In high school art classes I did the calligraphy for this bit of philosophy: ”There is love and there is art but a man has only one heart.” (Author forgotten). I didn’t like it then and I still don’t want to agree, but it festers. I want to have it all. Why can’t I have it all?
Finding a balance in my life has always been a difficulty for me. I tend to throw myself into projects which become all-consuming until the event is over or the deadline is met. Back in the days when I was event planning for the women’s conferences and banquet decorating, my creative side took over and now, in hindsight, I think I short-changed my family. Over time, a desire to take care of my aging parents and the extended family and the household improvements and my Bible study group and my writing group and my book club—not all at once, mind you—with an occasional holiday dinner thrown in, overcame my creative performance self which got buried somewhere under the laundry and the dirty dishes.
Not that there was anything wrong with what I was doing. All those things are part of my heart, my Self, too. Its just that I’ve had a longing to be expressing something else along with managing everything else. The way I go at things tends to support this unlikable quote, that a man has only one heart, at least at a time.
So to redress the balance I am taking an online course “Creative Courage” taught by Stephanie Levy and her artist friends. http://stephanielevy.blogspot.com/2011/07/introducing-my-new-e-course-creative.html This week we have explored many facets of our creative drive and vision and goal setting. I have had some revelations but I can’t just go off in a gypsy caravan to follow them, appealing as that sounds. What I need is to find a way to incorporate my creativity into the circumstances of my life, and control some of the distracting circumstances.
Hence this picture. I am trying to turn my dreaming into doing. The scales show the dreaming (in the clouds) to be light weight and the work of doing (with necessary tools) to be more significant. The clock represents a sort of time management which seems to be in competition with the free flowing artistic spirit of the vines. This is where I am now. I think I’ve been fighting this battle since high school.
I want it all. I just have to figure out how to get it all in.
