100 Day Project - Day Thirty Four

We are our choices.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I really love having options. Lots of paths to explore, a variety of things to do, choices to make from lots of possibilities. It’s one of the things that makes life juicy for me. I’m definitely a “variety is the spice of life” sorta girl.

This week I’ve been wondering if, even for me, there’s such a thing as too many choices, too much variety? I don’t know definitively. I’m mulling on it.

It’s not just about the freedom to choose but that it seems to me, being properly able to exercise that freedom requires options to choose from. No options, or only two, doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t want to live in a binary world. It would arguably be far easier to live in a simpler situation. Many alternatives bring challenges, for sure. But what would I lose without them? Diversity & complexity equate to richness for me.

So, I guess when I consider the alternative, less is not more for me.

Back into the messy, too-many-options fray I go then…

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Three

Meditating and musing today on shadow, and wholeness, and magic in the everyday. And these guys sum it up so much more elegantly than I...

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere.” - Haruki Murakami

“We wait, starving for moments of high magic to inspire us, but life is full of common enchantment waiting for our alchemist’s eyes to notice.” - Jacob Nordby

“And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.”
- Pablo Neruda

100 Day Project - Day Fifteen

Day Fifteen: And the restored version incorporates and integrates the art, philosophy or psychology and so is a different whole to the one that was before… a new gestalt. Obvious perhaps but, to me, it remains profound nonetheless.

100 Day Project - Day Fourteen

The Story of My Day in Four Acts:

Act One: “I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.” - Audre Lorde
~
Act Two: “Longing is not conscious wanting; it's an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what we've lost.” - Brené Brown, Rising Strong
~
Act Three: “To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above.” - Fernando Pessoa
~
Act Four: “In a flash of wonderment she saw firm, continuous ground under her feet, stretching from back then to right now and on and on as far as her eyes could take her.” - Ann Brashares, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

100 Day Project - Day Thirteen

So, I’m relieved (and not entirely surprised) to discover that I am NOT the only one who has several journals on the go at once. Or several reads. No wonder I like these people in my world. Amongst many other lovely things they bring to my life, they validate my quirks!

Interestingly, one of the quotations I shared yesterday was from Barbara Sher who wrote, amongst other titles, ‘Refuse to Choose!’, aimed at people she calls Scanners. I read it about 11 or 12 years ago and it provided one of the many “A-ha!” moments of my life. Scanner. Me to a T.

Scanners are people who, as she describes it, “others have called Renaissance men & women, da Vinci personalities, polymaths, multipotentialites, generalists, people with too many aptitudes, Jacks (& Jills) of all trades, eclectics, dilettantes or flakes.” Not all very complimentary labels, as opposed to Divers, specialists, experts, professionals, the Not-Scanners. But, despite this, the specifics of Scannerdom felt like my experience of the world.

And these are my Scanner-life journals. Those that are currently active. Each serves a slightly different purpose but really, they just represent a myriad of interests and an undeniable obsession with stationery. I realised after I took the picture, I also have a small one in my bag that didn’t make it into the shot and that this doesn’t include the digital ones on my phone and laptop. Eish! It is a bit of an addiction.

I didn’t share the pile of full journals – too many for a single pile – a whole box full in the garage. Nor did I collect the pile of blank books I have in waiting… that would just be embarrassing!

Along with ‘The Renaissance Soul’ by Margaret Lobenstine, this was very useful to me about 12 years ago. After a few rough years and a lot of self-doubt, it supported the reclaiming of a framework and vocabulary for who I am and helped me to feel okay with that, instead of thinking I was broken.

One of the most interesting insights from both reads was that the shift in focus to specialists being associated with success is a relatively recent one. Newer even than I’d fully appreciated. The rise of careers in science and technology, especially following the industrial revolution and again in the 1950’s, meant that arts, humanities and even history were devalued as “luxuries, irrelevant, silly, irresponsible”. For those of us with a bent and aptitude for arts, humanities or history, this was not a good development.

