Satisfaction -life advice

As we strive towards that "pursuit of happiness", I look around me and can't help but notice that the most unhappy people are actually very often the ones that have the most toys...

What I mean is this: one can have all the money, art, fancy houses, private jets, prestige, millions of fans or followers, etc. But money, influence, and owning things doesn't create happiness or satisfaction with ones self or with life. None of these things can replace the deep satisfaction one gets after a hard day or week of physical labor and then sitting back to look over ones own work and progress.   -"I sanded and varnished that table myself".  "Look at the garden I planted, or shrubs I pruned".  "I just love the blue swirls in that mural I painted yesterday".  "Can you believe I rebuilt this engine from nothing".  "I took the time and baked this cake from scratch because we are worth it".

For years the Japanese have known that the beauty of the garden, the peace it brings, is at least partly in the meditative, slow, ongoing practice of its care and cultivation. The Art of Fulfillment lies in the Doing. It is about the process and continued practice of creating and nurturing the garden, the home, the relationships, the career that one desires and envisions more than in "having" it, owning it, or simply inheriting it. We value most that which has taken time, energy and consistent attention. Doing creates fulfillment. Having creates emptiness. 

When we are young we know this secret in our bones. But age, and life, and other peoples influence in popular culture and the media, make us lose or way over time. Look at us now. Megalomania is considered normal, even healthy and attractive. Accumulation of things, status and influence over others falsely promises to lead us to enlightenment, fulfillment, happiness. Capitalism is so far over the top and out of control that the United States actually elected Donald Trump to be their leader. As if this deeply broken, unhappy person could ever create something himself, or be someone to look to as an example for anything but wealth.

We MUST UNPLUG!
Unplug our minds and wallets from being mindless followers of consumerism! I am not saying we all need to throw away our TV sets and live in a hut wearing loin cloths. I am saying mute the commercials. Stop believing the underlying messages they are trying to sell you. (You are not enough. Buy this truck and you will be happy, or at least envied. If you don't use these products or keep your living room this way you are not a good parent, person, American...) Decide how you can improve what you already own. Explore when it lost its value to you if it ever really had it... and why.

I am approaching a landmark birthday, and a health situation that will require surgery. Both of these things make me consider my own mortality and what I have to leave of myself, for the world, for my children. I want to have stood for something. My legacy, my life message is one that I just don't have a simple slogan or set of catchy words for. One that some how expresses that WE are enough when we become quiet and pay attention to the world around us. Happiness and fulfillment come when WE add the value through our own time, effort and attention. What we focus on, and spend our time, energy and efforts recognizing grows stronger be it beauty or terror. We always have a choice. Use it or lose it.

So I would say this: You cannot buy love, happiness or fulfillment. You can try and take it from someone else, but you will still not have it. No one can ever give it to you. But you can find it by working for it: being kind to yourself and others more often than not. Honoring life where ever you find it, and caring for and protecting those who are smaller, weaker, or less able than you are.

 It IS your responsibility to add care, and love and beauty to the world instead of just demanding it. Love shared, grows and blossoms. Happiness shared does the same. It cannot be bought, but it also cannot be given away no matter how hard you try. The more you give Love and Happiness, the more you share it, the more you will have. The more it will boomerang back at you again and again when you least expect it.

And that is how we save the world and ourselves. That is how we create a life and a world of love and generosity and beauty. That is where true prestige should lie. Every day, in the small decisions we make to DO something kind instead of walling ourselves up in our imaginary kingdoms of hurt and desire, soothing our temper tantrum disappointments with consolation prizes like a spoiled child.

We seem to have forgotten that we don't get everything we want in life. Being an adult is to recognize that not all opportunities are open to us. But that we can choose how and when to act on the opportunities we do have. We can choose to be grateful for the opportunities and the things we have to work with, and we can follow the roads that are open to us -even if they are not the ones our egos would have chosen-  (rock star, professional athlete, famous author, rich lawyer)

We can always create kindness -which takes so much more skill, and finesse then continuing to pass on the fear and loathing. We have forgotten that we have the power, that being kind creates so much more return on our investment of time and energy than perpetuating the "everyone for themselves" attitude that only grows the gap between the reality of happiness and the illusion of it.

