Secret #5 -- Committing to Self-Focus

This week’s discussion in the Next Chapter book club is Secret #5 of The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, by Gail McMeekin, is “Committing to Self-Focus”. Jamie, our amazing hostess and facilitator, challenges us to not just read about self-focus this week, but to experience it.

Because my whole life is patterned in cycles, so is my self-focus and self-care. Sometimes I am all about self-focus and other times, I’m very outer-focused or other-oriented. Times of self-focus tend to coincide with times of high creativity, while times of other-focus tend to align more with the fallow times I wrote about in my last post.

Lately, though, I’ve tried to be more systematic with my self-focus. On 15 January, I joined the 100 Day Reality Challenge. The intentions that I set all had to do with being more present in my day, or being more focused on my self. To support my intentions, I’ve adopted the daily practices of taking a daily walk, writing my morning pages, and keeping a 100-item gratitude list each day (because today is Day 26 of the Challenge, I’ll be adding a 15 minute meditation to each day). Okay, so I haven’t done such a good job with the walk – and I haven’t done the other practices for the past few days – but mostly I’ve been doing okay. Since I’ve been participating in the 100 Day Reality Challenge, time seems to have slowed down for me, and I’m more focused on my day. Eckhart Tolle teaches us to periodically stop what we are doing, taking stock of the moment and realizing that this is it; this is my life. I’ve been doing that more often and able to feel appreciation for where I’m at, at any given moment. I consider that pretty good self-focus.

Because my husband and I don’t have children, I don’t have that element of other-focus in my life. While I was initially heartbroken at not being able to have children, I’ve come to love our child-free lifestyle. John does demand a certain amount of attention and focus as does our apartment, but he takes as much care of me as I take of him!

How We Live ...

One of my favorite authors and bloggers, Patti Digh, tweets, "Seems we can choose to be in 1 of these 3 phases: Reacting against, responding to, or creating new (being generative). Which are you most?" Definitely food for thought ...

I think I do pretty good most of the time with not reacting against, although I do have my buttons, just like everyone else! Thanks to Jai Pausch and her recently deceased husband Randy, I'm learning that "it is what it is." This has helped me tremendously in my efforts to not react against so much of the time. Never one to worry too much, I worry even less these days. As I type this, however, I can think of one issue that I need to stop reacting against and just let go of. I need to take a deep breath, step back, remember that what will be, will be, and move on. The decision is being made by the powers that be and now I need to work to support it fully.

 

As an artist, I love creating new -- or being generative -- whether it is new ideas, or solutions, or producing actual works of art. I am especially thrilled to come up with a new idea these days, now that I'm on so much medication and my thought processes are a bit muddled. 

I'd have to say that I spend most of my time responding to. The alarm goes off; I get out of bed. The cats are hungry; I feed them. There are sales at the Gallery; I record them and make the bank deposit. Unfortunately, I do much of this without deliberate thought or conscious choice on my part. I'm just responding to my environment. 

That is about to change, however! Come Thursday, 15 January, I'm embarking on Season Two of the 100 Day Reality Challenge. For 100 days, I'm going to make a concerted effort to live more consciously and deliberately. I haven't fine-tuned my intentions yet for this Challenge, but I'm working on them. I'm working on it backwards: I know what my practices will be, I just don't know what the intentions are that those practices represent! My practices will include morning pages, gratitudes, daily exercise, and following a new Secret teaching-a-day book that I recently got. 

Last season, I took on too many practices and the first day that I didn't do them all, I fell off the practice-wagon and couldn't get back on it. I just became overwhelmed by all that I took on. I'm not going to make that mistake again this season, so I'm keeping it light. I may do more on any given day, but I'm not going to push myself or hold myself accountable for anything other than those four practices. 

As I said, this starts Thursday and lasts 100 days -- Wish me luck!

Blind Contour Drawing

As some of you know, I have real fear when it comes to drawing. So much so, that I get a knot in my stomach when I even think about drawing. I seriously cannot do something as helpful to myself as take a drawing class, even though that would probably go far to get me beyond my trepidation. But, I just get too anxious when I even think about it, and I have real anxiety problems.

