Reintegration and finding yourself not lost

Reintegration by Rowena Murillo

There are times on our journey where we might find ourselves lost.

The answers that we are accustomed to do not address the questions that we are being asked.

We might find ourselves confused, and aimless, at a loss.

What now?

Here's something that I have learned over my long journey.

These times of crisis are not a failure, they are part of the process.

The important questions will be asked again. The important answers will have meaning again. And the important paths are the ones we are still walking, even though the signposts no longer show us the way.

Keep going.

You will find yourself again.

An Empty Garage, (and some things with which to fill it)

An Empty Garage (Or My Studio, when I get my butt in gear and set it up.)

So I've moved into my new house, but I am not settled. I am distinctly UNsettled. I want to get back to work and be creative and make it cozy and decorate and paint pictures and start doing large pieces and explore and expand and grow.

But I'm still all kerflumoxed.

Oh crap. Not the process again!

Why can't life just go smoothly and allow me to pick up my art exactly where I left off? Why do I have to go through the reimagining and rededicating and revisioning? Why do I have to build up my routine day by day? Why why why?

Because that is the process.

So here I am, in a lazy state of recovery from the stress of moving and switching jobs and taking care of kids and new schedules and trying to find a new babysitter and all that. And I.

DON'T.

WANT.

TO.

WORK.

SO.

HARD.

blargh.

But I do know what my ultimate goals are, and they are to live the creative life and write and paint and teach and make money off of these things. To live in a comfy, colorful and beautiful home. To have happy and strong kids. To have a community of creative souls. To enjoy life. To live in joy.

So sometimes I just have to get over my laziness and resistance and get back to work.

But then again, I don't want to force myself to do something as a chore that should be fun.

So let's reframe it all. Instead of looking at all the work I have to do and dreading it, maybe I'll think about things that I am excited about doing. New projects. Old projects. Fun things.

Like what I am going to do in that nice big space of a garage that I have claimed for a studio.

POTENTIAL PROJECTS

• Painting Large Pieces. (I have space. I can finally paint big!)
• Using wood and metal and various hardware to make sculptures along with paperclay and sculpey and felt other familiar materials.
• Painting my old found white dresser a vibrant teal. (I've already bought the paint.)
• Furnishing my empty garage with easels and tables and a couch and/or chairs to make it a comfortable space to create. (The landlord said he'd put in a new window on the west wall.)
• Perhaps starting a new 100 in 100 Days project (I'm scared of taking it on.)
• Getting back to reading tarot cards. (I don't talk about this much, because I haven't done it often since having kids, but I used to have clients in NYC and I enjoyed it.)
• Learning how to do resin jewelry.
• Learning how to encaustic painting.
• Finishing my little doll and turning her into a kind of hearth goddess. (I need to get some art supplies to finish her up.)
• Having a place to be creative and exploratory, and perhaps also, away from the computer so I don't get sucked into the interwebs.

These are just the projects that come to mind. They are exciting. I should really get on it, before I get stuck in a rut of not being creative. Start the juices flowing so that life can be juicy.

I think I need to remember my baby steps. Maybe I'll start painting in my journal, first, so that I can get the practice back without all the stress of feeling like I need to produce something fabulous.

What projects would you like to take on? What would it take for you to get excited about them?

This Is Where Love Resides, or Flying Girl Blessing in the Branches

This Is Where Love Resides, or Flying Girl Blessing in the Branches
cotton, felt, embroidery floss, polyfill, beads, paper, acrylic paint, acrylic gel medium

Here she is. This is the finished sneak peak I showed you yesterday.

She is a stuffed flying girl, a mobile, I suppose.
This is Where Love Resides, or Flying Girl Blessings in the Branches

Here is the whole of her, from the top of her cotton thread, to the felt birdie, to the million times worked on girl to the paper banner that was not changed from the original.
Here is the original. Well one side of her, because I didn't like her very much and she wouldn't fly straight, having wonky fiber fill and arms that kept flopping and bending. The other side was embroidered with branches in silver and black and appliqued with a felt heart and leaf. So you see... I kept the inspiration in the piece, I just painted over everything else.

First of all I didn't like the color. It just didn't feel right to me. Second of all, there were problems with the sewing. It was at this point that I gave up making the tiny dolls out of cotton and just went to straight felt, where I didn't have to turn delicate arms and get that head caught in the spindly neck. SOOO frustrating. Oh yeah, and did I mention the wonky not flying straight and floppy arms? Ugh.

However, I still had this Flying Girl, and there was something about her I liked, not to mention all the work I put into her. And I did want to try painting on fabric, if you remember.

So one day I just stopped stalling and took out the long neglected paints and gave it a shot.

