On the weekend I went out to dinner to the Salt Spring Inn with an artist friend. I like that place. It's very cozy. Good ambiance. Friendly staff. The food in the two times I've been there has been decent.
When I was sitting there, I did notice a very quick wistfulness that seemed to rise and disappear quickly. It reminded me of being in the city because eating out is just not something that I'm going to do here much. It's too expensive. And, let's face it, for whatever reason, the food in these smaller places is just never that great. And, I never understand that. What is the deal with that? Why is it so hard to find people who know how to cook in small towns?
Perhaps not a coincidence, it was packed and I think probably the only place that was full that evening which we both found really surprising given the weather and that New Year's Eve had just happened.
It's nice to go out with someone who has to think about the creative process and to be able to talk about that with someone. It's just not the kind of conversation that comes up unless you are in the company of other people who are involved in some form of artistic endeavour.
It was interesting for me to hear that someone else has the same fears. That fear prevents them from moving forward or makes them doubt their direction or whether what they're producing is good enough. It makes them questoin whether the direction they feel they want to move in is viable. Then, there's all the work that will go into not just making the art but having to promote it, and finding the best way to do that. Artist/Entrepreneur. The two have to go hand in hand.
I think it's important to be reminded that whatever we may be experiencing as individuals trying to create something is also being experienced by all other artists who want to try and make a living off their artistic talent regardless of the medium.
She just recently quit the part-time job that she's had since moving to the island in 2006 because it moved her away from the reason she came here in the first place - to focus on her own work -and she only had it because it was a way to assuage the fears that what she really was going to do wouldn't work and how would she have enough money to survive.
This seems to be a never ending theme for creative people. How to do what you want to do and yet make a living to survive. And, let's face it, who wants to just survive. That's kind of tedious. I want to thrive. I don't want to just survive.
I've been thinking about a lot of this stuff now that 4 days of my week are being taken up with something - a job - that right away feels like it is taking me away from why I came here. Right away, I couldn't help but notice a change in my energy because instead of having things flow, meeting new people, I'm now in the same place 5 hours a day, four days a week. I`m having to listen to people who more often than not seem to have energies which are vibrating at lower level frequencies as a result of being in difficult situations and I`m noticing how that`s impacting my own energy.
I'm trying o remind myself that it's only temporary but I'm very conscious of this artificial clock that I've set for myself for the next year and anything that takes me away from why I think I came here causes me to get a little unhappy and impatient.
It's the same feeling I get whenever I haven't written anything for a while or I'm always having to do other things prior to getting down to doing what I really want to be doing. We've all been there.
I don't want to waste the year and look back and think, gee, I never got around to doing anything with my photography or I didn't write what I thought I would.
So, I'm feeling very much in need of getting very clear about the projects I'm intending to complete and detailing that in a step by step way.
That's what's been on my mind this past week.
And, really I never intended to write any of that. I completely forgot that what I was really going to write about today was about how if you pay attention to the rhythm of the seasons without forcing activity that is contrary to the season then things will flow more easily I believe.
It's good to remind ourselves that winter is a time to slow down, to plan carefully for Spring and all that you wish to try and have come to fruition throughout the year.
So, that's what I'm going to try and do. Not too exciting a post but hey, not much is going on right now!