I think the tide is turning again but we’re still facing into some of this, even now. There have always been the renegade “arty” types but the labels for them, us, have remained largely challenging. It’s a slow turning of the wheel. My opinion is that in the future, scanners will be fully appreciated again for what they bring. Not better than Divers. But not worse. Not less successful.

In my work I’m experiencing this change in another form, through the shift from organisations that are considered and consider themselves machines, with individuals being merely cogs that turn them - alongside systems, structures and processes - into a recognition that they’re in fact more akin to living systems: dynamic, multi-faceted, learning, perpetually evolving. I think this is one of those, “Huh, how could it not be obvious?!” things but it’s surprising that many people – several of them fabulously “successful” don’t see it at all. Even now.

100 Day Project - Day Six

When there are many options open to you, and in my world there almost always are, how do you decide which direction to take or which thing to opt for? This question is my constant companion.

For some, even the question seems bizarre, let alone that it accompanies my every moment and precedes almost every move I make. To many people there’s always an obvious ‘right’ way and, rationally, no real problem with choosing it. These people have an ability to get the true power out of pro and con lists and see life’s crossroad moments in mostly binary terms. Direction is clear: there’s forwards or backwards, left or right, up or down. It’s simple. And then, having made the choice… off they go: moving determinedly down that path.

On some level, I’ve always envied them this world view and clarity. For me it’s seldom that obvious. In questionnaires that ask, “What’s you most used expression?” I always have to answer, “Well, it depends…”

For a long time, I felt broken. It seemed to me that everyone else had some secret I was not privy to. An internal setting for direction finding and decision making that I’d not found. On a large scale, why could I not identify my one true purpose, set a clear goal, and commit to moving from here to there? There were, and still are, so many things I enjoy. At a micro level, why was I not able to pick my favourite-favourite from the Quality Street tin or my top 5 songs or my top-5-anything?! I was pretty sure it wasn’t because I lacked opinions, or preferences or conviction, I have plenty of all of these. Too many sometimes. Too much, too many, lots of… these were my problems.

When I have to make “where to next?” decisions, I spend a lot of time pausing in the crossroads, surrounded by multiple paths, several of which usually look quite appealing to me. I will eventually pick one based on something that might seem quite arbitrary – a glimpse of something interesting around a far-off bend, or the fact that it just looks unlike a path I’ve walked before. Then of course once I head off down one route, there’s all that intriguing wild and uncharted territory, not on the path at all, that’s constantly calling my name. That usually tempts me more than anything and I do feel I’ve spent a lot of my life exploring and bumbling (often very happily) around in that space.

Now, more than half way through my life, I don’t feel broken anymore. I don’t feel lost. I do still struggle with the “where to next?” and “ how do I choose?” questions and I do feel a bit odd most of the time but I’m okay with that.

There are several things that it's helpful for me to remember at times like this:

~ I actually have a pretty good sense of direction and as long as I pause to take note of it, I really can’t get lost. Waylaid perhaps but, at worst, I can retrace my steps and choose another course. Or, just reorientate and keep going. I do seem to know, instinctively, where my true North is.
~ Maps can help but sometimes just forging my own path is more satisfying.
~ I enjoy the meander. I’m just not a straight-line-from-A-to-B sort of person. And that’s okay too.
~ Identifying, exploring and finding ways to accommodate all of my alter-egos makes a huge difference – multiple personalities, all me but each with different tastes and even different motivations!
~ My Nana’s words finally taking hold in me: “comparison is a waste of time and energy because everyone is different and there will always be people in a ‘better’ or ‘worse’ position relative to you”.
~ Lightbulb moment: who’s to decide what’s ‘better or worse’ relative to you, except you?!
~ I don’t need to choose a favourite-favourite. Of anything. There’s room for multiple favourites.
~ I’m not the only one. There are others like me and they’re not broken either. In fact, I’ve come across many of my favourite people in the world also wandering around in the undergrowth, off the path, with eclectic playlists and pockets full of mixed treasure.

