Part of being an artist is never feeling satisfied with your creation. It is why you started creating to start off with. You feel that something needs to be fixed. You sense something is missing.
So you get out your brush and your paper or your clarinet and your tape recorder. You get to making stuff. You know that something needs to fill that hole you can sense, and that you are the one to try. But that same feeling that made you start is the same feeling that will make you feel that you aren’t finished – that your art isn’t good enough. That same feeling will make you think you should throw it all away.
Perhaps there needs to be a “Post Secret” for artists. Perhaps there needs to be a revelation of the mental process of artists, in the same way that magicians (sometimes) reveal how they do their tricks. You think you are doing it all wrong, but you just don’t know that everybody else is having the same problem. Perhaps that is part of what this post is all about.
I hate pictures of myself. My eyes don’t match up. One looks more “open” than the other. If I post a picture of myself, I’m either looking at the camera at an angle or I’m smiling so my eyes are squinting. Then it is harder to see that my eyes don’t match.
Then I started looking at other faces. I work in a library, so I can look at author photos on the back of books. I started slowing down and really noticing them. Almost all of them look “off”. Almost all of them have one eye different from the other. I finally realized that I look “normal” by looking “abnormal”.
Then I thought about something I was told years ago. I was told that when making a Persian rug, the artist will intentionally make a mistake so the rug isn’t perfect. It is to say that only God can make something perfect. In a way this seems arrogant. If you can intentionally make a mistake, you could then presumably make it perfect. But I think that isn’t the idea. The idea is that imperfection is OK, and it is part of being human.
Jesus tells us that. Jesus tells us that we can’t ever get to 100%. The test is rigged by the world. Jesus tells us that we are OK the way we are as long as we are trying to do the right thing.
I know someone who rewrote her book four times before she published it. I think that is such a waste of time and energy. Sure, there is something about putting your best work out there. But there is something about knowing that you are constantly changing and evolving, and your work is too. What you wrote/drew/painted/composed a year ago will be totally different from what you will create today. That is normal. Just keep creating. Just keep trying.
I know people who never start anything because they are afraid they won’t do it right. I’ve been that way. I’m glad I got over it. Well, mostly. I understand the logic of it. If you don’t start, you’ll never fail, right? Except if you don’t start, you’ll never learn and grow. You have to start, but you also have to let go. You have to be OK with it never matching up with what you envisioned in your head. That is part of being a creative person.
You’ll get closer and closer to being able to bring forth what you imagine the more you try. And some of being an artist is being OK with the happy accidents, the discoveries, along the way. While you are trying to get to one idea, something else will happen and take you down another road. That can result in some pretty amazing work. That can also derail you and leave you stranded.
Part of being an artist is knowing how and when to rein yourself in, and when to let yourself go. Sometimes the art will try to take over. Sometimes you should let it. Sometimes that is just an excuse to goof off and not get things done.
Trust the process, right? Sometimes. The best learning comes from making horrible mistakes. But you have to do something. Art doesn’t make itself.
A bad part about being an artist is that you never think you are done. Whatever you have made, it never feels “complete”. It is like me with my eyes. But then I got away from looking at myself and I looked at others. Art is the same. Nobody ever feels like their art is complete. You are normal.
Just keep making stuff. Don’t let the monster win. The monster is the thing that says you can’t do it, that you are no good. You defeat it by making stuff anyway.
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Time travel dream
I had a dream that I travelled back in time to visit my Mom. We were together in the living room in our old house in Chattanooga. She was sitting on the couch by the windows, where later we would put the hospital bed. She died in the same place she had sat all those years.
When I traveled there in my dream, I told her that I was really 45, that essentially, I was possessing my own body. I asked her how old I was at the time, because everything always looked the same there. She told me that I was 12.
I told her that she died when I was young, but I didn’t tell her when. I told her how it affected me. I told her that she might want to stop smoking and start eating well.
