The Muse is IN:An Owners Manual for Your Creativity is a book by Jill Badonsky. More about it here.
Sign-up for the Monthly Muse Flash here
The Muse is In: An Owner's Manual for Your Creativity
The Muse is IN:An Owners Manual for Your Creativity is a book by Jill Badonsky. More about it here.
Sign-up for the Monthly Muse Flash here
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07/08/2019
07/01/2019
04/29/2019
04/27/2019
My Territory
I'm taking Billy Collins' Masterclass. I think most of us love him and his poetry. Here's my attempt at a poem influenced by what I've learned from him:
I’m sitting in the living room
contemplating the yoga mat
to the right of my chair.
It remains there even after I complete the
downward facing dog and forward fold .
No need to roll and store it.
I’m single.
I don’t need be concerned that
my a style of décor,
“Contemporary Lazy,
will bother anyone.
I don’t need to change habits
that challenge the perfect order
of the efficient housekeeper:
The water pick, oddly stationed in the kitchen
instead of the bathroom where many would agree it belongs.
Cats given permission to
sit on the dining room table
like feline centerpieces flaunting
validated entitlement.
The variety of socks that have been recklessly
dropped in various coordinates of the house,
left for weeks,
sometimes months,
in the cursive sock spelling of
"So what?"
I can’t imagine having to conform to
The Good Housekeeping seal of approval.
Spending time removing dust bunnies
from underneath the sofa,
Always putting the coffee cups back,
segregated symmetrically
from the drinking glasses.
Having the Romaine stationed
in the crisper drawer when
it looks more festive
unpackaged on the second shelf
with the Tupperware containers
containing things that have been there for too long.
I can’t imagine always having to close
the cabinet doors.
My time is better spent
sitting on the back patio noticing the
sky, the blue slice above the telephone lines,
ushering a cloud through
on its way to evaporation.
Or lying on the bed reading Robbins or Vonnegut
with the Siamese and the Ragdoll
tucked in the contours of my curves as a
breeze wonders over my face.
Or eating potato salad over the sink.
I don’t fall prey to scolding myself
or comparing myself to the ordered and exact,
because I decide I am serving an important
purpose.
I am illustrating that single people are artists
simply by how they order their mess
and how they mess their order.
The houses they live in are actually art installations.
The plaque on their exhibit would read,
A single person lives here,
and the on-lookers,
the ones I imagine are there to
observe the artist’s masterpiece,
always nod and understand.
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02/25/2019
11/11/2018
The Tolerance Muscle
Dear Creative Friend,
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
~Confucius
~Confucius
Download Permission to tolerate PDF
I'd like to propose another kind of tolerance that will make your creative life easier if you buy into it. If you don't, good luck.
Once I decided creativity was going to be my life, I knew I had to either develop a "tolerance muscle" or be among the 85% that gives up on their dreams because of an unrealistic expectation of accomplishing things quickly, easily, and the way those things look in their minds.
(hahahaha snort haha).
(hahahaha snort haha).
Creativity has another plan for us. She says, this isn't about getting your way immediately, it's about searching the depths of your soul to muster up devotion to a process who's rewards go far beyond your acrylic landscape or chapter four in your book. Perhaps the world never showed any faith in you.... do you have the strength to show faith in yourself by showing-up for your creative call? Showing-up if not for the product, for the process of being true to yourself? Don't worry about showing-up perfectly - do it as inconsistently as possible if you must.
To stay on the path of my passion I got to tolerate my ineptness, blunders, inadvertently published typos, and the fact that my painting and writing didn't look like other people's stuff that I liked a lot. I got to tolerate projects taking three and four times as long as I planned, hitting walls, looking foolish and coming face to face with my ugly shadows. I got to tolerate my habits of procrastination and continually starting something new without completing anything. I got to tolerate people not liking me, thinking I'm strange, unsubscribing from my newsletter, not "getting" my art. I got to tolerate proposals getting rejected and once, I got to tolerate ripping up my favorite painting because I was looking at the wrong side.
If you're a warrior, you've tolerated these things too. And changing the language from "I had to tolerate ..." to "I got to ..." makes it clear that it was an honor to do that for myself.
Self-love is required to stay the course and in that love you discover an unmatched contentment which is a light for the contentment of others.
Creativity reassures you that when you passionately persevere through the tumult of detractors, the reward is far beyond the painting and the piece of writing. Creativity awards you with a strength, self-respect, and confidence that applies to every area of your life, breaking limitations, presenting a new perception that widens your existence beyond what you formerly knew what was possible. You are awarded with a faith that you can get through anything and share with the world your brilliance.
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