As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted in quite awhile and I never wrote my thoughts about Chapter Twelve from the 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women. The irony is that the main topic of the chapter, which is entitled “Planning to Achieve Your Goals”, is about PROCRASTINATION! Obviously, I am quite skilled at procrastination considering I couldn’t even make on last post to finish my blogging for The Next Chapter Book Club. It seems that since I became a mother, almost 13 years ago, I have perfected the art of procrastination – sleep always wins out over the non-essentials.

The chapter talked about setting creative goals and this has been one of my problems, actually it’s “THE BIG ONE”. I know that if I don’t have a goal, I can’t accomplish it (which is why it is so easy to procrastinate on housework – even if you do it diligently, you’re just going to have to do it again). Trying to define a creative goal seems to go against my accountant sensibilities, which make me think that I need formal training and some official document (like a diploma or my CPA license) before I can call myself “a creative”. Stupid, I know, but the mind works in mysterious (and sometimes stupid) ways. So I have been struggling for about two years with the idea of calling myself an artist. This has been a struggle much like some of my household procrastinations (some of which have driven my parents crazy).

This was particularly true when it came to painting our kitchen, which had been wallpapered with a fabulously “cute” wallpaper (think white with flowers and butterflies). I started stripping the wallpaper almost eight years ago. From a previous experience I found stripping wallpaper very therapeutic in dealing with death and my sister had died from gastro-esophogeal cancer one month after 9/11. When I started I didn’t expect to drag the project out for 6+ years but maybe I just needed that much time to separate the death from the project.

My most recent procrastination (other than blogging) was to repaint my youngest son’s room. It has been almost 13 years since I turned the room into my version of The Hundred Acre Wood from Winnie the Pooh. I told my son that this summer I would paint his room since he had been asking for over a year and he was going to be starting 3rd grade in the fall (admittedly a little old for Pooh and his friends). It was within 3 weeks of school starting before I could finally bring myself to put primer over the characters – after all, they were “born” before my actual first-born. The sadness that I expected to feel was quickly overshadowed by a feeling of exhilaration that I always get from redecorating part of the house. Now that the room is done, I love its fresh look and I have a feeling that Mickey Mouse and the gang (who reside in my 7th grader’s room) won’t be around much longer, either.

Well, I knew it would happen eventually. I am proud that I at least made it to week 10 before I completely missed a post for the Next Chapter Book Blogging Group.  So it is time to get caught up and I’m starting with my thoughts on Secret #10 – Living in Abundance with Positive Priorities. While considering the abundance in my life, the chapter asked the question “how are you using your gift of time?” When I considered this honestly, I realized that I had fallen back into some bad habits. This has to be a priority for me in order to keep myself moving forward. Another challenge in the chapter was to create a list of ten things you’d really like to do in your life. These are considered life-enhancing Positive Priorities. The things I identified for myself are:

• Explore places in the world
• Learn about history related to whatever strikes me at the time
• Expose my sons to lots of places and experiences
• Enjoy clothes shopping
• Walk someplace everyday
• Live more green
• Feel truly loved
• Create visual representations of how my mind relates things to one another
• Experiment with various art styles
• Share my passion for self-expression with others

Now I need to start spending my time on things that work toward these priority items. One of my first priorities is to get back to exercising on a regular basis. Over the past month, this has not been a priority and it affects so many parts of my life that I need to remember that it is worth the time (Billy Blanks would be happy to know that I have done a Tae Bo workout twice this week and it is only Wednesday ).

Secret #11 is entitled Subtracting Serenity Stealers. Many people think of this as eliminating the toxic people in your life (at least that is how I have approached this in the past). When I saw the word BURNOUT used in the chapter, I immediately thought of this in terms of doing to much, having unrealistic goals, and sacrificing other parts of your life for the one “really important” part. I remembered the feeling of being burned out during college and at times, during my career as an accountant but I never thought I could experience burnout as a stay-at-home mom.  Today I had an A-HA moment as I wrote this because I had just booked a flight to go visit my brother in San Francisco. I have been feeling the need to go somewhere for quite awhile and have looked at flights to a lot of different places over the past two months. The book contained a list of burnout warning signs  and as I read them, I realized that I had been experiencing many of them. I think that in addition to being tired of the routine of cleaning, cooking, laundry and driving the boys places, my insecurities and uncertainties in response to the ever-present question” What do I really want to accomplish with my life?” have caused me to feel burned out. Every time I try to answer that question, I stop because I would wonder if I really wanted something as a goal or was it because that is what other people were doing. While reading this chapter, I realized I have always had a goal, achieved it, and then made a new one, repeating the cycle. Now that my children are both in school, I have felt that I needed to start the cycle again since I had TIME. This chapter also lead to an epiphany that I could actually change a goal, something I had never considered. I realized that I could set a goal and work toward it and if I decided it wasn’t something I wanted, I could say “NO”, even if I was on the threshold of achieving it if I decided it was not right for me. I was amazed at how much energy and excitement I felt just from this realization. Now the important thing is to remember it so I don’t fall prey to those internal dialogues that always seem to plague me. Time to develop some positive self-talk to keep me moving. As stated toward the end of this chapter “change is difficult and you can only move at your own pace”.