But don't fall into the trap of "moral dessert". Just because you were not an asshole that one time in traffic doesn't mean the universe now owes you something. It is not a cosmic, return on demand bank account. Be kind for the sake of it. Consider it a practice, a process you are cultivating. A hobby you return to time and again.  And then, with out trying to dictate or control the flow of the universe, your life and satisfaction will slowly grow into something better than you could have contrived or forced into being. When you least expect it happiness will sit upon your shoulder like a butterfly, as you brush the dirt from your hands and examine what it is you built today.

Intention and the New Year

I've never been a New Year's Resolution kind of person, but I do like to take stock. I consider things like my general gratitudes and ways of being in the world, and consider the outcomes.
Every year I like to set an Intention for the year, a focus. And I make some decisions in support of that priority. Last year I focused on finances and taking care of some building projects. The year before was about solidifying my primary relationships to increase honest communications about expectations.
This year, I chose to get back to the Soul Fire of my being. That which nourishes my inner self and motivations. I quit my teaching job, and rearranged the expected use of dedicated rooms in my very small house. I started making ART again. Going to museums, workshops, galleries, setting up a better work space and consulting a creativity coach. I also made some changes to my massage practice and added some locations for my client base.

Fertility

Creative darkness.
The good stuff.
I'm not talking about the desert, where creativity dries up and leaves it's devotees wandering in dry, bleak territory of non-productive and non-inspiring drivel and hopeless, vast emptiness or minutia.
I am talking about the warm, moist darkness of gestation, creation, fermentation. That dark, secret space inside the psyche where the spark of inspiration and creativity is born.
This place cannot be reached with a vessel, plotted on a map, or dipped into on a timer. If you are a creative, this place must envelope you. It must consume you. It is the opposite of the desert, yet it is often the way out of it.
The darkness can feel like the emptiness before creativity strikes. And it lasts as long as it lasts. Everytime you look at your watch, or try to predict the out come, or speculate your grand plans aloud to an audience it has to reset. The process must begin again to be successful.
This darkness is s blanket fort of safety and rest for an artist. It is a place we go alone, broken, tired, and empty at times. Although once we accept it, and trust it we may soon begin to run gleefully, and passionately towards it's mysterious embrace. This darkness is the liminal state between waking and sleeping. The elusive twilight of genius that fades as soon as you shine a light upon it. This darkness is where all art and beauty is concieved. But this darkness is also what keeps us from being artists. Or stops a brilliant, prolific artist in their tracks.
This darkness is what can cause a timid artist to walk away from creative life. Walk, run, or melt. We turn away to bow down before life's little "obligations", the needs of others or their judgments, or our own fears. We try to share or explains this beautiful, limitless darkness and our friends think we are Satanists or something. We try to take someone with us and the headlights of their scrutiny cause it to receed or even unfriend us. We can fall into years, or even decades of non-creative, sad, lifeless normalcy, where the matches of true originality are too wet for anyone to even know what they are supposed to have been.
We cannot allow this. We simply have to respect and honor this magic genie lamp of genius and creatively at all costs, this nap fort from which all things sprout. We must protect our selves and our seedlings in the cradle of dark, moist earth from time to time. -Without constantly uncovering them -or ourselves- to show off, explain, or justify our lack of interest or participation in other people's expectations of social reality. All magic comes with a price. This is the price of creativity.
How do you self care and set boundaries with others to  honor and respect your creative darkness?

big fish

Sometimes in order to fit in, to not be "too much" we make ourseves small. It is a byproduct of those who have had to overcome great adversity in childhood to "try to hard" and we dont know how to stop. It becomes an innate part of who we are.

Sometimes other people do not understand us, or are not comfortable with our obvious discomfort, and they try to make us be even less. Less than who we are, less than what we are meant to be. express less, have less, do less, be less. but I say NO! NO NO NO!

So to all the other big fish in small ponds out there: YOU DO YOU, harming none, and haters be damned. For most of my time on this planet Ive tried to contort myself into fitting into other peoples projections, plans, preferences. Mostly so I could feel accepted, get love, belong to the family, not be the freak, get the job,  or keep my parents / boss/ spouse / PTA /social group / roommates from feeling or acting in a negative way towards me: threatend, jealous, disapproving, baffled, embarrassed, or worse, ditching me altogether.

