How to Stay Motivated, Part 1

My friend Lori asked me how I stay motivated, and I realized that I do have quite a lot of inspiration-scaffolding up around here. And some of it is admittedly similar to what I would've done at twelve.

This is as good a place to start as any:

I like to do this at the beginning of each year: Get a bunch of optimistic lady-magazines (I like O, Martha Stewart, Glamour,Real Simple) and a poster board. Cut out any pictures and words that you like, with no particular rhyme or reason. It's best if you do all the cutting and gluing in one sitting. Put it somewhere you can see it often.

A Nice Breakthrough

The other day at church, I went over to my friend-and-sometimes-guru Andrea Durham to ask if she wanted help with the upcoming Diwali celebration. She asked how I’d been doing and I told her I’d been feeling off and a bit disconnected. She out-insighted everyone.

She said that after a trauma (In this case the Hostile Work Environment/social justice awakening of my old job.) you go into survival mode. One you’re finally convinced that you’re safe, the grief from the trauma might need to come out.

It was such a relief to hear her say that—to acknowledge (as my attempted therapists hadn’t) that I’d been through something big and needed time and space. I felt a little glimmer of this-might-not-last-forever.

Being affected by the HWE is getting really old. It is not a good lens to see the world through. She said, though, that if I just take my time and keep myself from being isolated, that I should expect to be in a better state by next year. “Just look at how far you’ve come” she said.

If you need a Life Coach, I highly, highly recommend her. She can even validate you from afar, over Skype. 

Poetic License Horoscope for August 20-26

Spending Warm Summer Days Indoors, Like the Smiths

Leo (July 24-Aug. 23): Once you pointed out that when the contestants on, say, The Next Food Network Star, are talking about how the camera makes them freeze up, they are, IN FACT talking to the camera, it kind of turned my world upside-down.

Virgo (Aug. 24-Sept. 23): Make no mistake: Sometimes we are all just Mad Men secretaries, crying in a Pond’s focus group about the fleetingness of the muse’s attention. Nothing to do but wash your face, smash a vase, and wait.

Libra (Sept. 24-Oct. 21): This week, inspired by the hack-bot that stole my email contacts, I am meditating on imperfection. Please take all implosions, sick days, and the way things are collapsing like an Inception cityscape as signs that the universe loves you and wants you to start fresh.

Scorpio (Oct. 22-Nov. 22): Last weekend I went camping with my family. One of the highlights was sitting around reading with my little niece. She was reading an incredibly well-loved copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix. Love something/someone so much that the pages come out, the edges furl, the binding unglues, but the story is still legible.

Sagittarius (Nov. 23-Dec. 22): From Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: “It is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds…this creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send support for your creative ventures.”

Capricorn (Dec. 23-Jan. 20): In The New York Regional Mormon Singles Dance, Elna Baker hilariously weighs the dilemmas which arise between her secular self and her Mormon self. In the end, though, she can’t see the moon without saying “Hi, God.”

Aquarius (Jan. 21-Feb. 19): In Sloane Crosleys’ book I Was Told There’d Be Cake, she writes about working in the Museum of Natural History’s butterfly exhibit. Once, she didn’t check her coat well enough before clocking out—a tiny rare blue butterfly had ridden her lapel to freedom.

Pisces (Feb. 20-March 20): Feng Shui your life. Recycle you recyclables. Remove all old bosses, famous strangers, and nemeses from your email contacts. Return the stagnant Chi of unread library books.

Aries (March 21-April 18): Every time I watch The Real L Word, I think these three things: 1. This show is mostly about emptiness, and that’s okay. 2. I’m very grateful that my wife is accepted and loved as a member of my family. Shame on you, Tracy’s mom. 3. Natalie: run!

Taurus (April 19-May 18): One summer not too long ago, my friend Ty and I decided to fill plastic Easter eggs with various talismans: love notes, drawings, chess pieces, mini tarot cards, etc. We hid them all around the city of Syracuse, NY. Give random and unexpected gifts, preferably to strangers.

Gemini (May 19-June 21): My mom says that when she dreams about camping, it’s not the recreation, but the cooking. Try a new recipe for campfire eggs. Eat bacon out of a foil pan. Be flexible about what can be called coffee.

Cancer (June 22-July 23): Go to the stillest body of water you can find. Find some round, flat stones. Practice your skipping technique. Meditate on gravity, water, erosion.

Thinking About Abundance

From Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: “It is pretty clear that the creator itself did not know when to stop. There is not one pink flower, or even fifty pink flowers, but hundreds…this creator looks suspiciously like someone who just might send support for your creative ventures.”

This week my Unlocking Your Creativity Class is meditating on Abundance. It’s a good thing to think about if you’re trying to unblock or stay unblocked.

Anyone can get caught in the trap of seeing things in terms of scarcity and competition; if my friend has something, that must mean that I can’t have it. I think I’ve held myself back in life by this kind of thinking. Instead of asking my more successful friends for help, I’ve tended to avoid them and resent their success. It has cost me years with some very wonderful and wildly talented women.

It can be hard to retrain your mind to think there’s enough to go around, that you are going to be given what you need as an artist and a person. It would be wonderful to think of our fellow creatives as co-conspirators rather than competition. Towards that end, I had each poet in my class make a list of what reminds them of abundance, then post the list someplace prominent.

Things That Remind Me of Abundance (Besides Pink Flowers)

1. Going to the gourmet store and marveling at how many varieties of salt there are.
2. Buying notebooks 10 for a dollar.
3. Collecting seashells and pretty rocks.
4. Expanded horizons, literally and figuratively.
5. Children’s artwork—they’re so generous with it!
6. Poetry students rich with images.
7. Writing a detailed prose account of any given thing/day/experience- material is kind of infinite.
8. Libraries.
9. Blueberries: when I was little we had a family tradition of going to this huge abandoned blueberry farm, picking for hours and hours, acres and acres. It still seems like there was no end to those blueberries.
10. Morning glories vining the place up.
11. One of my first poems was about being a starving artist and wishing I could have some cake. Now whenever I make cupcakes I feel rich.
12. Shutting off the TV to read.
13. Making pancakes for visiting poets.
14. Swimming in the ocean.
15. We used to drive a Mazda Protégé and we loved it so much. Now whenever I see one, I think it’s my guardian angel.
16. The cheap art store.
17. The infinite amount of weird stuff you can learn from Radiolab podcasts. (and others)
18. Staying in bed all day with Amy. (mostly reading…)
19. My family.
20. Making pancakes for visiting poets. Thrift stores, vintage stores, flea markets, anyplace with random stuff.