This is the fourth in a series of posts I’m doing called A Dozen Thoughts on Living

Happy Day to You!

I also got inspired from some tie-dying tutorials I saw on YouTube and started trying to create designs by tying off parts of the fabric with string. I’ve mostly had success with using red and yellow onion skins—they create great, rich earthtones. I especially love the effects of red onion skin!

I’m looking forward to more blooming weather when I can start looking around for plants I can try for other colors, but so far it has been great fun and I would recommend it as top-notch textile play for anyone who has these sorts of leanings. Here are some pictures (although the photos don’t do the colors justice). I think they look especially vibrant with sun shining through.

This is the third in a series of posts I’m doing called A Dozen Thoughts on Living.

I bought myself the Big Box of crayons this weekend to continue this series and really just to hoard crayons. I nerded out by dumping all of the crayons out and sorting them by color group (greens, blues, oranges etc). I love seeing all the colors lined up, and I love the color names! The blues above are Cerulean (center square) and Wild Blue Yonder.

This is the second in a new series of posts called A Dozen Thoughts on Living. I hope you’re having a peaceful and joy-filled day!

Some while ago, a group of ideas found their way into my sketchbook about living an adventurous and creative life. I had thought I might make these ideas into a book, but then it dawned on me that they would be fun to share here on my blog in a series of posts. There are 12 of them, and since that makes a nice even dozen this is the first in a series of posts called A Dozen Thoughts on Living. I hope you enjoy them! I hope they inspire you to be kind to yourself and live with a sense of wonder and play! Happy Creative Day to you!

And now: I have BIG NEWS! I’ve had a new book in the works for quite some time—I spent the fall writing and printing and bringing together many ideas I’ve had for a long while to create a little book full of my heart, thoughts and inspiration.
And now . . . drum roll please . . . IT’S FINISHED!

The Book is called You are Alive, and it is a singing little book about the experience of being a human in this world. In this book, I thought and wrote about the wonder of being alive and also the challenges—how it is completely amazing that we are here breathing, but also how often we/I forget this. The words are airy on the page, giving you space to think, and they’re also accompanied by a collection of wild collagraph prints that I made especially for this book. {collagraphs printing is a printmaking process where the artist hand-makes the printing block by collaging materials onto a solid grounding and then prints the collage. I made these collagraphs with card stock on matboard and then printed with black ink on paper}.

I have just listed my book for sale in my shop! Find it here in the book section.

And here’s a little sneak peek:

***CLICK HERE >> Read the beginning of You are Alive

And some snapshots:

I am so excited to share this book! The process of making it is something I will never forget—thinking about the ideas through the concrete process of writing really changed me. I will always remember one particular walk I took in the middle of writing when something so deep shifted in me as I thought about what I wanted to say. It was one of the ost expansive moments of my life so far. So, I say thank you book, thank you art, and thank YOU for looking at this new work of mine!

Just wanted to wish you a happy, bright, merry holidays wherever you are! I believe “eat, drink, and be merry” is perhaps a good philosophy for life in general, but it is an especially good way to live the holidays!

I’m off for a holiday road trip tomorrow—first to visit my husband’s family in California, and then to visit my family in Colorado on the way back. I’ve been feeling in need of a little break, and so this one comes at the perfect time. Keep your fingers crossed for us that the weather is fine and clear. And I wish you smooth travels if you’re going away too, and lots of warmth and peace in these last days of 2011 wherever you go or stay!

I’m looking forward to another year of wild creativity here at Blue Bicicletta, and with that I say: farewell and *see* you in January! Thanks so much for being a part of my creative life this year!

Over the past six months I’ve been watching a change in myself around something I’ve struggled with for a long time: exercise. I’ve always dreamed of being the type of person who’s intrinsically motivated to exercise {and has the lean mean body to show for it}, but instead I’ve mostly been the type who begrudgingly drags her feet to work out.

But something of a miracle has come over me these last several months, and here I am, and dare I say it: I have become a regular runner! No one is more surprised than me. I have said for many years that I hate running, although I forced myself to pick it up some years ago when we got a dog and it became obvious that running was the only way to get myself cardio exercise while exercising our dog. But over the past months I’ve watched myself go from the bare minimum runner to someone who looks forward to going out and running longer and longer routes just for the fun of it.

This crazy change has gotten me thinking about motivation—how it develops and how you get to a point of self-sustaining momentum around an activity.

