Self-Improvement or Lack Thereof

From the Page to Reality: Thoughts on Finishing One of My Everyday Journals

~ artjournalmama

 First, let me define “everyday journal”.

My everyday journals contain Anything and Everything, from stream of consciousness journaling to sketches and paintings, from project ideas and lists, to habit charts, church notes and handlettered quotes, all stitched together with the cord of my neuroticism. They are handbound, with pages made of thick, toothy bristol paper, and are usually (but not always) small enough to fit in my purse (favorite size 7×8.5) All the smaller ones have covers that are made using kitchen chipboard, like cereal boxes, and the covers of the larger ones are actual book covers taken off old books and covered in decorative paper.

I have other books which I consider to be “art journals”. They  are made with 140lb watercolor paper and contain more acrylic paint and no pages that are exclusively writing (although I do write on my painted pages). They usually feel more forced to me than my everyday journals, more like I am trying to “make art” and perhaps am failing at it and so should stop right away.

In my everyday journals, there are no “rules” and Little Miss Perfectionist isn’t welcome. Paint sometimes bleeds through the paper, some (or maybe most) of the drawings totally suck and there is a lot of boring sameness in my constant desire to Manage My Time and Improve My Self and Get A Lot Done, and I succeed in that for a while and then I fail, and then try again, etc. etc. ad infinitum, and that’s pretty much what I chronicle in my everyday journals.

Here are a few pages from the past three years:

1) a habit chart (which usually cover about 2 weeks)
2) a self-portrait I did over some journaling
3) some dried rosemary from our 2014 garden (stashed in an envelope page)
4) a diagram of my circle of influence vs circle of concern.
5) some sketches for printable ideas for “freebies” to get people to sign up for my Rough Edges Life mailing list
6) covers that are decorated with “engraved” aluminum tape (a very easy technique that makes it hard to believe your cover used to be a cheezit box)

From the Page to Reality

My current journal has taken me almost four months to fill. When I got to the last-ish page, I noticed that there were a lot of ideas that kinda “went somewhere” quickly. That doesn’t necessarily happen with every journal. I am telling you this not so that you will think I am so impressive Dahlink, in my accomplishments.  But rather, so that you can see what a good tool a journal-based creative practice is for a person like me (and maybe like you too), someone who has limited time to create/achieve/produce and is not known for high levels of focus. I am a self-improvement junkie, as you may already know.  This disorder, if left unmanaged, can lead to excessive reading about self help, rather than actually helping oneself and perhaps might even lead to wallowing in one’s most unhelpful habits. But keeping journals like this, which have no rhyme or reason or expectation, has helped me more than any other “technique” to be steadily productive on a sustainable level. Maybe because all these ideas would have vanished into the ether if I didn’t have my journal around. Not to mention the little snatches of memory or personal insight jotted down randomly or contained in a few sentences of writing. (I still have a lot of bad habits though, this isn’t a miracle process by any means).

What Came to Fruition In This Journal

  • Here are the first and second stages of the idea that became the banner image on this blog (although ideally it is for my new business website, which is unfortunately NOT one of the projects I have completed):

We won’t talk about the fact that I actually prefer the middle image. When something gets too polished I don’t like it as much. Plus in the final image it looks like my cup hand is amputated. But since my “brand” is all about persevering creatively through imperfection, I allowed that to remain.

  • A few days after the Mockingbird Conference last February, I was still trying to figure out what the Mockingbird fundraiser zine would evolve into. On the right is a list of my motivations and fears about the project. It was not a big success financially, but it’s not true that No One Bought It (which was one of my fears). It did just break even. Also I may presell them at next year’s MBird Tyler conference. So a new opportunity did present itself even if I didn’t sell as many as I’d hoped.

And here is the completed MBird zine. Hopefully I can master watercolor skin tones by next year. I am not crazy about the stark whiteness of the Magills, who are stunningly attractive and always have the glow of health, but who would have undoubtedly looked piggishly pink under my “artistic ministrations”. THIS ZINE CAN STILL BE PURCHASED HERE:

  • Another wonderful providence is that I bought Anne Kennedy’s book Nailed It and I fell, immediately, deeply in love with it. I don’t remember how it happened now, but Anne and I started corresponding, and now we are friends. I even had a guest post on her blog, which was not even on my fantasy radar of what might possibly happen, ever, even in an alternate universe, between me and such a cool person as Anne. Here is a page whereupon I made a sketch inspired by the cover of Nailed It, probably a few days after I received it. I was thinking about writing a review Praising It to High Heaven (which I have not yet done because I haven’t made a zine since that time, and I would not relegate such an important piece of writing to the ephemeral blogosphere) :

