follow your dream

Fearlessness in Baby Steps

| Mairead

2310f

(French window)

Ok….. so, I’m supposed to be practicing (from the dictionary: the actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method as opposed to theories about such application or use) my fearlessness this week. I was figuring that might include some standing up on a soapbox or knocking on people’s doors or listening to a lot of criticism. It turned out to be a lot simpler than that. (Thankfully.)

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(French gate)

But before fearlessness there came little drops of sunshine. I have no idea who reads my words, unless they tell me. So I don’t know if the person who sent me this beautiful Ted talk about creativity read my last post. Or the person who met me for coffee…. Or the two people who gave me massages… Or the person who listened without asking me anything… Or the person who sent me a text to tell me she was doing lots more creative things since talking to me… Or the person who told me she was thinking of me… Or the person who sent me a link to hens (yes hens)… Maybe their kindness was a coincidence, but this week I got a heap of kindness. And the best bit? No one encouraged me. No one told me it was easy. No one told me to just do it. No one told me not to do it. No one pointed out that I didn’t know how to follow my dream… The silence was beautiful, thank you 🙂

2310g

(French garage doors)

And in the silence there was the first fearlessness – listening to myself. You might be surprised to learn that the one who thinks I should be doing things better… is me. Funny that. (Well, no not that funny, really.) Yep, there’s no group of protestors with banners outside my door calling TRY HARDER IN THERE! The protest is inside. This might be a good time to silence the protest inside my head.

2310e

(French church door)

And in that (at least partial) silence there was the second fearlessness. Anytime I’ve encouraged others to practice fearlessness (or any other new behaviour) I’ve known it needs to be done in baby steps. And it needs to include gentleness as you would towards a baby taking their first steps. Loudly shouting at the baby to GET UP OFF THAT FLOOR AND WALK, NOW! rarely brings success. This was a good time to practice the baby-step theory.

2310h

(French hiding door)

So, my itsy, bitsy, baby step happened quietly, gently at a small table in a pretty little coffee shop. I sat with an old friend (she’s not old, she’s… ah, you know what I mean) who definitely didn’t read my post and I haltingly (at first) began to tell her about my hopes and dreams for getting other people to connect to their creativity and to their peace… and no one died… and she understood… and then we talked about something else.

Brene Browne

(And my favourite sister sent me this photo-quote… It’s Brené Brown who is also running a creativity course… with Oprah! Creativity is very in…..)

I’m grand, how are you? Mairead.

I’m bursting to share this thing…..

| Mairead

2010a

(Lavender)

AAAAAh I was taking to someone over the weekend and they asked me what I was up to and I mentioned my Kickstart you Creativity course was starting in November. And as I mumbled and stuttered through some kind of an explanation I realised I couldn’t talk about it. I can’t talk about this thing I’m bursting to share…. It. Is. So. Frustrating. And of course my fallback for a solution to my inability to talk is to beat myself up. Today, I’m going to do something different for a few minutes, here….

2010b

(Love in the Mist)

Because I know most of you don’t live anywhere near the town on the east coast of Ireland and the west edge of Europe where I am going to run my course it makes it easier for me to tell you. I’ll write to you about my tiny little dream that I’m too afraid to speak about out loud… and I can hide behind my writing. This post is just for me (note to self: is it time to admit that this whole blog is just for you?) I don’t know what I’m going to write. Maybe by the end I’ll have a moment of acceptance or a moment of clarity or just a big meltdown. I do know I will stop at the bottom, post it and tomorrow I will write about something else.

2010c

(Mushrooms… bursting through the soil)

But today it’s about this: I’m bursting to share a thing that brings me peace and calm! But it’s too, too, too precious for me to bring it out into the light. It might get attacked by marauding bands of baddies….. Ok that sounds crazy. I know. I know it sounds crazy, but… Remember when you were little and you got this great present from your favourite uncle/aunt/mother’s best friend/rich shopkeeper? It was so great! And you wanted to show your friends, didn’t you? And you ran out to the green/road/school and you said in your little girl/boy voice “Look at this great thing Uncle John gave me!” And that moment when you stopped speaking was the happiest you were for the rest of the day because kids can be cruel and they didn’t share your enthusiasm or even your interest in your great thing or your wonderful Uncle John.

