How much time do you spend weaving between polarities?
Along the wiggling line of progress, between way too much and barely enough.
It’s not just me, is it?
At the end of last year I committed to a daily drawing practice: every day I’d work on improving my observation, coordination, imagination. Every day I’d give myself at least 5 minutes or so of drawing, not much more.
Just enough to open the flow of ideas at the start of the morning, to build on the muscle memory of drawing, to break through the first layer of inertia.
I really wanted to practice the drawings I find difficult, but to begin I was happy with doodles to see what emerged.
I told folk about this BIG plan of mine, I wanted the accountability. (I might have told you too.)
Just like the morning pages practice, the regular journaling habits, the daily yoga and meditation time, and all those wholesome promises I make myself…
I wonder to myself: is it the making of the promises, in and of itself, that makes me rebel?
“Who am I to tell me what to do??”
In the attempt to outwit my own ridiculous self sabotaging mind games, I ended up bending, breaking and rewriting every aspect of the plan:
Daily? nope. Drawing? meh, kinda, more splashing around in the shallow end of my abilities.
But what did emerge instead was the beginning of some compassion for myself.
What if sloshing watercolor about, writing seemingly meaningless words, letting patterns fall through my hand was enough?
What if I was still creating, still making, still bringing out ideas into the open. What if that was enough?
What if my obstinance and non compliance to my own self-set challenge wasn’t just the precursor to another ‘Fk this, I can’t do it’ and instead I just kept moving, kept making, kept playing.
And free from the berating inner monologue, occasional actual sketching would take place.
In the spaces in between, I can see, this is a part of my process I need to work through, not against, not in spite of, but with. With an understanding that only I can afford to myself.
So page by page, I’ll continue. Do you have a daily creative practice? I’d love to know what shape it takes.
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