  • And here are my first ever notes about Jordan Peterson, who I heard for the first time in mid-March. I had no idea at that time how he was going to become one of the Grand Obsessions of my life.  These notes I took while listening to him are intermingled with notes from Sarah Condon’s Tyler talk, and in both sets of notes is the word Suffering (with Sarah Condon thankfully having the word of Grace as an oh-so-necessary foil to JBPs almost neverending Law)

Dr Peterson pervades the rest of the journal, although there are some mind maps, a few pages with brainstorming for the upcoming habit chart/everyday journal making class that will be out by the end of August, and a painting or two:

I have many notes to help me as I create the Jordan Peterson Fanzine during the long, hot Texas summer. I’ve done sketches of him lecturing, and he never stops moving, so that’s a real challenge for me with my rudimentary sketch skills And in his honor, my habit charts are now titled with the admonition “Sort Yourself Out”

  • Another thing that began in this journal, and that seems to have become (for the time being at least) a semi-regular activity – church sketchnotes done using a template for an orderly layout (which pleases my inner zinemaker):

Three Days On, One Day Off

In addition to “being productive”, I learned something useful about myself near the end of this journal. I figured out that one reason I have always had a problem with time management is that planning or scheduling within a 7 day week doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s just rebellion, feeling like I am expected to just fit into this RANDOM social construct that I didn’t even ask to be born into, man! But whatever the reason is, I decided I was going to buck convention and try a four-day structure.

In case you have ever wondered, there are 91.25 four-day-periods in a year.

On each of three days I have been having a loose focus, and then on the fourth day I do whatever the heck I want. I need one day for grocery shopping and other errands and for housework. Another day for creative but “business focused” work and a third day for whatever seems pressing in the family or household – maybe, if I can ever break through my annoyance and resistance, I could do some reading aloud or take better care of the household finances.  Those are two squares on my habit chart which rarely get filled in with pretty colors.

In the little snatches of time apart from the day’s focus, I have been “fitting in” the things that too easily slip through the cracks, like reading real books, (most notably, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge) and also exercise, salads and brief but blessed moments of silence and inactivity.. Then on the fourth day/evening I can drink alcohol, or binge watch TV (which for me might mean three episodes) or just sit around all day reading Nordic crime fiction. But I am just as likely to spend an “off” day rearranging some room in my house, which is one of my favorite activities and technically would be considered both housework and exercise on the habit chart.

I hope your interest in making and keeping your own everyday journal has been piqued, and that you will let me help you in that endeavor 🙂

Be in the Rough Edges Life Creative Loop

If you have any questions related to journaling, personal excavation and/or creative practice (or if you just want to ask me some random question or tell me something) please email me at samantha@roughedgeslife.com

On my next “creative work” day I am going to make a video to go with this blog post. If you’d like to see that video, or be kept abreast of the progress on the habit chart class or the Jordan Peterson Fanzine, please sign up for my mailing list.

Creative Stuff Goin’ On

~ artjournalmama

The last month and a half has been a proverbial whirlwind of creative busy-ness, planning, and some surprises. I spent a lot of August finishing my zines and being very nervous about sharing them outside my usual crowd. I went to an event called The Dallas Zine Party in early September, which was a panel of longtime zinemakers talking about their work in the zine world. Even though I’ve been making zines for more than two decades, I still experienced mild Impostor Syndrome symptoms when I was there. Unfortunately, the only antidote to those symptoms is to act like you aren’t an impostor, which can be difficult. But I handed my zine packages to the panelists and they all just seemed happy to get some new zines and not hell-bent on exposing me as a fraud. Later that night when I was making more zine packs for Day 2 of the event, I realized that I had a misspelling. On the zine COVER. The zine I had just given to 10 people earlier that day while pretending not to be an impostor.

I was mortified for about two minutes, then exhausted at the thought that I had to print new covers. Then I had an epiphany. I saw that I could “fix” the problem while simultaneously reinforcing the main theme of my zine – being “productive” while also accepting my very real limitations as a fallen human being. So, with the help of my trusty Pigma Micron pen:

zinecover

So, that ended up being a happy accident, and it was good for me to have to walk the Accepting Failure Walk, instead of talking about in an inspirational way (which is a good way to distract people) while behind the scenes I was eradicating any evidence of actual failure.