I feel so blessed wth the precious few friends who may not always understand me but who always just accept me as I am and never ask me to be less to fit thier needs.  Now I am journeying back through time to discover all they ways and times I have played along with this unspoken expectation.

I want to identify the times I still do this and make anew choice. When I dont make myself small I can breathe, I feel inspired, I actually get excited about possibilities, and for a few minutes my lifelong depression fades.

film

Ive been playing with video and editing. something I've wanted to do for 20+ years, but the technology was not accessible.  I have decide to start with stock footage and sound effects while I learn various free editors out there. once I get the hang of it all, I will do more full scale works. I also plan to participate on GISHWHES this year which should help.

New Life

New Beginnings

I've discovered youtube. Not that I hadn't before, just as a creative outlet. I am curently trying out script writing, combining what I know: kinesiology, with what I do: teaching, and plan to make a video for my students so they can play it as often as they like, and I can stop repeating myself. If all goes well, it should keep me pretty busy, and help me develop some skills for more creative attempts later.
 I will keep you posted.

meanwhile checklist:
set design
props
script
sound
lighting
camera  -my phone?
editing software....

 whew, its a lot to think about.

xoxo

Depression and Creation: The dance of intentional destruction and self worth

For some its a matter of managing addiction, for some its about channeling the self loathing, but in the end its really about sweeping the fear under the rug. I am talking about self destructive behaviors. Choose your poison.

The internal dialog goes something like this:
 "Will I make a thing?  How will I look making the thing? what if its crap? what if I am not suddenly famous and able to earn a living because of the thing? or worse! what if I am? what if people want to talk to me and get personal with their ideas about what my thing means? what if its boring? What if they are boring? what if I am really boring?
or worse yet, what if I make a thing and no one even notices and nothing even changes, and my life still sucks and I am no closer to paying my rent or getting out of debt or gaining any respect?"
... it goes on and on and its a lot easier to over indulge in booze, drugs, sex, work, anything but actually attempting to make a thing. Any thing.

But the need to be creative leaks out around the corners of our lives;  Arranging the paper clips on our desks, or how we hang  or even pile the clothes in our closet....

I've been making food. Food feels safe. Most people like it, some one is likely to notice. And if its horrid you just make something else the next day.  Any mistakes are forgotten quickly in the aromas and sensory input of the latest work. Its easy to be dedicated and disciplined because hunger is a powerful driving force demanding regular production, preparation and completion of each project.

I can console my small, shattered, depressed self, with feelings of superiority because in many ways food is the truest embodiment of what ART is. It is a careful process and presentation that creates an immediate emotional experience. An experience that is gone, over and removed to the realm of memory as soon as it has been completely experienced. That is the epitome of true Art.

For many, a painting or a sculpture is real art because it endures the passage of time, and can be experienced again and again. But if ART is the process of creation, then the painting, photograph or sculpture is merely the product, the tangible memory or window into the energetic state of that process.

Many times I have busted my ass to build a body of work for a show, or an assignment, or just a time line for portfolio photography, only to destroy the products to the ultimate dismay of my teachers and classmates. Yet I was able to understand something they could not grasp: The destruction of the product was in itself an expression, an act of ART as much as its creation. Nature destroys in order to create. It destroys in order to free the energy and release it from its locked, committed, static form so it can flow, inspire and cycle back into being in a new form. The molecules of genius.

As I struggle through this latest bout of depression and sense of existing in a world that does not see or value ME or my skills, or my ideas, as I look for a job (any job) to support myself, I am inundated with messages to "Follow your Bliss".  So I have recently quit looking for work, after an entire YEAR in two states, of unsuccessful and un-insightful interviews, and resume black holes that have just eaten my resumes. It just doesn't seem to make a difference that I have tried so very hard for this log. It has just stripped me of my self confidence, while spinning my wheels and wearing me out.

For the first time in over 2 years, I want to create ART.

In order to do this I must create a safe space to ALLOW creativity to unfold, physically, mentally, emotionally. A space where I am not on a time clock or playing defense to justify my "screwing around" and "giving up supporting myself", and just "expecting the system to take care of me".  I have to create a space that these voices (and their various owners, my own included), and the ego cannot penetrate. I have to create this safe space, round up supplies, commit to daily studio time in a disciplined and consistent act, and suspend judgement of myself and any fledgling creations that sprout or don't within that sacred place.

1, 2, 3...