Done = Art

I am hiding. Hiding from ideas. Hiding from writing. You might see me posting daily paintings and that might look like I'm doing something and not being afraid. But I am still just as afraid as I was yesterday. But when I decide to do something, I do it. If I say that I'm going to post a painting a day, I'll post a painting a day, even if I hate the painting. I should probably have a blog month too, where I have to post every day even if it's terrible.

Everything feels terrible. That's not even the slightest bit true. I actually love life so much right now. It is cold and rainy. Positivity weather for me. I love it! I have a new job. It's an adjustment to my life but I love that too. Everything is pretty fantastic so why did I say it feels terrible?

Because no matter how much I am loving life I still think that my writing and painting is no good. Which is just ridiculous. Because guess what, I am painting and I wasn't before. That is good. I am writing. I wasn't before. That is good. My paintings today are not Monet or van Gogh. But they are mine and they are better than they were a year ago. And they are better than nothing.

The paintings are mine and I take great joy and pride in my paintings. Let me tell you something, I love paint! I love the way it feels when I get it on my hands. I love watching something fluid go smoothly on and how it layers and dries.

But I hide from all of these joys because I am not yet da Vinci. It is scary to share mediocre work and pretend that it is good. But I have to remember that it is not pretending. Of course it's not master work. But it is work. And I love it. I care a lot that other people like it too, but I am trying to not value my paintings on the amount of likes they get. I am allowed to love a painting that got 3 likes even if another got 53. I am allowed to love my work and that is not vanity.

People talk about artists gifts. They call certain artists "gifted."

But I have another secret for you, it is true that some things come more naturally to some than to others, but sometimes to call what someone does "a gift" negates the hours of work they put in to get to that level. The artists true gift is the gift of perseverance. Not giving up even when they feel blocked and uninspired.

And that is the gift that I am struggling with. I may not be a gifted writer or a gifted painter, but the Lord gave me perseverance and dedication. I can be pretty bad at motivating myself, but if I set myself a task I will do it. Which is why I often set myself small tasks, because they are attainable. I can't set myself a task that I might not be able to achieve, not because I'm a perfectionist but because I have to believe it is doable. Setting a goal of a painting a day is achievable because I can put a splat of paint on a canvas and call it done. Done = Art.

But if I set myself the goal of becoming something, or achieving some level of skill then I don't know that I can do that and I will stop before I begin. Art is attainable. Writing is attainable. It doesn't have to be good; it has to be done.

"I will take care of the quantity; He will take care of the quality." - Julia Cameron

Writer's Block

And again words are escaping me. Why? Why am I afflicted with writer's block. I understand not knowing what comes next in the story and being stuck on a plot point or how to write it or resolve it. I haven't touched any of my stories in months. One story died when I went off the outline. I need to take it back to where it diverged and just try to write from there, like nothing else had happened. Just try a different path to the fountain. Throw out the blockage. Well, I can keep it in my deleted scenes folder. But write I must.

Can writers block be the inability to put pen to paper? Anyone could write something. Why is a blank page so daunting? I fear the first page in an empty book. I psych myself out that I can't mark up a book with such potential. But once the book has its first page written in then it isn't intimidating. So why the block? It's an empty page. Literally anything could be written on it. Feather, blue, ground, elevator, bucket, quicksotic. Haha! That's definitely not how you spell that, but that's the point. Anything. Words. Feelings. Colors. Bandaids. Pandas. I could write about anything. That should be freeing, but it's limiting. Everyone needs perimeters. Having no boundary creates too much to figure out. Limit the choices. Writer's block springs then from there being too much a character could do, not too little.