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Your Secret Lives
I thought I’d share a fun little treat for your imagination. I’ve been playing with this all week and it’s actually led to some interesting revelations.
I got this idea from an exercise in The Artist’s Way, and then a friend of mine started a Pinterest board called “The secret life I’ve always wanted it to live!” and filled it with the most gorgeous, gypsy-themed photos. I’m planning to steal this idea and create my own “secret life” vision board, or maybe a few of them, or maybe a whole series of artwork of some kind!
So here it is:
If you had, say, 5 other lives to live, who would you be in each of them?
Just play with that for awhile. I don’t know about you, but my imagination went totally nuts.
Here’s what I came up with:
1-I’d live up in or by the mountains with a horse and some chickens. I’d go for lots of long rides and hikes, I’d grow a lot of my own food and make my own cheese. I’d do lots of looking and not much talking.
2-I’d be a contemporary dancer. I’ve always wanted to dance, I paint dancers a lot, and even though my skills are somewhat less than extraordinary, I don’t doubt that there’s a dancer in me somewhere.
3-A minimalist traveler, living out of a backpack and working my way around the world. I’d observe, write, draw, connect, and let things flow out of my life as quickly as they flow in. Drink it in, express it, move on.
4-A musician. I actually have a lot of undeveloped musical talent, I just don’t know what I’d do with it at this point. In this imaginary life, I’d be a drummer in a rock band, I’d carry a harmonica in my purse with a notebook full of song lyrics. I’d take the time to train my voice properly and keep my piano and composing skills sharp.
5-A geologist/rock climber. I’d travel to explore and study the world’s most beautiful landscapes and write all about it.
Then I got carried away and came up with one more:
6-A surfer, with long wavy hair and a beach shack. I’d surf and swim in the ocean every day, eat mangoes to my heart’s content and get around town on a skateboard in my cargo shorts and tank tops. I’d never run out of sunshine.
This is a silly, self-indulgent little game, but I learned that by doing this, I was actually tapping into neglected parts of myself that long to be expressed.
I really encourage you to make a list of your own and then mine it for clues to what you might be secretly longing for in your life. Noticing leads to consciousness of this longing, and consciousness leads to plans, which lead to action. This doesn’t have to lead to a big drastic life overhaul though. I like my life and being an artistwriter and I chose that life for a reason.
However, here’s what my secret lives are telling me:
- I need to get outside more. Several of these lives are all about the outdoors; rock climbing, surfing, hiking, and horseback riding. I don’t need to move to the country, but I can go hiking a lot more often, maybe plan a trip to a national park or a beach to learn to surf. I live in Utah for crying out loud, so I’m sure I can find a way to ride horses every once in awhile. That’s actually a big one. I grew up riding horses, but I haven’t ridden in years. This is a sign that it’s time to get back in the saddle, literally.
- Just because I’ve chosen visual art and writing as my mediums doesn’t mean that I should let my musical talents go to waste. I took piano and voice lessons for many years and I used to compose, but I’m quite rusty. I feel very untrained, but music is a very intuitive thing for me and I know it’s an important part of my life. I could look into bringing my piano home from my parents’ house, or I could ask to practice on a piano at my church a few days a week.
- I need to set up a separate savings account to save for trips. If you’ve seen my Handprint List, you know that travel is important to me. I’ve made it to China and New York so far, but I’ve got a long way to go. It’s unlikely that I’ll pull up roots to travel Eat Pray Love style, but this little action will help get me on a plane to somewhere. Baby steps.
- Finally, I need to connect to my body. I’ve always been a very cerebral person, so I’ve spent my life as a brain riding around in a very awkward, unconditioned puppet body. I’ve ALWAYS wanted to dance, so maybe I should look into taking a class. The nice thing about me working full-time again is that I have a lot of extra wiggle room in my budget, so things like a dance class is feasible.
Look at your own imaginary lives and notice what you can do NOW to feed those parts of yourself. They can be as simple as picking up a library book about a topic you’ve always wanted to learn about, or visiting a local farm to milk a cow. You don’t have to pull up roots (unless that’s what you’re being called to do) but you can expand your horizon a bit.
What are your secret lives? What are they telling you?
Filling your Creative Well
I haven’t touched my paintbrushes in about a week.
A few weeks ago, I would’ve completely beaten myself up over that.