We had a steady diet of junk when I was growing up – no fresh vegetables, a lot of fried food. If we ate vegetables at all they came out of a can or the freezer. A lot of food was brown. The walls of the house were stained yellow with all the tobacco smoke. It was a very unhealthy place to grow up. I had no control over my environment, and the people who should have looked out for me were killing me day by day.
For some reason I felt like I could warn her about the train wreck she was making of our lives by smoking and eating poorly. Her bad choices were my bad choices by default. I was her child and had no control over what I ate and the air I breathed when I was there. For some reason I thought I could change her ways by coming back as an adult to tell her what would happen if she didn’t change.
When I woke up, I pondered on that dream and I thought of this Bible passage. Jesus told this story about a rich man and a poor man. The Lazarus in this story isn’t the same one he raised from the dead – that was the brother of Martha and Mary.
Luke 16:19-31
19 “There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Laz′arus, full of sores,21 who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; 23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Laz′arus in his bosom.24 And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Laz′arus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’25 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Laz′arus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ 27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.’” (RSV)
So I realized that it didn’t matter. Even if I had been able to go back to tell her to change her ways, it wouldn’t have done any good. She knew that smoking was bad for her but she still did it. She knew that she should eat better but she didn’t do it. She had made her choices and she stuck to them, regardless of the warning signs and the evidence.
How many people are like this? They’d rather stick with what they know to be bad rather than make the change to what they know to be good.
Change is hard. It takes a lot of energy to break free of a bad habit. But it is worth it. And the more you push towards being healthy, the more energy you have to make other changes.
Fake it ’till you make it – not.
Maybe it is best if we all stop pretending to be the same. Maybe if we all stop faking that we are “normal” we will all get to actually be who we really are for a change.
The more we all get cosmetic surgery to average out ourselves, the more the oddball doesn’t know he is normal.
Blind in one eye? Wear sunglasses or a patch.
Have one leg shorter than the other? Wear a lift.
Butt too big? Wear compression underwear.
Boobs too small? Wear padding.
When we smooth and stuff and shave and shape our bodies to fit some imagined idea of “normal” we have stopped being normal.
We do the same with our emotional lives. We say we are fine when we aren’t. We pretend to be on an even keel when we are angry, sad, hurt. We fake it so often we don’t know what we really feel anymore.
Who are we trying to appease/impress? Ourselves, or them? What if they are faking it too, for the same reason? It takes too much energy to be fake.
We need to stop faking it so we can start to make it for a change.
When we start being ourselves, we give everyone else permission to be themselves too. We let them know it is OK to take off their masks when we take off our own.
It is scary, at first, for us and for them. But all change and growth is scary at first. Some people might feel threatened by your new-found honesty and freedom. Be yourself anyway.
Fill in the blanks.
I woke up thinking about my parents-in-law. Things aren’t going well with them, and I’ve been very distant because of that.
I’m angry with them. I’m angry about how they treated my husband, their son, as he was growing up. I’m angry about how they abused him. Their own history of being mistreated isn’t enough to excuse it. They should have known better.
I’m angry about how they haven’t listened to my advice on where to live, so they keep needing to ask for help. I was the one to suggest they move up here, closer to their sons, but that is all they have listened to. Five hours away was too far to help them, so they came closer, but they are still too far. Thirty minutes one way isn’t ten.
They should have bought a condo, or gotten an apartment. Basically they shouldn’t have gotten a yard and a place that has to be maintained. At their age, they personally need to be maintained more than their homes. I told them this, and they ignored me. I told them that my husband, their son, barely has time to take care of our house.
Now they need help. Often. Just like I foresaw. There is no need for these emergencies.
They continue to ask for my advice and input, but they continue to ignore it. They waste my time and that of my husband.
They are very needy.
They are too old to be this childish.
And then I stopped and remembered. Ask Jesus into it.
