creative life: the good, the bad, the salsa of it all.

I woke up at 5 Monday morning {which, by the way, is totally ungodly. I don't care who you are [hah, hi dad] but seriously. 5 am is just ... so wrong. I agree with my mommy: Vespers is the best time of day} But anyway, that's not the point here. I woke up at 5 Monday morning, and I began seriously and immediately craving salsa.

I don't know, I didn't question it, I just woke and knew: today, somehow, someway, I will have salsa.

It was like my soul needed salsa. And, magically, Betsy and I went to lunch at my new-slash-old favorite taqueria in Decatur [new because we've been there twice in the last week, and old, because the last time I was there was in highschool] and I ordered chips-and-salsa. And was presented with a beautiful plate of three varieties of salsa. I should have just eaten that for lunch. My soul was immediately happy.

I so wish that my creativity was like that plate of salsa: I craved, I said it out loud, and Bets took me to a place where I could get it. I wish I could:

*Get Inspired [crave]

*Fully imagine the whole experience [say it out loud]

*Have someone take me to the place I need to go to get what I need to complete it

But I find, more often now than ever, that my creativity is like a mountain, in that it's as much about the climbing as it is about being at the top. 

Sometimes it's as much about the craving as it is about satisfying the craving.

{both photos iPhone photos by (c)quiet+world+creative}

rollercoaster part ii!

I'm feeling that roller coaster feeling all over! {job, relationships, life, church, art, writing, food}

Trying so hard to press in instead of back away. I think backing away has been survival mode for me for so long that I don't really know what non-survival mode is supposed to feel like.

Operating out of a healthy place can be harder than it should be sometimes. Especially when you fear risk more than anything. {like me!}


Erwin McManus says this:

WE like to pretend it's hard to follow our heart's dreams. The truth is it is difficult to avoid walking through the many doors that will open. Turn aside your dream and it will come back to you again. Get willing to follow it again and a second mysterious door will swing open.

I like to pretend that I'm scared of failure. Really, though, I'm not. I've failed. I've failed big and kept on going. I'm really scared of moving out of a safe place. I'm really scared of not knowing.

Julia Cameron says that: Safety is a very expensive illusion. How true is this? When I'm seemingly 'safe' {or in 'survival mode}, how safe am I, really? When I'm comfortable because I know, what do I know, really?

The success of creative recovery hinges on our ability to move out of the head and into action. This brings us squarely to risk. Most of us are practiced at talking ourselves out of risk. We are skilled speculators on the probably pain of self-exposure.

We deny that in order to do something well we must first be willing to do it badly. Instead, we opt for setting our limits at the point where we feel assured of success. Living within these bounds, we may feel stifled, smothered, despairing, bored. But, yes, we do feel safe. And safety is a very expensive illusion. {julia cameron, the artist's way}

I just stopped and asked myself why I'm writing this blog entry. I think I needed to talk myself down off of my uber-controlled, what-the-heck-am-i-doing ledge. Needed to remind myself that I'm doing good and right things, and those good and right things are also brave things - doing brave things sometimes means butterflies in your stomach. And that's not something I need to run from.

...

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begint to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. {Agnes De Mille}