This week, I've been focusing on some drawing work and waiting for some more new wools to arrive before starting a doll project that I'm really excited about and have been planning for a long time...
I spent the whole of Saturday cleaning the house, whilst pottering about and playing with the children nearby, and stopping intermittently to make this tiny sweet Waterbaby... I found the card amidst and old collection that I'd had in my twenties. whilst cleaning, and the gorgeous new wools arrived in the post that morning... As I was cleaning/playing the little idea appeared to me! The shells are scallops shells - left over from a recent anniversary treat.
I felt so happy when the idea came together so quickly, so effortlessly, and so sweetly... And this is the thing with creative life... it just brings Joy. And peace. And fulfilment. And a feeling of truly living.
Since my littlest is now at school. and the time for me to get on with my own work has finally arrived, I've been rubbing up against lots of questions of how to grow things to the next level. As I have mentioned before, I'd like to open an Etsy store, attend markets again, and maybe grow things on social media. Making things bigger though, for the sake of the numbers, is just ever so slightly out of my comfort zone.
I recently enjoyed reading Elizabeth Gilbert's latest book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. I loved this book! It's like all the conversations I ever had with myself about creativity, the inner obstacles to creativity, and doing it anyway! It's an amazing book, and I think every creative person could benefit enormously from reading it! I love the way she shares the contract that she made with her creativity early on; that she would never ask creativity to make her living! That to her, was only going to murder creativity.
It lit a light-bulb for me as I remembering making almost the same pact with my own creativity when I started my blogging journey almost 5 years ago. My pact was, that I am NOT going to ask that anybody reads this or that I gain a big following or for what I write to go viral or gain lots of social media likes or anything like that... to me, that was exactly the same as asking my creativity to make me a living. Too much expectation. Too much pressure. As a sensitive person and an introvert, that was just going to kill my creativity dead.
Instead, I just gave the permission I needed to embrace small. To stay small for however long I needed, and that staying in flow and making things and living this highly creative life that I love was the single-most important thing. And I DID stay in flow, and things DID grow, and I am totally grateful for that gift I gave to my own creativity - permission to stay small.
I was also conscious that the creative work that I share here and on my currently small Facebook page is like an extension of my life with the children; our home, the way we spend our days. Stepping into this space, is a little like stepping into our living room! And there are only so many people that our living room can happily hold!
It's very easy to get caught up with concerns over what the rest of the world is doing. I think inner statements like "why should I do this drawing/painting/sculpture/thing when so many people have already done it and are doing it better" and "I don't have a book published or 6,000 facebook likers so I'm not professional" - are pretty universal voices. All "creative's" have them, but all those voices really do, is stop us from doing it anyway. Stop us from following the things the things we love to do and the things that essentially reflect WHO we are, what we can do, and make us feel whole when we do them.
I stated on my first blog, that was largely about family life, that it was never my intention to impart advice, opinion, or guidance etc. That's just not my gig. Being non-judgemental about ways to live has always been important to me, besides, you didn't ask me to help you, so, without your permission, I won't. Elizabeth Gilbert writes the same thing in her book. That letting the work exist for itself first, before anything else, liberates creativity. I'm with Gilbert on that. Yet I'm also with her, when she observes that sharing our stories CAN still inspire others, whether our intention is to help them or not.
And that's why I'm choosing to share this today... I'm so glad I made that pact with my creativity and that I did it anyway. Our home is vibrant and alive and filled with creations... I'm grateful just to have been 'in flow' all this time, and grateful, deeply grateful for my tiny audience, who for me, have made 'staying small' so beautiful, and so totally, totally enough.
I feel like all my work of the last two years is like the tiny Waterbaby in the shell... just discovered and washed up from the deep... new, fresh, perfectly formed in its own unique tiny way, and FULL of potential to grow bigger... who knows what the next stage of the journey holds... Thank you deeply for reading, and sharing the journey so far!!