Of Fluff and Nonsense
Today I got to see behind the curtains of one of my long-held daydreams, a real-life newsroom. My photography course allowed me the opportunity to participate in an internship with the local newspaper as a news photographer. and it is my (professional for a week) opinion, Mondays are slow news days. Very, slow news days. . . Hard to be an intern when the professional photographers barely have enough to fill their own shifts. Thankfully, tomorrow looks like it will pick up.
Newspapers are the historians of the community, recording details of the local life that many will have forgotten, waiting in archives to be rediscovered. Newspapers also used to be gatekeepers of worth. The information they disseminated had to fit a strict set of criteria for it to become part of the public discussion.
This is still the case (for newspapers of quality at least), but with so much social media, listicles and fluff pieces flooding the attention of the masses, newspapers have taken a massive hit. It was somewhat devastating to see an entire floor of a local newspaper just abandoned and empty, scattered paper on the floor, a once staffed library in disarray.
I understand why people enjoy the fluff, its light, its distracting, it even can make us feel like we are learning something even if it’s something we will never put into practice. It can help us feel like we are progressing, becoming better people, when ultimately its junk food for our mind, short bursts of engagement, with no real substance or long-term benefits.
I am chronic for this myself. I will start my day by going through the google curated feed on my phone and open articles I find intriguing into a new tab on my phone with the intention of reading it later. My big issue is that even when I do get time to go back through the tabs, there will still be ones I put off reading until I have time to read in depth or time to implement, time I never seem to have.
I am also aware by describing this phenomenon to you, you may realise this blog also constitutes as fluff and you may stop reading it.
Society has turned its attention to entertainment and turned away from content that is good for the soul. that is because the stuff that is good for the soul is usually uncomfortable, hard to read and takes effort. But it is only in the uncomfortable that we grow. We can only learn how far our understanding will reach if we stretch it. As for the purpose of this blog, I will only know exactly how far my creativity can go if I am willing to push it. Now I struggle to simply maintain it. I had a couple of rather dark days last week which killed my momentum. It’s been too long since I cooked (too long since we had groceries in the house!), I know the word count on my novel seems like a joke now, and I’m starting to get repetitive with the crafted things.
I wonder where I would be at if I didn’t spend so long saving links I will barely look at or reading articles I will never implement. Distracting myself with the fluff so I don’t have to look at the hard work ahead. After the last month of interruptions and trips away, the numbers aren’t what I would like them to be and so I am trying not to look. Even though knowing where I am at will help me get back on track.
One thing I did notice today though, I enjoyed having office hours. . .How weird is that? Knowing when to turn up, when to go home and that there was nothing fluffy to distract me in between apart from what was being produced for the newspaper itself. I have zero ability to implement that kind of work only quarantine in my own house as my work space is my play space, but I think I like it enough that I’d want to. It’s so difficult to discipline oneself when you can simply switch tabs or turn around to find anything else more fun than your work, but work is rewarding when you can do it. Even coming home after today and being able to make something towards the creative goals felt great. The more one works (at fulfilling work at least) the more one wants to work. Just one of the little things I have forgotten as a perpetual student. I’m looking forward to the end of next week (this week is my internship, next week is another week away) when I can establish a more normalised routine again. Last minute creative dashes before posting on this blog are not cutting it.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – (12/100)
Writing – Novel: 1,139 Blog: 16,604 /50k
Cooking – (19/285)
Music – (9/100)
Photography – May have forgotten that the challenge exists. . . Or at least that’s the conclusion one could reach based on my participation as of late. School is happening along though.
Craft – Two new earrings (15/100)
A Rested Development
I did a thing! I finally painted again yesterday and feel great for it! And today, after a street fashion session with a model, I found a salvaged piano left in public by The Piano Rescuers (@PianoRescueCANBERRA). As the name suggests, they rescue old pianos, tune and re-home the redeemable ones and transform the not so salvageable ones into public street art pieces free to play. I know its not technically my sheet music but I am counting the half hour or so playing on one as practice as I ended up testing to see what I could play by ear. It helped me gauge my memorisation of a couple of pieces I have been playing without the crutch of sheet music on hand. It is in those moments that its easier to remember why I am trying this challenge. It’s good for me. It’s wholesome, educational, and levels up my skills, while being something I enjoy. So hard to hold that in mind when its been a while since you last did a creative task and the couch and new TV shows are calling.
I had a friend comment to me today about my last posts about building habits being like putting one plank of wood in front of the other. His wish is for me to know what’s on the other side. . . (he’s going to read this and then I’m officially busted for talking about him to the internet). For me, I think it’s a good thing I don’t know what’s ahead. For now, at least. I am glad I am being forced to focus on the process, to learn to enjoy the act of creation instead of the results. It’s so easy to look forward and work for the future dream of recognition, accolades, financial stability. It’s also so very easy to look forward from our small attempts now and see that these little steps will never get us there. My painting last night will never get me commissioned to illustrate a children’s book. My street piano session will never lead to me on a stage. Looking at now and looking at the future destination can be a source of discouragement. It can seem impossible to get from here to there.
Journeys are what matter.
If you look at any successful person in the creative industries, you will see someone who still struggles with feeling like they have made it. Visual effects artists who have worked on 15+ recognisable blockbuster movies not thinking that they are much good at their job, painters who have represented Australia at the Venice Biennale still feeling like they are only small fish in the global artist pond. Even those at the very top aren’t alone up there and so are left looking around trying to determine which one of their super extraordinary peers might be millimetres ahead. Or they may look over to another creative pinnacle and think I want to be over there. The truth is no one will ever get to be ‘the best’, only (maybe if you are lucky) the best for now. There is no ‘made it’. One can always find a next step in life until they take their last.
Sometimes not knowing where the summit is, where the pinnacle of the climb is means instead of always looking up, you look at your feet, where you are right now as you trudge your way up the hill. Sure, it means your vision is filled with the path and you might not get early glimpses of the potential view. But you might be able to see that alpine daisy that was growing a meter away from your left foot, or the bird that twittered a song on your way. You can be more present when you are focusing on just enjoying the moment you have in front of you. It then becomes OK to stop and rest sometimes as even the rest is enjoyable. The alternate is to keep looking for the summit and being reminded how far away it still is. Sometimes the goal can seem so big, scary and intimidating it can discourage you from trying. Losing momentum feels like failure. With the last few weeks of not much progress, it has been easy for me to look to the summit of my goals and feel discouraged. It’s harder (and yet better for me) to take a moment to look around my little rest stop and see what can be enjoyed while I have been there. Funnily enough, looking around leads me to see a half concealed new thing to get curious about, one a little further off behind the one I have already explored. And before you know it, I’m walking my way up the path again following new delights.
Focusing on the journey means you might enjoy the small moments (and pauses) available to you with each step. If that is where your enjoyment comes from, the little steps day by day, then one day, the summit might surprise you by just turning up.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – A piece I actually want to count in my hundred! (12/100)
Writing – Novel: 1139 Blog: 15,747
Cooking – Desperately needs to get groceries in the house for even basic meals let alone fancy ones (19/285)
Music – Scored some curious looks while playing piano on the mean streets of Canberra Civic (9/100)
Photography – Model shoot today! Portfolio critique tomorrow. . ..
Craft – New pair of earrings! Discovered I need silver earring hooks for the first time ages, my massive supply has finally dwindled! (13/100)
Build a Bridge. . .
There is nothing worse than having the best of intentions and not getting anywhere. Old habits haunt. They stick around like horrible temptations, telling me that “It’s been over a week since you have done something, just give up already.”
The procrastination bug is real. It’s insidious and seeps in when you don’t expect it. For me, it takes a few days of inactivity to kick in but once its there it becomes a mammoth task to start again. I was just today likening it to physiotherapy after an injury. If you keep up your prescribed exercises you get into the rhythm, they become easier and easier to do even through the original pain. If you slack off and miss a few days (or weeks) it becomes so much harder as you need to build up that strength again. I have loved what I have done this month, the trip to Melbourne, the trip to Adelaide, but both have taken me out of my habit. I would not trade the adventures; I just would love to have figured out how to be active with my goals while on adventures, so I don’t lose momentum. There is another whole week one coming up in March.
But that’s the thing about habits – you must keep at them. Thankfully, it isn’t like how I used to think – work on your daily habit streak, and if you break it then you have wasted all that effort. No, it’s more like you are building a bridge, and even time you do (or don’t do) a task/habit, you are placing a plank on the bridge. Some days you are adding planks to the bridge marked “new habit”, some days you might place a plank on the old bridge marked “habit you are trying to break”. The good thing about this is that just because you may have placed a plank on the old bridge does not take planks away from the new. The more you manage to lay on the new bridge, the stronger it becomes and the easier it becomes to walk across that and get to where you want to go.
