Enchanting Juno

Focus. FOCUS.

 Youtube is making me want a kitten. 

 

In much the same fashion that etsy is making me want a ruby necklace.

I do not need a kitten. 

I do not need a ruby necklace.

There are the obvious reasons.  Kittens are a pain in the ass.  I already have a cat who would murder me as I slept if I brought home any such thing.  I do not have 2400 bucks to spend on jewelry.  If I DID have 2400 bucks to spend on anything I should spend it on my house, or my retirement.  Or travel.  Or not AT ALL.

But oh, I want them.  Because I want the life that goes with them - a clean house and the worry free time to play with an infant animal.  An event to wear a ruby necklace at - a party or a fantastic restaurant with great company at which I am dazzling and happy.   I swear this is the idea behind 90% of my spending and acquisition.

These are fantasies of a clean and glamorous alternate reality where nobody hairballs on my bedroom rug (I do not regret the steam cleaner ONE TINY BIT) and I did not spend an hour removing cat hair from a blanket - it never comes off in the wash, you have to brush it  - only to come back to the guest room and find this:

 "This is my room, not yours.  And if you get a kitten I will cut you." (Pardon the exposure, Vignette was having a brightness issue but I love this anyway)

Same blanket.  Of course.

These are fantasies of  happiness and love and contentment and joy that seem some days so very elusive.  

The most obvious and most important reason is that --surrendering, I guess  - to these fantasies perpetuates the least desirable aspects of your reality.   Blowing cash or worse, credit, on jewelry I may never wear will just take me a step further from a life where I might have more worry-free time to play with my existing cat.   Among other things. 

I have a lot of trouble with that, the indulgence of the moment.  I pulled two dozen books off the shelf this weekend, things I've never read and never will.  I packed up a dozen pairs of shoes for Goodwill.  In the last two years, while I 'wasn't buying yarn,' I managed to acquire oh, 24 lots that need documenting for Ravelry (TWENTY FOUR.  All excellent bargains! But still....). 

All of that together was probably enough to paint my house, with a nice dinner in Manhattan on the side.  A really REALLY nice dinner.  Which is sobering.

Etsy and youtube are not making me do anything.   They are somewhere between blameless and irrelevant in this equation.  It's me.  My wanting.  My confusion about how I get from A to B in my life.  I know better, but knowing better is not my first response yet, it's my 3rd, or 4th. 

I'm getting better, but how do you stop that voice that says this THING will make something better, get it, you deserve it.  I've said it to others, others have said it to me.  But no one deserves THINGS.  That grants a bit too much power to stuff, you know? 

How do you connect the synapse for long term understanding?  How do you act from there FIRST?

 

 

 

The Fear.

Here’s something I just learned that will blow your mind.  Unless you already know it , in which case you are wise and I want to be you when I grow up.

Creativity is about not being afraid of making a mess. Not letting The Fear stop you from making…mistakes, problems, piles of shit, a ruined mess of not right.

I had no idea. 

I’m sure there are many, many fine books discussing the creative process which talk about this very thing.  But I have never read them because I am not creative*.

I have this friend who has a technical job; recently he took on a project for no money that was way, way outside of his comfort zone, way on the creative side of the field he works in as a tech guy.  When the person he was doing this for asked him WHY he was willing to go out of pocket to do this for free he said, “Well, I know I can solve problems, but I wasn’t sure I knew how to create them”.

He had The Fear during the whole planning and execution process.  And he did it anyway. (I was, and am, really proud)

It is so simple and yet I have failed to comprehend this my whole life.  It’s a family thing.  My mom is creative and makes messes all the time and all we saw was piles of shit in the way of family life and disrespected that, and my dad…well, I remember I was sitting at a table working on some craft project when I was just post college and it was going great and it was SO satisfying and I had such a great feeling and I showed it to my father** and he was like, um, you know you need to find a profession right?

Indulging your creativity is an obstacle to progress.  Hard to even type that since it about as backward as it is possible to be.

But I absorbed it like a sponge, bought the whole package – creative endeavors are selfish and disordered and not respectable and an indulgence that needs to be set aside in the face of life’s responsibilities. 

Insert 10 years of workaholic depression and misery followed by 10 years of therapy and professional confusion. 

 I already knew that The Fear is a protective mechanism, and that The Fear is something I need to question, because it stops me, limits me.  Hell I almost didn’t go to my first SOAR because I had The Fear (fortunately I also have friends who made me work around it).

For me The Fear is primarily about doing poorly, not seeming competent, making mistakes.  It looks like a little bit of control freakishness, but really, it is the Fear.  But subverting it is so hard when it feels so strong and …responsible and good to abide by the limits.  Work hard, do well, don’t make a mess, don’t step outside normalcy no matter how much conventional work feels like dying.  Dying inside makes you a good girl, you know that.

And so I am listening and my friend said this remarkable sentence.  Let me show you again:

 “Well, I know I can solve problems, but I wasn’t sure I knew how to create them”.

 And some gear in my head rotated into place.  If I am too afraid to make a mess I will never make ANYTHING.  Being creative is about creating problems.

 Just writing that down gives me a damn chill. 

 

*Someone will yell at me for this.  I swear, it's not low self esteem, that's not really what gets in my way.  My self esteem is FINE, but I am not artistic - can't sing or draw or arrange pebbles in meaningful patterns, and for a long time I have laboured under the limiting idea that creativity was confined to art-y things for which I have no skill or talent. 

** My Dad defined himself by how well he fullfilled his obligations in many ways rather than by how he met his own needs, but to be fair, I was 22 and having some real trouble thinking about my future.  I looked kind of dead in the water.  I was kind of dead in the water.   I don't think he meant to stop me from thinking about what I really wanted or was good at for a decade.  Or maybe he did.  It used to amke him really angry when other people were better at living their lives.