Author: veronicabishop (page 14 of 21)

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invite the muse to play

September 23, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Good things don’t necessarily always start with a good idea. They come when you show up and start working. You invite the good ideas by doing the work that proves you’re ready for the ideas to make themselves known to you. When you prepare, the Muse arrives.

I’ve written every morning for more than sixty-six days now. That’s how long it takes to form a habit. I don’t feel like anything has really come of it yet, other than making it easier to show up every day and writing a blog post on a regular schedule. I guess that’s something. One step at a time. Hopefully ideas will come and I’ll get in the flow of writing creatively.

I had fun doing the writing exercise from my Writing Challenge app one morning. The writing is kind of disjointed when you get a new prompt every couple of minutes, but it’s a fun challenge to get the juices flowing. It feels good just to type, sometimes. I enjoy the physical act of pressing the keys just as quickly as the words come into my brain. Never mind if it makes any sense or is any good. That flow is what eventually gets me to writing something worthwhile most of the time. It primes the pump. It gets me into the rhythm of writing.

For me, writing has just as much to do with the rhythm of the words strung together and the flow of it coming out of my brain and out of my fingers as it has to do with the thoughts themselves. Good things don’t necessarily always start with a good idea. They come when you show up and start working. You invite the good ideas by doing the work that proves you’re ready for the ideas to make themselves known to you. When you prepare, the Muse arrives.

Yesterday I felt I should be drawing or practicing lettering, but sometimes the formality of it can be daunting. So I took the plastic wrap off of a cheap 2016 calendar I had bought for work and started doodling on the cardboard. Drawing on trash is freeing because it was going to be thrown away anyway. There’s no harm, no foul. And there’s absolutely no pressure to make anything good. I did some jaunty, silly doodle/lettering of my dog. I posted it on Instagram; not because I thought it was any good, but because I felt like sharing that it’s freeing to doodle on garbage. I certainly wasn’t looking for recognition. I was just having fun.

And that’s the kind of feeling I’m after every day. I just want to do something fun, even if meaningless, if it gets me into the mindset of creating. It takes the pressure off. Shouldn’t it be fun all the time? It doesn’t have to be useful or meaningful. It’s important to show up and practice. Just like it’s important for me to show up every day and not break the streak of writing. If you just do it all the time, it keeps fear and resistance at bay. There’s so much more room for better things to happen if you can get into enough of a groove that fear never has a chance to sneak in.

So go doodle on some garbage or write some gibberish. Have fun! And share it here, if you like. I look forward to seeing the results of your play time. 🙂

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rest & saying no

September 11, 2015 / / 1 Comment

November is usually a pretty crazy month for me. On top of working at a very busy grocery store that gets exponentially busier during the holidays, I usually vend at several craft fairs. This year, after much waffling, I decided not to participate in any shows this year. Initially I did a “gut check” as to whether or not I should apply to this year’s craft shows. I mentally committed to a “no” and sat with that decision for a while to see how it felt. Then I did the same thing with a “yes,” and already began to feel anxious. Even though before Christmas is by far the best time to sell handmade items, I knew I would come to regret the stress that would inevitably pile up during preparation. It was hard to say no because I live in a culture that sets the expectation that we all should burn the candle at both ends as part and parcel to pursuing the American dream; we are hardwired to over-commit.

I said no to craft fairs this year because I wanted to say yes to writing. A couple of years ago I tried to juggle NaNoWriMo with several craft shows on top of the craziness of the holidays during the day job. It was all just too much, and I wasn’t offering my family and friends the best part of me because I was too stressed to enjoy a moment of down time. I’m learning what my boundaries are, and knowing what to say no to is part of the process of learning to value myself. I would rather say no if it means having enough of myself left to give to the people who are important to me.

fal·low /ˈfalō/ n. plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility as part of a crop rotation or to avoid surplus production

In agriculture, farmers (before modern farming methods, at least) used to have a sabbatical year in which they would let the crops lie fallow. They would refrain from any kind of harvest or cultivation and let the plants go wild. Animals, insects, and passersby were allowed to help themselves and the weeds were allowed to take over. As the weeds grew deep into the soil and the fruit fell and rotted, they would return nutrients to the soil that had been depleted by the previous six years of growing one type of plant exclusively. Letting the earth rest for a season prepared it for another six years of farming, with healthier crops from the richer soil. Some farmers still practice crop rotation (alternating varieties of crops in given soil) for the same reason.

This year writing will be my primary external commitment. It’s time to shift my focus to something that feels more like me. Writing a novel in just one month will surely be no easy task, but just knowing that I haven’t committed to anything else has made me feel a sense of peace. No was the right decision, and I feel it will give me the rest I need to go into November with my best self, rejuvenated, and with a singular purpose. Rest allows me to cultivate the energy I’ll need in the future by letting go of other pursuits for a season, which will allow me to produce better fruit in another season.

Is there something in your life that you feel needs to lie dormant for a while? How would you benefit from either rotating to a different focus or taking a sabbatical from something? Have you seen benefits from doing this in the past?

 

 

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avoidance & comparison

September 9, 2015 / / 1 Comment

The difference between “failure” and “unstoppable force” is all psychological.

I’m usually a just get it done kind of person, except when it comes to my own personal work. I get up at 4 a.m. every morning to write, but it often gets pushed back to twenty minutes before I have to be out the door for my day job because shower/breakfast/feed the dog….When I come home I put off drawing because I should finish Learn Lettering first. But I also have to do laundry, and I have a massive headache. It’s so easy to fritter away time by pushing back the one thing that needs your focus until after this one little distraction. The feeling of having waded through all of the distractions and looking for more can feel an awful lot like boredom, but it’s a symptom of avoidance. Unless you’re content doing nothing all day every day (which I suspect my readers are not), you know what you have to do. Why does it feel like the last thing in the world you want to do right now? Because it’s important. Why is it the hardest thing to get started? Because the only person who has any expectations of you is the one person telling you to do something else.