I know I am in a bit of a slump lately. My mood hasn’t been great, been struggling a bit with my black dogs barking in the distance. I have been really struggling with inspiration for even simple tasks I enjoy. Just this past week, we were tasked with an assignment to replicate photojournalism, the area of photography I keep claiming to be aiming towards. The photos I took were stock, and basic and I knew they were simple box tickers. And I know that it’s OK to be like that occasionally, it’s just not feeling very occasional lately.
I have questioned why I am doing this. If it is to inspire others, then I really should work for ‘others’ to read this. If it is for me, then the low-grade stress it’s causing of constant deadlines and tasks isn’t the most helpful. I realised it’s for my future self. It’s for the me I am when I am not in this mood. It’s for the me that chose this in the beginning and told myself its for my own good. That me, the one who knew, could see that I would feel like this and made allowances for it. But that me also knows when I can get off my bum and get some planks laid on this bridge, I will enjoy it again.
It is too easy to give up when one no longer feels like doing a task (and I set myself six!). I am pretty good at doing that. Giving up is a bridge I am familiar with, and I don’t enjoy what’s on the other side. Too many broken dreams that won’t ever be rebuilt. So I need to continue to build this new bridge, the one where I don’t give up. I haven’t made it across yet to the other side but it looks like a place I want to be.
As the saying goes, I need to “build a bridge and get over it”.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – Tried two pictures today, both were horrible, and the colour bled everywhere, just a mess. (11/100)
Writing – Novel: 1139 Blog: 14,814
Cooking – Has anyone out there struggled as much as I to make chocolate chip cookies? Been meaning to for a week! It feels like it’d be the easiest thing to be motivated by (19/285)
Music – Yay! At least something I can say I did! May have ended with me crashing out of every piece I tried as I was not making it into the zone where everything sounds nice but at least I did it! (8/100)
Photography – This is an area that has been suffering too. Has been about 3 weeks of challenges that I have missed.
Craft – (12/100)
Mess on a Stick
This past weekend I went to a wedding in Adelaide. Flying out Friday evening I met up with my husband and best friend to attend the wedding then road trip the monstrously long journey back. We arrived back from the 5-day trip late yesterday afternoon. I had intended to write up Friday’s post while in the airport but anyone who has ever travelled knows that is not an environment conducive to productivity. After relinquishing my hopes of completing a post on Friday, I comforted myself that I had brought along supplies to make advances on at least the art and crafting goals that I could then post about on Monday. Words to the wise: do not try to paint while driving. . . No, I wasn’t behind the wheel but even still, cars are not the place to draw, paint or even fold origami. Wasn’t long before that idea was out the window.
I have noticed I am struggling with control issues in the last few weeks. I tend to respond to an area of my life hurtling out of my grasp by relinquishing control in all areas and if it’s bad enough, I cease to fight. I have also noticed when I am emotionally low, I struggle even more. It’s like I have even less fight in me, so it becomes even easier to want to give up entirely. As an example, my inability to complete a blog post or contribute towards the goals for the last two scheduled times had me contemplating throwing in the whole idea.
This whole project is a way for me to assert control over my life in a small, mostly frivolous way. It is to help me feel like I can imagine a thing for myself and bring it into reality. I know that seems like a really simply thing, but I have struggled with it most of my life. I could recount so many times where I set my mind to something and yet was not able to finish. I am not talking small things either. I am talking high school, degrees, jobs, careers. Some of these were in my control, somewhere so far out of my control that it sent me into a tailspin. Its easier to handle something going awry when it’s under your own control. You can dissect it, turn the situation over in your head, perform an autopsy and learn from it. It is so much worse when it is out of your control. The natural urge to understand the issue, to work out what went wrong, goes unsated. You are left with a bunch of hurt and confusion, and nothing to glean from it. It’s so easy to think there’s still something you could have done and to search long and hard for that one moment you might have been able to act differently, say something, or behave in a new way. But you never can find it. When a life changing situation is out of your control, there is nothing you can do to ease that hunger for answers, for justice, for remedy. Sometimes you just take the hit without the chance for defence or retribution and without hope of restoration. So, you are left wounded, bleeding, from someone else’s choices that had nothing to do with you.
I’m still dealing with a couple of wounds like this, still searching for a way to close them. I know this creative pursuit of mine is not a direct remedy but I am hoping that the sense of control it allows me in my life will empower me to start acting in ways to heal the old pains and become who I feel I should be. The last couple of weeks have had circumstances out of my control and have left me struggling to participate even in my own goals and creative challenge. When you add classroom considerations into this, I find I am ticking boxes and not a jot more.
Even with contemplating throwing in the towel, I will keep going. I want to know I can work hard at a thing and actually reach the end goal as intended. I don’t want to take shortcuts, make excuses for myself or simply give up too soon. I want to know I can make an idea into reality. I want to know I tried and gave it a respectable chance. Even if what I have in front of me is a mess on a stick. Tomorrow morning, I have a bit of time before class, I will see what I can make or play before I go to help me feel like I am back on track. Cause one thing I have learned from my many attempts and failures is that you can not waste time beating yourself up on what you didn’t do, you can only do what you can now.
A Walk In The P-Argh-K
First day of classes. . . WOW! I got to play with a camera worth… about 5x my car. Gorgeous piece of equipment, terrifying experience. The studios were set up with three different locations with three different lighting set ups each with its own model. I was particularly taken with the female model as she was stylish, sassy, and silvered haired. It struck me when I saw her how absent models like her are in the media landscape. We are not blessed with many women in their 50s who own their experiences in their own bodies enough to feel they are worthy and deserving of being seen and in front of the camera. She owned it! And was super lovely to boot.
Speaking of, I wore new shoes today, pretty white canvas shoes with stitched flowers that where begging to be worn for the first day of class. No time to wear them in (or so I told myself this morning, I’ve actually had them for months but hadn’t gotten around to wearing them), I put them on for the first time on a 7-hour day where I should have known I’d be on my feet for large chunks of it. I barely lasted the walk from the car to the classroom when blisters started forming and I began the graceful hobble of one who has made a terrible mistake. Classes hadn’t even started, and I had two perfect penny sized blisters forming on my heels. I had to sit in class, in pain for two hours before we had a break long enough for me to rescue my poor feet with band-aids. The rest of the day they were not getting any worse but definitely not getting any better. Now I must face the next week with wound on my feet, making walking painful, even if I wear more worn in and comfortable shoes.
A few days ago, I got my haircut. Getting a haircut had been long on my list and I had been putting off the research and booking of one for ages. When I walked past a reasonably empty hairdressers, I on a whim, went in and asked if they take walk ins. My thinking was that this saved me the hassle of the boring stuff and would get me immediate results. I discussed what I wanted (which wasn’t very much as I am not overly fussy with my hair, a trim and a redo of the style so as to not have flat hair) and sat in the chair. As any girl knows, hairdressers section your hair up to cut it. They start with the back, underneath section to determine the ideal length, then section by section they cut to match. This progressed, and I did not suspect a thing. . . until I noticed instead of cutting the mismatched bits, she was cutting the whole section again. . . which resulted in that whole section then not matching the previous one’s length.
Now I am not very experienced in hair, I had a blunt straight cut on waist length hair for the majority of my life and I do not ascribe to the every 6 weeks thing (it’s usually 6-8 months between- has been up to 2 years). This resulted in me accepting the proceedings happening behind my head as me simply not understanding how it was done. From what was long reasonably even hair down to between my shoulders, is now shoulder length with layers up around my ears, against a direct request against layers. It was only well into the whole drama that the hairdresser informed me (with no signage etc saying so) that I was in a barbershop and “we usually do men”. I was shown a mirror image of the back of my head and the resulting ducks tail shape dangling behind my back as repulsive to me as if it was an actual duck butt. This coupled with the heavy layers and shaping around the front also resulted in the duck butt also looking like a mullet. I was too scared to complain out of fear she would resume her hair-shrinking, sectioned passes again and I wanted enough hair left over to be able to fix.
Why did I tell you these mundane stories? These two stories and the subsequent fallout from them are a result of rather small and rather stupid decisions. Sure, they didn’t seem that bad at the time, but had I thought about it for even a moment longer then the present one I was deciding in, I could have foreseen the potential problem. No matter what we like to tell ourselves, shortcuts are not good for us. If it is a ‘shortcut’ that is good for you, it is simply efficiency. But a true shortcut? Those are usually ripping off something, somewhere. In my case, the shortcut to wearing my shoes has cost me the coming weeks ability to walk without being reminded of the trade-off for the little mermaid gaining feet (feeling like every step is being made upon sharp knives). The shortcut of getting a new haircut has cost me damage to my self-image until I can do what I originally should have done and booked in with a proper hairdresser to get it fixed.