I was surprised to find that this project felt very familiar. Painting the doll wasn't that different from painting on paper, honestly. Yes it's three dimensional, but I found myself doing the same techniques on fabric as I do on paper. I guess when you find something that feels right, it keeps popping up. Like the layering of colors. I find I am layering colors whether it's felt or paint.

After layering the blues and whites and creams, and adding the branches, shifting the colors around a bit, I finally felt satisfied.

I think this experimentation of mine might lead somewhere.

This is why I love taking something old and turning it into something new and unknown. Your stakes are low, because the original wasn't what you wanted, but the payouts are potentially limitless.

What are some things that you have given up on that you could take up anew? Look at them without all the attachment and create something potentially awesome.

Monkey, Bunny, and Mommy's Journey

Monkey Balloon ACEO acrylic on paper, 2.5"x3.5"
Bunny Flower ACEO acrylic on paper, 2.5"x3.5"

These mini paintings are in honor of my own little Monkey and Bunny... and in honor of Easter.

I don't think there are big momentous meanings behind them. I kinda just did them for fun.

I did a goddess girl at the same time... because I just don't like to waste paint, and I had extra blue and green and cream. I'll show you her tomorrow. Actually, that is a great benefit to these ACEO's... using up leftover paint before it dries. I am really cheap that way. ;)

But I did want to talk about a question that Converse Momma had yesterday.

"Do you create everyday?" she asked.

I started to answer in the comments but realized that it was such a big answer that it needed it's own post. And really, that's what this blog is about, living a creative life, becoming an artist in amongst the responsibilities of being the stay at home mom of two very young children-- who are at this moment running around like superheroes-- oh and crying. Ha ha ha. The joys.

The answer is: Yes, Converse Momma, I do create everyday.

But I didn't start out that way. About a year ago, I was barely creating at all. It was when I decided that last year, 2008, would be the year where I recovered my creativity. I started with my blog. I fussed around in my journal. I tried to paint. I cautiously avoided my novel that needed to be rewritten. But it started in my blog, where I began thinking about what kind of creativity I wanted in my life, about the truth and the fantasy of what it means to be creative. I faced dead on what it meant to be a mother and an artist at the same time, and how I could manage that. I had a big breakthrough where I realized that being a mom and living the creative life were not separate. One did not take from the other, but they were indeed the same thing.

If you go back to last April, it seems that every post is me struggling with my creativity. I don't think people who stumble upon my blog now would believe it, and that's why I link to all of these posts today. I WAS NOT CREATIVE. But I really wanted to be. Last April, I committed to being creative-- and that has made all the difference. If you made it through all those links, you must want to be creative, too.

How do I do it? I took it very slowly, and worked my way up.
I allowed myself to be inspired by other people, artists, writers, bloggers.
I joined communities and challenges... being in my situation, they are all on line, and yet, it still works.
I gave myself someone to be accountable to-- that's you, my dear readers. I post my creativity here, my paintings and projects and struggles and wins. And it reminds me that I always need something for tomorrow's post, so I don't give up when it would be so easy.
I steal time to be creative. Practice guitar while the kids are being read bedtime stories by Papa, and then show them what I've practiced and sing/play "twinkle twinkle little star," draw sketched in my journal while the kids are playing in the garden, write a post while they are watching Sesame Street, write a poem while I am on the toilet. I do not joke. People leave you alone when you're in the bathroom, and if you're a mom, you know how precious that is. My most fertile time being creative is positively opposite to all the collective wisdom of a room of one's own and good brain time.
My winning creativity solution is to paint while I watch tv on the sofa. I carry my bag of supplies into the living room and laugh at The Office while creating Flying Girls.

I forced myself to do it when I gave myself the challenge of painting a FG a day back in September-- I'd been too frightened to commit myself to painting every day, but it was in the back of my head and then it just organically appeared when I fell upon the old idea of Flying Girl. Now, I don't know what to do with myself if I don't have a paintbrush in my hand or a keyboard at my fingertips. I'm addicted, now.

Maybe that's the key. Get yourself hooked on creating. Make it a part of your bloodstream, so those minutes in the bathroom or waiting for the chicken to come out of the oven become like a hit of a drug. Art.

See, now I thought I was so healthy, skipping the myth of the addicted, drunken artist.... and it turns out I still fall into the stereotype... it's just the creating itself I'm addicted to.

This post seems awfully "me! me! me!" but that's another thing that needs to happen when you are creative. You need to be selfish and commit to it over other obligations. At least part of the time. I think that's one of the reasons it's so hard for women/moms to be artists, because they are expected to sacrifice for their families. Oy, I think that's a whole different topic.