THE TIPPING POINT

With any activity or practice, at some point you get to a place where there’s no turning back. This is the point when the thing is so entrenched in your life that you wouldn’t think of not doing it. I call this The Tipping Point. From my experience, you can only really see it in hindsight—at some moment you look around and realize that you’ve been going along for a while just doing without having to twist your arm anymore. The activity is so integrated into your schedule and so essential to your life that you don’t have to decide whether or not you will do it.

This happened for me with art. I can’t find the moment when it happened, but I started out forcing myself to go sit at my art desk {sometimes kicking and screaming}, and here I am four years later with creativity as the cornerstone of my life. And now this has happened for me with running. There were many years when I had to plead with myself to run instead of walk, and now I run 6-7 days per week, and I often find myself contemplating new running challenges I could take on.

How did this happen?!

TO THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Once you get past the tipping point your momentum sustains you, but how do you get to the tipping point? I thought a bit about what commonalities I see between the two examples in my life (art and running) and this is what I came up with. To reach the tipping point you need to:

1) see the activity through a bigger vision of the person you want to be (this motivates you to begin)
2) experience exhilarating, peaceful moments in the process of the activity that lead to memories of feeling good while doing that thing (motivates you to do it again)
3) see tangible evidence of progress (motivates you to continue indefinitely because you’re becoming your bigger vision)

These three criteria fit very nicely for me with both art and running. With art I had a bigger vision of myself living my life about creativity (1), and then once I started making art I felt great moments of peace and creativity while doing it (2), and then I began to amass a large collection of artworks which gave me a creative buzz when I saw how much I had created and made my want to keep going (3). With running, I started to see how running could be the fulfillment of me being the fit and healthy person I want to be (1), and then the more I run, the more frequently I experience the high of running (2), and then I started to notice that running was getting easier and I was feeling fitter, which just made/makes me want to keep at it (3).

THE BIGGEST COMMITMENT

While these three criteria are true to my current experience of running success, they also seemed to be true in my past experiences of running that never really took off: For years I wanted to be someone with inherent motivation to exercise, and I saw the bigger goal and how running could get me there, and I even experienced some great exhilarating moments while running, and at times I did feel like I had made progress towards being more fit. So what was the missing link then and what was different this time around?

After contemplating for a while, I came up with one thing: time. Both with art and running, the transition happened for me when I made the most serious commitment you can make to anything: I made it a priority by allotting very regular concrete time to it. At some point this past summer I decided on a weekly running schedule, and I set it in my head in stone: I would do two longer runs per week and run as many other days as possible. The same thing happened for me with art—I remember it very clearly: every day I would come home from work and instead of vegging out on the couch watching movies (as I wanted to), I made myself go sit at my art desk and make art. I became absolutely stone-willed about it, I let nothing else push it out. I can see now that it was this concrete dedication that made the difference. There was no maybe. I would plan in advance when exactly I would do the art (or when I would run) so that I couldn’t get out of it. And then after some time passed with this new repeated action I got to the place where I became itchy if I didn’t do it.

IS IT REALLY TRULY YOU?

After all of this contemplation I started to wonder: would this work for everything? Could you just pick any random thing and make it a habit in this way? And how could you tell whether what you’re doing is really in line with who you want to be, or if it’s just what you think you should be doing?

I think the answer to both these questions comes from my criteria number two above: you experience exhilarating, peaceful moments in the process of the activity that lead to memories of feeling good while doing that thing. I think this is the determining factor of whether or not an activity becomes a cornerstone of your life. Sure there will be moments when you feel unmotivated to do even your favorite things, but generally once you start doing something regularly (that’s in line with your true self), you will start amassing these experiences of good feeling that will sustain you through the rocky parts. Many days I have woken up and not felt like making art, but usually once I get going I sink into the good feeling. If you start really doing something regularly and you don’t begin to feel the goodness (at least some of the time), then that’s a hint that the activity is not your path.

We’re coming upon that time of year that’s known for new resolutions made and broken. I hope these thoughts with cut through a little of struggle and help you make next year full of new possibilities! Happy creative day!

I think most people would say the following statement is true:

People who are creative create.

But I think we’ve mostly got it backwards—I think it’s quite the opposite:

People who create are creative.

This may seem like a subtle difference, but I think it’s the key to being creative and sustaining a creative practice. Let me explain . . .

If I had to give you one ultimate truth about the creative process that I’ve learned through making art regularly, it would be: Art leads to more art, meaning: the more art you make, the more ideas you get for more art. This is true with any creative process. There’s just no way to stop it from happening: when you’re making something you inevitably get ideas to make other things because your mind naturally thinks up new ideas and solutions, especially when you’re in a creative state of mind.

