Wednesday, August 13, 2008
:the horizon versus the ground you stand on:
(journal collage)
***
I worry a lot whether I’m doing ‘enough’ about forging my way in the world in terms of my writing, my ‘career’ (which I have to put in quotation marks - because my eclectic work history hardly reassembles anything as cohesive as the word ‘career’ suggests) and my creative life.
My friend Sarah mused recently that she and I are “creatively greedy”. We want it all. To be writers, makers, artists, to be fully engaged and pumping creative geniuses.
Anyway - sometimes I get so angst-ridden that I forget that it’s supposed to be FUN, this creative life I’ve chosen. It’s supposed be rich and gorgeous and enjoyable. I get a bit future-constipated - which is my term for being so bound up in what might happen next, I forget to appreciate the ‘now’ of my life.
This is just a preamble for two inspiring things I read lately that I wanted to share with you - one is this great quote from Diablo Cody, director of the movie Juno. It’s kinda obvious, but it cheered me up and reminded me how kick-ass cool the internet is:
“We live in a time when you have the opportunity to put your writing out there every day. You don’t have to worry about rejection letters, you don’t have to worry about the man, you don’t have to worry about publishers. Write a blog, make a ‘zine, self-publish. You have the technology. There are so many people who will try to force you to apologise for yourself at every turn. Do not do it. If anything, amplify the traits that chafe people - there is a reason you are provoking a response.”
and I loved this, from Stephanie Dowrick’s book ‘Creative Journaling’:
“Many things are far better than fame or fortune. Love is one of them. Living creatively is another.
Living creatively mean tuning in to your senses and really knowing what’s going on. It means making quirky connections and seeking out inspiration, beauty, humour, tenderness and absurdity. It means liking the subtle as well as the magnificent. It means valuing your own experiences and making something of them.
Creativity may be expressed through works of art, but it can also be a way of living that is open, spirited, engaged, eager, curious and uplifting.”
Yum. Yum. Yum. I love each of those six adjectives in that last sentence.
Note to self: Lighten up, girl. Life is suh-weet.