A few days after the Zine Party, I became a paid, published author. That had been in the works for a few years, and I don’t know if I believed it would ever really happen. The piece that was published began as an article in one of my zines from a decade ago, and it was interesting to see how it came to be a 22,000 word spiritual memoir. I have never had a huge interest in being a published author apart from my own self-publishing, and the reason Mark Galli (Christianity Today Editor-in-Chief) knew about me at all was because I sent CT my zines (way back in 2009, I think) in the hope that they would consider writing an article about zines and how they are an underused medium by Christians. So, it was a pleasant surprise that something I wrote so long ago would come back to benefit me in some way, and would be read by maybe tens of thousands of people instead of the (maybe) fifty or so that was my usual zine readership.

I was personally contacted by maybe 15 people after the CT piece was published. It was encouraging to know that my writing resonated with at least some people who don’t know me and don’t consider it their job as my friend to be encouraging about all my weird ramblings. Then, about a week after that was published, I got an email from someone at a Pittsburgh radio station inviting me to be interviewed on their show. That was a terrifying prospect because while I am fairly eloquent and somewhat funny in writing, I am not known as a super articulate speaker. I had visions of being introduced and then nothing but the sound of my drooling would be heard. But John and Kathy put me at ease and asked good questions, so the drooling situation was mostly avoided. My delusions of grandeur (that every single one of John and Kathy’s listeners would immediately order my zines) also did not come to pass, but I don’t think I could have handled that much business anyway. But I was invited to be on the show again, and that is happening this afternoon. They even made me my own graphic!

johnandkathy

I’m just as nervous about it this time and I have no idea what I am going to say about “the act of creation: what is it, how does it work for you, why is it important for Christians to create and flourish?” (which is how they are promoting my segment). Hopefully we can bypass the drool scenario this time, as well.

And then finally, my dear artist friend Donna has invited me to participate in an online teaching group called The Creative Circle , where three of us will regularly write and have videos about our own creative practices and our creative struggles, as well as “teaching” various techniques or art things that we do. That is a nerve-wracking situation for me, mostly because I am afraid of not getting the stuff done and proving myself once and for all to be an incorrigible flake. Realistically, I don’t expect that to happen, but the aforementioned Impostor Syndrome always has a serious flare-up when I think about having to come up with fresh content to “inspire and inform” people. The blog portion of the Circle will begin in November, and come January we will open it for subscriptions, which is how you will be able to access videos and other content and “Support for Your Creative Practice”. Go here if you want to get in on the ground floor.

Oh, and in the next week or so I am going to buy the domain everydaymemoir.com and get started offering my own zine/mail art subscriptions and tools to get you started on an Everyday Memoir Practice. So, I have a lot going on, which is interesting but also mentally exhausting. One of my perpetual challenges is trying to simultaneously do enough to avoid boredom and feed my alter-ego Self Improvementista, while also giving my Introvert enough downtime (she has been known to create drama if I don’t do a good job with that).

One cool thing about being an Everyday Memoirist is that I know in a year’s time, I will come back to this post (the printed version, of course – since I’m all about paper) and I will have Thoughts About It. I will compare my delusions of grandeur and/or worst case scenario for my artistic career with whatever the reality is, which I actually consider to be a fun and edifying activity.

 

Me and (Former) Pastor T

~ artjournalmama ~ 5 Comments

Pastor T is really the first “celebrity” pastor I ever listened to (the only other is Tim Keller). While I was familiar with his name, I wasn’t interested in listening to him until I heard Michael Horton interviewing art historian Daniel Siedell about Modern art and the Christian faith. I looked Mr. Siedell up and saw that he worked in some capacity for Coral Ridge, where, of course, T was pastor until a few days ago. I think my road to liking T started years before I knew he existed, way back when I was early in my midlife crisis and still coming down from my own legalism and self-justification projects as an unsuccessful Proverbs 31 Woman.

I bought the book Search for Significance, which I had seen many times at the thrift store but passed up because I assumed it was just “worldly psychology”, because, you know, it’s not doctrinally correct to desire a sense of worth and significance because we’re miserable sinners who don’t deserve anything (and I do assent to that fact in a certain theological sense). But I was starting to see that I did indeed have those desires and had been trying to manufacture my own worthiness by my performance as a Godly Wife and Mother.

I finally admitted that I really wasn’t all that great at fulfilling the womanly roles as defined by the Godly Family Subculture (which I mistakenly believed had proper definitions and proper understanding) and I was left with despair, with anger and with confusion about what it means to be a Christian. Although I had sat for years under a pastor who regularly taught that our identity and our justification were found in Christ, I didn’t get it. I grew up without a foundation for a strong identity. I’m not talking about touchy-feely self-esteem, but the basic safety and belonging needs (as defined by our friend Dr Maslow).

