Don’t give up your day job?

I’m beginning to find some elements of my day job as a freelance journalist intruding at the moment on my creative progress and personal growth.

 A lot of how we feel about our work seems to hinge upon who it is we are working with. At the moment I’m having a few doubts about one particular employer who seems not to trust me completely to do my job and yet is trying to ring-fence my time and tie me up with commitments for months ahead.

 This seems fairly important in terms of creative growth, because doing work under conditions that don’t feel right has an impact on both my time to pursue other creative projects and my integrity. However, it’s quite a big move to step decisively away from paid work to hack a path through the unknown jungle of creative endeavour.

A wise friend on the Internet gave this advice, which I think holds true in situations well beyond career scenarios:

 ”Don’t commit to something that could be a soul-stealing proposition”

Wise words that I intend to revisit each time I have important choices to make.

create and grow

I’ve been looking through some of the artwork I’ve made over the years. Looking at some of it was uplifting, bringing back all kinds of memories.

 I’m working through a tough but interesting patch in the Artist’s Way right now, and am finding writing and journalling hard going. But when I rediscovered my artwork I felt inspired to make something – my initial thought was simple greeting cards for friends and family.

 So I’ve now joined the throng at cafepress with a couple of my images on cards, badges and so forth. Let me know what you think.

I decided that if one creative avenue was blocked I should just go ahead and create something, anything. I’m on a mission now to just put things I create ‘out there’.

Milestone

Update on progress with the Artists’ Way:

I have definitely been writing, painting, cooking and generally creating a great deal more since I started out following the Artists’ Way. I’m also making more time for activities that benefit me, like exercise and relaxation, and feeling more entitled to this time.

I had a real breakthrough a couple of weeks ago when I was at the swimming pool early in the morning. The Autumn sun was shining through the skylight and I was enjoying just gliding up and down the pool, which was almost empty. A few lines from poem by Penn Kemp I had just discovered were going round and round in my head. When I got home I had an urge to write so I switched on my computer and a story just began to flow. It wrote itself in about an hour.

 I’m no expert fiction critic, but I’ve written and edited plenty of factual articles before so I could see that I held together pretty well. What’s more I liked it myself. It was about self-discovery and a mysterious woman.

Remember the Goddess website I blogged about a few weeks back? I know the inspiring women who run it slightly and I thought they might like my story. Without spending any time talking myself out of it, I emailed it off. And they did love it. What’s more, they are going to publish it in February on their website.

It sometimes feels uncomfortable to broadcast positive things others have said about us. I’m going to do it anyway:

“I love it …. really enjoyed the story – so many questions were coming to me as I read.  Who is she?  What will happen next?  Enjoyment, too, of the lady with the perm – we’ve all seen her so often – and much more lovely bits of description!”

“What a beautiful story and I really like the way that you write. It really brought a tear to my eye.”

So I’ve proved I can do it once…the real challenge is to keep working at it and see if I can do it again.

Since then I’ve strayed slightly from the programme and am aware that it would be easy to give up and move on having ‘proved’ to myself that I can do it. But I aim to just get on with it and look at the reasons for wanting to move on/step back. There could be gold in them there hills…

Running with wolves

One to make you smile and one to make you think… 

“If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith… there is yet time.”

“The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands – all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase.” 

from Woman Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Get with the Goddess…

Some extremely insightful and talented women (and a few men) have set up a website and journal including art, poetry and in-depth articles that I strongly recommend at

http://www.goddess-pages.com/

I loved these pages – they reflect the soul’s journey at this time of year. The content is not ‘New Age’ but rather dedicated to Pagan/Goddess matters. If you thought these were one and the same (they aren’t) then please read Jacqui’s excellent article.

Wild behaviour is profound

Do you have expectations about how another person should behave – do you get anxious or annoyed when they act unpredictably? Try to let go of your expectations (just for an hour or two, at first, if you find this difficult). Do you feel differently about that person? Can you listen to their story without viewing it through the window of your own experience? 

To take this further, invite yourself or yourself plus a companion to do something radically different from usual and hold the space where you can be your true uninhibited self. Trust your instincts, and be sensitive to any feelings you experience.

