The Book You Really Must Have ....

If you are an artist (aren't we ALL?) or wish to hone your craft, this is the book you absolutely MUST have. It's titled: The Muse Is In: An Owner's Manual to Your Creativity. It is by the marvelous Jill Badonsky; and if you've read here before, you already know what a huge fan I am. If not, click on the link and get a load of her site. It's fantastically FUN!

I'm not going to write another review as I just did that over on Amazon. If you click the link (on the title above), you'll see that review there. If not, then do. The short of it is, in my not-so-humble opinion, this book is likely to be the ONE book that will change you and your craft forever. Then again, you're not me and maybe it won't. But wouldn't it be terrific if you found new ways to be more of who you are?

I thought so.

So, without further ado, go check it out. You're worth the $14, doncha think?

This thing that drives you....

Never apologize for your passions. NEVER. If you get a giant kick out of sitting on a rooftop tossing stale bread to pigeons, then go sit on the rooftop and toss away. If you get a kick out of scraping gum off the undersides of booths in diners, then scrape away. If you lose yourself every time you find litter on the street and get to pick it up and throw it in a trash can, well I say clean on! It doesn't really matter what floats your boat; just so long as it's floating. But for Pete's sake....don't apologize for it!

I am a firm believer in synchronicity; so perhaps you were tossing this out into the Universe yesterday or when you woke up this morning or when you told your boyfriend that you wouldn't be going to dinner at his folks' place because you were going to watch the game with your girlfriends instead. Or maybe this just came to you out of the blue (no such thing, if ya ask me) but whatever the case, I am compelled to offer it up. Just for you. And for me too. Because the truth is, I offer up stuff that matters to me as well. Kind of my own little house cleaning. When I write, it clarifies. It is always with the intention of helping you too. Always. But I don't just write stuff for no good reason.

There is always a reason.

Today, when I woke up, I realized that there were a host of people who'd made a host of excuses to other people while I was within ear shot. Each time I heard these Apologizers, it was all I could do not to scream out, DON'T! DON'T DO IT! I didn't, of course. But I sure did want to.

Why is this such a big deal? Why would I care one way or the other if someone made lame-assed excuses to not do what someone else wanted them to do and ignore what they wanted to do? Who am I to say that these people shouldn't make excuses or apologize for their passions?

Well. I'm glad you asked.

It matters because there are just not enough people on this planet who are actually living their bliss. You don't need me to tell you that. Just look around. Everywhere you will see people with scowls on their faces. They're crabby and obnoxious and plain ugly to everyone around them. They're freakin' miserable. Why? Because they're doing what everyone else says they should be doing and ignoring what makes their hearts sing. They're going to dead end jobs, eking out a living, all in the name of social pressure. They forgot all about that thing, whatever it was, that they just loved loved loved doing when they were kids. Those things that made hours turn into seconds. Those things that made them happy all the way down to the bone. Those things that they were born to do. They gave it all up because somebody who really mattered told them that it would never work. That they would never, ever be able to paint or sing or dance or act or teach or fly or ride the rodeo or rescue horses or have ten kids and do it successfully. They heard those naysayers for so long that they buried that dream and fell right into the depths of a madness that society calls "being a responsible adult".

It's an outright outrage.

So the next time you hear yourself apologizing for something that absolutely brings you to heaven, just STOP. You now have permission to do what you want, for as long as you want, without guilt, regret, or remorse.

If they ask you why, just tell 'em I said so.

Baby Steps

Whilst I listened to my Muse speak on the dangers of self-sabotage, I jotted and scribbled and doodled, letting the words massage their way into my brain. I have come to a place where I know that it is most helpful to not try too hard. Rather, to ease myself into the lessons and allow my Beautiful Creative Self to take what she most needs. Because sometimes, just the act of taking notes causes me to miss the most important stuff. Hence the doodling. It works for me, as does the breathing I do before hand and the colored pencils I use in lieu of a more serious utensil like a pen. I find pens far too stodgy. Perhaps it is a reference to the pen being mightier than the sword. Not sure. Either way, pens are for crossword puzzles, not doodling.

{WHAT? YOU USE PENS TO DO YOUR CROSSWORD PUZZLES??? Yes, I do. Because I am a serious crossword puzzler and as I said, pens are serious utensils. But I digress....}

So she was talking about self-sabotage. It is, not surprisingly, one of the most common, stubborn, ridiculous of tactics by the pesky Ego. And Fear. And the Inner Critic who is as bossy as that curmudgeon next door who hollers every time you howl at the moon with your dog. They are all party poopers and not nearly as clever as they might think. That is, if you happen to have a Muse who reminds you that they all use the same tricks:

Keep her distracted. If she is distracted she cannot create.

