired than when you started.

Rejuvenated even.

You also realize your week has gotten a lot more artistic than it used to be. And that the more you do it, the easier it is to continue.

That’s momentum you’re witnessing–and finally moving in the direction you want.

Wow.

All this when you weren’t even “ready.”

Doesn’t that sound good? Come join me and let’s get started.

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What do you think? Are you waiting to “feel ready” or have you taken the plunge? Do you like the idea of structured support? Please share your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.

“Your Honor, I’d like to submit the following bad drawings as evidence that the defendant has misled her family and friends by describing herself as creative, calling herself an artist and complaining she has no time to make anything.

As you can see, why does she need time to make anything when she makes crap like this?”

“Why indeed, Counselor. Jurors, please look carefully at all the bad art and reach your worst conclusions.”

“Your Honor, we find the defendant,………. long pause………., ‘Not Talented’.”
“Thank you for your service, the jury is excused. Bailiff, take the defendant to be arraigned, and measure her up for a hideous orange jump suit. I’m glad we caught her when we did.”

You’re Not on Trial

Your creative life is not a trial where everybody and their mother is on the jury determining if you really are an artist or just a big-talking fraud who’s been implying she’s artistic since God knows when.

Your ‘bad’ work is not proof that you’re not talented. Otherwise, everyone would be indicted.

No longer torturing yourself by treating your artwork as evidence in a trial is an important step toward getting on your own side and getting serious about making things.

Since making bad stuff is unavoidable, stopping yourself from going through your own version of this courtroom drama isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort.

But I know it’s hard to change your thinking pattern overnight.

So be gentle with yourself.

A Few Simple Steps

• Just increasing your awareness of your thought patterns is a game changer. Because we’re so used to our inner monologue, we often don’t even realize what we’re thinking anymore and just mistake it for reality. Realizing this isn’t true, even for a minute, is huge.

• Notice when the negative thinking starts. Before you even begin to create? In the icky middle of a piece or project, when nothing looks right?

• Notice how you feel physically when it’s happening. Does your chest tighten? Do you get butterflies? Where does the anxiety live in your body as a physical feeling? Stopping to experience the physical expressions of your emotions can go a long way toward quieting them.

• Give yourself permission. If this means you need to allow yourself to hide your work, throw it away or burn everything right after you make it, then so be it. Even if your rational brain thinks you’re being ridiculous, your fragile feelings need to know that even though they no longer rule the day (by stopping you from creating altogether), they still count and will be attended to.

• Experiment. Can you leave your ‘bad’ piece out in the open for an hour? A day? All the time? Don’t make yourself do something that shuts you down, but experiment with pushing at the edges of your comfort, and pay attention to the ramifications–because chances are, they won’t be any. The next time will be easier.

Building Creative Momentum

The only way to start making good stuff is to make stuff a lot–to maintain a creative momentum in your busy, everyday life. And if you’re making stuff a lot, chances are excellent that some of it’s ‘bad’. Or at least not what you intended.

It’s just about coming up with strategies for getting comfortable with that. Or, at least, less uncomfortable.

To help yourself keep making.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, one great way to keep yourself creating is to join me every week for the Creative Breakthroughs Collage Teleclasses.

Or even just one class, I’m not picky.

I’m absolutely convinced it can help free you up to build a wonderful creative momentum in your life and function as a real concrete support system–making it easier for you to commit to yourself  and your creative dreams and goals.

And even if you feel a lot of angst about your creativity, I think you’ll even have some fun because it’s such a blast.

It’s okay to need help getting started again. It’s also okay to sign up even if you don’t feel ‘ready’.

You don’t need to be ready! All you need is a few supplies and a speaker phone.

At 12.00 a pop, what  have you got to lose? You can sign up here.

I think lack of time is the number one obstacle for people wanting to start creating again or wishing they were doing it more.

And it’s easy to see why–our speed-driven culture creates high expectations of how much we should get done and how fast we should be able to do it.

But if we could change our relationship with Time–find our true personal rhythms–then all kinds of possibilities open up.

That’s the premise behind  Slow Time: Recovering the Natural Rhythm of Life by Waverly Fitzgerald. I’m only on chapter 3 so far, but I’m really excited by what she talks about, and I think it’s a great resource for anyone who feels like time is out of their control.

