start
"It's always a little disorienting", Oliver Burkeman says, "to realise how much of life is dictated by psychological avoidance".
We seek things not for the sake of attaining them. Not in the hopes of actually having them, but only in an effort of avoiding the lack of something else.
We want company to avoid solitude, to avoid loneliness. We want power to avoid impotence . Financial success, accomplishments, accoutrements, to avoid the feeling of having less. Of being less. To avoid vulnerability.
We grab as much as possible and hold on tightly to avoid letting go. To avoid the realization that we have no control.
In the process, we hold back our efforts. Hoard and harbor our ideas. Hoping to hold back the failure and disappointment that feels inevitable.
It feels inevitable because it's true.
Because it is.
There's no avoiding the let down. The faltering and the falling. But can choose the way you welcome it.
Write shitty sentences. Make convoluted poetry. Paint ugly pictures. Do all the wrong things in all the wrong ways. Fuck it up. Do it badly. Do it boldly. Make a mess and discover that there's aways been a deliciousness hiding underneath the disappointment. A kind of permission.
Not the kind you ask for. Not the kind you wait to be given. But, the kind you take. The kind you create.
Start by relinquishing your cherished thoughts about getting anything and getting anywhere. Start by letting go of good, and better, and “best” - whatever that means. Start by transforming it all into a gift. A gift you give yourself and the world.
Start.
Today.
P.S. ICAD - Day 350-353 - all featured collages are available for purchase here.
Great point on grabbing "as much as possible and holding on tightly to avoid letting go." It's a stark reminder of mortality. On the positive side, it makes those moments of creating art that much more special.
That collage titled "peculiar to the conditions" and the caption "I HAD THAT" is quite fitting to your topic today! Thanks for sharing.
Well said, Duane. It's tempting to make it more complicated, but it's really so simple. We want to hold onto our work until we feel it's polished enough to be seen. But in doing so, a lot can be lost by interrupting the natural, generative flow of creativity. Probably why small projects like ICAD can have such a profound effect on a person--the dailiness of practice. It generates self-trust.