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Dear Friends,
It’s so easy to diminish our work as “not good enough” or just plain “not enough” to share with others. Especially when we’ve been more productive or capable in the past. Especially when our dreams for ourselves are “bigger,” but we just CANNOT put more energy in to making those life goals happen at present.
Perhaps illness or injury is requiring that we give our body care and attention, asking us to put greater endeavors on the back burner while we heal and rebuild. Maybe life has intruded and family cares are needing priority at the moment. It could be financial needs are looming, requiring a focus on income-generation in order to get our basic needs met.
Whatever the circumstances, when we’re thrown off track from dreams and goals, creative or personal, it can be immensely discouraging. Our own expectations and internal pressure can make us feel we are failing. Sometimes, derailings can be for long periods of time.
Creatives have a NEED to create. When our progress is thwarted, it can truly make us feel “not ourselves,” rudderless and unfulfilled as humans. An artist who is not creating can feel they have lost themselves. I’ve heard many artists express this sentiment: I can’t NOT create. It’s a matter of mental health and general wellbeing.
It is difficult to release our greater goals from our working hands. Smaller goals can feel “unworthy” of our time and attention. But, the process of releasing is not as painful if we recognize these reroutings are merely for a time.
The idea — and it is that, purely an idea — that we have somehow failed in our writerly, artistic, musical lives is patently false.
The truth is, the unique course of our life fashions our creative work on the timetable it is ‘supposed’ to unfold. Forced rest or switched priorities are NOT dead ends. They are merely essential time outs. A break from our goal-driven course may immerse us in a challenging new life experience with valuable lessons, complete with space for rest and reflection. The time off gives our pet project necessary time to marinate and percolate, imbuing it with richer flavor and distinction. Personal trials can burn off the unessential parts of us, refocusing and clarifying who we are and where we want to go. Our voice only becomes more OURS through difficult disruptions.
My 2022 and 2023 route has traveled through many unexpected, intense diversions. Get ready.
It included holding vigil at the bedside of two beloveds in the final weeks of their earthly lives: my bestie, 98 year-old Hank Fleischer and then my mom’s sister, Aunt Joanne. Then the route took a significant turn, taking me on a ride with disabling symptoms from years of undiagnosed hyperPARAthyroidism* and surgery in November to excise a (benign) tumor. Then there was a two month bout with Covid. I had been joined along the way by an annoying fellow traveler causing long-time respiratory distress, finally identified last week after allergy testing: I am allergic to TREES (can you believe it? i’m a total tree hugger! of all things 😔) as well as evil dust and weeds, etc. This discovery will force another diversion in the near future: 2-3 years of allergy shots. A challenging and sometimes anguishing leg of the journey has been trying to find solutions for my fur child, Ruby, diagnosed with pancreatitis last year, and for my mom as she has struggled with a health issue. It has not let up for Ruby, and she lives with pain, which has me continually helping her through it and trying new diets.
All of this has confounded and frustrated my ‘bigger’ goals, leaving me silently shouting, “HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET MY BOOK FINISHED AND PUBLISHED????”
If I were to hold my goals with clenched fists, I would be continually confounded and frustrated. But to let go, I have to have faith in my future self. I have to believe that Life will provide what I will need to fulfill the bigger dream when the time allows.
This month, I have been able to loosen my hands and expectations. Trust has allowed the acceptance needed to do so.
In accepting I need to temporarily give up the goal, I could just give up and quit creating. All or nothing. Or, I could just lose myself in the demands of the day and the needs of others, internally slumping over into creative despair and powerlessness. I could decide I’ll just be creatively productive “one day.”
But I must not. We must not!
Our creative capacity, vision and desire is a priceless gift that must be prioritized and nurtured. Inherent in it is a blessed responsibility. We are responsible for this gift, to ensure it is continually developing in our lifetime. We must ensure it lives and thrives within us.
In overloaded times, we do not have to become discouraged at our seeming lack of productivity. There is another way: we can recraft our goals and expectations to fit the parameters of our present life.
Tiny Poems
Instead of tackling the restructuring, finalizing and querying required to complete and publish my book—tasks that feel overwhelming for me currently—I’m writing simple poetry.
When I say simple, I mean simple.
I’m talking SEVENTEEN SYLLABLES a day.
Three lines:
five syllables
seven syllables
five syllables
Yep, that’s it. A haiku.
A Japanese poetic form, emerging in the 17th century, a haiku traditionally evokes images of the natural world.
Perfect for me.
Inspired by a poet who writes a haiku every day, I decided to give that a go this month. It seems to be not only manageable, but also inspiring for me! This daily practice gives me 1) a reason to reflect and think creatively, and 2) a sense of accomplishment. Daily finishing that little poem keeps my writing brain active AND gives me a goal to complete.
I’ve not quit! I’ve not given up after all.
