Permission to (not) land

She made it through!! Harold's all fired up!

I love this sculpture. It is so damn rough, you know? 'Cause I don't really know what I'm doing. It's uneven. It still has tiny little particles of clay attached to the feet because I didn't clean it up properly before it went off to be fired.

But I don't even mind those imperfections. This is the first sculpture I have made as an adult. I am so proud of it :)

This is one of the first things I have painted in acrylic as an adult and I'm pretty proud of this one too :) (Apologies for the not-so-good photo). Does saying I'm proud sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet? Perhaps it does in some weird faux humble way that just doesn't ring true for me anymore. What on earth is wrong with liking stuff that's come from your own hand? I like these two pieces. I'm proud of them. I'm proud of facing blank pages and blobs of clay and seeing what comes out of them because it's bloody scary.

Making art is kind of like a version of listening to the voices in your head and doing what they tell you, except it's your heart and the right side of your brain and in some ways it feels as foreign as if voices were telling you what to do (just without language), and in another way it is so completely and utterly me and couldn't be anyone else. And it's been lying dormant for years. I am becoming myself. And it feels too good to be true.

You know what I am noticing more and more, as I go on ever so slowly allowing myself to see what's inside, to let it out, to give myself a voice in different arenas? I notice how much we people get around refusing to allow ourselves to do things that inside we are screaming to do. And then, if we do allow ourselves to do those life kinds of things, often we feel guilty and the subconscious reverb hits a few days later and we sabotage ourselves because we have ... sheesh, I dunno? Some kind of inherited Protestant work ethic thang that says that doing stuff that makes your heart beat faster must be illegal? Or some sort of stupid measuring scale that says "I don't deserve good stuff because I (a) (b) and (c)"? It's all so limiting and really totally egotistical. I used to wonder why the maxim 'Choose Life' would need to be expressed but I think I'm starting to get the idea, now.

But you know that thing that feels the best about all this newfound creativity? I don't care about what other people think of it as much as I love that I did it. That's where the value lies, which is kinda cool. And even further than that, I don't care how good it is in comparison to everyone else, because I'm not doing it to compete. I can't describe how good that feels ...

So self-sabotage and feeling guilty - stuff that for a joke :)

(Well, stuff it, that is, except for those times when I indulge it ;)