It's not about the money

from my art journals 

Just had a bit of a revelation. It has been percolating for quite a while.  (Possibly will not be the last time I will have it.  But it feels sure and solid today.)  

It is to do with money.  I find money incredibly fascinating.  Not in a 'I want to count my gold' kind of way.  But as a concept, and admittedly, as a personal struggle.  I have read so many books about it from all sorts of different angles. I have managed it super carefully and survived on hardly any of it.   I have wanted more of it.   

I am now 'in business' to 'make money' and  - you know - on many levels I need to 'make more of it'  because I want to pay off this mortgage, and I want to go on holidays and have my own art studio and all those sorts of things that money can help with.  

And yet there is this notion that money isn't anything.  It's an 'energy' its a 'fuel' it's not even a real thing - just a cypher absorbing anything we project on it (Charles Davis I am referencing you here) - and as such a tool to discover how to become more whole. 

And despite all this it somehow eludes me - like I just don't get it.  Literally. HA!  I mean, I am fully aware that I am in no way poor, and my position in life makes me part of the top whatever percentage of the world in terms of wealth and fortune.  But I still don't get it.  

SO back to today.  And my revelation with regard to money and my mission the world. Hard to just say it, or write it, but fundamentally - it's not about the money. YES I do need to live (and yes I do want to pay my mortgage off and go on holidays and all that stuff)

But it's just not about the money any more.

I want to make a positive difference in the world.  End of.  

I am working on exactly how.  But it will be using my talents and skills.  I expect it will be to do with creativity and connection.  And creating a future.  And enviromentalism and feminism.  Togetherness.  Making your own fun.  Humanity and divinity.  These kinds of things.  

Just sayin. 

yes it's possible. from my art journals

Finding Wild

Sometimes I want to change the name of my Wild Painting.  I took it on as a sort of whim, based on what my good friend Morgan told me about her Wild Writing classes, inspired by the work of Natalie Goldberg.  The WILD in my case, being more a creative state of mind, than anything to do with the wilderness or nature.  Morgan also runs a facebook group Wild Motherhood, and she really does love nature and being out in it - and her life now is nomadic - living in a van and travelling out in it most of the time. So it totally suits her.

For me my Wild is more like the freedom of the creative mind.  That space where you no longer know what you are doing, there is no plan, it becomes the leap in the dark.  For me, that space there, the departure from the known is pure creativity.  For we are now, making it up as we go along.  We must become present, very present, and sense and respond to what happens next.

I went to a mindfulness course run by some proper far out Californians who had actually helped train the chaps at the Navy Seals, and Nasa.  They explained that being able to be fully present was necessary in VUCA situations.  That is Volotile, Uncertain, Changing and  Ambiguity.  And that our times, now, changing so fast, are VUCA like this.

This might be a diversion.

It's not.  It's about presence.  And being able to fully respond.  That is how it is when I am painting, and in my Wild Mind (as Natalie Goldberg puts it).  Leaping into the unknown, CREATING something new.  Its at once exhilarating and deeply calming.

I was going to write a blog about how the folk who come on my weekends are so often people who are creative, but just haven't been it for a long time.   They know they are, but somehow they just don't get around to it.   I know this too.  I posted up on my FB page this quote about how women often get distracted by tidying up, and so never get around to the actual creativity part.  Here it is.

“I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Steven Pressfield writes about it in his short book The War of Art - like its an actual battle with an actual thing.  He calls it fighting resistance.  It's the thing that gets in the way of you getting creative.  In so many ways this is why I created the Wild Painting Weekend.   The first time I did it, it was just for me.  If I booked the studio, if I invited others to join me -  I would beat resistance and spend time painting.   And it worked and it was amazing.  And it worked for others too.  Who went on to restart their painting practice and sell more paintings and get creative again.

So now I have booked a studio - my own space!!! OMG  - (well -  for 5 months it is - its  a sublet!)

 I am totally cacking it to be honest.  I really do not know what I am doing.  And yet.  I have this feeling of diving into reality, of being alive.  And I know I am leaping into the dark and now I must sense and respond.  I have obligations that I have set myself and I must step up to the challenge.

Facing that blank canvas I am going to paint, and paint, and paint.  Until the painting emerges.