This article is 100% True
Today would have been day 51 of my 100 Day Project of Posting and Painting, but I knew it was over.
Here’s why:
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I thought I was doing this for me, but my friend taught me a new word: ‘performative’ and it dawned on me this was that. If you hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have painted on half of the days. So sneaky, the ways I find to prove my worth without me realising. “What would you do if you couldn’t share it with anyone?” is, I find, a most interesting question to help call myself out on this kind of bullshit.
I found my medium. This, apparently, was part of why I was doing this, though I did not know that at the start. I played with watercolour, acrylic, pastels, drawing (if you can count this as drawing) and began a love/hate relationship with oils that ended in love.
It was stressing my husband out because it was stressing me out, which was stressing me out. I would have days of quiet and not-so-quiet fury, filling the kitchen, the heart of our home, with frustration and for-fuck-sakes. Taps, walls, new kitchen tiles, floor, dog, door handles and washing up liquid bottles smeared with unremovable blue. Plus a bit of menopause thrown in. I nearly broke him.
“I’ve known you long enough to know that you commit deeply when you care about something enough. Your children, your marriage, your home, walking the dog, The Hunger Project, brushing your teeth (and on and one he went). You’ve spent years trying to prove you can commit, and it’s time to end that experiment now,” said my friend and mentor, Michael Neill, after I was bemoaning my desire to quit the 100 Day Project but annoyed at my own flakiness. Oh.
I’ve started my first novel, I’ve signed up to be in a dance show and what with MAFS and Traitors running at the same time, there simply are not enough hours in the day to do all the things I love every single day. And neither do I want to. I’d rather let God/the wisdom of my body (same thing) decide my plans for the day when I tune in to see what wants to be done each morning, rather than slavishly following a plan my tiny little mind decided upon.
I require a ‘Generator reset’, to quote the words of my quiet marketing mentor, Dani Gardner. I’m a Manifesting-Generator, I’m built to respond. Right now, I’ve found myself initiating all over the place and it’s non-productive, exhausting and leaves no space for the universe to serve me up gifts to respond to. I want to reverse the field from outgoing to incoming.
I’m starting to hate painting.
My instagram grid is an absolute mess and I yearn for beauty.
As a Mani-Gen, I am inclined to skip steps, create shortcuts and go fast. I’ve been painting my art FAST and selling it for the past two years, and now, in true M-G style, I want to slow it right down, go back to the beginning and learn how to do it properly. My Line 3 in my profile has been happily experimenting for the past 50 days, my Line 1 needs the foundations in place. My first in-person oil painting class is tomorrow.
“Stop creating for product and focus on the process” - my method writing teacher, Jules Swales. She is talking about writing and I’m completely ignoring her advice as I’m having the best fun ever with in her ‘How to Write A Psychological Thriller’ 6-week program with Curtis Brown Creative. But yesterday I realised this applies to my art right now. I plan to disappear for a while and study how to create the art I know I want to make but can’t. Yet. Focus on the process, not the product, Nic.
I feel like a bear and I want to go hibernate until Spring and stop jumping around on instagram. Just that, actually.
In summary, I learned a heap, I’m glad I did it, I probably won’t ever do it again.
Highly recommended.
It’s my life and I’ll paint if I want to.