Hurrying

One of the first things she asks you is to explore your own beliefs about Time–ideas you might not even realize you embrace because they feel so natural, you’re so used to them, that they just seem like “The Truth”.

Many of these ideas come not only from the culture, but from your particular family.

For instance, I always feel like I’m in a hurry. And I realized that a big belief I learned from my upbringing was that hurrying signified being serious about something.

Conversely, being slow signified being overly relaxed, too casual–not taking something seriously. Therefore, if I cared about something, I had to do it in a hurry or I wasn’t taking it seriously

Whew, let me tell you, that hurrying belief wears me out.

It’s also very difficult to actually hurry through learning new things (which I’m constantly doing), so I usually feel like I’m taking too long to do just about anything–which means I’m also feeling like I can’t measure up. More exhaustion.

But when I think about my notions about hurrying as a belief I have instead of just being the truth or the nature of things, well then I’ve got a fighting chance to stop that pattern and allow a new belief to take its place–one that still incorporates my values and the things I want for myself–such as being productive or doing good work.

Here’s a few new beliefs affirmations I’m playing with:

>When I take my time, I do better work.

>I accomplish more when I’m relaxed and present.

>I feel good, think well, and accomplish a lot when I take my time.

>I make better artwork when I pay attention, take my time, and let my understandings unfold naturally.

>I prefer to pay attention to what I’m doing without multi-tasking.

Creating a New Paradigm

Our beliefs about time are very tangled up with how we do everything in our lives–when I think about my hurrying belief, I see how it impacts everything I do–how I clean the dishes, how I drive, how I create.

When I interrupt my usual patterns and slow down, it’s a great feeling because I’m allowing myself more. When everything isn’t urgent, it helps me remember my priorities. And one of those priorities is my creativity.

It’s exciting to realize I have the opportunity to interrupt what isn’t working for me about how I experience Time and begin creating a new paradigm for myself, based on my own best nature.

Frankly, it’s just so nice to realize that I have a say in all that. That I don’t have to go through life feeling like there’s never enough time to do what I want.

That how I experience time is up to me.

And since my time is my life, this ain’t no small thing!

Your Time and Your Creativity

How about you? Do you know what your beliefs about Time are? How do they impact what you do and what you allow yourself? Please share in the comments–I’d love to hear.

It was tough for what felt like A LOT of reasons–personal, financial, business–but I recently realized it was mostly because of one reason.

Too much trying.

I had had to do a lot of hard things for the past several months, and all that trying was wearing me down until I finally felt miserable.

Why couldn’t I just do instead?

What the Heck is the Difference?

I’m a do-er. I do things. I make things. I like taking action. I like to execute, and I like to finish.

Doing suits me.

Doing has no agenda really, other than the task at hand. Doing has no heaviness.

I’m also a try-er.

Sometimes this is healthy, like the way I’m very willing to try new things I don’t know how to do.  I’ll give it a try–what the heck.

Sometimes it’s less healthy, like when I try hard to do things right. When I try to succeed. When I try to make something happen. No “what the heck” attached.

This kind of trying has lots of emotional heaviness associated with it. Lots of striving. The effort, the doing, is all wrapped up in the outcome.

Trying = Doing + Drama

As I was trying to figure out how to make myself feel better, I assessed my to-do list. There wasn’t much I could leave out, except the way I felt about what I needed/wanted to get done.

I realized if I could just do them without all the emotional heaviness of trying to get them all right/perfect/successful, I’d be a lot happier.

I’m good at doing, but I was so busy trying that I poisoned the integrity of the tasks at hand. I was ruining my doing with all my trying.

So now I’m focused on the “doing” without the drama of the “trying”.

And since I also have other unhelpful beliefs attached to trying such as “trying=being virtuous” and “trying=being-serious-about-what-I’m-doing”, it’s good at quietly slipping in the back door unnoticed when I’m busy working on something.

But that’s okay. It’s a process.

Your Creativity

How about you? Are you also trying instead of doing?

Is it hard to weave creativity back into your life because what you want to make would be hard and you’d really have to try?

Is it hard to go deeper or get bolder with your art because you don’t have the energy for that kind of trying right now?