All of this comes up for me now because I’m standing at a crossroads…

100 Day Project - Day Five

I’ve been preparing some hexagonals for a mixed-media collage piece I have in mind. I was inspired by an idea my aunt had for this 100-day project of making a quilt, merged with a notion I’ve been playing with for a while of creating some personal maps.

It also reminded me of this quotation, collected a few months back…

“In your life, the people become like a patchwork quilt. Some leave with you a piece that is bigger than you wanted and others smaller than you thought you needed. Some are that annoying itchy square in the corner, and others that piece of worn flannel. You leave pieces with some and they leave their pieces with you. All the while each and every square makes up a part of what is you. Be okay with the squares people leave you. For life is too short to expect from people what they do not have to give, or were not called to give you.” ~ Anna M. Aquino

I’m not entirely sure how it’s all going to come together yet but I’m enjoying the process and experimenting with a couple of ideas.

100 Day Project - Day Four

Maya Angelou would have been 90 this week. It was remarkable to see the out-pouring of respect and admiration for her on that anniversary. Not surprising but deeply moving and for me, still incredibly significant. In this time, when navigating being a person of integrity, a woman of integrity, is throwing up challenges both ongoing and new at every turn, strong role-models feel especially important. Maya Angelou embodied integrity. Heart driven but with a good head; compassionate and wise, she forged a path that is still leaving a wake. In my life and in the world.

I first discovered her writing when I was at university. She was not on the curriculum. Even on the most liberal campuses, early 80s South Africa did not actively encourage the study of women writers, unless it was Austen or Brontë, and certainly Black women were not even officially acknowledged as existing. In those days studying André Brink, under the tutelage of André Brink, was considered radical. But, there were plenty of works (many banned) doing the rounds unofficially. Along with discovering the music of Miriam Makeba and the joys of eating ice-cream for breakfast, reading Maya Angelou felt both incredibly subversive and like a home-coming to me. She’d not long since published The Heart of a Woman and I remember devouring a copy and being deeply moved by her story.

I remember sitting around at the home of one of my professors, for the first time in a racially mixed group of my peers, being served ‘special’ brownies that he’d made himself and discussing everything from the role of law and journalism in a state of emergency, the lyrics of Rodrigues, if wearing braids as a white-freckled-redheaded South African was appropriate, where to buy the cheapest red wine by the gallon (literally), and the role of Black women in the civil rights movement. Maya Angelou was with us in that moment and she is with us now.

Her life story was so different to mine and yet I did and still do hear my own heart in so much of her writing. She had the gift of expressing some universal experiences through the telling of her very individual story. That is just one of the ways she modelled, for me, how to be in the world. We all have a story to tell. They may not all land on a world stage or be told quite so eloquently but they’re all significant. Together, they add to and add up to the story of the world. I always think about what I’d like my bit of that mosaic to look like. Still working on it.

100 Day Project - Day Two

Today I was office-based, which is to say, working at home. The beauty of working at home, although it isn’t something I often take advantage of, is that I can organise my time around client work to include some play during daylight hours. Today that mostly involved making a ‘mess’. Creatively, of course.

I’ve been creating these little ring-binder journals for the past few years, born out of a need to combine visual and verbal journalling and use some of the tonnes of creative stash I’ve collected.

Let’s talk about the stash for a moment. I’m not just talking about the irresistible impulse I have to buy washi tape and stickers and all things stationery whenever I can but also whenever I travel, receive gifts, flip through magazines or even get junk mail, I have this habit of hoarding bits that visually appeal to me or are memory triggers. I’ve done it my whole life. And, as my life gets longer, that amounts to a LOT of stuff! Nothing is beyond being kept – I even have some pieces of dried paper towel that I once cleaned paint brushes on because I love the pattern that was created. A happy accident… too pretty to bin!

For a long time, I kept these bits in boxes and carried those boxes around with me whenever I moved; houses, cities, countries, continents… that stuff came along – decades’ worth. And, for an equally long time, I felt the guilt of collecting, storing and transporting all this “rubbish”.