It’s too easy to steal time from our future selves. In relation to my creative tasks, putting off the difficult ones (my novel is coming to mind) I am stealing time from my future self in order to avoid it. This is true even when putting it off might be a healthy choice at the time. This means future me will have even more to do later and will feel less likely to do it as it will become a mountain of a task to reach the word count. In an attempt at self-care in the present we can cause more headaches in the future. If I can learn to adopt self-care as a multi-tensed thing, I could care for myself in the present, while keeping a careful eye on what I do to my future self. In the best of situations, I could even look back and self-care for my experiences in the past, times when I needed a little bit of extra love and it wasn’t available. When choosing to do a thing to make current-self happy, a little bit of attention could save future-self so many problems. It is almost like I can forget future self is still me and needs the same level of care. This is not a lesson I will learn easy, nor will I remember it always, but with two very current lessons, I might at least have a chance to see the next one coming.
P.S. Thank goodness my bestie was here, she helped cut the duck butt hair cut to a much more attractive shaggy bob.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – (11/100)
Writing – Book: 1139 Blog: 13,187
Cooking – Emerald Pea Pasta, and Gazpacho Andalusia (19/285)
Music – (7/100)
Photography – This weeks challenge = #nofilter. that means minor exposure edits only and not to change anything else. The three model shots from today’s class fit the bill perfectly.
Craft – (12/100)
Stubbornly Gripping Sunbeams
Let’s talk about depression. I mentioned in an earlier post this is something I struggle with. Depression isn’t a simply as being sad. The opposite of depression isn’t happiness. Depression can be too all consuming and permanent to be the opposite of something that can be as fleeting and temporary as happiness. Depression’s opposite is vitality. That ability to embrace life to the fullest and live each moment to the extent of what it deserves. Andrew Solomon, a renowned speaker and sufferer of depression, has a favourite quote “depression is a slower way of death.”
All of this is such a cheery uplifting conversation topic, huh? The thing is depression is commonly accompanied by shame. Shame that one is not strong enough, shame that one cannot simply be happy and content with what others might see as a great life, shame that those ridiculous tiny little things that ‘normal people’ do all the time seem insurmountable and impossible. It is this shame that can stop people from reaching out, from acknowledging their experiences, that keeps people denying there is an issue until it becomes so large as to no longer be manageable and to need dramatic (and mostly expensive) intervention. The impulse to hide from and not discuss depression only makes it stronger.
How does it manifest itself for me? To others it is seen as laziness (I have been called such many times, both before and after diagnosis by those who didn’t understand). The exaggeration of tasks into behemoth obstacles, getting dressed in the morning, remembering to eat breakfast, simple tasks that most people do without thinking, become gauntlets of mental barrage. Instead of going and making a meal of two-minute noodles, the task becomes:
1. Get up even though your entire body feels heavy and lifeless.
2. Go to the kitchen
3. Boil the jug
4. Survive the time while the jug boils as this is non-distracted time and the negative thoughts can shout uninhibited.
5. Pour the jug and endure the time the noodles are in the microwave.
6. Get out of the microwave and sit down somewhere to eat.
7. Have the desire to eat or have the energy to force yourself to chew anyway.
All of this while battling the feeling that it’s a pointless task anyway because when you are depressed you don’t care that your stomach is rumbling (in fact you sometimes welcome the experience of feeling) and you will struggle to find joy in the meal even if it was the most wonderful thing you have ever tasted.
This sort of mental chore-isation of tasks happens all the time. When depressed, a missed phone call from a friend doesn’t strike the chord of “wow they thought of me”, it makes me feel like there is yet one more task I need to add to my ever growing list of things to do. Sadly, with this one, I tend to want to put it off until I feel more vibrant and healthier, so I don’t burden my friends with my sad-sack self. This can mean it is months before friends hear from me even when a phone call from a loved one is a healthy thing for me to do.
With other illnesses, feeling better does not equal being better. If swinging upside down on the monkey bars takes your mind off having pneumonia, you may feel better, but it won’t help fix the pneumonia. The beautiful thing is depression is a sickness of the emotions. Which means whatever makes you feel better is helping fix it. Yes, there are the regularly known remedies of therapy and medication, but rock-climbing, scuba diving, getting a pedicure, making Gothic collectable teaspoon handles, any manor of things can be considered equal and relevant to the process of healing.
I commonly struggle when I forget the difference between anaesthetising the pain and legitimate healing. I have a bad habit is sinking myself into TV. This works for many reasons, the stories, the entertainment, the ability to experience and borrow other characters emotions so I don’t have to fully feel my own. There is nothing wrong with watching TV, but there when I am using it to hide from uncomfortable emotions/situations long term (it’s like procrastination but amplified and somewhat darker). Like physical pain relief, it is only ever meant to be used short term. But, also like pain relief, it can be addictive. Getting oneself off the anaesthesia of TV means facing all those uncomfortable realities and then some as new ones tend to crop up while you are under.
Truly healing remedies take more effort than anaesthetising ones. Exercise, eating right, sleeping well, socialising, creativity. These are the activities that make people feel alive, that help people embrace vitality, the opposite of depression. It can feel like a cruel joke sometimes that it takes vitality to live a vital life. But when those small glimpses of vitality break through the dark clouds of depression, like sunbeams through a storm, I have learned to embrace those moments. It’s almost as if I hold on tight enough, if I can grip onto the light like ropes, then I can pull the sun through the clouds; force it to push through the black shadows and get my blue skies back. My creative tasks have felt like chores some days, big, heavy chores but they are also like my ropes. If I can do just one, even on a bad day, I know I have a sunbeam, proving to me that the dark clouds aren’t all there is, that sunshine is at the other end and will come back.
As I write that last paragraph, I can’t get the legend of Maui and the Sun out of my head. There is a Maori legend from New Zealand which describes how we got our days. It is said the sun used to rush across the sky so fast that people didn’t have enough time to achieve their tasks for the day. Maui, a demigod known throughout the Pacific region (and credited for bring New Zealand out of the ocean), gathered a bunch of men and headed east to the find where the sun rose. They lashed ropes across the opening of the pit and waited till the sun came out from his resting place and beat it with Maui’s magic jawbone till the slowed down.
In my experience I don’t think I will ever be free of my depression. It’s like an old sports injury, if I am not careful to remember that it’s there, I can cause it to flare up again. Then on those occasional days where it’s raining funny, it’ll hurt for no real reason. I am getting to know my injury, what flares it up, when it’s an extra bit tender before a big twinge, or when it’s sensitive on just a rainy day. I don’t know every iteration it will come along as but what I do know is this: if I feel shame about it, if I try hide the fact that I experience life this way, I end up putting myself at greater risk of injury.
Like Maui, I wage war with the sun. Sometimes it breaks free of its ropes and zooms too fast across the sky leaving me in darkness. Sometimes I can grasp one of the ropes still trailing from its body and drag it back to where it should be. And sometimes, I win the battle and am rewarded with sunshine days that last and last.
Now, where’s my magic jawbone?
THE RUNDOWN
Art – An exercise in seeing what I can draw without taking my pen off the paper, that alone was challenge enough (11/100)
Writing – Novel: 1139 Blog: 12015
Cooking – Have managed to menu plan until July. . . what a nightmare! Also cooked Blackened Tofu, Rich Cashew butter with Tarragon Sauce, and Oven roasted Sweet Potato with soy sauce glaze (17/285)
Music – (7/100)
Photography – Missed the photo challenge last week due to being interstate, will try make up for it this week as well as starting classes Wednesday!
Craft – Origami jumping frog (actually jumps when you press it’s back down!) and a new pair of earrings (12/100)
Absence Makes My Heart Grow Fonder
So, where was Wednesday’s post? Turns out as it was my 5th year wedding anniversary, my husband decided to spirit me away. A three-day, two-night trip that we are still working our way back from (writing this in the car on my phone) that has been filled with so many memories and magical moments. While it hasn’t left much in the way of time for my creative goals, I was able to tick off one of my life goals: I was taken to Attica for dinner. Some of you may know the significance of that without explanation but because I'm so excited by it, I'm giving one anyway. Attica is a restaurant in Melbourne that has for the last 10 years been ranked within the top 100 best restaurants in the world.
I was first made aware of it in 2014 while I was studying commercial cookery with a focus on patisserie. I started to daydream about experiencing such a high class of food and whatever might accompany it. But then I watched the Chefs Table series on Netflix. In the first season it has a full episode dedicated to the head chef and his journey with cooking. I was undone. Turns out he grew up within villages of my home. We shared childhood stomping grounds. I suspect my father may have even taught him while he was at school. After that the daydream was cemented, he became lodged in my mind in the role of food rabbi, and I his dedicated disciple. I followed each award he received and watched every documentary appearance. I daydreamed multiple ways a potential meeting may play out.