So, as part of my 100 Day Reality Challenge, I have decided to start drawing. EEK! to me! LOL! I have the book The Natural Way to Draw, by Kimon Nicolaides, and I am working with it. It starts you off with blind contour drawing.

For those of you who don't know what blind contour drawing is, it can be a little hard to explain. Basically, you put your pencil on the paper while imagining that it's on a certain point on the object you are drawing. Then you move your eyes slowly along the contours of the subject, while moving your pencil at the same time. However, you do not look at your paper as you draw! When you come to a stopping point, you can look at the paper to reposition the pencil. Once your pencil is in the new starting position, you carry on as before, moving the pencil as you move your eyes until you have followed this new contour as far as it will go.

The book recommends that you draw live nude models, but I don't have any of those handy! I think I know how to get into a drawing group that meets on Mondays that has live models -- and I may do that at some point -- but I have to take baby steps with this or my anxieties will shut me down -- BIG TIME!

Oh! About the pictures! The top one is the first blind contour drawing I did. It's of one of my teddy bears, Trevor. It was done on 07 July -- just a few days ago. You'll notice that he only has one ear. I started drawing at his right ear, and basically drew in a clockwise fashion. By the time I got to his left ear, I was heading off the page! LOL! You'll also notice that his left arm is coming out of his head, poor thing. All-in-all, I don't think it's too bad for an initial effort, considering that you don't look at the paper while you are drawing. Of course, it's impossible not to peak now and then, but when I catch myself looking, I just tell myself "Don't look" and go back to what I'm supposed to be doing.

The bottom picture is one I just finished on the night of Thursday, 10 July; it is the sixth such drawing I've done. I still started at the top of Trevor's head, but this time, when I ran out of contour line the first time, I repositioned my pencil at his left ear and drew from there, rather than continuing in a clockwise fashion. I continued to do that, working from side to side, as it was time to reposition my pencil each time.

One of the great things about blind contour drawing for someone like me, who has such a blockage about drawing is that the product is not going to look great, no matter how good you are -- especially if you really are doing them blind, or near blind. So, I'm making silly drawings that are supposed to look silly! It relieves a lot of the pressure to "do good".

I'll be honest: I don't enjoy this as much as some other art activities that I engage in. But I'm probably getting more out of this, growth wise, that when I do the same ol' thing over and over. I'm hoping to come to enjoy this. I'm considering contacting an art teacher acquaintance of mine and arrange for a private lesson, just to make sure I'm not developing any bad habits. Have her go over things with me like how to hold my pencil -- and what all the pencil designations mean, anyway! -- in relation to the paper, and stuff like that. I don't think I'm ready for drawing lessons, but I think I'm ready for one drawing lesson!

Co-Creating Your Reality

I know I usually blog about art stuff, but this is something else that excites me, the idea of creating my own reality. Through a post on Yahoo! Group, I ran across the website, Co-Creating Our Reality and the idea of a 100 Day Reality Challenge. The idea behind the 100 day challenge is that for 100 days, you focus on your goals and intentions by declaring a commitment to them. If you want to, you can declare certain practices to follow throughout the 100 days of your challenge. Then you blog or video blog on the site so that others can follow your progress and process and support you as you go.

The site encourages the use of the Law of Attraction, the Law of Deliberate Creation, Universal Laws and Principles, but I think it's a good site for encouragement in general goal setting and tending.

CCOR is a social network built on the Ning platform, so there are opportunities to make friends, leave comments for others and comment on blog and video blog posts. There are also discussion groups that you can join to boost your participation and encourage your progress.

I've set my challenge to start on June 28. I picked that date so that it will end on October 5, the date that my Featured Artist show opens. I really need to set some goals about making art, framing art, planning my reception and generally being creative! I haven't set my intentions and goals yet, but I'll certainly set them before June 28.

If you decide to stop by the site, look me up. I'd love it if you'd join me in the challenge!