past the attachment to safety
creative blocks, practices of curiosity, the lovers, losing yourself
Hi again,
So many thoughts kicking around in my brain! Yesterday, sitting on a grass mound by the Oakland harbor, I said to my friend Trent, “I’ve been having reflections.” And we laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been having THOUGHTS! My brain has been thinking.”
I’ve been coming out of a cloud where I felt creatively blocked. Since July, I’ve moved to Oakland, started school in-person, and largely been out of my comfort zone. The last few weeks, I have been on break from school. During this time, I started doing The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, after years of hearing people talk about that book and thinking, “Oh, huh, I should check that out.” I’ve been nesting. I’ve been trying to put my health (emotional, mental, spiritual, physical) first, and to see how that changes my life.
So this week, I am giving you notes. And I will develop them in time.
Welcome to the Lovers year. Sarah Faith Gottesdiener, who runs the podcast Moonbeaming, gave a wonderful workshop on this Tarot card and the themes of the year. The card was originally called Choice. I recommend a rewatch of Sarah’s workshop ($), or following her newsletter (free). In embodying this card, I am trying to recognize my autonomy and all the ways I can choose. And the ways I cannot.
What ways can you choose? What are the choices you make, that you don’t even realize you make, daily? In which ways can you not choose?
I have feared growing larger and tried to keep myself small. This shows up a lot of ways for me. But one thing I’ve been thinking is, I have to have the bravery to be able to grow larger, and to recognize when I am intentionally holding myself back because it feels safe.
The Artist’s Way has made me reflect on how I, and many of us, tend to sell ourselves short. We don’t allow our dreams to be utterly expansive. We cut them down to fit into “practical” containers. Of course this isn’t always on purpose, or by choice. But sometimes, people ask us what we want to do in the future and we say an answer we think we should say. We downplay our deepest desires, thinking we are protecting them. One day we feel “blocked” and can’t quite place why. We don’t feel connected to ourselves. In all of our self-protective attempts to hide our dreams, we forgot what they were.
It took me some time to realize that I have been doing this to myself. Creating art and writing is a driving force of my life. I dream of spending my life doing those things, whether or not that means paying my bills with it. But people ask me, “What do you want to do in the future? What about when you graduate?” and I immediately say a practical answer. I try to sound smart. I don’t say I want to create because it is not a “realistic” answer. Or, sometimes, because I don’t wish to get into the vulnerable territory of truth with a stranger who I doubt will take me seriously. So I crumple up my real desires and tuck them into my back pocket, replacing them with a more practical answer. By doing so, I reinforce the idea that my dreams are unattainable.
I am not disregarding practicality, nor the need to make money to survive. But for the last month I have been feeling lost and creatively blocked. I’ve realized I am creating my own block. By trying to attach the worth of my creative practice to practicality, I am telling myself creating is not a worthwhile thing to devote my energy to.
I can’t make good work when I’m thinking about whether or not it will be successful or if others will compliment me for it. The work I am most satisfied with is the work that is as honest as it can be. This honesty almost always comes from a place of vulnerability and uncertainty. What is the most truthful is often messy, many-edged, and fluid when it is interacted with. It is not something I am always confident in. Growth requires pushing myself past points of familiarity, and not seeking applause for going there. How can I feel sure in this? It doesn’t feel SAFE. But I don’t want to hold myself in small containers because they feel safe. I’ve done it for a long time. I understand the necessity this held for me at different times in my life. If I want to get past my creative blocks, I have to get past my attachment to a sense of safety. I have to let myself feel and be in the (constant) uncertainty, and find ways to ground myself despite that.
Further, by trying to give others a practical version of my dreams, I am trying to be who I think someone wants me to be. If we do not show up as our full selves, we will not feel seen and therefore, we will feel loved. The reward of vulnerability is being seen, and being truly loved. It is ok, even necessary, for our circles to shrink. It is ok to not be liked by everyone. It is ok to be niche. It is necessary for the people whose opinion I allow to sway my choice to be a very small list. It is ok to limit input from external sources, and be choosy about what I consume.
Further: If I wish to find myself, I must first lose myself. And then do it repeatedly. The process of self-cultivation has been one of continually stumbling, thinking I’ve completely lost my way (and self), then finding myself again, in the tender places of reflection that I have been in before.
The deep questions do not lead to more questions. They lead to more answers. How can I honor the questions, and rather than trying to unravel them, follow where they go? How can I, as Rilke said, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
How can I create more practices of curiosity? How can I move through the questions without getting stuck on uncertainty? How can I allow my dreams to be expansive? How can I find simplicity in my days, and make all of these things not hard, but joyful, or fun even? How can I keep asking, even when I think I know? How can you? How can we collaborate and do these things together?
Thank you for reading.
Recommendations for this week
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
“Be My Husband” by Nina Simone (Hot Chip remix)
The Unknowing podcast
Finding ways to be a student
Taking steps to learning a new skill outside your comfort zone
Submit your poems and stories to Hello America’s winter compilation
Waking up one day and saying, “Hello world! Me again!”
Asking more questions
Keeping a notebook
Nurturing the relationships around you which make you feel seen
Believing in yourself
This Audre Lorde quote: “I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes--everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!”
I just wanted to say the way you write feels like spring and makes me want to love deeply, so thank you :)