Jesus Jesus Jesus, I said. I visualized all of these problems as big blocks. I saw the light of Jesus entering them. It was like a glue, filling in all the cracks, making them stronger.
And I came to understand that the brokenness is part of the plan. The brokenness is necessary.
The poet Rumi reminds us that bread can’t become bread unless the grain is ground up. Then it is mixed with other ingredients and heated in an oven.
Clay isn’t useful unless it is shaped and heated too.
These broken bits, these hard times, these trials that we all have – these are what make us who we are.
They aren’t the bits to run away from. They are the whole story. They are it, everything.
They are what make us human. They are what make us who we are.
God isn’t the “bad guy” for letting bad things happen to us. These “bad things” are just the hard things that push us out of what we are and into who we are supposed to be.
They are what get the baby bird to get out of that shell. They are what get that same bird to jump out of the nest and fly for the first time too.
We are those birds.
Stuck in our shells, we would die.
Stuck in the nest, we would never live.
Adversity isn’t.
It is opportunity.
Jesus is the glue that holds us together, is the hand that pulls us out of the hole, is the thing that rescues is from being stuck.
Jesus is “out there” but is also “in here”. Jesus is instantly available -all you have to do is call on him. Ask and you shall receive, after all. But Jesus is also inside every person who has let him into their lives. Jesus builds houses for poor people through Habitat for Humanity. Jesus feeds people at the rescue mission. Jesus holds people’s hands when they die in hospice care. Jesus teaches children how to read.
Jesus wears a lot of faces and goes by a lot of names, and he’s here.
But he had to be broken and blessed for that to happen.
He wasn’t crucified for our sins. He was blessed and broken on that cross, just like how he blessed and broke the bread and the fish to feed thousands.
He became more, so we could become more.
Thanks be to God.
Carbon copy
Sometimes it feels that all we are doing is copying each other. We copy style, ideas, and ways to think. We copy so much that we’ve copied our whole lives.
We have copied for our entire lives.
We have copied our lives, entirely.
Nothing is original about our lives when we copy.
After a while we have copied each other so much that we stop being anything at all. Have you ever seen a Xerox copy of a copy of a copy? After a while it stops looking like anything at all. It starts looking like a big mess. There are dots everywhere that weren’t there before.
White people in Western culture have started to think that they need to be Native American or Indian or Chinese or Tibetan. They don’t like their own culture and so they try and emulate another culture. They do this with clothing, with art, with music, with food. Perhaps they think they are showing respect to the other culture by adopting it.
I know, I’ve done this.
Meanwhile the other cultures are trying to emulate Western culture. They dress like us, watch our TV shows and movies, and have even started to try to look like us. Asian girls are getting plastic surgery on their eyes to look more Western and less Asian. There are products in India and Thailand to bleach the skin so they are more white.
We are trying to be them, and they are trying to be us. At what point are we going to meet in the middle? Then we won’t be anything at all.
Perhaps it is best if each person finds her own path. Stop trying to create it from someone else. Stop even trying to make it from your own culture.
Perhaps we need to stop faking it
so we can make it.
We need to start making it so that we are actually ourselves for a change.
Look at plastic surgery in general. What does “normal” look like anymore? Too tall? Too short? Too fat? Too skinny? Boobs too big/small? Butt too big/small? Eyes are too blue/brown/green?
You can “fix” that. But it isn’t a fix. It is a fake. You aren’t broken.
Eventually we will all have homogenized ourselves into one big mess of nothing.
Be yourself. Don’t copy anybody.
Angry is just a feeling.
It’s okay to be angry.
“Angry” is just a feeling. It is the same as being tired or being hungry or having to poop. It is a sign that something is lacking or there’s too much of something. It as a sign of imbalance but it in itself isn’t a bad thing, and it’s okay to feel it.
You don’t have to explain it. It can just be. It is what you do with it that matters. It’s not the feeling itself, it’s the action you take when you have the feeling that matters.
