Surrendering to the Process

A reflection and a poetry video

If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s dreaming up an elaborate adventure. I’ve no shortage of ideas for how to make life interesting for myself and others. (Just ask the long-suffering friends who have to listen to me spouting idea-rainbows all the time.)

The thing that captivates me most about being a creature on earth is the sheer scale of everything, the number of possibilities, the endless potential. I am stirred by wondering what is beyond the clouds, by watching David Attenborough with the kids and marvelling and the sheer number of species on earth, by being in motion, by the books not yet read and all the possible things the future might hold. I’m one of those who will look at things like run-down buildings and mentally turn them into the best community spaces ever (in my head, at least). I LOVE working with kids because it’s like mining for those shiny gems of potential, and they still have plenty of time to make things happen in their lives, plus all of the internal belief required. ‘Possibility’ as a concept gets me out of bed in the morning.

On the other hand, the thing that upsets me the most is to see potential go to waste. I can usually vividly picture just how GOOD something could have been, and reality inevitably falls a bit short. This is just the way of things. Resources can’t be found, people choose poorly, hope dwindles, imagination dies. Terrible, terrible things happen. The comparison of the ‘what could have been’ and ‘what is’ is jarring to a mind like mine, because I really do believe in goodness and our ability to transform things, and wish wish wish we would. There’s a sort of grief there for invisible things that never were.

There is nowhere I must learn to make greater peace with this frustrating disparity though than within myself, the only real sphere of influence. When I am still with myself, I know the ways in which I am not living up to my potential. They may not match my internet presence, they may be totally different to yours, but I know what they are… the self-limiting beliefs and behaviours, the little ways in which I forget or disregard the sacredness of my one life, and of the life around me. Oooft, hard stuff.

So, in an effort to banish ‘all or nothing’ thinking and to transmute the longing for greater actualisation into my art practice, I’ve decided (temporarily, at least) to make fewer plans. There is just something about ‘grand plans’ that can get in the way of progress. So no more straining or worrying about future things. It feels counter-intuitive at first, almost as if I’m being irresponsible, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. After all, it’s a bit like the emotions involved in observing the shortfall between the paintings you’d love to make and your current actual technical skills level; a bit of a downer at times but you’ll never master painting if you don’t just start painting! So, I’ve begun to simply write my values, my intuitions and the deep things I’d love to see realised on wee bits of paper and just put them in a jar, and then rather than making a blueprint for progress, simply to leave it alone and go about the daily process-work. This feels very odd to me as someone who usually prefers a goal in the middle-distance move towards, but recently, it’s opened so many surprising and delightful doors that I could never have imagined that I think it may be ‘working’.

Promoting Passion and Process Work

I spent last week at Keele University, helping lead ‘Promoting Passion’, a creative gathering hosted by my long-term friend from the US, Brooke Shaden (photographer, author, speaker, philanthropist and most inspiring and kind human I think I’ve ever met). She is equal parts creative magic and unmatched work ethic. Now nine years in, Brooke has managed to cultivate an environment that offers complete safety to people to be their creative weird selves. The result is a gathering where life-long friends are made, deep shadowy things are brought into the light, mistakes are allowed and tissues are required for all the tears, both sad and happy.

When we concluded, Brooke left me with this pile of 485 sheets of unused paper and, feeling that it must already be marinated in magic of some kind from our gathering, I decided this will be my little ‘trust the process’ personal project, to just do SOMETHING on a piece each day until they run out. My only rules are to go with my gut, to do it every day, and to be willing to be terrible at it and to share it anyway. Fortunately I am also still under the creative spell of fellow event speaker and brilliant friend from Italy, Sara Lando, who specialises in being not precious at all about the things we make. Her subversive genius throughly dislodged the self-judgement filter. This exercise is just short enough that I can force myself to suspend the great amount of resistance I feel for just ten minutes and DO THE THING. I’m only on day two and I sure hope this avoidance I feel calms down a bit. (It’s been mostly word-y so far thanks to spending a week with Surrey poet laureate Adam Gary too). On the other hand, there’s no way 485 things can all be genius, so I look forward to creating and sharing some truly terrible stuff with joyful abandon.

We already know when we begin that it can never be perfect or match our imaginations, but can we expand our hearts just to let it be gradually better than it is currently?

And finally, here is a wee poetry video my kids and I made… it feels like a spoken lullaby. I think this might be the first time my actual voice has been out on the internet, and it’s thanks to the attendees of ‘Promoting Passion’ challenging me to do this new and scary thing, even though I’m still in my feelings about it. So here we go guys, happy now? Let’s all just make things.