2010d

(Beauty underneath)

So you learned a clear lesson – keep the best stuff to yourself. Keep the stuff that means the most to you to yourself, hidden from the light in a safe place. Even if it means you can’t use it. Like the tiny china tea set that I got one year out of the blue from a friend of my Dad’s. It was fun sharing it with my dolls but it would have been so much more fun sharing it with my brother and my friends… but I couldn’t trust my best stuff, the things closest to my heart, with them so we all lost out. When I couldn’t share my china tea set no one got to experience how great it was – not even me. I was afraid it was going to break or my heart was going to break because they wouldn’t think it was as amazing as I did!

Aaaaaah and here I am again!

2010e

(Fence in Altamont)

When this thing began it was a tiny dream and a minuscule little thought. I wanted to uncover a process that would allow me to share what I found – peace, calm, and the fun of creation – with others. It grew when I was in France, when I went out to the garden each day and I felt myself connecting to peace as I began the process. And it worked. I started to think I could really do this. I could definitely share this process and maybe it could help other people connect to peace.

2010g

(Moss growing quietly on a rock)

Then I began to have doubts… Would it actually work? Is there a path through creativity to peace and calm in a human’s life? A sometimes difficult, challenging, even awful life? If there is would my little process find it for others? Who would want this, maybe I’m the only one who wants to connect to peace and calm? Now that I think of it, maybe getting basic physical needs met is more important. Needs like food, warmth, health, money….

2010i

(Hydrangea)

But the doubts (even if they are valid) are just a smokescreen… they are hiding my fear and my sadness. And I can’t blame the children who taught me the lesson. I can’t blame their parents. I have no one left to blame but myself… and that isn’t working too good…. so I’m going back to my precious things. The precious things, the china tea set or my course are so connected that I may be able to free one with the help of the other.

2010h

(Butterfly and Lavender)

I don’t need encouragement, I have lots of encouragement, I have to step out on this ledge on my own….

I don’t need anyone to tell me you big eejit just do it! I am telling myself that all the time…. and it isn’t working.

I don’t need anyone to tell me it’s easy…

I don’t need anyone to point out that I have been encouraging others to follow their dream and I can’t even do it myself… I know.

I don’t need encouragement not to do it…… I am bursting out of my skin to do this… and I am scared shirtless.

And that reminds me, I read a quote this morning: Fearlessly accept the reality; then fearlessly set about transforming what needs to change. — Elena Brower.

So while I’m revving up my fearlessness, maybe you could share your precious thing? Mairead.

Parthenay – not just a pretty town

| Mairead

2309b

(This is the Courgette Chocolate Cake – yummy! And no I didn’t make it…)

It is so hot here today. It was so hot yesterday too. At the weekend we went to visit a little town called Parthenay. It’s a really beautiful walled town with a combination of stone ruins and pretty half-timber houses. We took about 200 photos so if you’re getting bored with hen pictures have no worries there’ll be something different this week. Although I don’t know how you would….

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(Look how brave she is!)

You remember last Friday I mentioned the Camino? Well, a funny thing about Parthenay is that it was one of the towns in France on one of the routes to the Camino. (Yes there were lots of towns and lots of routes but still…) There’s even a whole area of the town called St. John’s Quarter. St. John is the saint of the Camino because his remains are buried in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela – the end point of the Camino walk.

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(One of the narrow side streets)

So… isn’t that gas? And we walked a lot in Parthenay, up and down little side streets, along steps, over the ramparts. The old town is on a hill surrounded on three sides by a loop in the river, no slacking off on the walking that day. Therefore, you could say I’ve already started the Camino… One day I mention something, the next day it comes to me…. now what do I want next?

2309g

(Only 1,492.2 Km to go)

Ok, well that’s kinda funny too.. because the thing I want is… to encourage others to join my classes where we do crafting with intention like I’ve been doing here, like the collage, montage, art journaling, life journaling or whatever. And I looked up just now and saw Mara at the trestle table painting a little coffee table she got from the second-hand shop. We’ve been crafting side by side all day at that trestle table.

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(The ramparts)

Maybe I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing….. Mairead.

