I noticed that after a period of lethargy and feeling guilty about being too lazy to even wipe the sink in the bathroom, I spring into action. (This tends to happen on Saturdays.) Dust mites beware! I clean everything, I cook, I take the baby to the park, I even manage to arrange all my office outfits for the week ahead. During the scrubbing and the grocery runs, my head twirls with ideas of writing short stories and sketching with my husband's artist quality paints and crayons. Everything is under control. I am a supermom and a superwoman. I am an artist in the making. Then, fast forward to Sunday night. I am spent and too tired to move. The house is almost (almost) sparkling, the family had a wholesome meal and spent (generally) good time together, but all my creative impulses remain unexpressed. I then fall into the work-home-play/eat with the kiddo-relax-sleep routine. I am back to the lethargic and too lazy to throw an apple core into the garbage bin state. Argh! Disappointed! And then the cycle repeats with no iterations.My husband puts in his fair share of cooking and cleaning and playing with the child. My mother also helps us tremendously (she watches our kid while we work - we are extremely lucky!) It's just that there is enough for three people and more! I am not saying that the time I spend on housework or with my family is not worth it. If I couldn't play with my husband and daughter, I would be heartbroken and if our apartment was a mess I would be annoyed. These are top priorities; that's why I do them first. But what's missing is the stuff that makes my heart sing from joy of creativity. Stuff like creative writing and drawing and painting. It's been years since I've done these.Then I stopped and knew that it was not the point I wanted to make - but it illustrates one of the reasons for my starting this blog. About a month ago I had an epiphany. It was a realization about barriers. I have a friend who recently graduated and is in between further schooling and a real job. He'd asked me to help him with a job search - he wanted to get an entry level office job - a foot in the door. I was eager to help. It started out promisingly - we scheduled times to share ideas about the job search. He sent me a rough draft of a resume and a job posting. A week into it, he dropped the subject. When I brought it up, he said that it's a tough market and that his current job isn't really that bad and he's making money and supporting himself. An entry level office job would mean a pay cut he couldn't afford. He gave me all these reasons for not pursuing the job search aggressively. That, of course, meant stopping the job search altogether.
The shortsightedness of this approach was evident. My friend was hiding behind barriers of his own creation. His reasons were logical and sound and made sense in the short term. I saw them as excuses for inaction. Then I felt bad. Here I was judging . And then another thought occurred to me - if my friend (who is really smart) is creating obstacles and buying into them, what obstacles am I creating and buying into? I started this post with them. My friend's reasons for keeping the status quo are really excuses - so apparent. My reasons are really good. Or are they? Could they also be shortsighted excuses? Too little time for 'creative pursuits', too much cleaning, a family, omigod - poor me! I put up a lot of barriers and bought into them. I am fearful of a lot of things that changes bring. This second post is a baby step through the fear and past my really good barriers. In the following posts, I will discuss a plan I have to bring about the changes that are necessary for me to feel like a creative being. Without them, life seems incomplete. Perhaps it can aid others in creating changes they seek.
Thank you for reading,
Irena
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