Seventeen syllables may not seem like much. But it makes all the difference and keeps me in the game. When I hop on my London Writers’ Salon 8:00 a.m. Zoom gathering joining the throng of international friends whittling away in silence at their own word projects, I have a routine and discipline that keeps me from feeling adrift. (I highly recommend sitting in on the LWS writers’ hours! www.LondonWritersSalon.com)
Outside my back glass door, I look out on a body of water I call “Golden Pond.” Tall, graceful spruce and weeping willow trees line the far shoreline. Beyond the flanking trees, a marshy meadow teems with a rich variety of birds. I’m visited by the regulars: Canada geese, great blue herons, barn swallows, house sparrows, American robins, red-winged blackbirds, mourning doves, European starlings, and Northern cardinals. And those are just the regulars! Guest vocal appearances by the ones who haven’t visually appeared to me yet include yellow warblers, American goldfinches, gray catbirds, cedar waxwings, tufted titmice and ospreys, to mention just a few. They create a lively dawn chorus and, when I get a glimpse, a colorful scene. Oh, and there are snapping turtles and muskrats, too. It is a WONDERWORLD! I have so much inspiration for haiku writing.
Sometimes, this poetic form gives me a place to sort through whatever difficulties I’m facing that day. Expressing troubles helps me release the heaviness of them. I feel validated and supported somehow.
Four Haikus
A lone dove tunes up.
Now, drowned out by rattling engines.
“Air conditioning.”
Canada wildfires
Dust in our winds, choking us.
Forests, wildlife—gone.
There you are! Up from
Your mucky pond, brave and still.
You let me see you.
(about the snapping turtle who had never yet come out for me til that day)
Survived yesterday,
Ruby and me. She, so sick.
Please, never again.
Clay Play
Throughout the extended season of looking after my beloved parents, I have sustained one—and sometimes only one!—self-care practice to maintain my social and creative well-being: ceramics classes.
In 2017, I signed up for (and have repeated) beginner wheel throwing and hand building classes at the Ann Arbor Art Center (down the road from the University of Michigan.) I escape to this thriving eclectic city once or twice a week to mingle with fellow artists and my fantastic, delightful teacher and friend, Daria Paik.
Though I’ve taken intermediate and advanced classes, I think I have regressed recently in my skills. I’ve given up wheel throwing for now, until I have greater capacity for the focus needed to center pots. But I continue on, making what I call “wonky pots,” loving the process of playing in the mud and seeing what happens.
Continuing on with these classes in the tough times and through illness has done something miraculous for me: forced out perfectionism!
Perfectionism saps the life out of experiences. Perfect is SO overrated. “Perfect” people are utterly BORING (and that’s an illusion, anyway.) Perfect is not something to attain to!
As a detail-oriented person with a history of perfectionistic tendencies, this newfound freedom really is incredible. I love it. Sometimes I make truly shitty art and I’m completely okay with it! I can see bits of beauty in each piece. If I’m not crazy about them, I can always recycle them. Tossing them in the bin actually feels GREAT! It’s all part of the process.
I deeply enjoy the process now so much more than the outcomes. And that’s what creating should be about! It should be FUN. It should be playing! If it ever stops being that, I will stop doing it.
Fellow perfectionists out there, let me tell you, it’s such a freeing experience to lower the stakes, and to let yourself make wonky artwork.
I hope you will try a little, easy project soon and even intentionally allow those glorious “imperfections” and asymmetries to exist. CELEBRATE YOUR EFFORTS not your products. Improving technique gradually is part of artistry, but the true glory of creation is the enjoyment of it.
(While you’re reading on, click to listen to ENJOY by Tekno, recently featured on the magnificent Apple TV show, TED LASSO.)
You know what else releasing perfectionism does? It makes you value others’ imperfect artwork. I recently showed my wonky pots to a fellow artist friend, and their response was not encouraging. Their critical eye saw the mistakes and my novice technique. It was a bit discouraging. But it also made me sad for them. It seemed they couldn’t even enjoy the bits of beauty in it. Their exacting eye saw only the “flaws.”
I encourage you to throw off that mentality. Critical, exacting and demanding kills joy. It shuts down artists, young and old.
I would love to hear your thoughts about recrafting your goals. I would love to hear what smaller goal or practice you may want to shift. If you have adjusted to smaller goals, I would love to know how that adjustment has freed you and preserved your creative soul. Please use the comment section below to share, or to just comment on this blog post in general.
If you like today’s blog, please click the heart to let me know. It really does help keep this artist going.
As always, I wish you fresh eyes to see that Wonderworld is around you, even in your current difficult circumstances. Don’t miss it!
With lots of love,
Linda
and Ruby
(*HyperPARAthyroidism is different from Hyperthyroidism.)
P.S. I’d love if you might share this with someone you think would enjoy or be encouraged by it.
This is a beautiful post! Haiku is the form I go to when I am most inspired, or amused. Birds! The Birds! Your entire post brings to mind one of my favorite books by Anne Lamott, “Bird by Bird”. Have faced similar pet and family health challenges over this past year. The beauty through all of that has been partially relocating to the East Coast, and discovering it again like a tourist (I’ve been away so long) in between and alongside caring for my mom (we went to a lovely Solstice celebration last night that was pretty far out of her comfort zone, and made personal essential oil fragrances together), and had a “sleepover” at my new apartment. Snapping turtles! There is one that lives on the banks of the river behind my apartment. And I’ve been inspired to enroll in a watercolor portrait class online given by one of my favorite Cincinnati drawing teachers. Fitting creativity in as many open bits of time as possible. It is essential and life giving, and your post captures this beautifully!❤️❤️❤️Enormous hugs friend!
A beautiful meditation on creativity. Thank you! Your pottery is exquisite!