I have a very little fridge and I’m not going to fill it up with rain

| Mairead

1809c

(Some perfect scraps of paper)

It seems to have rained all night so the ground was very wet this morning…. but it’s sunny now so I’m sitting outside on the swing. Since we got here I’ve been making craft stuff everyday (except at the weekend) and the weather has been nice enough to work outside. Until this week. It was hard to come back inside when I’d got used to working in the air. Even when the sun wasn’t shining it felt good to be outside. Now there were downsides. For example every piece of paper had to be weighted down so that it didn’t blow away. It’s painful fishing for those perfect scraps of paper in the rose bushes. But working inside the glue smells and the spots of paint I’ve been dropping may never come out of the rug… 

1809a

(Bits and pieces)

So, instead of reminding myself it will be a lot colder and wetter when we get back home and how’s that going to suck… I starting thinking….. all this talking and thinking about cold weather or wet weather or bad weather gets me no closer to the thing I want to be doing. It’s just a distraction. 

1809b

(Mara came back today and she made up a vegetable basket – all from the garden. And later there’s promise of chocolate zucchini cake – no idea…)

Like when I go into the supermarket here. I bring a list, it’s a very small list because we have a very small fridge (note to self: bigger fridge is not always better fridge, you tend to fill the fridge and the only advantage is that there’s more room for things to go off…) But on the way to getting the things on the list I see lots of attractive other things. Like cute knives and forks, you can never have enough knives and forks and they have a gingham pattern. Or cake… well who doesn’t want more cake? Or those funny orange sticks in the fish section – what are they? Anyway, by the time I find the things on the list the basket is full and I’m ready for a nap. 

1809f

(Who could pass these?)

How is that like this? Maybe not a lot but it reminds me… when I’m in the supermarket I forget why I’m there – to fill the little list. When the rain falls I forget why I’m here (in France, but maybe also in general) – to fill my other little list. My other little list has joy and love and fun and crafts and glue and paint and scissors and fabric and pins and thread and wool and other people’s hens and…..

If I fill my other little fridge with rain and cold and problems and worry it’ll be hard to get anything else in, Mairead.

And so the work begins….

| Mairead

1009a

(The tunnel of tress)

Last evening we went for a walk. There’s a farm lane at then end of our road and we followed it the first evening we arrived but there were signs and as we couldn’t read them (!) we turned back, rather than suffer the consequences of trespass! But our host tells us the signs only refer to hunters, so we’re welcome. We went off again last evening and found a lovely tunnel of trees. The tunnel led past a house where a man was carving a huge tree trunk into a deer with a bench. We waved our Bonjour and carried on to a lake. The lake was surrounded by other carvings by the same man. The path continued onto a paved road and eventual onto the main road where we were able to complete a circuit home. Considering how few houses we passed there are lots of paths.

1009d

(One wood carving was in the middle of the lake, might be  a seal?)

It’s the same with the roads we’ve been driving on. There are multiple roads leading to the local town and our sat nav seems to bring us on a different one or variations of different ones each time. It does mean you can get lost very easily but it also means you are never without an option. I like options but sometimes they’re not useful to me. They make it difficult for me to start or when started they distract me from continuing. This morning I started.

1009f

(That our nearest town in the distance)

One of the things I’ll be doing while I’m here in France is preparing for a course I intend to run back in Greystones. It doesn’t have a name yet (too many options…) but it’s about setting aside time for creativity. Lots of people think they’re not creative and the other people who know they’re creative often think their creations are not good enough. So, while the idea of spending time creating might be appealing, the mass of judgement heaped on any creative output can be painful and paralysing…. or at least that’s how it can be for me.

1009e

(Cattle over the hedge)

Usually, I take the time to get everything out of the cupboard and set up the perfect space and enthusiastically begin. But very quickly I can see that the beautiful idea in my head is not what’s appearing on paper. So I stop, I shove everything back in the cupboard and I firmly resolve to forget the whole creating thing! Funnily, I’m always drawn back.

1009g

(Not a great picture, the real thing is so amazing – stars in the middle of the country)

But there is another way. I am practicing that other way here. I started this morning, in the garden. Our host, Mara (from Australia…. where they speak English…) when she realised what I was up to, pointed me in the direction of her shed where a trestle table awaited. So, Denis and I took the table out and I set about doing creative time in a different way.