A couple of years ago, a few days before my 30th birthday, my dreams were both made true and dashed in a single breath. My husband had managed to get reservations and keep it a secret (a feat in its own right), right up until he told me he won’t be making them. He was being posted interstate for work and wouldn’t be able to join me. I could not bring myself to go alone. Such a whirlwind of emotions - a desire relegated to daydream was made tantalisingly possible only to be stripped out of reach again. Within 10 days of moving to a new state, my birthday was spent in a pizza joint without my husband, without Attica and with some exceptionally new friends (most I met for the first time that night).
After a period of mourning, Attica was again relegated to daydream. Until Wednesday.
Over breakfast on our anniversary, I was coyly told I needed to pack an overnight bag, a vast redirect from the day at the beach I was led to believe we had ahead. Unfortunately for him, as soon as I knew something else was going on, the whole thing was revealed. It seems the only way he can keep secrets from me is to make sure I have no clue they exist. Instant tears. After resigning myself to my imagination as substitute for the experience, to actually be heading to Attica was enough to make me cry. I have never been so happy to endure the tediously boring drive down the Hume Highway.
I may not have gotten to meet my food rabbi (he was home playing the dutiful father to his children), but I did get to experience his exquisite culinary art. There is no other word for it. The flavours, the combinations, the layer after layer that revealed itself with each bite, it was like being able to lick the Mona Lisa.
The whole affair took just over 4 hours, 15 courses each with non-alcoholic drink pairings (I didn’t know you could have those!). Each mouthful a burst of combinations my overactive imagination had never managed to conceive of. It felt like doors of possibilities were opened where I hadn’t even realised the door existed let alone the worlds behind them.
The whole affair was all that I had hoped it would be, and while exceedingly expensive for the student that I am, it was worth every cent.
I only harbour one regret, I didn’t go full blown food writer on the joint and take detailed notes whenever they told us about the dish. While they very thoughtfully present the diners with a personalised menu of what each has consumed, it contained the names of the dishes not the detailed ingredients and combinations as described. The absence most noticeable when the very first dish is a combination of 11 mini dishes and sauces, all, in my opinion, worthy of their own menu mention.
Upon leaving the restaurant, I left long planned food offerings of a Whittakers Dark Chocolate Peanut Slab and a Whittakers L&P White Chocolate Slab (kiwi favourites) to the head chef, who at once feels so familiar and close in my mind through our shared childhood experiences and yet so aloof and far beyond any skill I could ever hope to possess in the culinary arts.
Before the next post I will return to my creative tasks and continue making progress, but for now I will continue to bask in the awesomeness that is my husband and ride this high home.
Progress Check
A forest of creativity, well, the start at least.
One month down already, so how am I going? I pendulum between doing everything every day, to the down period where I did barely one thing in an entire week. It’s hard when you start something large and long lasting like this. The temptation is to go hard so you get heaps done as its huge and intimidating so you feel you need to work on it all the time in order to complete it, but if you don’t take care you can burn yourself out. Then it’s ensured to not be completed. I feel like I am finding my balance, the stress of the ambitious goals has plateaued to quiet persistent motivation but with wiggle room to allow for days of nothing. Without focusing hugely on where I am vs where I should be, I have managed to roughly keep pace.
I am aiming for a tenth of each goal per month, it allows a couple of months at the end of the year to catch up any deficit. With that in mind I am on track with my art, music, photography challenge and craft goals. I am keeping up with my word count for my writing goal, just not the extra task to split it between the blog and novel. The novel is the clearly neglected loser out of the two, however I am nearly reaching the word count goal on the blog alone. My biggest struggle is the cooking. It’s an ungainly goal, not one that is easily split or tracked. It took most of the first week to simply digitise the recipes so that I can have a list to plan with, tick off and organise. However, it is still in the delegation stage. It’s the unpleasant task of menu planning but for a whole year! Sure, I have cooked things, but some meals require 5 separate recipes to get the complete dish. Trying to figure out where I am with that goal is a challenge. I am still working on a reasonable (read: achievable) distribution of recipes so I don’t get a massive log jam at the end of the year, or worse, end up with a whole day of just cooking sauces.
So far, I am enjoying it more than I am not. Some days are a little arduous when you don’t feel like doing anything and yet there’s this big list of things to do. But I am noticing, even when what I am creating isn’t fabulous or even presentable, the act of creation itself brings a sense of place, like creation is part of being human and by joining in the process I am fulfilling some grand design. The long tradition of creation, I feel it grounds me, like I am joining centuries of others who have had the same goal, drive, passion. It’s a comfort to know we all heard the same call and have all wrestled to figure out what it means and how we each need to respond to our individual wonderful and wacky iteration of that call. If I may be so bold, it feels spiritual. The process of creation feels like an exercise in listening to the universe, the bigger picture, the divine and partaking in it just a little bit. Even if its akin to a toddler plunging their chubby hands into a bowl of flour Mum is using to bake a cake with and proudly exclaiming “I am helping!” Even if the role is small, (and maybe more of a hindrance than a help) I am glad to be a part of it.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – playing with masking fluid and learning that technique matters if you want paper to stay as part of the page when you peel it off (10/100)
Writing – Book: 1139 Blog: 9776
Cooking – Headaches and planning
Music – (5.5/100)
Photography – Getting ready for classes to start next week
Craft – (10/100)
A Date Amongst the Fires
Yesterday was a day of cooking and chores. I don’t want to toot my own horn but wow those recipes turned out well! The “Anytime corn and chive pancakes” are ridiculously moreish and I was tempted to repeat the recipe at full size (professional recipes are always for ten serves) immediately upon finishing the first batch. As for the stuffed zucchini blossoms, they were a little bit (read stupidly) expensive. Thankfully, they were a one off and still not as expensive as a dinner out. I don’t see how anyone not working at a restaurant would have them in their regular meals rotation unless they had a veggie garden and a small hatred for actual zucchini. However, they tasted like their worth! Crunchy bread-crumbed outside and soft savoury stuffing in the inside. What I paid for in ingredients I would have (before learning how to make them myself, maybe) paid for happily on a night out. I can see why they were in the professional cookbook as they are a worthy meal to splash out on. As for the rest of the day, chores are boring, and I won’t go into detail beyond saying I dominated our apartment so hard it was embarrassed that it tried to pass itself off as a home beforehand.
Today, I went on an artist date with a friend. No, an artist date isn’t a date between two artists (although we both are), it is a day where you take your inner artist out for a date to spoil it and I happened to have external company as well. An inner artist (as introduced by Julia Cameron in the artist way) is the bit of a person that takes joy in the play and beauty in life, the spontaneity and unpredictability. It is the opposite of the inner critic (for those of you who new to this blog I explain the inner critic here: http://www.cadenamckenzie.com/blog/2020/1/17/sparring-with-my-inner-critic). It is the little child in us that takes delight in googly eyes on rock pets, that enjoys twirly dresses, that thinks buying a lollypop at the supermarket as a reward for doing the grocery shop is just the best thing ever! It is the part of us that takes joy in the small things. It is also the part of us that gets restless and bored when we have been working hard or trying too long to do one thing or even creative work. While it is the source of creative output it also gets tired. The ideas come a little less frequently, may run around the same circles or may even run out. I find it is a good idea to fill the tank every now and then by intentionally finding something that inspires the inner artist again.
As some of you know, the town I am based in (Canberra, Australia) has been surrounded by bush fires for about two months now. Having explored the area well beforehand, we decided to go out and see what has become of the areas that are now cleared for re-entry.
It was confronting. Driving through the mountains, high enough to be able to see through valleys way into the distance felt wrong. It was like the haunting intimacy of seeing a balding woman without her wig on. You know you shouldn’t be able to see that much of the bald landscape underneath the trees and yet, there it was on display. The trees were charred and black or red like the bark of gums, accustomed to being cooked and falling off in sheets, efficiently setting about the process of regrowth after many fire seasons. Amongst this sepia toned landscape, a small shock of green. A flamboyance of colour burst forth as a creeper winds its green foliage up a charcoal trunk basking in so much revealed sunlight. Further along near a dry creek bed a fern leaf continues to grow beneath scorched edges, looking like a lush emerald, gold tipped feather of a tropical bird.
The circumstances are horrible, there have been many people displaced and many homes lost. Even for those not directly affected, the months of smoke heavy air and glowing horizons have left an entire state (or in this case, 3) with the effects of persistent low-grade stress. But one thing that never ceases to amaze me is that nature, however harsh and unforgiving the circumstances, finds a way to return. Along the way, it brings beauty. It is this beauty I sought today, and it delivered.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – From today, I am stocked up with supplied for the next project (8/100)
Writing – Book: 1139 Blog: 9113
Cooking – Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms with Basil and Lime Mayo, and Anytime Corn and Chive Pancakes (13/285)
Music – (5.5/100)
Photography – See for yourself 😊
Craft – (10/100)
Musical Therapy
Since my last post I have been productive, if not massively creative. I decided on doing some basic self-care, no, not bubble baths and rosé, simple basic care like going to the gym, making sure I ate my fruit and veggies and drinking enough water. Many of you will not be surprised to hear that a good sleep can change one’s entire outlook. For me one of these things we take for granted and yet make the biggest difference is music.