Maslows-Hierarchy-of-Needs

So, all my life I have tried to build my sense of worthiness and/or  (in Tullian or Mockingbird Speak) justify myself with:

1) my beauty and desirability (in my teen years especially – a fail)

2) intelligence or debate skills (in my mid to late 20s and early 30s – a fail)

3)  the aforementioned womanly arts or gender role fulfillment (my early 30s to late 30s – a fail)

4) my creativity and physical fitness (my early to mid 40s – a fail), and

5) probably other things I have forgotten, which were undoubtedly failures too.

And then to deal with the discouragement of being a constant failure and/or disappointment, I have self-medicated with pot off and on during all these years.

Understand I am not saying that I am a literal failure at all those things, like I’m not the ugliest person on the planet and I’ve had my share of attractive men who have found me attractive; I am fairly intelligent and articulate (at least in writing); I have kept up our home and am raising what so far appear to be five non-psychopath children; and my artwork, while still untrained, shows promise. But that’s the whole point. That desire to feel justified, loved and accepted is bottomless and can never be quenched no matter how objectively well we perform. I know other people have said it, maybe better and with more traditional theological language than Tullian, but he was the one who made clear to me that these functional saviors are actually idols, which always require sacrifice but never deliver.

When I had my 5th baby, she was such a clingy type that I didn’t have much time for my Identity-Enhancing Activities. At first, that didn’t help with my identity issues. My mind was always still swimming with plans to improve myself and ideas for art and writing and other creative stuff that could generate income and also maybe a teeny tiny bit of fame and/or human approval for me. I reread Natalie Goldberg’s books and was intrigued by the Zen idea that a key to being content is non-attachment, which is not the same as having no “attachments” (people, things, activities you love and enjoy) but is a practice of:

1) accepting the impermanence of all things in our lives (All flesh is grass, and all it’s beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. Isaiah 4:6-7)

and

2) observing your circumstances and thoughts and emotions without constantly judging them, fearing them, letting them determine your actions, trying to control them or thinking they define you. ( Though certainly as Christians, we are supposed to examine ourselves, repent of our sin, etc. and those things are really not part of the Zen mindset – although they do value kindness and compassion, which are Christian virtues if not always our practice as Christians.)

Anyway, I’m pretty much the most attached person in the history of the world, and I think all my self-justification schemes are the ultimate form of attachment.  Of course, I’m not really a Buddhist. I just find the Buddhist way of describing my inner landscape to be very accessible.

How does all this fit into my experience with Tullian? Well, one of his main themes is that we do indeed let our circumstances and thoughts and emotions define and control us, which definitely causes “suffering” (a key Buddhist term). We look to our actions and our internal situation and either feel good or bad about ourselves or think that God changes his opinion of us, depending on “how we are doing”. Tullian slams home the fact that we need to look outside of us to the objective work of Christ, because when we don’t, we either fall into despair when we are doing poorly (struggling with sin, depressed etc.) or become prideful when we are doing well (giving so much money to worthy ministries, having long and fruitful “quiet times” etc.).

Another thing I heard from him numerous times is a quote from J. Gresham Machen: “So it always is: a low view of law always brings legalism in religion; a high view of law makes a man a seek after grace.” I literally never understood the severity of God’s law until I heard Tullian the So-Called Antinomian. I didn’t get that Jesus was serious when He said, “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Because I had come to the end of my very short and frayed rope of self-righteousness, I was able to really hear that for the first time.

When I was a very young Christian and reading Francis Schaeffer, I was drawn to his distinction between psychological guilt feelings vs real moral guilt. While I think his point in making that distinction was to help modern semi-nihilists understand the holes in their philosophy, I was reminded of it when I would hear Tullian talk about the Big-L Law (God’s actual moral law) and the little-l law (all the “shoulds” we deal with in this life.) From Paul Zahl:

“The principle of divine demand for perfection upon the human being is reflected concretely in the countless internal and external demands that human beings devise for themselves…Law with a small ‘l’ refers to an interior principle of demand or ought that seems universal in human nature. In this sense, law is any voice that makes us feel we must do something or be something to merit the approval of another . . . In daily living, law is an internalized principle of self-accusation. We might say that the innumerable laws we carry inside us are bastard children of the law.”

I think this idea must have it’s roots in Romans 2:

“They (those without the law) show that the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.”