Along the way, one of the things that set off the happy bells in my head was this:

Questions are the prompts for those tiny steps we can take toward our beautiful, creative light. We are all Lights; and if we are to shine for all the world to see, we must be persistent. We must practice. We must be repetitious in our commitment to our craft. With these little steps, we will slowly make the shift that will bring us to our Purpose. Any artist who has ever had one of those days (or weeks, or months, or...years) when it seemed like there were 4,693 other things we just had to do before we got to our creative work knows that the trick is to find a way, any kinda way, to get back to it. Sometimes we have to literally trick ourselves. We have to use new tactics. We have to re-think the way we speak. Saying things like "I get to..." instead of "I should...". They are little baby steps that lead us down the road we most wish to travel. And if it means that we have to start all over again every single day, then that is precisely what we will do. Because I have never met an artist, regardless of their chosen art form, who hasn't said (at least a thousand times), "Oh, how I wish I could do this for my living."

Well, guess what. You can. But you're not gonna get there by wishing. You're going to have to commit. You're going to have to suffer change. And stretch consciousness. And re-think thoughts. It might be a pain in the ass (at first) but wouldn't you rather have that challenge than a lifetime of working some horribly boring job while the Light of All That You Are dims to black, abysmal nothingness? Please. Please don't let it happen. Take those steps, whatever they might be for you. Make the commitment. And then, little by little, you will make your way to that Life you have only secretly dreamed of. That is what living is all about.

Inspiration Please

Wouldn't it be great if we could jump in our cars, toodle down the road, and find the exact spot to find some inspiration?

Or drive to the nearest Home Depot and pick some up off the shelf?

I got to thinking about Inspiration the other day, and as I thought, I perused the Net for pics. As I did, it got me to thinking about how to search. Which then led me to think even further outside my usual M.O. (as in "modus operandi"), which then led me to these:

I gotta tell you, when I saw these, I almost forgot what I was looking for in the first place. I just couldn't get over that somewhere on this planet there are people who actually DO stuff like this. Talk about Inspired! 

So anywayz...

I thought I'd offer up a little nudge here. Just poke at you for a minute to see if you might get your own Creative Self fired up. To see if maybe you could step outside your comfort zone for a minute or five and discover all that delicious creative stuff that's simmering inside of YOU.

That's all.

The Magnificent Being You Are

So you're struggling with that thing you love to do. You procrastinate. You find ways to sabotage yourself. You make every kind of excuse to NOT do it. This is a form of self-punishment and, at some level, self-loathing. You might not see it that way. But if you were to take a moment or two, you might surprise yourself. See, the whole Creative Being thing is a bit more tricky than your brain can handle. That is to say, your brain isn't the Creative Being. You are.

The thing about tapping into your Creator is that there's a whole ton of baggage you brought with you over the course of this lifetime. Stuff your parents told you. Stuff your teachers told you. Stuff you heard on the playground. Some stuff you just made up in your own head. All in all, it can make for some very boisterous and horribly unruly conversation, all of which will leave you exhausted, scared, or (if you're lucky) pissed off to the Nth degree. This then leads to ... you guessed it...NOT doing what you really love to do.

Know what I'm talking about?

Here's a little sample:

Let's say you've always wanted to be a dancer. For as long as you can remember you've been jammin' to the tunes and entertaining everybody around you. Maybe you went to school for it. Maybe not. Maybe you decided to forgo college and hit New York City instead. Gonna make it as a Rockette. Or dance with the Alvin Ailey Company or Madonna (well, for that you'd have to go to L.A. but who cares). Maybe you didn't do any of those things because you heard your father saying, "Only the best of the best can do that for a living. You're just not that good." Even if he only said it once, it's quite likely it rang in your head a million times so it seemed like he said it every day of your life. Whatever it was, it stuck. And so, because of the very sensitive nature of your Being, (doncha know? ALL creators are ultra sensitive!), you got yourself a "real" job and put the dancing thing on hold.

When I have some money saved, I'll quit my job and do it.
When I find the courage to move out of this god-forsaken town, I'll do it.
When I turn 18 (or 21 or whatever), I'll do it.
When nobody can stop me....

Sadly, what you might not have realized is that the only person who was really stopping you was

YOU.

And now, here you are, wishing you'd done this or that differently. Wishing you still had that fire burning in your belly. And those lithe, strong muscles. And the so-called youth that has long slipped away (unless, of course, you're still living that youth. In which case, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WAITING FOR???). The point is, that was then and this is now and there isn't any good reason for you to NOT do whatever it is you really wish you could do.

Which leads us back to the self-sabotage thing.

You've been listening to those horrible tapes in your head for so long, you actually have forgotten just how magnificent you really are. Really. Because if you remembered, you wouldn't be punishing yourself by not doing what you really love to do. No matter what it is or how "old" you are. If you remembered how utterly, perfectly magnificent you truly are, you'd stop beating yourself up and let yourself just BE MAGNIFICENT. But the tricky part is that you've forgotten which is why you are where you are in the first place. So here's a little something for you to play with.

Ready?

Pretend you are MAGNIFICENT. Even if it's just for 15 seconds. What would that feel like? What would it feel like to be the marvelous, creative, awesome Being that you really are? I know. You don't know how that feels. But if you will just PRETEND for a little while each and every day, you will remember. You will feel how it feels and know all the way to the core of your Magnificent Beautiful Self that you are and always have been. So...

Whatcha gonna do now?