Love Letters to Creative Souls

Dear Creative Ones,

Today the sun has agreed to bless us with her rays. Such a treat for these long grey days of Winter. As I sit here on my computer, I have had to close the curtain as it is too bright! Who would have guessed?!

I have been working hard to put together a new session for our Thursday classes of 2013. In the past, some of you have asked, “How do you come up with your ideas for the classes?” It might begin with an idea out of the blue, or an idea one of you have suggested to me, or some book I am drawn to that is grist for the mill. It is a process that goes through many stages, and I find I cannot rush it. It often takes time to gestate. I have come to trust this process but there are always points where my Resistance rises up and brings me to a complete halt. Always, at some point, my Resistance tries to kybosh whatever idea(s) I have come up with and undermines my efforts. These days, I find I am easily overwhelmed by too much information and my Resistance seems to know this weakness in my system. So it goes for that spot. It has me researching everywhere, reading, getting sidetracked, spending hours on the internet, taking me off my game. I start to 2nd guess things, I begin to add other things and complicate it, and end up wondering what I am doing.

Then, there is The Little Voice (and I mean Little, if I did not pay attention, I would not hear it at all) and she says “keep it simple, Lisa”. So I go back to the basic idea and begin fleshing it out. As Albert Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

You ask, “Why am I telling you this?” Well, I guess because I have realized that the process I go through to plan and what we will learn in the next session connects to all this. I have been reading Steven Pressfield’s work on and off over the last year. He writes clearly, and cuts through the crap. Pressfield is a writer but his information relates to any creative endeavor, dream or life purpose, even exercise, meditation, etc. I imagine if I was to meet him he would be hard as a nut; he does not appear to be the type that puts up with fools, or the fool within. That is exactly why he is so prolific. He gets the work done! I count 11 books published to his name (at this date). As well, he writes online: http://www.stevenpressfield.com/books/

Pressfield says “DO THE WORK” (and, BTW, that is the name of one of his books). That is NOT what I have been doing. Don’t get me wrong, I have been doing work, ALOT of work, but this Fall I have not gotten to my own personal creative art work. I have allowed myself to be distracted by Christmas, family obligations, exercise, cooking, teaching (which is my work too—so that is complicated for me), the new book Sandra Lamb and I have been working on, “The Light Within”….you get the idea. All good things. And I do love teaching—it is my art as well. It feels like one of the things I have been placed here to do. It brings me much heartfelt joy and a lot of my creative thinking goes into planning and teaching the classes. But I use it to distract me from doing my OTHER creative art work.

Fess up time: I signed up to do the Sketchbook Project in Nov. and I have not completed it, and I cannot foresee that I will. Now, granted it arrived just before Christmas and we were going away, so I did not have enough TIME (1st excuse). I did take it with me to Vancouver, with great intentions and I did do a little bit in it, but NOT ENOUGH…. ahh, that “not (good) enough” thing (2nd excuse). I was BUSY (3rd and most used excuse). Actually NOT ENOUGH TIME and BUSY could go as one excuse, couldn’t they? And the next few weeks will mean more of this as I am going to HELP family (ohh, red flag, HELPING is my BIGGEST excuse). My Mom and sister are both having major surgery-my Mom, a knee replacement, and my sister a C-section for her 2nd baby. I am happy to go and Help; helping is what I do best. Here comes Lisa riding up on her Helping Horse (oh, maybe it is really a Dragon?). Heaven forbid if anything gets in the Dragon’s way, let alone her ART! The Dragon of Resistance takes many forms and this is one place where it is fiercest in my life. What is it guarding? Could that be….fear? SHHH, don’t tell, even I am fearful!

So now you have a little understanding into the mind of a creative one. And I would imagine even you too have a Dragon or two to face. And that is just what we will do this session. We will face the Dragon of Resistance in its many forms and see it for what it is, use it to direct us where we need to go. Once we discover what that Dragon is trying to take us away from, it gets easy…well, maybe not easy, but easier to move in the direction of our True North. . We will work on this together, each Thursday for 11 wks. I am pretty sure this is a lifelong process, but we will dig in, dig deep, and forge forward together. If you choose to sign on for this Painting Endeavor (we will paint our way through it), please let me know ASAP. There are limited seats, some which are already filled.

We are not starting until Valentine’s Day, Feb 14th—which seems fitting to me. A day to commit to yourself, show yourself how much you love you. I hope to see you, slaying dragons with your paintbrush. In the meantime, I am off to help my family….I think I will bring my sketchbook, just in case I can sidetrack that Dragon along the way.

On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon.

You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon.

~Steven Pressfield

Sending you all Paintbrush Swords to

Slay your Dragons of Resistance with Great Swaths of Colour!

Kind Regards,

Lisa,

The Goddess of Colour