What if you didn’t have to try? What if you allowed yourself the endless opportunity of doing instead?

To “do instead of try” combines honoring the present with being committed to the long haul of your life. What a generous, loving, forgiving way to be allowed to move through time.

What the heck–why not give it a try?

A great spokesman for following your heart.

He wrote this poem in the last week of his life.

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford
The Way It Is

I’m a huge poetry fan, as I was an English major back in the day, along with studying art, and poetry is one of my earliest loves. I feel like it’s the most marginalized art form, and most of us were taught poetry in school by people who didn’t like it. What a shame, since so often it’s the art form we reach for when we need to express our most important emotions.

I thought the exuberance of this poem would be good for a grey winter day (like the one we’re having here in the Northeast) and e.e. cummings‘ playfulness with language is a great inspiration for doing your own thing in whatever your art form.

You  might not know that e.e. cummings also painted and drew, and was influenced by Surrealism, which I talked about recently in my blog post on Automatic Drawing.

Enjoy.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

by e.e. cummings

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The second one is something I’ve wrestled with on and off for a long time–pushing past rejection.

As part of his talk, Kevin shared his experience of writing a memoir/motivational how-to book and trying to get it published. He sent his book out to fifty-two publishers and they all rejected him.

Fifty-two. 5-2.

And then he published it himself.

It got to 2nd place on the Amazon best-seller list, and now he has a publisher for his 2nd edition.

As I listened to his story, I thought, hmmm, when would I have quit? When would I have thought that I needed to read the writing on the wall and understand that what I had written was no good? Twenty rejections? Eleven rejections? Thirty-one?

All my life I have been so moved by stories of people ignoring rejection or prevailing wisdom about what’s “good” or “worthy” and what isn’t, and turning their dreams into success.

I’ve marveled at their emotional fortitude and lack of self-doubt. Their unwavering belief in what’s they’ve created above and beyond what anyone else thinks about it.

Mattering

I asked Kevin how he balanced trying to make changes based on criticism he received and plowing forward with his vision that his book was indeed worth publishing the way it was.

He admitted that some of the criticism really hurt and he did take some of it to heart, but because he knew why he’d written it, it was the why that sustained him and drove him forward.

Interesting.

Could I think that something I made was so important that I must share it with the world when lots of experts were quite happy to tell me, no it isn’t?

Perceiving the “going forward in the face of rejection” as an insistence that something I’ve made is so important has always kind of made me uncomfortable.

But then I realized it isn’t so much about insisting that something you’ve made is important, it’s more about simply believing that it’s valid. As valid as anything else. You can make something and simply try hard to share it because you want to.

And when someone doesn’t like something, (or 52 someones in Kevin’s case) why should you or I or Kevin Touhey ever believe someone else’s opinion of something we’ve made MORE than our own?

Why should we put our destinies in someone else’s hands like that?

Whatever the reasons for why, in the past, I might have made that mistake, it’s my life right now, and why not see about changing that?

Because I also believe I’m an evolving, growing creature excited by the future and in love with possibility.

Being on Your Own Side

Kevin Touhey wrote a book and wanted it published. He asked 52 publishers to do it and they all said no, so he did it himself and created an Amazon best-seller. And then a publisher asked him.

His story another example of being on your own side. And the more you’re on your own side, the more your creativity can shine. The more you’re on your own side, the more permission you give yourself to do what you need/want/dream of doing.

Why not? This is your life, every minute of it.

Right Now

So I ask you, at what number of rejections do you think you would have thrown in the towel?

Let’s call that “The Past.”

And now I ask you to think about the positive, real reasons why you love to make things and how you feel when you’re creative and engaged.

Do you feel good? Fulfilled? Alive? Most yourself? Write them down. Now put your hand on your heart and repeat those truths to yourself.

Let’s call this “The Long Now.” Real honest truths you can access anytime.

Are You In?

I’ve also decided, in the course of writing this blog post, to write “52″ on a post-it note and stick it above my computer as a reminder to be on my own side when I’m sticking my neck out and doing hard things like writing personal blog posts, creating classes, planning workshops, or designing kits.

To be on my own side when I make my artwork and share it with friends, post it on the internet, or approach a gallery owner about showing it.

How about you? You in?

I almost ran out in the first 5 minutes, panicking about out how I was going to keep chatting with perfect strangers all night.