I’ve been fortunate not to really have experienced any rejections or roadblocks except for in my own mind. Whether it is my inherent introvertedness or a lack of self-confidence, either way it has kept me from “putting my art out there”.  Maybe that is why one particular quote from the 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women means so much to me. Gail McMeekin wrote “putting yourself out there and sharing your work qualifies as an act of courage and tests your fortitude.” In the past I have mostly put myself out there through swaps, gifts, and donations to my sons’ school silent auctions. Even though I’m still taking baby steps, they have gotten bigger. I have just completed a piece that I created for a fundraising auction for a local public radio station.  I wanted to post about the auction separately, but you can find the info and a picture of the piece here. One of the things I found beneficial from this chapter were some of the suggested exercises. Recently I wrote about what I envisioned as a perfect day for me as part of reading Walking in this World by Julia Cameron. I used the exercises in this chapter to turn that journaling into a list of goals and steps I can take to acheive them. Even though I may be taking baby steps to work on my goals, at least I am moving toward them.

Since I’ve been taking my time acknowledging myself as an artist, I haven’t had many opportunities to form partnerships or alliances in that capacity. The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women specifically defines partnerships as a business arrangement which shares profits and risk and alliances as a close association with a common objective. I do believe that it was my alliance with my friend Melynda that made me realize that I needed to take my art to a level beyond just scrapbooking and card making. What began as a working relationship (I met her when she hired me as a design team member for her online scrapbooking kit club) later turned into friendship that I like to think gave us both inspiration. I was always available to her to brainstorm business ideas and the art techniques her kits introduced me to opened a whole new world to me. I can’t imagine what my life would be like now if our paths hadn’t crossed. One of my most recent alliances has been with several local artists that found each other through Meetup.com with the intention of working through The Artist’s Way together.  It has been over two years and there are several of us that continue to support each other and our creative goals. My other current alliance that to me is invaluable, is the friendship I have developed with DebMarie. We met through a Yahoo group and found that we live fairly close to each other. We have become wonderful friends and I’m thinking it would be fun to do a collaborative art project with her.  Next week we are going on a “fieldtrip” to some antique and second hand shops so maybe we can come up with some idea for the future. Because she does mixed media work as well, I feel she understands me better than many other people.   I believe this quote from the book offers the best advice:

“the vital foundation for a solid relationship is self-knowledge on the part of each person involved and a commitment to joint abundance.”

I hope the future holds more opportunities for collaborations.

This chapter of “The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women” asked us to identify who influenced us early in our life. I immediately knew that my sister, Kathy, had been one of the most influential people when I was young. I think I had a predisposition to all types of arts and crafts but I remember being in awe of her when she left for college, majoring in art. I often wondered if it I interpreted her changing majors to Occupational Therapy as a subliminal message that a career choice should be “practical”. In every book I’ve read about creativity, the question always comes up as to those instances in your life where you were discouraged from following your dream of being an artist. I never felt that anyone said “you can’t make a living being an artist”, but when it came time for me to go to college, my interest in business and computers prevailed. So fast forward twenty years, I’ve experienced the corporate world and am now a stay-at-home mom with two boys (who are growing up much too fast) and I am recreating my life to include my need to be creative. I only wish I could share my experiences and my creative passions with Kathy, but unfortunately she died from cancer over seven years ago.

In the last two years, I have been actively seeking out other creative individuals, some who I consider as guides in the journey and others who are traveling companions (I have found this a bit ironic since it feels like just yesterday I was giving my nephew grief for his “networking” mindset). Having these people in my life has been such a blessing. They have instrumental in identifying my dreams and giving me the confidence to go after them (and if you are reading this, then you are one of those people and I THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart).

And now….on to the Crusade part of my post…

In keeping with Michelle’s play on traditional new year’s resolutions, she titled GPP Crusade #28 as “Portion Control”. I didn’t use my shape from Crusade 27 but I did use the technique in a couple of recent projects. The challenge was to use partial images or shapes to add visual interest. The first canvas, my angel project, uses only a partial image for the focal point and also incorporates part of the angel stamp I carved. I also made a combination mask/stencil of a pair of wings. I used part of it by dry brushing over the mask and also glazing inside the stencil. My original image transfer of the angel head was much more distressed but it was a little “too partial” for my tastes and I ended up doing a second image transfer. My second canvas, with the buddha, includes partial stencilling of the words “purposeful life”. Both of these canvases were made for a challenge that my friend DebMarie and I do every two weeks. We have been meeting for breakfast every two weeks since school started for our kids. Although we always seem to be on a creative high afterwards (don’t you just love talking to people who get you ), we decided that we would also pick a challenge so that we could each see how the other interprets it. Week one was the color red and week two was to incorporate a map (the base of my buddha piece is a japanese map). Don’t forget, if you click on the image, it will bring up a bigger size in a lightbox so you can get a better look at it.

Well, that’s all for now but hopefully I will soon be showing you a piece I’m making for a charity auction AND since it is for a public radio station it had to include some type of vinyl record…have I piqued your interest?