When we moved back to my parent’s place after a two-year stint away, Mum decided she didn’t want the antique baby grand piano in the lounge room. Can’t blame here, it took up about a third of it. So, the piano ended up in the sleep out at the end of the double car garage instead. This happened to be my bedroom for the next 3 years. For me this was more of a benefit than I could have known.
In our family, we all took lessons in multiple instruments. While piano was my most enduring instrument, saxophone and bass were the ones I would perform in front of others. Don’t get me wrong, bass was never a skilled instrument for me but I was just effective enough as a musician that my father decided to tell me what notes when with what strings and give me 40 minutes to sort out the rest before thrusting me up the front of church one day when the regular bassist didn’t show. After that it seems I had made the enviable standard of ‘you’ll do’ and was asked to fill in again until I became a regular fixture.
Piano, the instrument I took 11 years of lessons in, was never an instrument I played for people. I may have performed a handful of times in low pressure environments such as a church social but only when ‘voluntold’ by my parents.
My performance instrument was saxophone. I was never as good as my brother (he gained one of the top honours in music with the saxophone during high school) but I was effective and found a place in multiple bands and ensembles. One of these ensembles, the combined schools concert band, won the gold award at nationals.
I quit music altogether in the middle of high school, half a lifetime ago. I was burnt out, undertaking too many commitments in the area. As well as lessons in two instruments per week, I was taking music as a subject at school and was involved in 6 different music groups. I calculated that if I was doing what I should have been doing, it would have been four and a half hours of practice per night.
There is a difference between practising and playing. Practising is concentration, mistakes and technique. Playing is painting with sound. Those three years in the sleep out is where I first experienced depression. That evil, nasty, consuming feeling of being unworthy (those same ones that came calling when I was writing my last post) first visited me in high school. Playing the piano became a refuge. The sleep out was disconnected from the main house, and across a creek. This meant I was far enough away that I could play the piano in the middle of the night without waking anybody. When I was struggling to sleep, when I was stuck in that thick black cloud, I would sit at the piano and paint my feelings into existence. The impermanent nature of music, the transience of the experience meant that when the notes stop ringing, they stop existing. By the time I had played out how I felt, after pouring my ugly broken sickness into sound, I would come out the other end lighter.
Music allowed me to experience and deal with emotions without needing name them or create a logical framework for them. It was simply expression, then release. For those three years, the piano in my bedroom was my therapist. Piano became imbued with the intensely personal nature of such.
It was March before I got reliable access to keys again. Playing through my old sheet music was disheartening. I had imagined that somehow with a decade long break I would be able to pick up exactly where I had left off. The techniques necessary to be able to play songs I once knew by heart were once again unfamiliar and in need of practice. Instead of being reminded of what I no longer knew, I am working on music I never have known. Some of the pieces are crazy hard to challenge myself, some are a much more relaxed pace. The techniques I practice allow for greater play.
I hope that one day I will feel that I can play in front of people again. Maybe even to one day share on here to show my efforts beyond simply saying piano practice is happening. Until then, I have a decade’s worth of therapy sessions to catch up on.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – Playing around with salt and watercolours. Am going to need bigger salt to get the texture I want (8/100)
Writing – Book: 1139 Blog: 8321
Cooking – Went through and allocated about a third of the recipes across the calendar, will be working on allocating the rest before the end of the week, so as to ensure I don’t get a log jam at the end of the year.
Music – Half an hour of practice, an hour of play (5.5/100)
Photography – This week’s challenge is to photograph something that makes you feel warm. Tea, a book, cosy things and my cat, what more could a girl want?
Craft – I made a mess with the salt, does that count?
Motivation Evacuated
Australia Day weekend. Yesterday was a mammoth day of adventures and fun. Joined by couple friend of ours my husband and I went out for brunch, then to the National Gallery of Australia to partake of the Picasso and Matisse exhibition currently running there. This turned out to be a full day and evening thing culminating in the ever-exciting complete evacuation of the apartment block. A smoke bank from the local 400+ hectare bush fire only 5km from our house had rolled through and triggered a smoke alarm in the gym downstairs. PS. One small comfort is finding out that our precious cat is more drawn to the sound of the treat door opening than she is motivated to hide from the sound of the alarms. That is the first time in all our moving around that we have experienced an evacuation. Made me realise how dreadfully under prepared I am. Outside on the lawn surrounded with everyone else and their pets, I remembered all the best laid plans I had for how I would deal with one. None of which I had done. Even the collection of the cat was thanks to the husbands thinking. I was too far in the “who burned the toast?” mind frame to have thought it all through. Didn’t think to collect any identity papers, didn’t think to collect the hard drive with three years of irreplaceable photograph work on it, nothing. Before anyone mentions off sight backups, I usually have one but have been in the process of collating and triplicating my work so it’s all here in the one spot.
Today, I have a wah. In the light of yesterday’s non-event, realising how dreadfully under prepared I am for such things (like not having it cross my mind to collect my cat!) made my goals feel frivolous and silly. The overwhelming sense of not feeling adulty enough to adult has gotten hold of me. My inner critic is having a field day telling me I need to be more, different, better. Have you ever considered that line of thinking? When someone tells you they wish you didn’t have (insert negative character trait here) or that they wish you did have (insert positive character trait here) or I wish you were more like (insert name of person not you here) they are essentially tell you they wish you were different than who you are. Almost like they are saying they wish there was a different person with most of your personality and character but not that chunk in your place. Like they can almost accept you but not as you are, you need to be fixed first. This is quite devastating to hear when the trait is one you cannot change. Even more so when you have internalised people in your life telling you this message so frequently that your inner critic starts to use it against you. How can you be content pursuing the things that make you feel you are finally coming into your own when you have such a loud voice in your head that you need to be someone else to be enough?
My logical arguments for my goals will come back nice and loud (probably even tomorrow) but today I couldn’t bring myself to be creatively productive. I comforted with the logic that the husband is still home today (Yay for long weekends) and therefore time spent on him is time well spent.
Creative Cross Training
Today I was searching for an ingredient and got talking to a woman who works at Essential Ingredients in Kingston. Firstly, I was pleasantly surprised I had finally found someone who knew what dulse was (it turns up in so many of the books recipes and I had never heard of it before this book, even with commercial training!). And secondly, it was wonderful to see the enthusiasm when I mentioned why I was so adamant about not to having substitutions.
“I’m Julie and Julia’ing my way through a vegetarian cookbook.” The words were not even half out of my mouth when the reply came back “I love that!” The bubbly energy towards my endeavour was both encouraging and a little scary. Here was a stranger (a pleasant one non the less) who asked for my details so she could look up this very blog (Hi by the way, and welcome to my creative mess) and I suddenly felt that panicky inner critic freaking out about how it isn’t just friends and family any more. What if this isn’t good enough? What if she is expecting Julie Powell level prose and amusing anecdotes? Will she judge me that I am still undecided on whether to include the actual recipes along with the photos? (My main hesitation is that they are in American measurements and for the commercial based quantities of 10 serves each. That’s a lot of maths.) But interestingly, I found myself making excuses about the content. Claiming the Julie and Julia approach for the cooking made me feel like I was somehow defrauding her of her attention by also having the other creative pursuits on the blog too. Like I may be tricking her into spending a few moments on a topic she might have no interest in. I know that is just my own insecurities projected upon this unsuspecting (and only encouraging) stranger.
My whole life I have heard the messages of singular focus, specialisation, pick one area and focus. This has come from school, parents, friends, family, careers, self helps books. . . you name it, it’s the prevailing advice. Even in my photography course the main path is that you pick one genre to specialise in. That’s not an easy piece of advice to follow if you are me. I have always had an insatiable curiosity. This has led to many different job roles and experiences but also to never feeling entirely settled. I tend to get to a point where I have satisfied my curiosity about whether I can achieve a thing, then I get bored and look for the next task or role to conquer. I know I have been judged for this. I have had people tell me to my face that it is not a good way to be. But in my exploration of self, I find myself asking why is it a bad thing?
For many years now specialisation is and has been the goal. Using doctors as an example, this is usually a good thing. When someone has something stuck behind their eye, I am sure they don’t want someone who has only ever treated an eye a small handful of times as a general practitioner but rather an eye specialist who has had years of practice. If you are accused of murder you probably don’t want someone who studied every single law in the country as that means they probably only spent a small amount of their time on criminal justice. Specialisation means people can get exceptional at one particular area and be extremely useful in that one role. But that mostly means the person can only do just that one role.
