Nothing Lasts Forever

I just re-listened to Elizabeth Gilbert's "Creative Living Beyond Fear" Calm Masterclass. It's mysterious how listening, watching, or experiencing something for a second, third, or ninth time can still manage to show or say something new to me. The content is the same, but I'm not. Even just a few months later, I'm hearing it differently. It's so obvious, but still seems impossible. It boils down to this: experiences change me. I didn't really see that until recently. It took 50 years of acquiring experiences to see that even though I'm all grown up, I'm still changing (learning, adapting, adjusting,...). 

So anyway, I came to the part about Anne Patchett's "amethyst butterfly". (Anne thinks of her ideas, in their initial conception, as this beautiful amethyst butterfly that she enjoys time with and adores, but the second she begins to bring the idea to life she has to imagine smashing the butterfly to pieces because what she is capable of writing will never match up to the perfection of that pristine butterfly.) That part hit me different this time. I think when I heard it several times before (in the masterclass and in Liz's book, "Big Magic") I was like - nah, unnecessary. I thought that because I couldn't fathom smashing the image of my perfect book in my head. I didn't want to lose it let alone annihilate it.

And then I lost something for real. The best dog in the whole entire world. Which reminds me of another life lesson that took 50 years to absorb and learn to accept... Nothing lasts forever. Nothing. Suck it up kid.

I know done is better than perfect. Especially since we only have one precious life to do something. All this to say, I haven't been drawing. I haven't been working on my story. I haven't even opened any drawing files until yesterday. When I was "down bad" I couldn't bring myself to do the things I love to do. It was difficult to write because I didn't want to write about my feelings. I couldn't draw because that too seems to stir up feelings. Wouldn't leave the house. All the while knowing that it's deep feelings like this that have inspired centuries of art. Feelings worse than this, actually.

So I ask myself - What's holding you back? I see all the manifesting content that floods my feeds and recognize that I'm the one getting in my own way. As Julia Cameron ("The Artist's Way") describes it, "The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature." I've been keeping myself from expressing myself creatively because I'm afraid to be content again. Hmm... is that really it? It's not that I want to remain sad indefinitely, it's more like it doesn't feel fair to be in my favorite drawing spot on a beautiful afternoon with a nice breeze if she can't be there with me, as she would if she were still here.

And maybe I'm holding onto that perfect image of my book a little too tightly. I'm afraid of not being able to draw what I see in my head. I have to remind myself that nothing I make has ever turned out precisely the way I saw it in my head and it's worked out just fine so far. No one knows that the shade of brown I was envisioning would arrive from the printer much darker than I anticipated. Nobody knows! And seriously, who cares if they did! Done is better than perfect!

It's time, Dawn. Come on. Get back to it.

I've been working on this illustration forever. I'll share it so I can move forward. I need accountability, so I will share consistently. (So I say.) Let's go.