DIVINE TURBULENCE

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I started taking Vitamin D this week and everything is different

I finished a quilt

I started a new quilt

I said out loud to my therapist “I trust myself” for the first time in 33 years

I calculated that on April 29 I will have been sober for 4000 days and that seems like a lot of days

I took Leah and June up the bluff to look at the lake

I wrote a letter and mailed it

I got a PO Box again

The boy at the coffee shop remembered my name today

I started reading Blood Memory by Martha Graham

I tried to read a Sally Rooney book and immediately was like wait what is this about?

I referenced a rose ceremony from the Bachelor in a situation where I didn’t need to do that

I listened to this Haim song over and over and over again

I watched Leah finish her quilt on the porch studio that I cleaned during Flexible Office and now it is my favorite place

I felt myself be a little less tired everyday but then tired again today

I had a dream I did not like

Last night I found myself jumping around from task to task. Sewing, then stopped to write a letter, jumped back into sewing, read Blood Memory and wrote ATHLETE TO GOD in giant letters in my notebook. Back to sewing. Iced my spine and did a face mask. Watched the trailer to Benedetta. Sewed more. Threaded the machine and wound the bobbin. Stretched for a little bit, journaled, made a to do list, sent a text.

The feeling in my body was peaceful, easy, wasn’t this my hope for my studio practice? To shift my research from medium to medium, modality to modality, all within two hours. I read for twenty minutes without stopping, that is so many more minutes than zero. The voice of judgement weaves in between the cracks of doubt - the story that says : You need to cultivate discipline and do each thing for longer periods of time.

That isn’t true. I don’t need to do things for any length of time. Who made up lengths of time? Everything on Earth comes down to : How long do you stay? And when is it better to leave? When is it better to stay a little longer?

I pushed myself when I wanted to quit sewing. One more square. I loved every time I stayed for one more square. Two pages into the Sally Rooney book I yelled NO! I am not in the mood for whatever the hell this is. And then I picked up Martha’s autobiography again - I had those 20 minutes of success perhaps I will again. Nope, mind is racing too much. The quicksand of judgement creeps in - you should have tried longer. I wanted to journal because I know that writing it out on the page clears a lot out. It did. And then I made a list. I wanted the list to feel smarter. I was more tired than I realized and went to sleep.

This divine turbulence of my mind is indeed spirit lead. When I am in resistance to my own natural waves is when I am filled with the most doubt. When I follow the signals, when I choose to trust the messages of shifting, when I listen to my body - this is where ease emerges.

I trust myself to know how long I want to do a thing for. I trust myself to decide what the next thing is. I trust myself to know that I don’t know and sometimes I just have to make the next choice and trust that the net will catch me. If you are reading this the net caught you.

After withstanding the extreme trauma of mind and body of staying in something too long I feared the opposite would come true - that I would never trust myself again. How could I have gotten myself into a situation where I felt like I had no other choices, no other pathways after all the work I have put in to understanding how to pivot? I wrote a whole book with a subtitle that says PATHWAYS TO FINDING YOURSELF WITHIN THE GREAT UNKNOWN….

All the little pieces I put into place leading to the right now were there even when I felt like I was retrograding through my own life.

Accessing my creative potential requires great acts of faith within the turbulence. Within the container of capitalism we are taught that our worth comes from our productivity. That everything should be income generating, that nothing should feel too good in the essence of our work.

I want to stay with myself and feel the adequacy of god within me. I want to measure how long I stay not by the task, or by the person, or by the treasured quilt - but by the level of ability I have to stay with myself. The abandoned self can do so little for the collective, the body, the spirit. I want to stay with myself as an act of resistance and as an act of research and as an act of presence. This I shall not leave.

THE PEOPLE’S RESEARCH

Class starts this Sunday March 13 at 10am PST / 1PM EST

Every class is recorded, so if you cannot make it live / prefer to work class on your own timeline / or have to miss one week : you will have access to the recordings and materials forever

This is an invitation to deepen your process and stop fighting yourself in the journey of putting it into the world. The world needs your online class, your podcast, the newsletter where you tell them about these things, the book you have been meaning to write, the dance you are choreographing, the painting you just started.

💎 We will meet live on zoom three Sundays in a row as well as have co-working time between classes that is conversational in nature for questions, answers, group brian storming and visioning

There is a benefit to separating our work from our life and our hobbies from our income generating practices - but what if we also found a way to have them all flow within each other through a lens of research.

🌪 In this class we will develop organized practices for tornado people (if you are actually a very organized tidy person you will still love class!) and the importance of the day to day research we are called to do as citizen artists, as citizen researchers.

We will find rituals and our own true pace of collecting data, storing it, and finding its way to output. We will destroy any idea we need a fellowship to be a researcher, a studio to be an artist, a degree to hold a title.

✏️ We will sharpen the skills of our writing and how we talk about our work and our research, we will stretch beyond our limited beliefs.

And as always, we will find ways that service weaves seamlessly into our work and is not separate - but an integral piece of the puzzle

March 7, 2022, 3:31 p.m.

DIVINE TURBULENCE

Acts of faith in creative practice

That isn’t true. I don’t need to do things for any length of time. Who made up lengths of time? Everything on Earth comes down to : How long do you stay? And when is it better to leave? When is it better to stay a little longer?

THE PEOPLE’S RESEARCH

Class starts this Sunday March 13 at 10am PST / 1PM EST

Every class is recorded, so if you cannot make it live / prefer to work class on your own timeline / or have to miss one week : you will have access to the recordings and materials forever