Why Creating FEELS SO GOOD….

Dear Creators of WONDER and MAGIC-

It’s been two weeks since my mom died and  there have been lots of lows and many ecstatic highs.  I’m being gentle with myself and not attempting to be productive in the usual sense.

I have been checking in on my dad everyday and rereading and listening to my absolute favorite book about the meaning of life, “The Smell fo Rain on Dust”-  which is NOW on audiobook!   He’s an indigenous shaman and poet who writes in the most unusual poet-prose.

Otherwise, I have been making art.  Painting last year with Art Medicine Woman Aviva Gold (my interview with her was one of my favorites of all time is….it’s HERE) helped me to identify the fact that I am here, among other things, to paint and make art.

Looking back, I have fallen in love with so many artists of all mediums and I think these adorations were clues that also LONG to make ART!:)  Who are you obsessed with or enamored with?  Their lives could hold the clues to something your soul wants to do?

In order to give myself a jumping off point, I’ve been taking online art classes with Tracy Verdugo  has to be one of the most generous and WONDERFUL art instructors out there.  She has a free class at her website if you are curious and would like to try it!

The thing about creative work (no matter what medium you are working in-  words, vegetables, goauche, full scale interior design projects or..?) is that we must be willing to sit down and do it…badly….at first…over and over.  I already know this from my writing and other creative endeavors.

And we must be willing to toss out many of these early efforts.  It can make me feel cray at times-  like “What is the point????”…but there is a very DIVINE point.

In time, if we keep going, we will discover a tidbit of something we made that we really LIKE..and that is definitely the best part!

What a joy to make something we feel proud inside about…WE helped make that THING come into being…and that feels magnificent.

(one tiny section of a painting I made that I really liked!).

When I paint and pay rapt attention to what I am painting, I experience a FLOW STATE which is so lovely.  It reminds me that the FEELGOOD is always there…all we need to do is put all of our attention on what we are doing.

So, whether you are listening to a kid, cleaning the floors or  making phone calls to the utility company—if you do it with 100% of your attention- it will be strangely joyful. I hope you try it!

Be gentle with yourself and keep exploring the people and things your heart is pulled towards….it will not steer you wrong.