A generalist is a person who is satisfied with being not excellent at one role like a specialist, but good at many roles. I know when people look at hiring for jobs, they are looking for the best person for that one role. This is where specialisation has its advantages, but what if those companies hired a person who was not the best person for that one role, but good at it as well as a handful of other useful roles? That one person would be of more use than the person great at one task because they would be able to step in a help in many areas while the company only needs to hire.
We have all heard that’s saying, “jack or all trades, master of none.” But many of us have never heard the second part which says, “but oft times better than master of one.” Having skills in multiple areas allow a person to utilise information from each of those areas when doing a task. A previous student job of mine running cables and helping with staging and lighting meant that while studying photography I had an advantage on lighting set ups and how they work. My playing with modelling clay helped my pastry chef training by giving me a head start on sugar flowers.
There are a few areas we celebrate broad approaches; exercise is one that comes to mind. How many memes are out there teasing about missing leg day or spending too much time on just one area? At the gym an all-rounder approach is ideal. If I am kind to myself, I would give myself license to exercise my creativity in more than one area. It is OK that this blog is multifaceted. It is OK that I have multiple interests. So, friendly sales lady, if you are reading this, welcome to my creative cross training.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – I had company yesterday! Thank you, Clare, for suggesting an art date, was excellent fun. Tried my hand at a hedgehog after feeling nostalgic about the albino ones we had living around our house while growing up (7/100)
Writing – Book: 300 Blog: 6645
Cooking – Tonight’s dinner is Black Bean Chilli with Almond Coconut cookies for dessert (11/285)
Music – Another half hour (5/100)
Photography – Enrolled this week so first steps towards completing the Diploma
Craft – I may have bought a toy pottery wheel for my husband as a joke about his lack of creative hobbies for Christmas. . . It may have also been a little for myself. . . This is the first time I have tried my hand at it, and it was on a $15 Kmart toy that could not stand any pressure upon it and so would simply stop spinning. I am claiming that as my excuse for how wonky they are (I may have managed to use a little of trick photography to help with how bad they look).
A Magician and Her Tricks
I am feeling thankful for this blog today. I felt like I might end up with a third post where I have done nothing more than write “I have done nothing” and it motivated me into action. Glad to see the accountability is working. While it may not have been a super productive day with progress occurring on all the tasks, today I tried three things I had never done before. Four if you consider the level of mess in my studio/office as something I have done today, but that’s tomorrows problem.
I also want to thank those readers who have messaged me with encouragement and stories of their own art and creativity journeys. I thought I would just let you know your effort is appreciated. I included a comments section below my posts if you want to join in by sharing thoughts, experiences or even photos from your own dalliances with the arts.
One comment I received has stuck in my mind - that I am brave to put all my creative mess out in public (thanks Eris!). I think that it is essential that the curtain gets pulled back and that the process gets exposed. I recently met one of my favourite portrait photographers Lori Cicchini (check out her work here: http://www.loriana.com.au/). I have spent the last year in awe of her work, it is creative and whimsical and stunningly beautiful. Her work has been used in many magazines, including Vogue, and was exhibited at the Venice Biennale (like the Olympics of the art world). In the talk she was presenting she walked a room full of photographers through her process, how she made some of her most famous works, how she got to where she is now. It took 10 years of practice and hard work, of taking the opportunities that came her way and gaining the skills that she could. That talk and the chat afterwards was one of the most encouraging events in my photographic journey as it demystified her work from the realm of unobtainable magic, to obtainable if I work really (really!) hard. Not only that but the hard work is enough to make it as far as she has.
Some of you may have heard me talk about how magic only happens when you don’t know what’s going on. We are faced with so many success stories, especially in the arts, of people magically getting discovered, of one day walking in their normal lives then next minute everything is transformed into wonder and success. What we don’t hear is the years of persistence, the work, the practice, the hours of effort put in so that when that opportunity came, they were ready to take advantage. It’s because they could take advantage that it looked like luck, a whirlwind success story, like magic.
A magician never reveals his tricks because once you know how a trick is done it no longer seems that special. Even with Lori’s immaculate master pieces some of the shine is taken off now as I know how I could recreate (or at least emulate) what appeals to me so much in her work. Holding onto your trick and only showing the magic is fine if you want a life alone on stage. With Lori’s talk she invited us to join her. She took her love of the photograph and shared it with us so we could explore, play, and create alongside her.
I don’t need to be alone on this stage – that is too boring and lonely for me. I simply want the joy of creating and to prove to myself I can be disciplined with my art. It has taken me a while wrestling with this arty side of me to allow it out and for it to be active in my life. I struggled watching other people perform, make and create with seemingly effortless brilliance and I felt unworthy. I know the emotional baggage, the brutal things the inner critic tells me, the procrastination, are all unpleasant, uninspiring, and ultimately not the points one would include in a 30 second elevator pitch about who I am and what I do. We are talented as humans at hiding the uncomfortable and ugly. It helps us get along with others and is a useful skill to have in polite society. But it can shame us into feeling those parts are somehow wrong and shouldn’t exist in our lives.
The fact that I am blogging my way through this process is not to feed my ego (although I will again thank you for the encouragement you give by simply thinking my work is worth reading) but it is so that by going through the mess I may be able to smooth the way so that someone else may not have to. That they may feel encouraged after seeing behind the curtain. That they might join me in the fun that is the creative stage.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – I tried a pour painting yesterday, still drying today. . . And I thought acrylics were supposed to be fast drying! Today I painted champagne glasses with glass paints that were donated to me about 5 years ago and I have not really explored with them until now. (6/100)
Writing – Book: 300 Blog: 5550
Cooking – Baking tomorrow, will have cookie photos for you on Friday. (PS is there interest in the recipes?)
Music – Half an hour today bringing it to (4 .5/100)
Photography – This week’s photo challenge is black and white. I chose a subject that is usually so colourful (my paint wall) and contrast the subject with the presentation. (3/52 weeks)
Craft – I made the yarn mini me in the header image. Any suggestions on how to do eyes will be met with gratitude. (8/100)
Silence in the Storm
Trying to regain motivation after three days of doing absolutely nothing is a struggle. They do say how you take care of yourself impacts your mental outlook and wow does it ever?! After barely lifting my pounding head from a pillow for the last few days, not really eating and no real sleep, trying to feel energised and motivated felt like a massive burden. All the negative thoughts rushed in, making me feel like I would never become the person I imagine myself to be as I can’t even do simple artsy tasks. . . But there is one thing I can rely on; any form of unexpectedly timely chaos is going to energise me. Today, the city where I live (Canberra, Australia) experienced a weather change like I have never seen. After months of no rain, bush fires and overwhelming, choking smoke we had a thunderstorm that brought along golf-ball sized hail. Bare minutes passed between seeing all three kilometres to the Red Hill lookout (commonly used by me to gauge how bad the smoke visibility has been) to a full storm surrounding me. Wind gusts over 110kmph, tearing leaves off trees, filling the air with debris as the rain announced its return. Then the rain turned to hail. Outside, protected from most of it on our balcony, I still got hit from the ricochet, as hail exploded with such force around me. On a good day, thunderstorms will excite and energise me, this was something else! The 10-minute barrage resulted in abandoning all other projects and progress to go outside for a rain drenched two-hour photo mission.
This kind of chaos shocks me out of myself, out of my head. I forget my own issues as the negative self-talk gets silenced. The moment at hand is the only thing in my mind. Especially with such a fleeting, high powered phenomenon, there is little room for the contemplation and over thinking that the inner critic thrives on. All I could think about as the hail abated was that I needed to capture some of this experience. Gathering my camera and raincoat, I went out to explore, play and splash into unexpectedly deep and icy puddles. Entire trees stripped of their leaves, those leaves carpeting the roads from view, every single car outside dimpled like a teenager recovering from severe acne. Negative self-talk has no place in that kind of environment. There is so much external going on there is simply no room.
There is a quote by philosopher Rene Descartes “I think therefore I am”. His point is “I think therefore I exist”, but it is commonly misused as we are what we think. This misuse is not only an incorrect interpretation but also just incorrect. We are not what we think. Yes, without discipline, whatever thought passes through our brain will shape us, but I believe that if you try, you can take a step back from the thoughts running through our minds and become an observer to them. This is where the interesting stuff happens. If I was every thought in my brain the negative inner critic could permanently reduce me to a whimpering mess. Becoming an observer to my thoughts allows me to see those threads and look at what triggered them. Where did they come from? Is there any objective truth to them or are they simply equipped with strong emotions?