When you’re hungry do you overeat? When you’re tired do you sleep too much? What do you do with these feelings?
Perhaps having to go to the bathroom is the best example.
When you have to poop do you poop right where you are, or do you go to the bathroom? Do you wait and wait and wait when you have to pee, until you feel like you are going to burst? Or do you take care of it right away, and in a healthy way that is good for you and those around you?
To poop right where you are isn’t healthy, and it isn’t considerate of others. To wait and wait to pee might be considerate of others if you are in a meeting, but it isn’t healthy for you.
Going to the bathroom is learned. That isn’t instinctual. We had to learn how to handle that natural occurrence. I propose that dealing with anger is the same.
It is possible to learn how to deal with this natural feeling in a healthy and safe way, one that is healthy and safe for you, and for those around you.
Some things that work for me –
Go for a walk.
Have a hot bath. Bubbles help.
Write.
Paint.
Deep, focused breathing.
Prayer.
Playing the drums.
Think about the things you do when you are happy, and try one of those when you are angry. Sometimes that is enough to flip the switch.
No matter what, don’t try to escape your anger by using intoxicants. It isn’t about escaping it, it is about allowing it a safe way to get out.
Consider a balloon. The pressure builds up and builds up, and the air has to get out somehow. Either it can get out the way it got in (the neck), or the balloon can burst. Burst balloons don’t work as balloons anymore. They are broken bits. We are like that too when we don’t let our anger get out in a safe way.
Now, in the middle of all this it is a good idea to think about why you are angry. What about this situation is making you feel angry? Does it remind you of some earlier situation that went wrong? How did that situation make you feel? Was there someone in your past who taught you how to react in this particular situation?
You can unlearn old habits and take up new ones. You are forever able to rewrite yourself. Nothing is permanent. Just because it always has been that way doesn’t mean that it will always be that way. The past does not predict the future.
You can’t escape anger, but you can redirect it and you can learn from it. Anger is a part of life, just like night is a part of day. It isn’t bad, in and of itself. It is what you do with it that matters. Use it wisely and it can teach you a lot.
We have to be weak to be strong.
We are taught how to be strong, but we aren’t taught how to be human. Weakness is seen as a bad thing. Loss is glossed over.
We are lying to ourselves and to each other.
In our lies we are killing ourselves.
Sometimes the death is dramatic – A school shooting. A suicide.
Sometimes the death is slower – Fifty years stuck in a job, a marriage, a life that doesn’t fit, doesn’t feel real.
In our desperation to conform, to put on a happy face, we lie to ourselves and deny our basic humanity.
One thing I try to tell people when I visit with them in hard circumstances (a death, a divorce, a dismissal from a job) is “It is OK to say ‘This sucks.'” Invariably they take me up on it.
I think this is what we all need – permission to be honest about our feelings, which is at the core, permission to be human. We spend so long putting on a happy face that we stop knowing what our real face is anymore.
I just found out that a friend I knew from high school has killed himself. Things hadn’t been going well but nobody expected him to take his life.
A few months ago a lady told me that her teenaged stepdaughter had committed suicide. She was distraught over being dumped by a boy.
My father attempted taking his own life several times in my childhood. His grandfather was successful, if you can think of killing yourself as something to succeed at.
These losses are all holes. We are lesser because they are not with us.
I wish there was a better answer than calling the police or the shrinks when someone is suicidal. I envision an intervention, an escape, where people are retrained how to take care of themselves. Not medicine and shock therapy, but true healing. I envision a vacation, a spa for the soul.
I committed myself twice. Twice I knew that I wasn’t well and I sought help. Twice I was in a mental hospital. I didn’t learn anything useful in either one. It was only when I got out and started reading about bipolar disorder for myself that I started to get better.
I wasn’t “healed” when I left the hospital. They let you out when the insurance benefits stop.
I started to heal when I started to take care of myself, but I feel that I should have been taught some of these skills in the hospital. It is hard to look out for yourself when it is your mind that is the part that is broken.