We know that standards of righteousness and morality differ from culture to culture, but that everywhere people have some standard of right and wrong. Even in the most secular of societies, we devise expectations for ourselves and for others that may have little to do with actual righteousness or morality, but under which we can still feel unbearably burdened. Again, Paul Zahl:

“In practice, the requirement of perfect submission to the commandments of God is exactly the same as the requirement of perfect submission to the innumerable drives for perfection that drive everyday people’s crippled and crippling lives.  The commandment of God that we honor our father and mother is no different in impact, for example, than the commandment of fashion that a woman be beautiful or the commandment of culture that a man be boldly decisive and at the same time utterly tender…  The weight of these laws is the same as the weight of the sublime moral law.  Law, whether biblical and universally stated or contextual and contemporarily phrased, operates in one way.  Law reduces its object, the human person, to despair.”

Since I have been a Christian, I really haven’t had many times where I felt like God didn’t love me or I wasn’t really “saved”. I have mostly lived under the burden of little-l law or misinterpretations of the Big-L Law. But ultimately, I have fallen prey to that because even subconsciously, I was (to quote Tullian) “…seeking (my) worth in anything and everything but the gospel of God’s grace, (so I)  kep(t) seeking and keep wearing (my)self out in the process.” I was “… setting (my) sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus.” Namely myself and my ability to perform, to improve, to be impressive.

Even before I heard Tullian I considered that I should consciously practice relinquishment. It has been so exhausting trying to fit Identity-Enhancing Activities into my days, which of course didn’t enhance my identity because it was another failure – a failure to fit in the Identity-Enhancing Activities. So practicing relinquishment doesn’t mean giving up particular things, art and zinemaking or whatever. It means relinquishing Identity-Enhancement  itself. It means believing that “my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Of course, I will fail at relinquishment too. Tullian:

“Because Jesus was strong for me, I was free to be weak; because Jesus won for me, I was free to lose; because Jesus was someone, I was free to be no one; because Jesus was extraordinary, I was free to be ordinary; because Jesus succeeded for me, I was free to fail.”

Lots of people in the blogosphere are saying that beliefs like that are what led to Tullian’s sin. And yes, it was a big, big sin. A friend pointed out how in his formal statement, he tried to shift blame to his wife, which I agree is also a big sin. This sin of his is hurting a lot of people and even giving non-Christians ammunition against us, because they believe we think God loves us because of how good we are. But as Michael Horton says in Christless Christianity”

“If the focus of our testimony is our changed life, we as well as our hearers are bound to be disappointed.”

I’m disappointed that I won’t be hearing any more preaching from Tullian, even though I agree that he needed to step down from his pulpit. But I don’t feel like he personally disappointed me, because I didn’t put my faith in him. I don’t think any of his correct statements are tarnished by this sin. I’m sad that the Liberate site is no longer up (which I guess I understand, as it was an outreach of Coral Ridge) but I don’t think we need to do damage control when a person falls into sin.

In one of his sermons, he quoted Brennan Manning. He made a joke that the next day, he would get all kinds of calls asking why he was quoting a heretic. I’m writing this because I still owe a debt of gratitude to Tullian, and that doesn’t change because he’s now an adulterer, any more than it changes my affection for thinkers and writers I don’t always agree with. Because, as RC Sproul Jr. wrote just today, “We serve a God who delights to make straight lines with crooked sticks.”

God put Tullian in my path when I might have been on the road to denying the faith, because I could see that the theology of glory was a lie, but I didn’t yet know about the theology of the cross.

May Tullian (and may all of us) always turn to God in repentance, saying “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” And when we know we have received that mercy, in hearing the gospel, “God reminds us again and again that things between He and us are forever fixed. They are the rendezvous points where God declares to us concretely that the debt has been paid, the ledger put away, and that everything we need, in Christ we already possess. This re-convincing produces humility, because we realize that our needs are fulfilled. We don’t have to worry about ourselves anymore. This in turn frees us to stop looking out for what we think we need and liberates us to love our neighbor by looking out for what they need.”(TT)

 

FOCUS – New Zine to Be Published Mid-June

~ artjournalmama ~ 2 Comments

This feels like a transition time. Baby is almost 4 and seems to be finally coming out of a long-term, hard-core gotta-have-Mama-at-all-costs phase (which has, in all honesty, lasted her entire life). My score of readers knows that I always have a lot of things I want to do or feel like I should do, but right now the overarching important thing for me to do is relearn how to FOCUS, both for my own sanity and to facilitate actual progress on the to-do list items.