As I sit on my studio floor writing this, the canvas I prepared last week with a base coat of blue-black lays in front of me, unmoved from that spot since I laid it down to let the paint dry.
You might know from my post last week that I’ve returned to work full-time, and I believe that’s a great thing for me right now. If you’ve been reading Handprint Soul for awhile, you also know that I believe that every challenge offers precious wisdom.
I’ve always struggled with full-time work, mostly because I’ve had a lot of demanding jobs, but also because I don’t like being on someone else’s schedule and 40 hours or more every week just tends to wear me out sometimes. I need a lot of time to think and reflect, and sometimes that’s hard to do when I work full-time and try to do a million other things.
So, the wisdom here is to learn to take exquisite care of myself while working full-time and starting my art career. At least I have a head-start on this job because I really do love it and I’ve been working there for a few months. It’s not like I’m throwing myself into something completely new, but any big schedule change requires some adjustments.
While I’m settling into this new situation, I’m clearing a lot of other things off my plate. I’m taking it easy and making sure I have meals and snacks prepared for work, that I get enough sleep, journaling, and keeping things maintained. I’m even adjusting my sleeping schedule so that I have more time for creative stuff in the morning before work. I’ve been thinking about art, but nothing is pulling me into the studio right now. I don’t see art when I look at trees or the sky right now.
However, I wouldn’t call this a block. I’m not concerned at all even though this would have terrified me a few weeks ago. I know that creativity needs to be nurtured in order to flow, and once I settle into things and things don’t require as much consciousness to maintain, I know that my imagination will start wandering again and I’ll get that itch. It’ll come back. It always does.
I’ve been working through The Artist’s Way and early on it talks about the vital importance of filling the “well,” which is our internal reservoir of images and ideas from which we draw our inspiration. Laura Hollick’s latest video expresses the importance of tending our “inner garden.” I’ve understood this concept for awhile, usually thinking of it as a process of “creative intake” and “creative output,” but I feel that receiving two reminders in one week is a gentle nudge in the right direction. I need to fill my well. I need to tend my garden. I’ve been so busy keeping the rest of my life together that I haven’t had room in my head or my schedule or the openness to keep my inner creative shelves stocked.
Maybe I should stick to the well and garden metaphors, yeah?
But how to we tend that garden?
It’s different for everyone, but to water our creative hibiscus flowers, we simply need to do things and visit places that inspire us. Read a good book. Go window shopping. Visit an art gallery or a museum. Go hiking. Listen to music that stirs you. Drive. Mess around with a new art medium. Whatever fills your soul with electricity, or at least that’s what inspiration feels like to me.
So, with things settling down, I’m working on tending that garden. When it’s flourishing again, the art will come.
This is the first time I haven’t felt uncomfortable with creative blockage, to say the least. Isn’t it incredible how life sends us the messages we need? We just need to hear them.
10 Signs that you Need to Slow Down
Stress is a major creativity killer. The problem is, a lot of us don’t recognize it until we’re three quarters of the way through a bag of Oreos or in the doctor’s office with a diagnosis for adrenal fatigue.
The trick to handling stress is to stop it before it starts. Easier said than done. If you miss that train though, the second-best thing is to know how to recognize stress so you can know when you need to back off.
Know your red flags. Here are some of the most common ones:
- You aren’t living in the moment: If you’re always thinking about the past or the future-to do lists, making ends meet, what you’ll make for dinner, why did you do that, you didn’t get enough done-then your brain is overloaded and you need to take some time to breathe.
- You feel disconnected from your body: When I’m overly busy, the first thing to go is my body connection. I find myself eating out of habit or convenience rather than waiting for my hunger signals, I stay up late, and I eat a lot more sugar. It’s worth it to take the time to reestablish communication from your body. Yoga or “lie down” meditation works well for me.
- You can’t do one thing at a time: You eat lunch while answering emails, make to-do lists during church (guilty), things like that. Multi-tasking is not as efficient as it seems. It just causes more stress and renders us unable to give each task the care it deserves.
- It takes you forever to fall asleep because your mind is going in a million different directions.
- You find it hard to relax because you feel like you should be doing something else.
