Thursday, September 27, 2012

Writer's Block?

I am sitting here and then I am pacing and then I am outside and then I am looking at the mess surrounding me and then I am back again sitting here. I am limitless in my day (or at least until 3:00 when the boy gets home from school) and yet I am stuck. The piles of laundry and the piles of dishes and the piles of bills are sucking up the energy and greatness inside of me. I want to paint. I have ideas spilling out of my head. I want to tear the papers and layer them and paint over them and swirl colors around them. I want to feel that desire with the brush in my hand, the need to spill forth with the smoothness and the textures and the brush strokes. My body aches for it. But I am in stagnant staleness. I am morphing or at least trying to and yet I can't seem to oompf it out of me. I'm not sure what it is holding on to me, holding me back and away from what I WANT to do. I feel jittery and anxious and irritable and so instead of balance between house and home and art and freedom, I am chained to my environment and self. I MUST get out of my head. I must break out of it. The mess... I can't find my space. I can't breath. I am trapped here. I want to swoosh it all away and look at a blank canvas around me and under my hands. The balance is off. My head is off. Every little thing I touch is a challenge. My head and body are not in sync. Does it start with a simple unloading of the dishes? What if I pick up the clothes strewn across the floors? What would happen if I clean off my work space? Will that be enough? Will one action result in more? What is the worst case scenario? What am I afraid of? What is wrong with me? Why can I not push through this? Am I terrified of the greatness that I know that I have? Do I secretly know that I can have it all? Am I holding myself back? Am I sabotaging myself? The excuses that I lay out in front of me are not so huge, are they? Could it be as simple as the itchy shirt I'm wearing nagging me into submission? If I take it off will my outlook change? Why do I just sit here? I am overwhelmed. There is an elephant in my head... a HUGE mental block. I can't even identify it or describe it. It just sits in there like an iceberg. Cold and lifeless as big as a hell freezing me into submission and stillness. What in the hell is IT??? All this deepness and vastness and blankness and yearning lying within arms reach and I just can't get there. Why can't I break free, expunge myself, rise above it? What is IT? I don't think it is a simple as a "to do" list. I think it's uglier and smellier. I think it's rotten and ugly. I don't want to touch on it or be around it, but it is RIGHT THERE. Identify. Identify. Identify. Zone in on. Destroy. Obliterate. Explosive annihilation. Self doubt? It feels more sinister, buried deeper. WTF Are these my whispers? They just don't feel right. What to do? What to do? Pray? Bless the house? Therapy? Clean? Nothing seems to fit into the pigeon hole. I MUST PUSH PAST. I MUST PUSH PAST.

"Quiet down Sweet Child. All will be okay. Don't take this on. I am here with you."

I need to comfort her, that lost baby girl inside. She is capable and strong but she is so God damn fragile and she won't trust me. Why won't she come to me? Why can't I hold her?

Randomness. Clarity? Insanity? Thoughts expelled like vomit from a monster. It makes too much sense when I read it back. Writer's block?

Baby Me

7 comments:

  1. I found you through Flying Lessons. Wow, I've been here. 1000 times. I think one small action will trigger others. If I have painters block, sometimes the action of just putting paint on the page or canvas is enough to get me started. I have to fake myself out though, and tell myself, no REAL painting today, we're just going to slosh some pink paint around. Cleaning up my art desk works for me sometimes too. Maybe pick one tiny ten minute action to get started? I know you'll break through! Take care - Tricia

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    1. Well said Tricia! I'm a fellow Flyer too and am just overwhelmed with things to do, etc. We have to remember that first and foremost we are artists, and we need to create. Trying to fit that in with growing a business, etc. is very very challenging on top of responsbilities outside the art. I'm glad we're going through all this together!

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  2. Brilliant post!!! You couldn't have expressed how I feel right now any better about where I am in my art, and where I want to be. Information overload is very real. And it can scare us into being paralyzed. But don't let it. When I feel like this, I let myself feel this way for a time, then I tell myself to GET OVER IT, and GET CRACKIN' - even if it's just applying gesso to canvas. Thank you for this AWESOME post! I am RIGHT THERE WITH YOU!!!

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  3. Wow, Michelle! This is powerful. Keep writing, keep going. You have so much to share and you are so strong... I can sense it in your writing. Thanks for your bravery today.

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  4. Oh my. Michelle, you have struck a nerve with me. I so very often feel like this.
    Sometimes I come home from work and I really want to paint but then I look around and I see the I really need to do the windows, the floor could do with some much needed attention and in overall I have so much stuff, unneeded stuff, that I really want to roll up my sleeves and get in there. But because it is so much (seriously not kidding here) I have placed on my to do list I get overwhelmed with the result I do NOTHING. I switch on the computer and get sucked in. I'm not cleaning, I'n not purging my stuff and worse of all .... I am NOT painting or creating. I go to bed unfulfilled and have to all of this TOMORROW where it will happen again. Luckily since I have become a Flyer too, I have been a little better.
    Every day i do something. After work I do a task around the house and I try to do a minimum of 2 hours of something creative. It works for me. Because when I did something I hate to do (straitening up, cleaning, cooking those things) I feel good and inspired to do creative things. And sometimes I paint for a couple of hours and sometimes only for 30 minutes.
    Michelle, thank you. Thank you for opening up and being so honest.
    Know that you are NOT ALONE in this.
    Bless you girl, you will make it.

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  5. You got it out. Good for you. Oh...I could feel every word and every painful wasted moment. Too much busy and not enough "This is what it's all about." I think you have a lot to say...KEEP WRITING!! And let me just say, that Renee has got it going on. She said it well. Carry on!
    This sisterhood will lift you up...
    June Maddox

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  6. Wow! you really struck right at my heart. I am so with you on this...I know those feelings and thoughts...still struggling with them. Not sure what to do...too immobilized and have no energy to force myself into my workshop.
    Debbie

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