The best medicine is self care, and prevention. I’ve learned that there is a fine line for me for how much I can deviate in my routine.
The basics? No caffeine. Limited (or no) processed sugar. Drink lots of water. Avoid all stimulants. Regular exercise. Creating, in one form or another, every day. Making time to be alone, and time to be with friends. Learning to speak my truth, and set boundaries.
Sure I take my medicine. But I need a lot less than many people because I don’t get as off balance.
When I stop doing what I know I need to do to take care of myself I feel that I “have let my flame get low”. All I have to do to build it back up is to start doing those things again.
These are the skills that mental hospitals should teach. These are the skills that all hospitals should teach.
But until they get the clue, it is time for us to teach ourselves.
Mental health is not an accident. It is a lot of work.
Mental health isn’t an accident
Mental health is just like physical health. If you don’t take care of it every day, you’ll get sick.
The bad part is that there isn’t an immediate symptom that something is wrong, with both things. It takes weeks or months of not taking care of yourself to fall ill. By then it is hard to pull yourself back together.
It isn’t like if you touch a hot stove and you get burned. The repercussion is quick in that instance. There is a simple one to one relationship. You learn very fast that if you don’t want that kind of pain, don’t do that kind of action.
But mental illness, like physical illness, is cumulative. It is a slow wearing away of yourself and your strength.
But it isn’t an accident. And it can be prevented.
It is Spring inside us.
If you are feeling out of sorts right now, you aren’t alone. We have all gone through a major shift. Some are more attuned to it. Some just feel sick and confused.
The old skin is being shed. Nothing makes sense. Old patterns don’t serve, habits don’t help.
This is a time of new growth. This new birth is not a time of throwing away all your old things and ways but it is a time of seeing them in a new way. It is a time of opening up and questioning and being like a child.
A child learns how to walk in part by watching other people. But also the child learns how to walk by just learning how to walk. The child feels things out step-by-step. She checks her balance and she examines it. She figures out if this step works or if it throws her off-balance and makes her fall. This is the same with us right now. We have to feel everything out.
Everything that we took for granted is no more. It doesn’t help us and it doesn’t serve us. This is a whole new life and a whole new way of being. Take nothing for granted. In fact take nothing at all. Nothing is probably the best thing you can have with you right now.
If you keep on doing things the old way you’re going to get the same old results, and you’ll be left behind.
You’ll be wondering what happened
and why is everybody else going so far ahead
and why am I so lost.
It is just like Abraham in the desert. He had a whole new way of doing things and he couldn’t do them the old way. It is just like the new Christians. They had a whole new way of doing things and they couldn’t do them the old way. The old ways have to be reassessed and things that have been discarded have to be looked at again.
It may be time to do an old thing in a new way.
It may be time to do a new thing in an old way.
It may be time
to Be
the Way.
It is a time of feeling things out and trusting the process. It is a time of holding on loosely. It is also a time of not letting go.
You may feel like doing something new and unexpected. Go with that feeling. Don’t worry about doing it wrong, or looking up how to do it. Feel it out, and you’ll know what to do.
We are the ones we have been waiting for. Now is a beautiful time to be alive.
Weeds or flowers?
What do you pay attention to, the weeds or the flowers?
If you were gardening, sure you have to pull the weeds out. If you don’t take the weeds out they are going to crowd the flowers and you won’t have healthy flowers.
But if all you do is notice the weeds then you’re not going to pay any attention to the flowers. The flowers are going to wilt and wither. They’re going to get eaten by worms. They’re not going to be strong.
Also, all you’re looking at your whole time gardening is the stuff you don’t want to look at. You’re not looking at the stuff that you started gardening for.
Likewise, with your feelings, your emotions, your life, anything that you pay attention to is what you’re giving attention to. You’re giving your energy away. So make sure you’re giving it away to the right thing.
betsybeadhead 
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