You've got to read this blog link!

Sometimes you run across someone else's blog post which smacks you alongside the head and snaps you out of your comfort zone. Patti Digh's post from March 11th is one of them. Here are a few of my favorite snippets:

(substitute "make art" for writing or whatever it is that you want to do)

"sit back down and stay in the room. SURE, I know the laundry just got fascinating, but sit the hell down and write (make art)."

“I haven’t been able to write,” people say to me all the time. “No, actually,” I respond, “You have been able to write, but you have chosen not to.”

"sit the hell down and write. Sit alone with yourself and a piece of paper without thinking about an audience, your database, the best way to market using social media."

"Sit with yourself and your unique place in the world and write it all down. Write it all down. Speak your voice. So many people say they need to find their voice. You have a voice, now use it, damn it."

"Can’t say what you want because people won’t understand or like it? Who are you living for? Yourself or people with wallets? Yourself or applause? Yourself or validation?"

“People won’t like what I’ve written. They won’t buy it. It’ll never get published.” WHO CARES? Who cares."

For the full impact of the blog, please read the entire blog post at this link:

http://www.37days.com/2010/03/how-to-write-a-book-a-wee-rant.html

PROCRASTINATION - What's Your Story?

Below are some quotes about procrastination that I really like. Pick one and tell us how it applies to your art and life: (I love to get comments!)

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. ~Robert Benchley

The two rules of procrastination: 1) Do it today. 2) Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. ~Author Unknown

You may delay, but time will not. ~Benjamin Franklin

Someday is not a day of the week. ~Author Unknown

If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it. ~Olin Miller

What may be done at any time will be done at no time. ~Scottish Proverb

A year from now you may wish you had started today. ~Karen Lamb

Source: www.quotegarden.com/procrastination.html

NOT GUILTY!

“How tedious is a guilty conscious”  - John Webster (English writer/playwright 1580-1632)

I don’t know about you, but I have dealt with guilt for many years about not having a “real job”.  These days EVERYBODY has, or used to have, a REAL JOB.  If you didn’t, there must be something wrong with you, or so I thought.  I guess this is why I never pursued any of my art beyond college, even I thought I thoroughly enjoyed it and did well at it (at least my teachers said so).  I convinced myself I wasn’t good enough to make a living at art.

So like many of you, I pursued other options that seemed right at the time, but never really made me happy.

This morning I decided to look up the definiton of guilt: 

1:    the act of having committed a breach of conduct especially violating law and involving a penalty.

2a:  the state of one who has committed an offense especially consciously

2b:  feelings of culpability, especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy: self- reproach.

3. a feeling of culpability for offenses.

The only one that comes close to describing me is 2b, so I looked up the definition of self-reproach:

 - a feeling of deep regret (usually for some misdeed)

- the act of blaming yourself

A “guilt trip” is defined as a prolonged feeling of deep regret.

Okay, so maybe I have been on a major guilt trip. But to where and for what?  What misdeed have I done? 

The loss of income?  Would that extra income have made my husband and I happier?  In many ways, no.

For not becoming the successful person I could have become?  It depends on how you define success.  And my life isn’t over, yet.

So I declare myself and anybody else out there who has felt this way, “NOT GUILTY!”

Go work on your art and try your very best to not feel any guilt about it, because you are not doing anything WRONG!  

You are doing something right, creative, and beautiful!

Sources:

guilt

self-reproach

guilt trip