I regret what has happened to my brain and my nervous system during the childbearing years way more than I regret my stretch marks or other physical signs of motherhood. I saw a documentary once about stress, and it said that many people in our culture are always in fight or flight mode. That put into words how I have felt for years, maybe all my life. It’s the pressure of “perceived threats”. That can mean being afraid that my past will come back and haunt me in some way, or worrying myself sick about what might happen in the unknowable future. There are also the ever-present threats of the present – like my all-too-common (though usually mostly subconscious) sense that somewhere, someone (could be my husband, the old woman at the grocery store or someone reading this blog) is judging me or expecting something from me that I cannot deliver.  All these things are actually incorporeal  – my feelings, neuroses, angst – but FEEL physical like threats that I want to run away from or come at with teeth bared. What that looks like for each of us will be different, how we manifest fight or flight –  but I assume (as a fellow human being in an often scary world) that you also deal with this unfortunate aspect of life in some way and have developed a few more or less ineffective coping mechanisms and/or annoying habitual behaviors in response.

I honestly believe that my body now reacts to the constant interruptions of children (and the over-complication young kids bring to otherwise simple or straightforward tasks) the way a proverbial caveman would react if they were suddenly being chased by the proverbial saber-tooth tiger. This doesn’t mean that I literally think my kids are out to get me (although they can be as manipulative as any sinner at any age). It’s like this:

kids

And that’s just one example. It’s like my brain can no longer hold a thought for more than 10 seconds even if I am alone. I think this is probably what they call neural pathway development (or in my case, neural pathway destruction). I notice this problem especially when I try to read, but it has affected everything I need or want to do. Having to do something like run a simple errand or do a basic household chore is almost a trigger in itself. I get anxious  and even somewhat panicked even thinking about doing whatever it is because I know it will require so much more from me than chopping celery. My body interprets it as a threatening situation. I can fight by literally fighting – or at least getting really grumpy and showing it. I can take flight by simply not doing “it”, whatever IT is.

My own self-improvementy thoughts (completely apart from dealing with other people) usually also feel, if not always threatening, then at least exhausting.  In practice, this makes me inefficient, because I will let my ideas (if I am feeling competent and/or productive) or my emotions (if I am feeling depressed and/or stagnant) distract me from what I am doing. I will literally be in the middle of washing dishes (a good and necessary, if sometimes maddeningly mundane task) and in response to a thought like, “Such-and-such would be a good thing to have in my next zine”. I will turn from the dishes like some mind-controlled person in a sci-fi show responding to her master’s inner call or something, and head to the computer or notebook. That’s if I’m feeling productive. If I’m feeling depressed the thought at the sink might be, “Oh crap, I’m already washing these dishes but those (insert your favorite expletive) sheets have to go in the washing machine. Man, I am a total failure at this job.” So, I turn from the dishes (in the same sci-fi manner, only looking more despondent) and go get the sheets off the bed. The most likely next act in this scenario will be someone in the family inserting their need or request or simple comment into the fray, and neither the dishes, nor the zine work nor the sheets will get done.

So, I need to focus in at least two senses. I need to focus on what I am doing at the moment and, yes, pay attention to it in a zen-like manner but mostly just finish it already. I also need to plan at least some focused time for the things I say are most important to me. This could be having a mental date with myself at 2pm every day for a workout DVD, or a plan to sit with my 7-year-old for thirty minutes to read aloud, or setting aside the whole day for only basic housework and zine stuff. I’m not sure of the specifics, in fact it is specifics I am afraid of, because when something has been specified or codified that’s when it’s most obvious if (or when) you deviate, which (in perfectionist-speak) translates to FAIL.

A new zine comes into this situation because it, in itself, is a form of focus. So, it’s a natural container for six weeks or so of my thinking and planning and (most importantly) execution of FOCUS. It should be ready for mailing by mid-June. I don’t think it will a Thirty Days Zine exactly, but it will be done quickly, in that Thirty Days spirit. I’m going to charge for this one. Not sure how much yet, but that info will be made public when it has been determined.

 

45 Minutes at a Time and the Stuff That Brings Up

~ artjournalmama

I’ve liked the idea of breaking a day down into manageable blocks of time since the old days of Managers of Their Homes (although scheduling every minute of every day into 20 minute task-specific blocs is not for me).  In my journal from last summer (which was pretty much a detailed record of my self-improvement-overdose) there are more than a few pages where I mull over that idea. It was definitely good for me to give up self-improvement as a lifestyle and an idol, but I do need some kind of framework for my time or I will literally walk around the house all day jumping from task to task but not accomplishing much that is tangible. (I was amazed at how many steps this generated when I wore a pedometer). Because I am such a perfectionist, though, something as broad as “pick something to do for 45 minutes” can get me all stressed out. I start feeling like I must (for all eternity henceforth)  fit all my life into neat 45-minute segments. I would wonder whether this or that activity should go into  1) a housework block 2) an enjoyable but productive activity block 3) a something I dread or feel a duty to do block, or 4) a true relaxation block (which is how I would likely break it down). And what about the things that don’t fit neatly into any block! We can’t have unmanaged time running around now, can we? I’m serious. Especially when I am generally stressed out or hormonal, my thought process has some uncomfortable similarities to this humorous dramatization.