But, not anymore. Time has taught me that being able to lay my hand on exactly the right bit of collage material when I need it or the perfect ribbon for a gift I’m wrapping, far outweighs the silliness of having held onto that tiny thing for years. Stash = Treasure! I believe that creatives everywhere will know what I mean.

The flipside of this is that I also don’t want to die like a hoarder, buried under a mountain of junk. And I don’t want to inflict it all on whoever it is that has to clear out my stuff when I’m gone. So… I have become more selective about what I buy and what I keep, I do go through it at intervals and cull (makes great bonfire fodder) and I actively try to recycle, upcycle, use it in some way. If it no longer sparks joy, it goes. If I still love it, it stays but not just to languish forever in a box. Some gets incorporated into arty projects but most is really not that worthy. Finally, circa 2010, enter conscious and consistent journal-page making.

These pages are not art, but each is a collage, a mini assemblage of ephemera I’ve gathered, or a collection of words – either my own handwritten musings or quotations and phrases gleaned elsewhere. I have about a dozen of these little A5 ring-binders full of pages of prettiness. It provides the perfect way for me to combine some of these bits into pages that either become the bottom layers for my journal musings or just a pleasing visual interlude between them. They too get sorted and culled every now and again, and it keeps it all manageable. The boxes are reduced, the collecting has purpose, and I have an easy creative outlet and an endless supply of space to blurt my insides out onto.

What I couldn’t have imagined when I started doing it is just how much I love these pages. I love making them and I love using them. They’re a place to play, to ponder and to wonder. To dream. I don’t often wallow and wail in these journals. My plain paper journal is where that tends to happen. These are a happy place.

So, that’s what I was doing today. I’ll be collecting some ideas for #the100dayproject in them and they may form the basis for some other things I make down the line. Today, just creating some new background pages with bits I’ve collected on my recent travels IS the thing.

100 Day Project - Day One

So many metaphors for a life: a journey, a tapestry, a garden, a roller-coaster ride, a painting, a jigsaw puzzle, or even (if you are Forrest Gump) a box of chocolates, to name but a few I can relate to. For me, most of the best offer something that’s consciously created and actively embarked upon; something that’s emergent, something that evolves, and something that holds at least a few surprises.

I’ve always found that spirals, journeys, mosaics, and collages work well for me.

Since my teens I’ve embraced spirals as a metaphor for time. Time that embodies the past, present and future all at once, multi-dimensional, and can be explored in several directions through mindful presence, dreaming and reflection. Time that allows us to experience the echo of a thing; an experience, a lesson, a person. An echo. Repetition, not the original but sometimes so loudly heard or keenly experienced that it can even feel like we are moving through the same terrain, although we never are. We never truly travel through the same place twice – either because we’re viewing it from a fractionally different perspective in time, or we are different since we were last there, or both. And spirals, because in my own experience there’s nothing perfectly linear about anything long-term we do that's worth doing, especially life – even if it has a clear beginning and end.

Spirals of course are also a version of pervasive organic fractals – an expanding and evolving symmetry. Beautiful!

Journeys, although sometimes they can feel like a cliché, are the ultimate metaphor for someone who is at an archetypal level, first & foremost, an explorer. I am.

Mosaics and collages? I find it appealing that something ultimately meaningful can emerge from pieces of broken, torn and sometimes even discarded bits. Sometimes the appeal lies in the similarities, sometimes in juxtapositions, sometimes in the pieces themselves, sometimes in the spaces between. They can contain contradictions, create cohesion, be simple or complex but there’s no doubt they were made, piece by piece. They emerge, they evolve and while there’s interest and texture in the close-up view – where one has to work to create them – it’s only really when we step back that their full beauty and significance can be seen. For me, it’s a profound creative process.

And all of this? Why the musing? It’s the impulse and inspiration behind my 100DayProject. As sustained creative endeavours go, for me, it’s a long one. So, I’m approaching it like life – as a journey, a mosaic, a collage. Sometimes I’ll be collecting materials, sometimes I’ll have my nose pressed up to the surface as I place the pieces, sometimes I’ll step back and have a look at the whole. Always, I’ll be dancing around that spiral.