Creative ideas are often talked about like these lightning bolts that come out of the blue. We’ve all heard some version of a story about the creative genius who got her/his career-defining idea in the shower, on the bus, while walking—in general while doing nothing. This might lead you to think that if you were really creative, then you too would get these lightning bolt ideas. And if you haven’t, that must mean you’re not really creative. The part that is being left out of the story is that said “genius” had been spending hours and days of his or her life creating and therefore mentally immersed in the creative process. They had basically been cultivating a little nest where creative ideas could incubate. The particular circumstances of when their lightning bolt idea arrived is less important than the fact that they were constantly opening themselves to ideas through the creative process.

This opening is THE KEY to being creative. All you need to do is sit down at your desk, stand at your easel, open you’re notebook, hold your guitar. Then, start playing. Some days you will just mess around and won’t find any real direction, other days you will start to find a lead and follow it, and then still other days you will catch on fire with a new idea and start jamming on it heartily. All of this is part of the creative process, whether you’re a practiced maker or completely new at your craft. There will be days when you feel like you are wandering around in the dark. But if you make time to be creative, and you show up, and you keep showing up over and over again, the ideas will ALWAYS come. It’s just a matter of time.

I regularly forget all of this, but I was reminded of it yesterday two times—first when I sat down to write, and second when I sat down to draw. I had no ideas before either of these actions, but when I just let myself put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard some surprising ideas came out that I never would have arrived at had I waited for an idea to come first {for example the drawings at the top of this post}. This is how most of my ideas have arrived—as happy accidents, or as “what ifs?” while I’m making something else. If you trust in this, and keep rededicating yourself to the process, you will have all you ever need for an entire life of creativity.

Here are some specific pointers to help you with this process—

When you sit down:

~Throw ideas of “good” and “bad” out the window
~Let it be play
~Be open to any idea that comes
~Just begin! A drawing starts with one line. A story starts with one word.

Happy Making!

This morning I’ve been writing. I discovered a couple of months ago that one of my favorite ways to write is to just open up a computer document and type on about random things for however long I feel like it, what you might call free-writing. This is not really a new discovery, I’ve been writing every morning like this in an actual paper journal for about five years, and I’ve always found that just the act of sitting and writing soothes me. Many of my biggest mental challenges have been solved this way—it’s a form of meditation for me.

But a couple of months ago, I felt this want to make a new book—something more expansive than I had made before. And in considering how to start, and while re-reading one of my favorite books on writing (Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg), it occurred to me—why don’t I start free-writing more deliberately, and in the direction of some ideas I have been having for said book idea? I’ve also long loved the act of typing on the computer—it feels so fun and therapeutic to me to just start tapping away on the keys. And so a new writing practice was born for me.

Now I have generally finished that new book project (more on that soon—I’m waiting to receive my first copy from the printer!), and I am feeling another want to write something new. Yesterday, I started free-writing again to see where it takes me.

While I write, all of the demon thoughts come out again, things like: no one is going to care about or “get” the weird little books you make and you need to find a topic and write a “real” book this time. As my free-writing generally becomes a chorus of all the voices in my head, a different voice came back with more inspiring thoughts like: just make what sounds fun to you and what is a “real” book anyway?

Isn’t it funny how we’re always trying to fit ourselves and what we do into a defined box that already exists? I have dreams of myself in some alternate perfect universe writing neat books that would fit on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, or better yet, being a neat person who goes to work every morning and brings home the bacon and gets promotions and has neat finances and dresses nicely.

Instead, I am a messy person who is sitting at the computer in clothes that very closely resemble pajamas. A person who prefers to make crazy little flights of books that fit nowhere, and may be obscure to most people, and may take other people on wild adventures. A person who would much prefer sitting here in the quiet house typing about nothing and watch ridiculous TV shows during lunch and then work evenings as a baker (as I am now), really mostly for the fun of it and also to make extra money.

This is who I am. This is my messy life. It is mostly wonderful. And the most wonderful thing is letting myself be who I am. Sometimes that means letting myself freak out and again run through why I’m doing what I’m doing and not trying to live that alternate life. Other days that means just making my wild little books and not looking back.

In writing this I’d like to ask you: what boxes are you trying to fit yourself in? What guilt are you creating for yourself around being someone you’re not? What would you do if you just let yourself be who you are as much of the time as possible?

Let’s break the cycle together and let ourselves be weird and wildly who we are, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else or fit neatly in a mold.

I hope you have a wonder-filled day!