On the Search for Soul
Taking a look back over the past 2 months, which honestly feels like a lot longer, I’ve learned a considerable amount. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, but I’m also feeling burnt out and frustrated. In the hopes of gaining some clarity I’ve been tuning in more and waiting for answers to reveal themselves. Just recently I got exactly what I was looking for.
Answer #1:
While listening to the audiobook of Everything is Spiritual by Rob Bell, I got to a section where he talks about form such as words, art, music, etc. He says, “The forms aren’t the goal. The goal is an experience of spirit.”
A lightbulb went off. That’s what I was missing! The mandalas lack soul and spirit.
Looking back over my notes from several weeks ago when I was brainstorming about what I’d like the feeling of the animation to be, I wrote down “focus on energy” along with the words shifting, bouncing, breathing, waves, vibration, fading, and slow. I wanted the mandalas to have life. However I lost sight of all of that when I created a schedule for myself to post a new video to YouTube every week. My focus shifted away from making work that had energy and spirit and toward making sure that I kept on schedule even if I wasn’t completely happy with what I was creating. The result was, as a friend correctly assessed, mandalas that feel inorganic.
Which brings me to Answer #2:
Scrolling through my overflowing inbox, the subject line “Your Plate’s Too Big and Your Spoon’s Too Small” leapt out at me. It’s from a newsletter called The Spiral Lab where the author offers, in their own words, “critical insights and healing metaphors for reframing the ways we understand neurodivergence and disability.”
The article is about the stages of grief that we go through when creative projects inevitably take longer than we planned.
On denial, the author writes:
“Look, denial is baked in. Denial about how much we can realistically pile onto our plates and denial about how big our spoons are is just part of the process, okay? Not accepting that fact is itself a form of meta-denial.
I personally don’t think there’s a realistic way to overcome this sort of eyes-too-big/spoons-too-small denial, and all the coaching and hacking and “accommodating” that boils down to “just be more realistic” is itself a form of denial.
I would prefer to recast this denial as exuberance, as vision, as sweet hopefulness—and those are good things! Don’t let anyone shame you into believing they are not.”
She uses her plans to paint the entire downstairs of her home as an example. When health issues came up and she had to have surgery, she revisited her painting plan after healing.
“…I let the spring of hope bubble to the surface again, and in what I thought was an entirely realistic (like patting-myself-on-the-back-for-being-so-realistic) goal, I told myself I would, in the two weeks before our scheduled camping trip, finish just the living room area of the whole downstairs. I would not be foolish and expect to finish the whole floor, just one little end of it!
And I would do this while also watching the Tour de France for 3 to 4 hours each day, writing weekly newsletters, and running DDS. No problem!” (DDS is her business, Divergent Design Studios.)
That last part? That’s me in a nutshell. Determination and exuberance supersede reality.
As you may remember, I thought I could make two mandala videos a week—a 2 minute video on Tuesday and a 3 minute video on Thursday. All it would take is working on videos every day while also trying to care for a senior dog, attempting to organize my neighbors into starting a tenant’s association, writing two versions of a newsletter every two weeks, and scrambling to find work and financial support so I can continue to survive. Easy peasy. 🙄
Eventually I came to my senses and decided to only post a video once a week, yet still found ways to make things hard for myself by dropping the 3 minute videos in favor of 5 and 10 minute videos. (Which was actually a smart decision because my views jumped considerably, but it compounded the stress I was feeling to stay on schedule.)
So what’s my solution?
A healthy dose of realism and acceptance along with refocusing on spirit and soul.
This isn’t the first time that I’ve had ridiculous expectations for myself and it likely won’t be the last because that’s just how my brain works.
In the aforementioned article, the author says of acceptance:
“Acceptance is not so different from Hang-Dog Resignation, it’s just more like relieved resignation that eventually spills over into gratitude for the insight that it really is possible to be an artist, to actually make shit, without completely contorting our quirky, lovely bodyminds into someone else’s idea of what creating should look like. This isn’t a shameful, I’m-such-a-failure resignation, and it certainly isn’t an I’m-incompetent-and-I-quit! sort of resignation.”
As part of my own relieved resignation and acceptance of the limits of my capabilities, this month I’m going to step back from writing two versions of this newsletter in order to give myself some creative breathing room.
If you subscribe to the free version, you’ll get an update at the beginning of August about what I have and haven’t been able to accomplish. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get a short newsletter in 2 weeks about how my attempt to breathe life into the mandalas is going.
Interested in subscribing to the Extended Version? Click below! Subscriptions are pay what you wish, starting at $1/month.
Thank you so much for continuing to following me on this journey. I’m so grateful for your support and I’m glad you’re here!
Until the next newsletter, be well!
Giesla
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