- You feel like you don’t get enough done: When you allow yourself to give each task the time it deserves, you feel much more accomplished because you know you did a good job, and you did it deliberately. You were present. Feeling like you haven’t done enough is also a sign that you need to be gentle with yourself, respect your limits, and possibly manage your time better. Find ways to work smarter, not harder.
- Your body is protesting: You’re face starts to resemble the surface of Mars, your pants are tight, you feel a drag in the afternoon, you can’t get out of bed in the morning or get to sleep at night, your back hurts-sound familiar? That’s your body screaming for attention. In the hustle and bustle, you’re poor body has been neglected because you haven’t been listening to it. Listen to it, find out what it needs, and do it.
- “Fun” stuff doesn’t feel so fun because you’d rather veg: When I’m stressed, you’d think that making art and writing is a great stress-reliever. If I catch stress early, creating does feel great, but if I let stress get too far along without kicking it in the butt, I find that I don’t feel like painting. All I want to do is sit on the couch with a box of Fererro Rocher and watch Fraggle Rock. If I don’t have the mental energy to create, I know something’s gotta give.
- The tiniest things overwhelm you: When my life feels like a minefield, the idea of balancing my checkbook or washing the dishes seems gargantuan. It’s not because I have better things to do, it’s because I feel like I already have so many things piled up on me that emailing a gallery director feels like it’ll crush me. Secret: it’s not the little task that’s daunting, it’s the collective weight of that and the other 234 things you think you have to do, or the weight of worry. Dump that weight. You don’t need it.
- You feel numb: The way that most of us deal with stress is to turn off. We go into Robot Mode so that we can push through whatever needs to get done without those pesky emotions or intuition whining in our ear to slow down. If you can’t hear your intuition, that’s a good sign that you’d better tune into it. It’s there to take care of you.
Breathe. Delegate. Get some perspective. Learning to recognize your own red flags is the first step to dealing with them. Life is much too short for stress.
A Different Kind of Self-Care
Today, I get to do something that would’ve made me cry a month or two ago.
I get to go back to work full-time.
After a few months of really choppy income and lots of stress, we’ve decided that I need to be the main breadwinner so that Sam can focus on his (very intense) schoolwork.
I resisted this idea at first. I need time to make art and promote myself! I barely have enough energy to work part-time and do laundry! At first, I felt like a failure and a sell-out for choosing financial stability over extra time to dedicate to my art.
I took some time to think about it, and I realized that this is one of the most caring things I can do for myself right now.
The truth is, I really enjoy my job. It’s actually something related to my degree, I’m good at it and I feel appreciated there. It pays better than any other job I’ve had and it’s quite laid-back.
With me working full-time, Sam can take the most intense weeks of school off. We’ll be able to afford healthier food, and I can buy the supplements that help my anxiety and winter blues. With benefits, I can keep up on my doctor, optometrist, and dental check-ups.
Most importantly, this will take care of A LOT of our overall stress, and that means more mental energy to dedicate to my art and writing. Security is a huge factor in my emotional health, and the stress of being financially strapped far outweighs the stress of a busier schedule.
I see this as a huge act of self-care. Yes, I’ll have to adjust my routines and learn to juggle a busier work schedule with artmaking and self-care, but the peace I feel inside tells me that it will work out.
Self-care isn’t always what it seems.
I’m thankful that this opportunity presented itself when we needed it, and it galvanized my belief that life (or God, the Universe, whatever) has a way of providing for us, even if it doesn’t seem like what we want at the time. Things work out.
Accepting Limits and a Sneak Peek
So my Internet has been patchy lately, and this post is brought to you by my iPhone. I’ll keep it quick, because I’ve got a lot to do today.
I’m hoping to finish my latest painting today, and it feels like forever since I’ve finished anything. I completed my last painting in November, and that was the only piece I finished that month. It was huge, but nothing compared to the one or two paintings I chugged out every week in August and September.
I’ve accepted that winter is my less creative and energetic time, but sometimes it’s hard to cut myself some slack when I need to. I think this is true of most people. We feel guilty for taking breaks or spending more time reading than making stuff even if that’s what we really feel like doing. We confuse limits with laziness and interpret needs as weakness.
That kind of thinking doesn’t serve us. I’m ok with this one painting, even though I’d intended to finish at least three in December. I feel like this is quality work that reflects the internal shift I feel when the seasons change as well as a new element I’m going to include in my work for awhile.
