If you can do it, I can do it too!

I should be sleeping right now.  I am in the midst of a project that I am behind on.  It is my own fault.  This one my being rejected doing.  My mind was foggy about it, I couldn't see it clearly.  I didn't feel well, I didn't feel like fighting the war to create.  I couldn't get it moving.  I became a baby about it, I cried and stamped my feet and felt sorry for myself, instead of being a woman and doing what I needed to do.  I hate myself when I am like that.  When I do everything to resist the flow of work that I love so much.  Why am I like that?  Why as human beings do we run from things that actually make us happy?  It's a mystery.

This blog is much the same way.  I want it to be right.  I want to have pretty pictures, I have ideas but I resist doing them.  One thing I realized is that I can't keep it contained, so even though it is about creativity, the creative being that I am encompasses my entire self.  So whoever reads this will get my musings about life, spirituality, etc. etc. etc.   I find that many things cross my thought process on a daily basis and I feel like I need to include more of those in this writing.  Maybe some of that will encourage someone else to take a plunge or to look at something from a new angle.  I will probably even make some people angry or upset.  I guess I need to take that chance.

A few days ago, when I was working on a project at a client's house, she said, " how do you know how to do all these things?"  The simple answer is, "because I needed to"  and it is the complex answer also.   I learned from my father that things could be figured out.  He was always challenging himself to learn how to repair something or how to make something.  I had that role model.  My mother also was a creative person.  We never had a lot of money but she would manage to make beautiful things that were actually better than what you could buy.  Like the furniture she made for my cardboard dollhouses.  Bottle caps became lamps, matchstick boxes became beds and chairs, magazine pages; paper dolls, etc. etc.   And I had a grandmother that taught me how to make Barbie doll clothes and my mom and a neighbor taught me more about sewing.

Theater had a big influence also.  I learned to alter patterns for costumes and use large cardboard boxes for sets.  Along the way, a kindly neighborhood artist and signmaker took me under his wing and taught me more about painting.  I received a lot of encouragement.  I had a teacher that encouraged me to write and another who encouraged me to combine my art and writing.  ( I also had plenty who tried to make me create only in specified ways.  Their lesson to me was to learn how to hide)

In adulthood I learned to create things from other things to have the pretty things I liked for my home.  I work for poor ballet companies that have very small budgets so I have to use chicken wire, newspaper, and duct tape to make things like a giant doll head or a clam shell.  Large garbage pickup time is a great time.  So many possible treasures end up on the side of the road because people can't see with new eyes.

I read all the time to discover new ways of doing things.  I try to learn from other more experienced people in areas that I am interested in.  I watch DIY shows and devour the internet.... If they can do it so can I.  I have a friend that constantly is learning new things and she is obsessive about them .  When she decides she needs to know something, by the time she is done she is an expert.  Her latest thing has been about the business side of the internet.  She should be a CEO for some company because she is a visionary.  But I think she is only beginning to see the possibilities of her.

A friend that was asking my advice and help on a project that was over her head made me very happy the other day.  I wanted to help her but I was miserably sick and could really only look at what she was doing and make a few suggestions.  But she said later that that was enough.  It gave her enough confidence to say, "if she can do it, then so can I".  And truly that is what I want people to say.  I want them to look at the things they desire to do and not be discouraged because someone else is doing it, but instead to say, " if they can do it so can I!"

I recently was flipping through the TV channels looking for something to watch.  Their was a movie on about 3 women who were given a house to flip.  They all thought that they were just going to be gophers and someone else would do the work.  But it ended up being their job and they had to figure out how to do it.  From knowing nothing to remodeling an entire house.  Yes it was a movie, but there are many people who learn how to do things from no knowledge to completion.  They want to build a house, repair a car, build a boat, raise chickens, and they do it. 

We are our own worst enemies.  We convince ourselves that we will fail at so many things so we never try.  So what if our first attempts are somewhat crooked and not very wonderful.  It's the process, the act of stretching ourselves into something new.  Children oftentimes do that very well, until they learn to start comparing themselves to someone else in a negative way.  We need to compare ourselves only to ourselves.
We need to push ourselves and prod ourselves until we enter the flow of the creative process, whatever that is.  We can do it!
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