But I met a lot of nice, down to earth small business owners and we had a motivational speaker, Kevin Touhey, who was a very pleasant surprise.

“Pleasant surprise”, I guess, because I tend to wrinkle my nose at titles like “Motivational Speaker” and the blurb I read seemed like a lot of internet sales hype I’ve seen before. But he was warm, honest and real. And now that I’ve met him, I know he means it all.

And while a lot of what he said wasn’t new to me, it was a great reminder. And he shared two experiences that lingered especially in my mind after the talk was over.

Bags and Bags

One was that he has grocery bags in his office filled with scraps of paper with different thoughts of gratitude and appreciation written on each one. Bags–plural.

He pulls out an appreciation or two when he needs to counteract a negative belief or experience.

He holds his hand over his heart and breathes into it as he reads these thoughts of gratitude and appreciation to himself in order to blunt the effect of the negative belief pattern and stop the spiral of indulging familiar demons.

I really like the idea of physically creating and keeping actual bags of gratitude around me–it’s so concrete and poetic at the same time.

Insight on the 159 Local to Cliffside Park

While I’ve created gratitude lists before, the image of grocery bags stuffed with gratitude and appreciation so intrigued me that I pulled out my notebook on the bus ride home and started a fresh stream-of-consciousness gratitude list of my own.

I kept writing without picking up my pen until I got to my stop–gratitude after gratitude–it really changed the quality of my bus ride home.

It also provided me with a clearer insight about the positive affect that attention-to-gratitude could offer me by disrupting a myriad of subtle negative attitudes I’ve got socked away that barely register in my consciousness.

For instance, the bus I was riding on is new and has a new feature of automatically announcing its destination every time the driver has to stop and open the door. The mechanical voice was delivering its garbled announcement over and over, stop after stop in my 30 minute ride.

I’m pretty sound sensitive and this kind of thing generally drives me batty. As  I was writing my gratitude list, my intolerance for these announcements was feeling a bit, oh, ironical.

I thought about how I could turn my irritation around with appreciation and wrote ” I’m grateful that NJ Transit does its best to keep its equipment updated with the latest technology.”

This made me smile.

And it did change how I felt.

I imagined NJ Transit staff sitting through lots of meetings discussing how to improve service for an ever-dissatisfied public. I imagined them brainstorming different solutions and realized that a lot of somebodies did this to make things better for me, and I appreciated their effort.

Even if I wasn’t loving the end result. And as I appreciated their effort, the repetition of the mechanical voice was much less grating.

This glimpse made me wonder about how many other little things like that I could potentially turn around and experience differently–joyfully even.

Gratitude for Yourself?

Including negative thoughts about myself.

Could I turn around everything I experience as a personal deficit and experience it with appreciation? Or take a moment to appreciate my talents and strengths that I usually take for granted as I give myself a hard time for things I’m not so good at?

What if I even just tried to match every negative thought with a positive one? Do I even know how many I have? I’m a little scared to find out, but I’ve decided to try.

(But I’m going to start small to keep it doable–maybe noticing and matching my negative thoughts with a positive thought for an hour or a morning at first.)

I think this is important to do for your art-making and creativity as well. If you’re busy beating yourself up for not making things or are judging yourself for making something you’ve deemed mediocre, how could you turn it around?

What would you say to your dearest friend? Could you consider being your own dearest friend?

I know it’s hard and awkward. It feels easier and more familiar to tread the well worn grooves of  self-criticism and judgment–sometimes those grooves are so familiar and well worn we don’t even know we’re thinking them. So just noticing these grooves might be a start.

Or maybe a bag of gratitude might help.

I’m thinking a pretty basket rather than a grocery bag for mine. How about you?

What do you think about Kevin Touhey’s bags of gratitude? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’m going to discuss the second thing he shared that stayed with me–an experience of not giving up–in my next blog post.

Last winter she gave a fantastic Ted Talk and I thought I should share it here in case you haven’t seen it.

It’s a great talk on creativity, “genius”, success, fear of failure, and the cultural stereotypes of the “unstable artist” and how we might rethink that. I hope you enjoy it–she’s very engaging.

(If you’re reading this in an email, you’ll have to click here to view the video.)

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