On a practical level, I know it is important for me to switch tasks like that.  One of my tendencies is to go all obsessive with an activity (usually for days and days at a time) and then wind up with burnout and even a distaste for the activity that sometimes last a while. I also don’t know how else I can practice mindfulness if I don’t have a nice mental barbed-wire fence I can corral my thoughts behind for those 45 minutes. But although my rambling thoughts do need a bit of corraling, I need to let some cracks form in my Armor of Emotional Repression. A few days ago I realized and/or admitted that for a melancholy type like me, there is pretty much always some level of sadness happening. Even when everything is going along blissfully (and I feel bathed in peaceful, Rivendell-ish soothing light) there is always a sadness because of the impermanence. The moment is passing away. Of course, that is somewhat more pleasant than the dreaded is-this-all-there-is-to-life sadness that comes with depressions, the times of despair, loneliness and/or (insert human suffering here).

It’s easy for me to be critical of my much younger Journal self – more externally obnoxious, wholly non-Christian – but she had some good qualities that I have lost. She was more more optimistic and/or funny in the face of the aforementioned human suffering. She was still cynical (but it was a hopeful cynicism). My disillusionment with myself and with everyone else over the years has been theologically correct (people pretty much hopeless, hence, Jesus) BUT I wish I could just suddenly transition from KNOWING that everything I need I have in Christ to FEELING it. I know our feelings don’t affect our standing with God, and I know that He doesn’t owe us spiritual warm fuzzies and all that. I just think that my general tendency to suppress my emotions as a coping mechanism is making me cold hearted in some ways. I think it’s standing in the way of my getting the gospel on a deeper level.

I know I had a lot of pain and stress and trauma early in my life, that my protective neuroses come from that. But I know that my fear of having my heart broken (in all those myriad ways this can happen in our world) is keeping me from loving people like I should. Over the years I have come back many times to the idea that we have to lose our life in order to find it, and that means letting go of it (or at least my conception of it) and all it contains. That hurts on so many levels.  I want to learn mindfulness because I want to see my life as it is, which is the life that God gave me. I want to feel the feelings my life (the living and the losing of it) brings up because I believe that’s part of the dying process of the Christian. I want to get to the living part so I’m starting to be maybe willing to go through the death.

I don’t know how I got from 45 minute time blocks to those existential musings, but ever since I was a teenager, if left to babble, I eventually link every seemingly mundane topic to some underlying stuff.

Some Rambling About The Same Old Stuff

~ artjournalmama

I am feeling some benefit from my maxi-minimalizing adventure and my hiatus from self-improvement. Even with getting rid of almost all stuff we don’t use, the place still gets pretty messy during the course of a day. But the process of cleaning up (even though it can look so daunting to my already chaotic mind) is much simpler and might take 25 minutes for the whole house, including vacuuming and sometimes excluding the kitchen (depending on what’s happening in there at the time). I think now I could actually follow a focused day kind of routine like recommended in Bootcamp for Lousy Housekeepers, which is the only housekeeping/homemaking book that made my cut during The Great Purge of ’15.  When there was worthless stuff in all my rooms (and I’m not talking about stuff that would be considered crappy in general, it’s just superfluous for me and our lives), any focus I put on housekeeping seemed to go towards maintaining and/or organizing the excess so it didn’t put out its tentacles and take over.

Now, post-minimalizing, if I go into a room that’s messy, what I see might be toys and dirty clothes on the floor (which does look super overwhelming at first glance and can really make my heart sink if I’m having a discouraged and/or bad-attitude kind of day)… but really, they just need to be picked up and put in their proper toy homes and the washer or at least laundry area. 10 minutes tops.  I am doing surprisingly well having no or low expectations of the outward impressiveness (or lack thereof) of my life. If I feel like painting, I paint. If I feel like cooking, I cook. If I feel like scrubbing the kitchen sink (which I occasionally do) it gets scrubbed. If I don’t feel like doing much at all I will just putter around all day, getting into this and that.

