Valentine's Day Project

I know, I'm a bit late in reporting on my Valentine's Day project - a totally fun adventure in paint, tissue paper, words, and gel medium. I worked a layer a day, in small chunks of time that felt manageable and not too much. I knew what I wanted when I started out, but over the several days of work the collage informed me what it wanted too, and I was in a nice place to hear it. My beloved really enjoyed it, and miraculously he had also made me a lovely collage. By the way, if you want to nominate a name for my beloved, I'd like to hear it. He's trying to convince me to call him Mo Golden on this blog, but I'm not sure that name gives the right tone.

Lately I've been enjoying podcasts about the creative process. Creative Thursday by Marisa Haedike discusses how to step out of fear and into courageous faith in your creative potential. It's important for me to hear over and over again. I'm realizing how, when I start to dream of making my living from creative pursuits, the money fears make themselves known. When did I start needing so much money? How can I scale back and need less? Or is now the time to really put my nose to the grindstone and make (and save) as much as I can? Can someone in her 30's actually work less, make less, and enjoy more free time? Or isn't this the time for paying dues, working hard and long so I can "deserve" an easy retirement?

It's interesting to lay out all of the thoughts and beliefs that come up around living a creative life. I notice, looking at the last paragraph, that there wasn't any room for making a wonderful, abundant living as a creative. Well, why not?

For the last several months I have been catching up with the wonderful podcast, Cast On with Brenda Dayne. Brenda brings to knitting philosophy, community, history, archeology, anthropology, science, and art. It's great fun and I only wish I had more time to listen to it when I can actually sit and knit along. Most of my listening happens on the way to and from work.

The next week leaves me no time to paint or collage, but I am rehearsing the next show, and there's some wonderful creativity going on there. We'll see what April brings.