With that said, I thought I’d give you a little sneak peek:
I’ll post this either tomorrow of Friday!
Winter Solstice and Winter Self-Care
Although it’s been freezing and frosty for weeks, today is the first official day of winter, or the day the Winter Solstice occurs. Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are the furthest we’ll ever be from the sun, that life-giving source of heat and light. Today, the gradual shortening of the days ends and many cultures around the world celebrate rebirth. Today is the shortest and darkest day of the year, and time seems to stand still as nature lies dormant. The trees have shed their leaves, the sap has frozen, the birds have migrated. All is silent.
I was going to create a painting to celebrate this special day, but my spirit and body seems to have aligned with nature because I too have slowed down. I’m ok with this, because I think it’s what my body needs.
My big goal with winter and winter blues this year is to make peace, while giving my body and spirit the best support I can. Dark days are hard for me. I’ve been fatigued and melancholy lately. Not depressed, just less enthusiastic.
I’ve also been reading all I can about the effects of winter on the body and spirit. Though it seemed a little “woo woo” at first, I’ve really come to understand the concept of yin and yang, the two complementary energies that govern the universe. Yin is slow, cool, wet, feminine energy while yang is fast, hot, dry, masculine energy. Winter is yin, while summer is yang. These two energies exist within us and we feel better when they’re balanced. Makes sense.
Today is the slowest, most yin day of the year. During the winter, we have very little yang energy to spare and quite a bit of yin energy. This can look like we have no energy, but yin energy is just slower and more contemplative.
In the winter, we can balance these energies by building and conserving what yang we have, and releasing excess yin. Do yin exercise, like restorative yoga and walking while avoiding strenuous yang activity like running and aerobics. Eat yang foods (warming spices like ginger, garlic, cayenne, cinnamon and tumeric) and avoid cold yin foods like cucumbers, lettuce, and mango (i.e. “summery” foods).
This concept was galvanized for me yesterday when I felt kinda bla and attempted my favorite exercise DVD, hoping to gain some energy. I made it about ten minutes in before feeling like I was going to keel over. However, I was all warmed up for a walk, so I bundled up and took a stroll around the block instead. It felt great, then I for a yummy, yang-building lunch I had eggs scrambled with onions, tumeric and garlic salt.
So instead of burning yang energy that you don’t have today, try slowing down. Trade your kickboxing class for some gentle yoga, have a spicy stir-fry for dinner, and enjoy a quiet evening rather than running around Christmas shopping, preparing for parties, or doing chores.
Take the hint from nature. This is a time to slow down, focus inward, and renew.
Slowing Down with Nature
In a few days, we will have reached the shortest day of the year: The Winter Solstice. Until then, the days of the Northern hemisphere rapidly grow shorter and darker, and the world seems to slow down.
I too, feel like I’m moving in slow motion. I wrote about winter blues a few weeks ago, and though I’ve accepted that this is my slower, quieter time of year, it’s still difficult to deal with low moods, fatigue, and carb cravings. My body also seems to want to eat higher on the hunger scale, meaning that I start to eat when I’m less hungry and stop when I’m fuller than usual. I’ve taken on a few pounds of “winter padding”, which doesn’t really bother me because my clothes fit and I know they’ll go away in the spring.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels like she’s slowing down. Creative people in particular seem to be very sensitive to the seasons and the cycles of nature. Many great creators throughout history worked seasonally. I honestly can’t remember who at the moment, but maybe that’ll be a fun post for later 
A few days ago, I wrote about how I felt overwhelmed by my to-do lists, especially related to art. I was going to post two new paintings last week, but I haven’t quite finished them. I was going to create a painting about the solstice and actually have it finished by the solstice (which would take several full days of painting) but I haven’t even started it. I was going to do so many things, but I just can’t.
At first, I felt guilty. Sometimes I’m still stuck in that modern American mindset that my worth is determined by my productivity and how much I work, which is not true at all. Then I remembered that in these darkest days of the year, I need to respect my need to slow down. I can’t chug out one or two paintings a week like I did in early fall. I can’t power through a mile-long to-do list each morning before work. It’s not laziness. It’s just respecting my limits, which is an essential part of self-care.
