Panic at the Studio: How I’m Learning to Show Up for Myself

I can’t say this is true for all artists, but it’s true for this artist. After a show is hung, after the studio is swept and organized, after the opening is over –  my mind goes blank. I’m certain I’ll never create again.

At the end of May there was no doubt my encaustic days were over. I was done. I brought a table loom into the studio and pulled out a few kumihimo wheels from storage in the garage believing I had spent my limited creative battery life. I felt drained.

Playing with weaving on a tomato cage

And then the panic began. I realized that October is not too far away and in October I will be hanging a solo show. 

Panic, of course, was getting me nowhere. To distract myself from the rising tide of fear that my life was a total waste and that I was incapable of ever having a good idea again, I settled into weaving on the table loom. Which also got me nowhere. So I settled into creating kumihimo braids for the charms that came back with me from our trip to India a few years ago. At least that was something productive. December, after all, will be here not long after October and I need product for the holiday craft shows.

And that’s where I found my calm.

The meditative nature of kumihimo and the rhythmic click of the bobbins as the wheel turns in my hands brought me to a place where I could begin to think about melting wax again. And that’s how I realized there’s something brewing inside me. Another story asking to be told.

Wheeling away with my kuihimo wheel

Of course, Austin Kleon would point to Tom Waits and Nick Cave, songwriters who believe the music is not within them and struggling to get out. Instead, they prefer to  believe the words and music already exist and are floating in the ether waiting to be found. Which is not unlike Michelangelo’s assumption that the sculpture he was searching for was already in the marble. It was his job to chisel away the superfluous material. Or like the art teacher I knew, who asked his students to consider that the drawing was already in the pencil they held in their hands. 

If I’m willing to open myself to those sweet possibilities then my time at the table loom and with the kumihimo wheel was time that I needed to settle. Time I needed to become receptive. To tune in. To reflect on how I want to show up for the work, for the muse, and for myself. 

The supplies I need to build my new body of work will arrive on Tuesday. I’m itching to get back to what I love to do and I need to do. I’m excited by what I might learn this time around. 

We are acts of creation and born to create. It doesn’t matter if you’re dragging a loaded paintbrush across a blank canvas, typing on a keyboard, pouring ingredients into a mixing bowl or writing formulae on a whiteboard. We are acts of creation born to create. 

As we step into a new week – what will you do to be more receptive to that possibility? How will you show up for yourself these next seven days?

The Gift Part II: How Mimm Got Her Mojo Back

When I was in my late twenties there was a nightclub with a mezzanine and lots of ferns on Bryant Street in downtown Palo Alto called 42nd Street. It later became O’Connell’s Pub – a place I loved and, if my memory serves, the place where I saw the band Black 47 for the first time. But when it was still 42nd Street I was taken there after a dinner date. We had a drink or two to loosen the truth and then he said something I’ve never forgotten:

“I think the reason why you keep yourself so busy is to avoid meeting people.”

It was a small but pointed observation. While at the time I was keeping busy in order to avoid a second date (very nice guy but not my type), his words stung. But as the saying goes, the truth hurts.

It was never my intention to be a busy person. My natural inclination leans more toward sloth than to hare. And yet, here I am. A busy person.

Being busy has its benefits. I’ve worked hard enough over the past decade to purchase my own BMR home. I’ve worked hard enough to keep myself clothed with mark downs at Nordstrom’s Rack and I’ve worked hard enough to keep myself a little too well fed. I’ve even worked hard enough to enjoy the occasional splurge. The latest? Lash extensions and a mani/pedi so I could feel full-on girlie girl at the wedding Ben and I attended last month in Atlanta. 

Being busy has cost me, too. Being busy has kept me from the things that help me feel whole. No amount of lash extensions and freshly painted toes can replace a quiet hour of writing or a day given over to kumihimo, basket making or taking photographs at Shoreline. 

But now we’ve landed on the second Monday since the start of the Zombie Apocalypse. It feels less like eight days and more like eight years. Still, I’ve been given the precious gift of time. What have I done with it all?

On the first Monday, when I took my walk to the pain clinic and found it closed, the novelvirus was as described: novel. I didn’t give the sudden change in circumstances much thought. I was feeling a bit giddy – a little like the feeling I have after an earthquake that’s big enough to remind me life is fragile but not so big as to break the Simon Pearse vase given to me as a housewarming gift.

By Tuesday I was pulling my hair out.

On Wednesday my beloved Ben was thinking about finding an office space to rent. Yes, I was that bad. So I took myself to Shoreline and began to ponder how we would survive. Ben joked if the virus didn’t kill him, I would (SO not true!).

I spent some virtual time with my new peer coach, Evan, on Thursday. By the end of our Discovery Meeting I had an action plan in place. I resolved not only to write an hour a day or 500 words – which ever came first – I also made a promise to myself to create a schedule. I realized my heightened anxiety was fueled by a sense of being unmoored. When all my work ended I was set adrift. A schedule would anchor me once again. I just had to be certain it was a schedule that focused less on creating Busy Person Mimm and more on Taking Care of Mimm.

By Friday I had free online yoga classes organized for my students and friends – you can find the schedule here. I filled my academic calendar with the classes I now have time to take to complete my coaching certification. And I scheduled time for walks, for art, for self-care. 

And today? The second Monday since the start of the Zombie Apocalypse? Well, it’s possible that today I got my mojo back.