Remember Your Dreams and Find Your Wings

Flying Girl Flies at Night or Remember Your Dreams
12/30/08
Golden Fluid Acrylic

So yesterday was my Fourth Year Blogoversary. It's hard to believe I have been blogging so long. Actually, I started the year before, but I've been with Warrior Girl for four years, and it began when I began my journey with motherhood.

I don't think it's a coincidence that I started this blog right before the new year. I think it was the New Year and the reflection that came with it that had me sit down and pay attention to where I had come from and where I was going. Thus Warrior Girl was born.

To mark that day, last night I sat down with my paints, something I hadn't done in a comparatively long time, considering my every day painting habit of the previous few months, and I let Flying Girl loose to wander.

Remember Your Dreams was what came out.

That's really what this blog has meant for me, I think. It came at a time when I had forgotten all those dreams I had once had, lost in procreation. Maybe these things don't happen to every pregnant and nursing mother, but to me they did. A big part of myself got lost. Two kids later, and four years, I think I've gotten back to myself, in no small part because of this blog and the community I discovered here.

Maybe it shows you how lost I was that I was writing this blog for 3 years before I even got a reader or two. It wasn't until last year around March where I really started putting effort into this blog, writing regularly, commenting, finding communities where something clicked, people who I saw as kindred.

That's what this year was for. And that brings me to the other painting I did last night. I guess I was ready to paint again after my Holiday hiatus.

Flying Girl Sends the Call, or Find Your Wings
12/30/08
Golden Fluid Acrylics

Yeah. That was this year, as I explored my creativity for the first time in 4 (maybe longer) years. It wasn't easy. It might look easy at the end point, when all you see is the output, but it took so much work, both mental and physical and so long, and so many baby steps. It's only when I look back at the beginning of this year that I can see how far I've come.

And I did. I looked at my journal from a year ago. I could barely read it. I had forgotten what I horrible state things were in. I was in. Sometimes, it is easy to forget how hard this year has been. I mean, really, really bad.

And I am so glad.

By focusing on positivity, on happiness, on beauty, on meaning, on lessons and productivity, on moving forward, I was able to gain so much more than I would have if I had focused on all the really sucky things that happened this year. I don't even need to give details, just imagine your own sucky things, or worse ones if you had a good year.

And I wonder also, if this year had not been so hard, would I have made so many leaps and bounds forward in who I want to be?

I say this, not to gain pity for my hardships or congratulations for my successes. I say this for everyone else.

It is possible.

No matter how bad it gets, there is hope.

You can come back. You can discover your wings. You can remember those passions, even if you have to go digging around in your childhood to find them.

So thank you for coming on this journey with me this year. I don't think anyone's been following since the beginning of WG, but there are a few who saw the start of my rebirth.

And it has meant so much to me.

I wonder where we will fly next.

I Don't Know How I Feel

I often don't know what I think about an issue until I write about it. This may be why I write so much, I am just used to going on and on as I uncover my own thoughts. I have over sixty full journals where I have self reflected and worked out issues and outlined my true desires. Writing is a great tool, and a vital one for me, to help the thought processes.

But something just occurred to me yesterday... I may write to learn about what I think, but I often do not know how I FEEL until I paint.

This is an interesting discovery. I have been both writing and drawing as long as I can remember. They feel like normal outlets of my brain. Over the last few years, years that not coincidentally coincided with pregnancies and raising infants, those parts of myself have silenced quite a bit.

No wonder I have had a hard time moving, not just through the day, but through my life. Because it's like I have had blinders on. How do I feel about all of this???

I don't know! I haven't been painting!!!

I suppose poetry could also serve the same purpose, since it is kind of like painting with words, but I haven't been writing poetry, either.

I tell you, it's about time for a Renaissance, even if it seems as if I only have time for fifteen minutes of creativity at a time. Even if the kids are pulling at my ankles and there is, in fact, a little baby trying to get up on my lap as I type. Is making dinner and doing laundry and sweeping the floor (again!) really an excuse for half living?

I don't know how I will achieve this rebirth, because all of my old techniques to pull myself up by my bootstraps entail vast amounts of time to myself, a journal, art supplies, lots of coffee, a bit of wine and a seat at some cafe with a moody view out the window of a bustling city street.

How will I manage it now? My tools at hand consist of a toddler and a preschooler, mounds of scattered cheerios, cartoons, my uncle's computer, a neglected journal, and art supplies that have sadly, and rather symbolically, all dried out.

Well. In the mean time, let me show you a painting that I started in my journal. It is how I feel. The word is "aglow" but I am not sure if those are tentacles or vines growing into the picture. They feel ominous, but maybe they will blossom with the light and with time... I don't know.

Maybe by the time I finish the painting, I will know.