Of course there is some risk involved – you might find out things about yourself or your companion that you didn’t know before and have to then work with or accept them. That’s why we tend to do ‘familiar/safe’ things as a general rule, and come up with ‘reasons’ which say we can’t follow crazy urges. Substitute the word ‘reasons’ with the word ‘fears’. 

As you raise your awareness, these opportunities for spontaneous action and release tend to come up more often. I’ll give an example – a samba band member spontaneously invited a group I was in to watch a procession and dance amongst the crowd – several of us ended up dancing wildly in front of the band all the way along the pier, with a fairly large audience.

Many of the people involved would usually rather have died than danced madly in public. But the wild dancing followed a day of meditation and reflection. We had gone into town to deliberately create opportunities to do uninhibited things. This is what Sark calls ‘living juicy’. The outer activities may seem plain crazy – but the self-knowledge that often results may be profound.

Other people’s expectations, real or imagined by ourselves, are really powerful. Keep an eye on little voices in your head about what they think. You can live with these voices and work with them if you are able, or imagine a nasty fate for them if they are getting in the way too much.

Syncronicity:just in time?

Here’s one about a clock…

I’ve been talking to people and reading a lot about syncronicity and intending recently -

Syncronicity: people and events matching up better than you could have planned it, with a dash of meaning you hadn’t anticipated.

Intending: Putting ideas out there in a powerful way to make things happen and grow into the life you really want.

One common idea with intending is that the universe will give you what you really want, but in it’s own sweet way when it’s good and ready. You have to allow time and timing to happen – you can’t expect the universe to cough up the goods to a schedule.

I recently really needed a kitchen wall clock to use in a kind of ‘time bending’ exercise with some university students I teach. I hunted and asked around the university and no-one came up with the kind of clock I needed. I did this over a couple of weeks, and the idea that I ‘needed’ a clock for the exercise to work out was on my mind.

The night before the class I gave up and bought a clock from a supermarket. Cost wan’t an issue, because the university re-imbursed me. I used the clock in my exercise and was pleased with how it went.

 When I got home that evening there was a big carrier bag in my hallway. My mother-in-law has frequent clearouts and often offers the nicest items to us in case we can make use of them. You can guess what was in the bag, right?

Of course, not just any clock but a kitchen clock exactly like the one I had in mind. On one level, the universe provided me with exactly what I needed, and was it giving me a little nudge about ‘timing’ and gratitude by chosing to supply a clock?

On another level, it was just a coincidence…these happen all the time and have been scientifically proven to be quite likely. Hang on a minute – why are they likely? Could it be because people everywhere are wishing them into existence, or because the universe is giving little signs out when it sees the need? That’s impossible to prove or disprove, so I guess it’s a matter of faith.

Golden opportunity?

What’s this ‘vein of gold’ business then?

Each of us has creative gifts of some kind or another. As well as being obviously creative (a painter or actor, say) you could be a creative childminder or be inspired to cook up inventive meals.

So what? Well right now I’m exporing the idea that we ‘tap into’ creativity from some higher place, or maybe that being creative re-introduces us to who we really are and the more soulful or spiritual side of life (religion optional). At any level, this for me is a good place to scatter a few seeds for personal growth and push myself to live a more creative and fulfilling life. I’ll keep you posted. I bet loads of you have ‘been here’ before. Support and advice is really welcome – please keep it positive. Thanks.

The name is inspired by a couple of extremely popular books by Julia Cameron about unlocking your creative potential. These books are great to dip into, but require a certain time and effort commitment on the reader’s part to do soul-mining expeditions and come back with a motherlode of self-knowledge, creative inspirations and confidence, or ideally both.

I have had these books for at least four years and, despite reading them and taking it in, had not previously commited to the programme Julia suggests. A million other things got in the way, like having two kids, needing to work to pay the bills, etc, etc. These are basically excuses so I’ll put them in a kind of psychological bin bag and kick them into the garden right now.

I’ve started mining now, and have plenty of ideas bubbling away. Some of them will bubble out onto this blog.