One of the things I struggle with is that these kinds of photo missions sometimes feel like cheating in the creative department. I am capturing what is already there, not exactly crafting an image. I do not get to choose lighting or even my models. Everything is already done for me; I just click the shutter. I know that is an uncharitable way of looking at it. Becoming the observer to my own thoughts allows me to take the time to be kind to myself and add more balance to the negative self-talk. I did choose the composition and which of the exposure triangle to emphasis (shutter speed, aperture or ISO). I did choose what to point the camera at and which moments to capture. I made decisions and therefore I created the image. While it still feels more like cheating than if I had worked hard to set up a studio shoot myself, or if I had created some painted masterpiece, it still is part of the creative journey and it is something I did create. Not every day needs to be filled with all the things.
The excitement of the hail and chaos that ensued allowed me a moment to ignore the inner voice telling me all the horrible things it’s been saying over the last few days. It allowed me a moment of peace to gather myself and regain an upper hand. I am grateful that for all the chaos I was able to find the silence in the storm.
THE RUNDOWN
Writing - Blog: 4592
Everything else - Same
Sparring with my Inner Critic
For the last two days I have managed to complete . . . zero tasks towards my goals. Yup, you heard me, not a single one. “But there are so many to choose from!”, “some of them are so small” and “you couldn’t even have done one?” I hear you ask, though truthfully it is just my inner critic.
Every one of us has an inner critic and it isn’t always a bad thing. It’s that part of us that tells us off for the stupid and silly, but also can hold us back from the brave and courageous. It’s the part of us that wants to stay in the safe, comfortable and known. It like predictability and routine. It is concerned with appropriate. It’s the part of us that hears our childlike impulses of “maybe I would like to fly a kite today” and responded with “you are in your thirties, stop being so silly” (No? just me?). The inner critic is like the adult part of us that helps us behave appropriately, fit into society, be a grown up. But the flip side is that it responds to new, unknown and childlike with fear. The “what ifs” are its main weapon. What if it sucks? What if someone sees me? What if I get caught blowing bubbles from the third storey window while I’m trying to see how far they will fall before they pop? What if I throw myself into a ball pit made up of 300 balloons for a photo shoot? You know, general things we all do. The inner critic is excellent at logic, using it to convince us that if it doesn’t serve a larger picture (career, relationships, goals) then it is unworthy. And for the most part, we need our inner critic so we can survive. The inner critic is the one that tells me off when I have a bill coming up that I need to pay and have been procrastinating, or that says I need to stop going on photo missions and get groceries. It seeks control, order, predictability, logic and planning, working to prevent harm by curtailing any surprises coming for us. But what happens when we only listen to the inner critic?
The creative part of us is the part fascinated by the new and unknown. It is curious and adventurous. It is the childlike part of us that just wants to play. Our creative side uses those same “what ifs” questions as tools. What I add chocolate chips to these oatmeal cookies? What if I want to add this sparkly ribbon to that hat? What if I add butterscotch candy into a candyfloss machine (which I highly recommend doing)? What if I take an old piano apart and turn it into a TV cabinet? (Just me again?) This is the part that take two things and sees how they can fit. This is the part that cares more about the trying than the result. This is the exploration, the play, the now. The creative self thrives on freedom, new, surprising, unexplored, messy, spontaneous.
When the inner critic is dominant, a person misses out on so much fun. They never experience things ‘just cause’ or for the pure joy of the moment. It’s like they have taken their inner child and locked it in a box never to be let out because the stuffy grown up doesn’t trust it near the fine china. The flip side is, when the childlike side is dominant, they don’t pay bills, don’t eat healthy, don’t look after themselves and are no longer a functioning member of society. It is best when both parts can work together and give each other space. When the inner critic can be the grown up and say, “enough play, let’s get these chores done” and the creative self can say “enough work, let’s play and enjoy life”. You don’t have to abandon responsibilities to indulge the creative side. But neither should it be ignored just because your chronological measurements get past a certain number. What’s the point of earning all that money if you don’t get to play with what it brings? Children don’t need money to indulge their creative selves. Sure, it helps they don’t have to worry about affording food and bills, but they are free in their creativity, not worrying how it might be received, or if its good enough. One of the most beautiful moments I have been privileged to witness is my niece on the deck outside her home singing and dancing for a good ten minutes. She was making up the lyrics and melody as she was going along, twirling and prancing with no orderly choreography but fully enjoying her moment in the sunshine. She was not worried about how she looked or if it was good or not. And that is what made it so good! You couldn’t package that or put it on a stage and sell tickets, but it was beautiful and priceless (and Aunty got video). Creativity is too serious to be taken seriously.
So, two days into a typical (for me at least) three-day migraine, and the greatest achievement I have made is managing to squeeze in two naps today. Normally this would have derailed me. My inner critic (as usual) has gone into overdrive and has been trying to scold me for not being able to manage even one task. It’s been saying all sorts of mean things trying to scare me away from this adventure into the creative unknown. “See? I told you that you can’t do this. You aren’t even two weeks into this, and you have had to take two whole days off?!” (Inner critics may use rationale and logic but also will ignore legitimate reasons such as crippling headaches if it suits them).
But I planned for it this time. I knew this was coming. This time I gave myself space to be human, to have my non-functioning days. This time I will not let my inner critic convince me this is failure and a reason to put away my childlike creative self in a box.
THE RUNDOWN
Writing - Blog: 3776
Everything else - no change
Finding My Colours
I cracked the novel! Finally, after three weeks of periodically getting it out and putting it back untouched (I do suffer from some extreme blank page paralysis) I finally wrote some! It feels really good to have messed up that pristine empty first page. After so long trying to muster up the courage to try writing that story again, I am elated. Admittedly, I only wrote 300 words but that’s more than I have added to the novel in years.
Something that tends to happen to any of us on a creative path: we wait to be better. I feel I may have spent the last 10 years waiting, maybe even still waiting a bit now. When I get better at photography then I will start a business, when I learn metallurgy then I can sell my jewellery, When I start cooking fancy meals then I can host those dinner parties I enjoy, when I get better at playing piano then I will let others hear it (I am still doing this one, only the closest people to me have heard me play with abandon, most people wouldn’t have a clue that I can play). I end up in a situation where I wait instead of doing. Hindsight is teaching me that all the time I was holding back till I got better I was denying myself the fun of actually doing these things. I could at least be as kind to myself as I would be to... literally anyone else! For instance, I can draw a thing, and have it recognised as that thing. I wouldn’t look at someone else’s work knowing they are trying to draw a cat, see a cat and think “not good enough”. For what I want to do (enjoy learning a skill and make a few things along the way I am proud of) I am a good enough artist. I thoroughly enjoy other people’s cooking; I have said many times “The best seasoning a meal can have is to not cook it yourself”. Even if that is all that brings flavour to my food, I can cook food that will be enjoyed and doesn’t poison people – I am a good enough cook. I can write words that amuse, entertain or enlighten people (if only evidenced by the fact you are reading this) – I am a good enough writer. Its time I started painting myself with the same brush as everyone else. Many people (I included) struggle to start without assurances of obtaining fame, fortune, mastery or perfection. How many times have you heard stories of people who were super into a sport, an art, a skill, that gave up on it when they realised that they are unlikely to make money or a career of it? Do I need to reach perfection to legitimise my enjoyment of a task? What happened to the childlike play for the sake of it? The messy, bright, unpolished joy of creation just cause. Shunryu Suzukiroshi says “We are all perfect with room for improvement.” I may never be reach fame, fortune or perfection, I may never be counted amongst the greats but that’s not what I am aiming for (not yet anyways). I am already perfect for what I want to do - improve.
The question I should be asking myself isn’t am I good enough but rather do I enjoy it? I really do. This fact alone is worthy enough for me to do them. I have spent more money on sillier things to end up enjoying myself for shorter amounts of time than doing any of the activities on this challenge. I used to (used to being only weeks ago before this challenge took up my spare moments) spend so much time watching other exciting lives through television, playing computer games, reading news-feeds - watching other people enjoy their lives and not fully enjoying my own. I think creativity is a conversation. There is the listening and then there is speaking. I love a good story, watching TV helped scratch that storytelling itch, but it’s not much of a creative conversation if I don’t say anything back. This is the same for the art gallery nearby that I know more intimately than my own apartment block, the playlists of super talented classical pianists I have on Spotify, the three shelves of cookbooks on my bookcase that have mostly been uncooked. The places and activities I like to spend most of my free time have been one sided conversation. I collect, observe, consume other peoples’ art and creativity and now I feel I am finally saying something back.
