This last weekend I’ve been thinking about the process of going from Planning A Thing to Doing A Thing. I’ve been in a season of planning for a while now, and getting the swirl of ideas from my brain, to paper broken down in actionable steps to execution has been a weirdly overwhelming experience.
It used to be that the big impediment to a project was a material component. I needed some art supply or piece of equipment that I couldn’t afford and for what ever reason could not seem to find my way around, and often this issue would stop whatever plan completely.
Later, when I could Afford A Thing, the stumbling block becomes Time and Space. I never seem to have the creative space I need, and even if I did I’m aware that I don’t have the glorious chunks of time I had back when I had little money to afford supplies since I wasn’t working the way that I work now.
For some reason (namely, that my brain is used to self-sabotaging and will scramble to cover up my insecurity and laziness with Reasons), I’m pretty sure that someone could come and give me a studio and pay me for my time tomorrow and I would see some other stumbling block that I never anticipated to keep me from Doing The Thing.
I worked with a really great therapist last year, and she started to get me back in the habit of journaling and journaling in different ways. I started to break my ideas down into small, tasty, actionable steps. I started to have a written record to keep me accountable to what I needed to accomplish. I became one of those Planner Ladies that you see on Pinterest who lay out their goals on a timeline, and keep to do lists, and manage their time. (If you are curious my journal is just a spiral bound sketchbook, and my planner is a MAMBI Happy Planner that I got on sale at Michael’s). I felt like a fraud. We will talk more about feeling like fraud another time, suffice it to say that I did not understand how to marry the side of my brain that works in office administration with the side of my brain that likes to make small mythological creatures out of clay and ink. In fact, part of me really believed that they were antagonistic skills to each other, instead of realizing that they are vitally important parts of a whole.
I’ve also realized that it is important to address some of these ideas that keep us from Doing, and that as in most things, these ideas are not unique to my own experience. So I decided to go back to doing workshops/art meets using the kind of supplies you’d find in most kid’s schoolbags. My big issue with that idea was… Space! My friend Kiki mentioned we could use the big table in her tarot shop, and I immediately recoiled… I’ve been thinking about the parellels of art space and devotional space deeply for an upcoming post so working in a space where Tarot readings happen was not an easy idea for me. But as I started praying about it, and looking for other options it became clear… an answer had been provided. Not in a comfortable way for me, not in the way I expected, but I had opportunity.
So this weekend we made ATC’s at RockStar Tarot. With crayola supplies and the leftover scraps from my collage work and papercraft. And drank tea. And had a good time. And no one “caught” paganism, we all just made art. And the fraud police did not show up to call me a bad Christian or a fake artist. So, I mean, I’m just saying… if you Did The Thing, that probably wouldn’t happen to you either.
The Theopathy League 