0909c

(The tools)

I have formulated a little routine. First I lay everything out around me – the paint, paper, brushes, books, magazines and whatever else I think I’ll need. Then I find a nice sitting place and sit there. I ask myself some questions about what I want to reveal to myself today and then I start being kind to myself. Only then do I begin the creative stuff. Very soon, no matter how I was feeling when I started I begin to feel relaxed, calm and settled. Eventually I hear myself let out a long sigh and I remember why I love making time to create.

This is the work I’ll be doing here, Mairead.

Pensive on a rainy Monday

| Mairead

0909x

(Photo I took of Glendalough round tower last weekend)

The weekend before we left Ireland I was down in Glendalough at a family gathering. Sixty-five cousins (four generations) from my Dad’s side of the family came together on a Saturday morning to walk in the hills and share a meal. My Dad had three brothers and the organising committee was made up of one member from each of the four brother’s families. I was my family’s representative. It was a very easy committee to be on, everything seemed to slot into place.

09091

(It’s raining today…)

I think that’s due to my cousin Charlie. He was the one who had the idea for a gathering and so we made him the president (chairman was too ordinary.) He was exceedingly good at his job and exceedingly good at delegating. He’d say “Now, I want you to do that, but only if it’s okay with you, now tell me if it’s a problem, but you’d be great, you’re exactly the right person for it.” Apart from not being able to get a word in edgeways, who could refuse him? None of us did. It wasn’t until the Sunday morning at breakfast that I found out his wife, and not he, had been answering all the numerous emails from the other members of the committee over the past few months.

0909b

(…so I’m looking out at the pretty raindrops… )

Charlie got an idea into his head all those months ago and he did what was necessary to make it happen. He didn’t do everything. He did what he was good at and he asked for help with the rest. It worked. We sat around tables in the hotel in Glendalough and reminisced about our childhoods, about parents and grandparents who were not there, about cousins who could not attend. We had a great time. We said “This was a great idea.” I’m glad Charlie had an idea in his head and I’m really glad he shared his idea with the rest of us. I think it takes courage to share your ideas.

0909d

(…and working away inside)

The sun has come out now so I’m off to sit in the garden, Mairead.

Very quiet day here….

| Mairead

Didn’t do a lot yesterday, took the day off and read…. But I’ve included some previous day photos. In fact we have so many photos we could pretend we were still here for another month! Or maybe we are….

01 07b

(Another view of the Duomo.)

I was reading an article from the online version of the British Telegraph newspaper, it was written by a guy called Mic Wright, who lives in Dublin. The article was about how hard it is to be a writer nowadays. “The currency of the written word has been devalued”, there’s so much writing and it’s free. So why would anyone want to pay you to do it?

01 07d

(There are lots and lots of scooters)

I don’t know him but it sounds like he’s having a bad day. But if he stops writing I’d be sad because in that short article there was some beautiful words. For example, words  “spill forth from the internet like water from a broken valve”, yummy! He talks about telling his teenage self to give up the dream of being a writer, now I’m sad again.

01 07e

(Artist at work outside the Uffizi…. she reminded me of Nolene, and it could be Nolene! Hello New Zealand!)

But the saddest bit? The comments. They were some very cranky people commenting but that’s not the sad bit. The sad bit was one of the commenters was a parent with a seventeen year old son. The son wanted to be a writer. The parent needed the son to know that writing didn’t bring in money so it was not worth the son’s passion. He was going to send the article to his son, because he was “not prepared to support him until his 40’s.” I wanted to tell the parent that encouraging his son to follow his passion does not automatically lead to having to support him financially until he’s 40. And I want to tell him, please, encourage your son to follow his passion….. But I am not brave enough to comment on the site with the cranky commenters…

01 07a

(Giubbe Rosse bar/cafe in Piazza della Repubblica Florence, favourite haunt of writers over the years)

I think most people will agree with the parent and that makes me even sadder. So, I’ll stop now.

“The path will call to you, and you’ll find yourself on it. The way to begin is to stand…. waiting, waiting… breathlessly waiting.” Carlos Castaneda.

I’m off to ponder on the beauty of Florence, Mairead.