Getting on with things

I believe that sharing something you have put time and effort and emotion into creating always carries an emotional risk, however well-rounded and confident a person you might be - will they like it? Will they laugh at me? Will they think/say/tweet that they could have done better with their eyes closed and the paintbrush up their nose? Am I being unpleasantly arrogant thinking its good enough to share? or, if selling, is this a ridiculous price to ask regardless of the time/effort/love that went into it? Who will ever take me seriously enough to pay money for this stuff?...All that kind of thing.

I do hope its not just me anyway!

Of course all that should really matter is that you like it, and believe in it. Certainly there are people who do operate like that, (or who seem to anyway). But I am not one of them. I can like it and believe in it for a while, but there is always doubt and concern and even despair (of the 'who-are-you-kidding-you-know-you-are-rubbish-at-this-and-at-everything-else-too' variety). Nothing brings low self-esteem to the fore in me like creativity does, which is a shame since I really want to be more creative and more seriously creative as well. I have got better at handling it though - this blog is evidence, if you need any. It used to be that I could like things myself, and look at them and go back to them and admire them for days, but entirely in private. Then I started showing things to a restricted list of individuals, which grew gradually and organically without me actively seeking to extend it and these days I can keep up the positivity until it is too late to do anything about it (the pictures have been posted, or 'look what I made' said, or a peice is out on the table when guests arrive). This is a very new thing. I think that the trick for me is not to think about it beforehand, just show or not as feels right at the time and save the anxiety for afterwards - and believe me it does still come (nasty comments? complete blank nothing happened kind of response? faint praise only? Compliments are always a delightful surprise). I have a little mantra (more on mantra below) that I use when I find myself agonising - every time, even if it is the five thousandth time in a minute, I tell mself  'you've done it now, let it be'. Not the most exciting or poetic phrase, but it does actually help me stop worrying myself into an early grave. Which I could do very easily if I let my natural inclination take its course.

I think perhaps that I find it difficult to separate opinions about my work from opinions about me-as-a-whole. If my work is useless then I am useless, you know the kind of thing. It seems possible that this is a measure of how much of myself I do put into my work. But if the work is done then it seems a shame not to share it. The time and effort has been spent after all, and I have to believe that I wouldn't want to show people if I really and truly thought it was terrible myself, as opposed to simply being afraid other people will think it is. Anyway, who knows, it could be rapturously received and praised to the skies! This is not my default mental state, but I would like it to be.

I  made a sampler once, when I was about 15, which read

'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these - it might have been'. 

I believed that then. And I thought it meant that I was probably going to be the saddest person who ever lived, letting all those might-have-beens slide past me because I was too scared to go out and grab them. It may well have taken me the better part of 20 years to internalise those words and recognise them as an encouragement rather than a prophecy, but I do still believe them now. The phrase can function as a mantra, and its one I use when I get wobbly about putting myself out here like this - if I don't do this, and the other things I want to do like my Etsy shop (in the works), joining art groups, seeking exhibition opportunities etc then I will never know if I could have done them. I don't like not to know things.

Mantra are extremely useful things. Or I find them so. It is not an intrinsically religious thing, or even a spiritual one although it can be. It is about packing a whole lot of thinking and decision-making into a short phrase. I write the phrase down usually, in order to make it real and active as opposed to just things in my head which can get lost or forgotten. Then when I say or read the phrase it reminds me of the things that I packed into it when I chose it. My first self-conscious, deliberately chosen mantra was from Rudyard Kipling's poem 'If''. I took the lines:

"If you can forces your heart and nerve and sinew

to serve your turn long after they are gone

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the will which says to them 'hold on' " 

because at the time I was deeply stressed and also depressed - you know the things on the most-stressful-thing-that-can-happen-to-you lists? They had all happened at once, and I had to keep it together because other people were depending on me to do so. To me those words meant that even when  struggling as long as I could hang on to the will to carry on, as opposed to curling up in a corner and waiting for the world to go away, then the rest of me would fall into line - I had the emotional strength to hang onto these lines, if nothing else. So I would repeat them to myself over and over when I need to and it was like telling myself 'hold on, hold on, hold on'. I had them in a locket for a while, then I put them in a little bottle instead so that I could see them as well as hold them.

Having them physically with me was a good thing, as if I was in a situation where I couldn't just stop and recite poetry I could just hold them and think 'holding on'. Writing the words down was important, I know the whole poem by heart so I could have just recited it to myself but by choosing the words and writing them down I was investing them with the meaning I needed them to have.

There are other things I should have done then (Doctors, counsellors, whatever), but I didn't. The mantra didn't make everything better, but it did help me to cope with things and it is a technique I still use, and am finding new uses for. Mantra can influence feelings and help you through doing things you find tough. My current favourite, which is a good one for trying new things that you don't know will work out, is also from a poem - Sheenagh Pugh's 'Sometimes' -

"Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to"

which reminds me that failure is not foreordained or inevitable, even for me. I wrote this one on coloured paper to signal positivity, and I put a feather in with it because birds are the most supremely self-confident creatures. I can hang it in the window when I'm working or have it in my pocket if I am going somewhere intimidating.

 

It is also important to me, as I think I mentioned, to notice when I am feeling negative. This is because you can get so used to feeling that way that you forget other things are possible. I try to recognise it and then move on - pretty much with that phrasing. 'I think I'm stupid. Noted. Now I'm getting on with this'.  If you try to ignore thoughts and feelings they grow - like telling someone not to think about the pink elephant - so, in theory, noting them should keep them small. I can accept that, just at this moment, I think I am stupid without letting that stop me doing what I have decided to do. I've just made another bottle charm today actually, although not a mantra. More of a symbol, reflecting the fact that fear can be a barrier but it can also be spur. I find it very easy to get down on myself about being down on myself, about being shy, about finding the creative act frightening but it is also true that I need the fear, I need to be aware of the risk that I take when I make art in order to be sure that I am producing something real and true. It is a stylised molecule of adrenalin, made out of paper and beads. I have been using this image in a painting, and I find it strangely pleasing. Hence my little charm.