THE RUNDOWN
Art - Two new pieces, a pen based ‘hieroglyphs’ of the things I used each day and a watercolour painting that may even now still be drying. Note to self: good quality sketching paper is not good quality water paints paper - may have suffered bleed through from both images onto each other (4/100 pieces)
Writing - So happy to have made a start on the novel, I do find myself fact checking my words to the point of disruption as its set 400 years ago (Novel: 300 (squee!), Blog: 2,745 words)
Cooking - Traditional tabbouleh with India style flatbread and toasted spice hummus. (9/285 recipes)
Music - Yes, it’s happening, no, I am not yet brave enough to video my practice anyway as some of you suggested (4/100 hours)
Photography - Using the rule of thirds to demonstrate motion - Balsamic glaze dripping of a strawberry along the third lines. (2/52 weeks)
Craft - I tried origami today, two patterns I had never done before. One normal one-sided large origami paper, the other I had painted as practice for a watercolour wash. (2/100 days)
"Madness, or Brilliance"
Will Turner’s expression mirroring exactly how my inner critic responded to my ‘Year of creative living’ challenge - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003
The overwhelming magnitude of the tasks I outlined last Wednesday tempted me towards regret as soon as it was published. Being public, my tasks become significantly harder to back away from. I know that was the point, but I have tried similar regimes before, and failed. The autopsies of those attempts revealed that trying to do everything everyday was guaranteeing disaster. I’d have all the energy for the first week or so, then a single bad day would come, the black dogs would bark, or a migraine would hit. I’d be unable to complete the list, or even do any of it and then BAM! The streak was broken. I had failed to do everything every day. I might try start again but the next streak would be shorter after my failed attempt and so, discouraged, I’d have less fight.
That’s been the temptation, to give in to those thoughts of discouragement. “You have tried this before and it didn’t work, why is this time different?”
Because I haven’t tried this before.
This time I have given myself space to be human, to have bad days and migraines and made space for all manner of streak breaking things. This time I have invited you to become involved, to witness my successes and failures in full gory detail. This time I am focused on living a more creative life rather than simply ticking as many boxes in a row as I can. The numbers are “more like guidelines anyway” (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003). Even if I finish this up now, today, I will have spent the last two weeks with more intentional creativity than I have had in my life for months. A beautiful change from living the peaks and valleys of life vicariously through media consumption, creativity is the best way to experience those emotions and moments fully for myself. As the Irish playwright and Noble prize winner George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” Too long have I waited for the answers to come to me, too long have I hoped that I would wake up magically in the fullness of my potential, too long have. . .can you tell I watched Pirates of the Caribbean recently?
Back to the topic at hand, this week has been full of emotions. Overwhelm has been prominent. The cooking goal has been a nightmare to organise. Turns out this cookbook is not as easy as “I will cook this one recipe today and that will be it.” Most recipes will use others in the book as a base, or as an ingredient, then there are serving suggestions that sound perfect to go with it but also have their own cooking times, resting times and whole recipe ingredients. At least 285 recipes will not be 285 days of cooking, but it may take that long to figure out the order of attack. It already stole much of the time I was hoping to spend on the other fun things. This then caused fear to arise that I had chosen too many things to do and maybe I should whittle it down. I am barely into my second week, and not even at the end of a whole once since posting my intentions and already I am being tempted to quit? My inner critic is, as my Nana used to say, a “right fearful sod”. What I do know to be true is that whenever your entire body and mind freak out over a decision you have either done “something incredibly stupid” (there I go again) or are embarking on something extremely wonderful. . . Time will tell.
“This is either madness, or brilliance.” – Will Turner
“It’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide.” – Jack Sparrow
THE RUNDOWN
Art - I have completed two art pieces (scribbles more like), one drawing and one painting as shown above.
Writing – No movement on the novel yet . . . However, from the blog, the count is at 1848 words
Cooking - I decided for Day One, I would cook two fruit-based savoury dishes and a vegetable-based sweet. Asparagus with strawberry sauce; rockmelon (cantaloupe) soup with cashew crème, and butternut pumpkin (squash) muffins. Yup, I know, I was scared too. Turns out they are not too bad! Would never have picked any of those recipes to work from title alone but the flavours were moreish, and seconds were had.
Music - One dilemma I have been stewing on, I can show evidence for my other five goals, but how do I show off music practice? Which I have been doing. I mean without subjecting you to videos of my every mistake and missed note. If any of you have ideas, please help . . . ?
Photography – Coming on Wednesday with the next update
Craft – Some of you may already know I make jewellery. Shown are four pairs of earrings I made this week as well as the board on which to display them.
It’s Not Impostor Syndrome If You Are Actually Faking It
“Excessively creative”, that’s what my husband calls me. I have creativity in my blood. My mum cooks the best vegetarian meals most of you will never have tasted (but really should), repeatedly getting ‘meat and three veg’ guests to exclaim “I didn’t even miss the meat!”. My father has this innate ability to work out some DIY option for almost anything (he once made a workable alternative to a plastic moulding machine that would normally cost $20,000 using an oven, and old vacuum cleaner and a wooden frame he made from scraps he had laying around). My sister has conquered many a field, music, art and is now a fantastic fabric artist, making some of the most wonderfully imaginative quiet books, quilts and toys for her children. I have fond memories of listening in awe of my brother jamming out improvised jazz riffs on both the guitar and piano. Art, music, food, craft of all kinds surrounded me growing up. As the youngest I watched, absorbed, and dabbled in all of the ways laid out before me, the path smoothed out and worn, the obstacles removed by my family working it out before I got there.
In my own life, I was five when I proudly proclaimed that I wanted to be an artist. I remember feeling so proud of a painting of a white horse and rider I did as a 7-year-old that it hung on the wall in my bunk for months. As a pre-teen, I voluntarily did extra homework as an excuse to write a 12-page story over a weekend and get it graded. I had music lessons from 5 till late teens. I have had a blessed, art filled upbringing.
So why am I telling you all this? Not to show off my artistic upbringing, or to brag about my family (although they are pretty awesome), but because in spite of the copious amounts of creative fertiliser, I still failed to grow. Sometimes, I was actively cut down. The 5-year-old proclamation to become an artist was met with derision and scoffing from an adored uncle who told me you can’t make money as an artist. That horse painting? That was the last time I remember painting. I strove for recognition in music so much that I burned out and quit all together. An idea for a novel come to me at 17 but after many months of work and the naivety of not backing things up, I suffered a corrupted hard drive and lost over 50 pages of work.
The decade following as an adult, I tried to fit the mould prescribed to us, get a job, earn money, be sensible, tick of the markers of adulthood. I worked at a bank, trained in Commercial Cookery, even earned an associate degree in Ministry and Theology and most of a Bachelor’s in Media and Communications (still going on that one, actually). But no matter which avenue I walked down I did not fit. The rigidity of the bank, the sameness of everyday as a cook, even being let go from a job as a youth pastor for being “too creative for church ministry”. . .
I took that as a sign. After licking my wounds for a while, I realised I had been running away from what had always known myself to be, an artist. Now don’t get me wrong, a soul of an artist does not a talented one make. I have the desire to be a painter but have only painted once since that white horse from my childhood, the results which were truly not good and were in fact shame hidden in the back of the recipient’s wardrobe.
I have a list of activities that I secretly claim as being part of my identity and yet, if I am honest, I don’t do. Instead of suffering from impostor syndrome, I have been simply an impostor, faking my credentials in the club of creativity. It’s hard to call yourself a musician/artist/writer if you haven’t played/drawn/written in years. Even with my qualifications in cooking my husband does most of it at home. This year I am taking my creativity back, reclaiming it, bringing it front and centre. I am going to do what I claim is who I am.
Art – 100 art pieces. Draw, paint, sculpt, anything! Just do it twice a week
Writing - Start that novel again, maintain this blog and reach an end of year word count of 50,000 words total
Cooking - cook my way through a book I found at a second-hand store called Professional Vegetarian Cooking by Ken Bergeron (285 recipes)
Music – Actually start music practice again, 100 days of practice = 50 hours
Photography – Complete a 52-week photography challenge (one shoot a week), and gain my Diploma in photography
Craft – make 100 tangible, 3D, in-real-life things
These are based on the idea of doing each activity twice a week. I have had to include flexibility to account for migraines that I get regularly and that wipe me out for three days at a time as well as my proclivity to suffer from depression (hoping this might help with the management of that). However, as I am ever the optimist, I do have a stretch goal: DOUBLE IT!
In full honesty, I know how lucky I am to be able to undertake these activities. I have a supportive husband with a secure job, and fair chunk of free time in and around my studies. Its only because of both circumstances that I can even consider this undertaking. The freedom to take these creative desires of mine and make them a reality, to take myself from the creative impostor to simply a creative. I am telling you all this, not for grandstanding, accolades or encouragement (. . . maybe a little bit for accountability), but mostly in hopes that in sharing my creative journey through these intimidating tasks I have chosen for myself, that I may become your creative fertiliser so you can grow your own.