Right now, I accept that it may take me two or even three weeks to finish a painting. I accept that what I need right now is the time to read, journal, do yoga to keep my body healthy. I need to think, prepare healthy and warming foods, and slowly work through the things I have to do. I have to go to work to pay my rent. I have to buy groceries and wash my dishes and do laundry. Sometimes, that’s the best I can do.
I’m not taking time “off”, I’m just allowing myself to move slower during these darkest days of the year. This feeling is temporary, and it’s ok. It’s ok if you need to slow down as well. The holidays are a time when most of us feel like we should be rushing around, even though it goes against our natural instincts. Do what you can to take this week slow. You’ll thank yourself later, and think how energetic and awesome you’ll feel in six months during the summer solstice!
10 Ways to Cultivate and Nurture Creativity
- Carry a notebook or sketchbook to record ideas.
- Pay attention to what inspires you, and don’t judge it. Follow the things that draw you in.
- Give yourself time and space to think.
- Be gentle with yourself. Don’t say or think bad things about yourself or your creativity.
- Honor your ideas. Don’t discard them until you’ve given them some thought.
- Slow down, take time to notice. Notice the things and people around you, how things make you feel, changes and cycles both in the world and your own soul.
- Do things that fill you up whether it’s reading, taking walks, watching good movies, or playing with animals.
- Find out what is the most fun for you, and do it as much as you can. This is something that brings you real joy and fulfillment, not just zoning out in front of the TV. Choose conscious fun.
- Spend time with people who support you.
- Know what’s important to you.
Painting-Blue Dancer
We all lead busy lives, and whether we enjoy what we’re doing or not, it’s important to slow down sometimes. Life can be overwhelming, even if it’s fun.
To me, this painting is about that quiet space we take for ourselves where everything is calmer, the delicious space of retreat. We can hear ourselves in the quiet, even though that tiny voice gets drowned out amid the hustle and bustle of our regular lives.
It’s in these moments that we rejuvenate, discover our true paths, and learn to intimate with our spirits. This is how we strengthen our intuition and imagination.
24X36 Acrylic on Canvas
Available for purchase here.
What’s in Your Toolbox?
We all get stressed out sometimes. We all get angry, tired, anxious, or plain burnt out. So what do we do when we get there? How do we take care of ourselves? How do we learn from these emotions?
If you can’t think of the answers to these questions, don’t worry. It’s ok if you don’t know how to handle these emotions yet, because most people don’t. Most of us see these emotions as bad things that should always be avoided, and that something is wrong with us if we experience them. This isn’t always the case.
Uncomfortable emotions aren’t there to get us, they’re often our greatest teachers and road signs. If we’re stressed, anxious, or depressed all the time, we know that something in our life or attitude needs to change. If we get angry, we might have stumbled over an emotional block that we get to work through and release so we can live better.
But how do we do this?
We use a toolbox. Everyone has one. This toolbox contains the tools we use to handle emotions.
Sometimes these toolboxes are well-stocked so that we can handle any job life throws at us. Some of our toolboxes are rather sparse. Others are full of hammers when what we really need are screwdrivers.
Let’s take a look at our toolboxes. What kind of tool could we find in there? Let’s take a look at my toolbox first. It may not look like your ideal toolbox, but it sure works for me:
- Journaling
- Yoga, walking and hiking outside
- Uplifting reading like my religious texts, blogs, and books like Healing from the Heart by Dr. Judith Moore (this book was key in my recovery)
- Talking to my husband, Mom, or friend.
- Cleaning my apartment, artmaking, and cooking. Great activities for when my hands need something to do while I think.
- iPod: good music, inspiring podcasts and my SoulArt courses.
- Dangerous behaviors like using drugs, smoking, self-inflicted injury, having unprotected sex or drinking.
- Zoning out in front of the TV or computer
- Blowing up at someone to express anger
- Shopping
- Wearing ourselves out by overworking or overexercising
- Bingeing or restricting food
- Bottling up emotions until they make us sick.
- Supporting rituals like “you-time”
- Supportive friends, family or a counselor you can talk to
- Journaling and creative expression
- Exercise
- Service to others
- Good books and other resources to help you work through emotions
- Activities that help you unwind without tuning out. Yoga, reading, and that old self-care cliche, the hot bubble bath.
- Anxiety-soothing activities that keep your hand or body busy while your mind is free to think like cleaning, knitting, wire-jewelry making, kneading bread dough, whatever.
