breathe dearheart, breathe

Tag: wild inspiration (page 1 of 1)

Constraint, Freedom + The Big Adventure of Quitting my Day Job

[I’m beside-myself with excitement and joy to bring you a guest post by Andrea from ABCcreativity.

Andrea is the coach I most admire and appreciate on the internet today.  She seems to constantly create and share a beautiful, vibrating feeling of love and abundance, creativity and spirituality. I signed up for Andrea’s Creativity 101 e-course – it is spectacular (+free!) and her honey-voiced, guided meditations have reduced me to lovely, healing tears.

Andrea is an artist, a creative journaler, creativity workshop facilitator, meditator and coach. Please be good to yourself today and visit Andrea’s online place of miracles-waiting-to-happen-for-you, ABCcreativity.]

“What I love about Inner Wild Therapy is that the posts here flow into that deep space beyond words. Right now, The Case for Constraint is speaking to something deep inside me.

For several years as a struggling artist, I saw day jobs as the devil and did everything I could do avoid them. I would not be constrained.

I had no idea that the very thing I rebelled so much against, the day job, was the very thing that would move me forward and onward and into fabulous new worlds and experiences i couldn’t even see from my day job-less world.

When I got that day job, seven years ago, I swore it was only temporary.

But as I settled into the routine of an employed person, my creativity began to soar. Constrained, for sure. My days weren’t free for art anymore. But when it was time for art – I was focused. I was clear. I was more productive as an artist when I had a full time job! Who would have thought?

New art supplies. Courses. Retreats. Stability. Routine. Growth. The biggest constraint, the day job, turned into my best tool for creating a life that feels right for me. It was like a little incubator. And as I grew stronger and my creative work great bigger, the incubator got smaller and I shifted into part time work.

I am coming up to the part now where it’s time to let the day job go completely. To release the constraint and fly free. And this part is so much harder than I ever would have thought. Every day I am stunned about how much there is to process in letting this part of my life go.

This is it. Freedom. No constraints.

And I know I’m ready. Or I’m getting ready anyway. I’m planning to leave my job by the end of the year. But in the meantime I am so really fully completely aware of how beneficial the constraint has been. The safety and nurturing of it. The familiarity.

And then I get to this part in The Case for Constraint.

And that means our creative power can explode like a new universe from a black hole.

Well yeah. On the other side of the constraint there is this magnificent explosion of creative delight. That alone is worth going into a constrained period, isn’t it? To go from the grey office day job to having this as my workspace:

fabulous art room

Creative explosion of delight.

But really what it’s all coming down to for me is that this can’t be separated. Constraint and freedom are partners. I’ll always have both and how comfortable can I really get with that fact?

There are ebbs and flows. There is downtime. There are reasons to contract. Just like there are reasons to expand and create and enjoy. There has to be balance. All I can really do is listen to my life, listen to my heart, do my best to do what feels right and trust what shows up – if it’s constraint or freedom or success or stillness or a big mess or a totally amazing adventure.

xoxo

andrea”

Image “i know who i am” borrowed by me from Andrea’s Art Exhibit: “let’s all live happily ever after, a celebration of life, possibility and dreams about to come true” which I just discovered is on redbubble – available for sale as Greeting Cards, Matted Prints, Laminated Prints, Mounted Prints, Canvas Prints and Framed Prints. For stories about Andrea’s series of darling & inspiring paper dolls,  creativity blog, art journaling videos, online creativity workshops and guided meditations visit ABCcreativity.

Nature: is it in your nature?

Do you think about yourself in relation to nature around you? What is your relationship with nature?

Are you intertwined like ancient roots or curved branches? Do you blend in? Are you detached?

I have just realized that the more I am in nature, the more I details I notice and the more supported I feel.

Yes. I was going to say ‘healed’ and there is that too. But it’s supported that I mean. And feeling supported, as my extraordinary homoeopath once told me, is the number one most important factor in anyone’s healing.

Last night I noticed that the bees were still busy caring for the pinky-purple flowers of the giant rhododendron trees in our back garden as dusk was darkening thickly around them and the wind was gusty and hard. Yet even with their aerodynamically-absurd tiny wings and big, fluffy bodies the bees kept going.

Suddenly I’m thinking the quickening dark is an analogy for depression and that bees are a wild inspiration to us for mindful activity in the face of impending mental angst.

I am seeing these kind of tiny, potent metaphors and analogies everywhere I look in nature now.

It’s quite overwhelming.

It’s like I knew all this but now I am being shown, blinkers off, eyes wide open.

I’m frightened yet thrilled. Like when a child asks for some “danger” within the safety of a familiar, loved story.

A single happy moment. Unbidden. Arriving during a simple, productive task.

Cherished.

I feel we have lost much of the support of nature, the bracing perspective it gives us, and the multifarious, analogous aids we have in seasons, plants, birds, animals – aids we can easily find in every living thing if we simply look.

I think we humans have simply taken it all for granted, simply not really noticed it and furthermore we’ve been hugely attracted, like bees to blue plastic flowers, to gadgets and gizmos and fripperies that provide saccharine nectar for us which doesn’t sustain and nurture us but gives us hedonistic, too-quick highs and cravings for more.

Don’t get me wrong, I am as easily seduced by shiny as you or anyone else. But now I am feeling a different seduction that’s much more rewarding. A primal craving. And a deeper level of satisfaction.

I’m Noticing Nature.

Feeling supported by it.

Which in turn makes me Notice Nature more.

And feel ever more supported.

Why should this be such a surprise to me when it’s in my nature? Is it in your nature too?

Image “Forget Not” above borrowed from Mae Chevrette Art – Original Paintings and Mixed Media. You can buy this and other art such as “In the Sea” and “The Love You Make” oh, and “To Be Brave” from Mae’s Etsy store. Thank you for making the world more beautiful Mae.