I can crush it at the day job because it’s easy to create a clear to-do list for something external; I can detach myself from it. I can put my head down and work through a migraine because I get paid to and I can clock out and go home at the end of the day. It’s not personal. It’s somehow easier to adhere to extrinsic guidelines, even if you’re the one creating the task list within that structure. But imposing guidelines and expecting results for your own personal work is somehow a different animal. There’s that nagging Resistance monster somewhere deep in my subconscious telling me it’s just a hobby.

What I’m really avoiding is the idea that I could actually be successful at something and be capable of leaving my day job in the foreseeable future. I’m excited and scared of leaving something I know exactly how to do–even if I stopped loving it–and diving into something that’s a mix of both familiar and uncharted territory. I’m avoiding picking one thing because I’m afraid that means saying no to everything else.

It’s also scary because being successful means running with successful people..and being able to keep up.

I know it’s ridiculous to fear leaving behind something that doesn’t light you up inside. If there’s something else that makes you feel like it’s your reason for being, why should there be any fear in pursuing that? I guess we’re geared to seek safety. Mundane is safe. The known is safe. Routine and ease are safe. But staying with the known out of convenience doesn’t challenge us to be our best selves.

There’s a fine line between being inspired by surrounding ourselves people who do good work and being intimidated to the point of self-loathing. It’s important to surround yourself with people who are good at a skill you want to learn or who are good at living life in a way that you’d like to live yours. Glean wisdom from their experience, but be careful not to compare their level of success to yours. This can be paralyzing. There’s a tipping point; beware of it.

You get stuff done by showing up and doing it. You get great by practicing. You get prolific by not letting anything stop you.

I can too easily go from looking at the work of someone I admire and thinking, “I can do that,” to looking at the volume of their work and thinking, “Damn, I don’t just need to step up my game…I feel like I’m not even in the game.” It’s like getting pumped up for a workout. You start warming up and get the adrenaline going. “You’ve got this!” you tell yourself. Then you get lapped by a group of marathon runners and lose all desire to continue. Why? Because you made the mistake of comparing where you’re at now to where they are after lots and lots of training. Giving up and sitting on the bench isn’t going to get you to their level. You step up your game by learning from people who know the game better than you, not by quitting because you’re not good enough. You have to start somewhere and improve you, not compare yourself to someone else’s progress. Even experts were new at something once. Even marathoners had to learn how to walk.

Well, what gives the people you admire that level of success? They have a large volume of work because they commit to doing it all the time. They practice all the time. It’s great if you can look at others’ work and be impressed by how much time and effort they put in to become as good as they are, then be inspired to action. It’s dangerous if you fall into the trap of comparison and let it stifle your motivation. It’s crazy how quickly I went from despairing and feeling like a failure to closing my browser and just writing. When I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started writing, I felt like an unstoppable force. I got bogged down in looking to others because I was avoiding my own work.

But you know what’s funny and never feels obvious at the time? Just doing my own work was the solution to getting my own work done. Imagine that! You get stuff done by showing up and doing it. You get great by practicing. You get prolific by not letting anything stop you. The difference between “failure” and “unstoppable force” is all psychological. The only difference was that I made myself start typing what was going on in my head. It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg situation, but doing is what caused the mental shift from negative to positive. I called out the monster that was psyching me out and keeping me from believing I could be anything. I simply stopped avoiding my own work and the fear subsided.

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introversion & authenticity

September 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Not everyone will like you, but you have to give them the opportunity to make that choice.

Last week I posted about permission and having no regrets. I realized that my only regrets in life are regrets of omission– that perhaps I hadn’t fully participated in life. For instance, I’ve never been much of an athlete, but I was great at swimming. I probably could have really made something of myself on that front, but I got really focused on school and swimming took a back seat. I never continued to develop into the really strong swimmer I could have been. But I can always take up swimming again.  More than failing to hone a skill, what I regret more are missed relationship opportunities.

Every year toward the end of school I would start really getting to know a handful of people, and they’d always say something like, “You should talk more!” or “I didn’t know you were funny.” I guess I always subconsciously felt I had nothing to lose by showing my true colors right before saying goodbye. I was too shy to reveal too much of myself during the rest of the school year. I was always afraid I’d scare people away, even though experience showed that true friends had always been gained when I let my “freak flag fly.” The right friends are the ones who love you for who you are, to whom you are a special treasure because so few are allowed into your world.

But part of me regrets missing out on what other friendships might have been if I hadn’t been so afraid of opening up around people. It’s okay to only let the right ones into your inner circle. In fact, I think it’s entirely healthy. But that doesn’t mean it’s healthy to close yourself off from everyone else. Not everyone will like you, but you have to give them the opportunity to make that choice.

For us introverted types, it often feels safe to be neutral. We’re behind-the-scenes types. We’re observers. Some may even call us floaters. We get along with everyone and don’t fit neatly into cliques, because we don’t really broadcast enough of ourselves for people to put a label on us. But you know what they say: still waters run deep. It’s okay to not have clearly defined, superficial characteristics that allow others to file us away neatly in a box.

Just like honesty is always the best policy, you should always be yourself. Be authentic with everyone. You don’t have to unleash 100% of your personality all the time, but don’t let your shyness be an excuse to not engage with people. If you scare them away, fine. But keeping yourself to yourself might be depriving both you and someone else of a really great friendship. So don’t be afraid to show your true colors. You’ll attract the right people, and the ones you might “scare away” probably aren’t the right people to be around. If you remain in a corner, you’ll never know who may have been drawn to your flame.

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