Pressure.
I’ve come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘getting life right’. Absolutely no one is as sure of themselves as they appear on the outside. We all pretend to be okay, we pretend to know where our lives are going. But we go home and quietly second guess ourselves at best - at worst, we agonise, then we abandon our needs and ideas. My memoirs, this site, my art, it’s all arisen from a decision to just act on my deepest needs, to only let myself stuff up - but celebrate it, because I’m brave. I learn from my mistakes - usually, and have become my own advocate. I will have my back now, regardless how things turn out. A decision that has set me free to try.
You look back over your life a lot more as you get older. One thing I’ve done a lot lately is reflect on mistakes I made, not in a self-punishing way, but in an effort to learn - to look for patterns that can hint at how I can make the most of my ‘third act’ which is rapidly approaching.
Everyone makes mistakes - poor judgement calls, oversights, careless stuff-ups, you name it. But that’s not the kind of mistakes I’m referring to. I’ve asked myself, “is there a consistent or recurring tendency?” and “if I had my time over, what would I do differently?”
Here are two answers that keep cropping up, regardless of which situation I think about…
a) I’ve never believed in myself enough to really pursue what I want.
b) I often assume something is a problem… then find out that it’s not. Either the problem wasn’t as bad as I thought, or it’s not there at all.
But I’m getting better at asking myself a MAGICAL question… “does this problem look the same from a completely different angle?” If not.. that means how is looks isn’t necessarily fact - it’s a perspective. Then I ask myself another magical follow up question “is there a creative way I can handle this differently?”
For making decisions about how to handle situations, a golden, shining, SPARKLING key… is knowing what I want from life.
Crucially I’ve learned enough - about myself and about the world - that I am very intent on actively honouring what really matters to me - instead of what matters to other people. I’ve always known that creating art is what I need to do, to be me. But I denied my truest self expression for decades, from of fear and self doubt.
I don’t expect fear and self doubt to disappear - it’s part of being human. Instead of fighting against them, I accept them, acknowledge them, even list them and put them on the wall. But then I say… “And I’m going to do this anyway.”
Some practical ways I action this insight…
I have listed all my biggest doubts and fears and put them right up on the wall next to my easel. Each one is accompanied by a response that feels empowering to me.
Mindfulness. Practicing just noticing my thoughts and where they are taking me. Bringing my creativity into any situation and asking myself “is there a different way to look at this?” Or “is there a different solution?”. I note down a plan, then act on it.
The artwork for this entry is very scrappy as I did it while under a lot of time pressure - it expresses my wobbly acceptance of being so utterly imperfect in who I am and all that I do… It expresses “not having time or energy to do art” and DOING IT ANYWAY.