I finally started writing the mixed-media/memoir book that’s been percolating on my inner stovetop for a few years. I’m not sure if I know enough to write the kind of book I’m envisioning. Not sure if I have enough actual content for actual book length, which looks to be in the 125 -150 page range for this type of book. But making the book is the only thing that’s going to answer those questions. Either I’ll finish it and say, wow, this is pathetic I need more OR (I hope) wow, I can’t believe I had enough stuff to fill a book! I am gonna give myself a deadline and say it will be done by the end of September. I want to positively utilize those long months when we are hermetically sealed into the house. I have been trying to remember that I want to Make Positive Effort For The Good, which can often be a tiny thing.  I bet if I worked steadily for just an hour a day on:

1) book research – doing artwork and doing hands-on planning of the projects and/or

2) actual writing of memoir text portions that will probably lead into the projects

…that I could be way done with the book by the last day of September.

I have chosen my closest personal artist friend to read every section and give me feedback. I am keeping a little journal close by so I can jot down any thoughts about possible content. My oldest daughter is pretty much living in my art studio room temporarily while she does some redecorating in her own room, so if I am going to work with paint and stuff I am going to have to use my 8 feet of living room table for the time being. I’m going to go through my own art journals and see what “techniques” I already use naturally, and probably work my way through my few absolute favorite art books and try some new things to incorporate into my repertoire. I also need to look through my own zines and the book The Zine Scene, because one project will be an actual old-fashioned handmade zine.

The demo zine in the book will be called something like going zen, and one feature I want to have is a list of what I did in a day, rather than things I want to do in the future. So, today I did the day one work of making danish pastries (it’s a two-day affair), I washed sheets, sat outside with my younger kids and worked on this entry, I made nummy baked chicken with a spice rub, buttery white rice and salad. I washed quite a few dishes, vacuumed and enjoyed watching my little one playing with the Daniel Tiger figures I ordered her as a surprise. If I didn’t write all that down, I would think I did the proverbial Nothing. Hopefully I can finalize the list by saying I watched the Americans, but that won’t happen for an hour (God willing).

The End.

 

 

More Thoughts About Not Doing Anything “Impressive”

~ artjournalmama ~ 3 Comments

This is the first post on a new blog, my first time having my own domain name!

I have dealt with this topic in a bit of a series. You can read the other posts here:

My inner life has definitely been more peaceful since I have stopped struggling to fit art, writing etc. into my days. Although that might just be hormones (the peacefulness part). All I have been doing is getting up and drinking my latte, and then spending the rest of the day doing basic household work and cooking, taking the little kids outside, going on 45 minute walks while listening to Tullian’s Romans podcasts, and maybe reading a few chapters of a book or watching an episode of my current television show. When I have to go to the store or take the kids to some lesson or go to the gym, it hasn’t been stressful because I don’t come home to a mess or a rush to get food on the table.

I definitely see this is a spiritual exercise and not just an opportunity to relieve some stress. I think it’s perfect timing that three of my friends are having some artistic success right now, because it’s great for the ol’ humility to not being doing anything impressive while other people are. I’m pleased to say that in general, I am rooting for them and am enjoying living vicariously through them, instead of feeling competitive. Hopefully I don’t get self-righteous about being so magnanimous.

One thing I have been thinking about for a few years is the very real possibility that I don’t have anything particularly unique to offer the world. Listening to the Romans podcasts has added to the peace I have been slowly developing about that fact. You may know that I have spent my life trying to distinguish myself with either my intellect or my creativity or by tireless service (this mostly within my own family), and it has been exhausting and depressing. Learning that it’s okay if I’m never all that successful at anything has been a relief. I still like writing, art journaling, painting and occasional debates about anarchism, but I know that many others do all these things better than I can, and that the earth will keep spinning for however long I don’t add my proverbial two cents. I am finally learning what it means that He should increase and I should decrease, and right now it’s not even a personal struggle to be decreasing. I don’t expect that to last, but I am enjoying it while it does.

I just re-read Mary Pipher’s autobiography, subtitled Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World. A big part of her story is how she had a breakdown trying to live with the stress of being a successful author, with all the traveling, the talks and speeches and the expectations. When she finally realized that she had to get off that treadmill,  her recovery came through complete simplification of her life. She spent months doing nothing but sleeping, cooking and eating, reading and non-professional writing, yoga and other gentle ways of getting in touch with the feelings stored in her body. I wasn’t quite at that point when I read it a few years ago, but it seems providential that I am in my own decompression period and focusing on the same type of things. Her children were all grown by the time she fell apart (so she was able to have a lot more solitude than I will get) but I am hoping that I’ll experience some long-term healing from whatever simplifying I can manage in my own circumstances.