Creative Every Day

Soaring

December 29th, 2007

When synchronicities start falling in my lap wherever I turn, I know I'm on the right track. And everywhere I go I'm seeing things relating to "Now." I've been on a fun little run of the internet this morning and keep thinking, "oh, i must link to that and that and that!" But then it gets a little out of hand and I need to let go of trying to remember it all. I think if I did remember it all this post would be a tad too long.

In a beautiful example of Julia Cameron's quote, "leap and the net will appear, " I received an amazing and generous offer in the comments of my last post, from Sarah of Today's Homemaker. Sarah has offered her services as a proofreader/copyeditor for my book! Thank you again, Sarah! And thank you to everyone for the chorus of "YES!" It means the world to me!

Above is something I did in my art journal this morning with pencil, colored pencil and pen. I'm going to use it for this week's Illustration Friday theme which is "soar." The theme seems to fit in so perfectly with all sorts of things coming up, such as the leaping rabbit in the post below and Marilyn's theme for 2008: "leap." The quote above is one that Patti left in the comments of the last post. I think it has to do with letting go of the baggage and restrictions we put on ourselves, so that the core of who we are is allowed to soar freely. The quote from Ginevee, an Australian aboriginal, says, "Inside each of us, there is a forgotten person." When I read it, I had this ghostly image in my head that needed to come out. I put that quote within the forgotten self who is being allowed to soar. Perhaps I'll do this drawing with paint at some point, but getting it out of my head is good for now.

While working on this image, I was listening to some podcasts and somehow ended up choosing an older podcast from Accidental Creative. This particular podcast is called "Moment" and it was so incredibly relevant to some of the things I've been talking about here, that I had to share. This may sound odd, but I actually listened to this podcast several times and I even took notes in my sketchbook! The podcast, by Todd Henry of Accidental Creative, is all about becoming "unbound" or how we can uncover and break down the artificial boundaries that limit our creativity. I wrote about something similar in my post on defining beliefs. And for many reasons this theme is particularly important to me right now. For one, one of my defining beliefs has been, "I'm not a writer." I could go on about where I came up with that belief, but it's really not that important. The important part is that it became part of my identity and I held onto it as a rule, when in reality it's an imaginary construct that is not serving me in any way, except to hold me back.

Henry shares a story from Neil Fiore's book, The Now Habit that illustrates really well how artificial boundaries can limit us. We are asked to imagine a board that is 1 foot wide and 30 feet long. Can you imagine walking on that board easily? Yes, it would be quite simple to do for most of us. Now, imagine that board is 100 feet in the air, balanced between two buildings. It would take the same skills to walk along that board, but we'd surely be terrified of falling. Just like moving the board high up in the air, our imagined boundaries keep us fearing the consequences instead of living in the moment and focusing on the actual skill it would take to do the job. My theme for the year is, "Now." So, if my boundaries keep me from living in the moment, that's just one more reason for me to unearth and release them. 

I also really liked what Henry had to say about "the break between aspiration and action." Here, he was speaking about how when people have big dreams that they aren't acting on, there is usually some artificial wall in the way (or the aspirations they have are actually those of other people.) This was certainly true with my dreams of writing a book. I had all sorts of belief systems set up that were blocking the way. And it's also true as Henry says, that each belief that you uncover leads to others which can be daunting, but also so very freeing to discover! I'm definitely feeling a lot more freedom in releasing some of my defining beliefs this year and I'm sure the continued freedom I find in 2008 will lead to wonderful places.

I also loved the part of the podcast that talked about how you must step outside your comfort zone and explore your curiosities because being stuck in old ways of doing things and/or feeling any tension around moving forward is usually a sign that some boundary is in place. All of this relates so much to being in the now, to being open and willing to play, to releasing the fear of failure, to being confident and yet humble. These are all lessons I'm trying to absorb.

I'll leave you with this poem I found online today by DW Bender. The poem, which went with the beautiful woodcut she created for this week's Illustration Friday, touched my heart:

tonight when dreaming
may I turn into a bird
nameless and homeless
in my solitary flight
I'll forget I have no wings