This is my blackboard.
Or rather a bit of it. It's 8ft by something feet. It's big. It's my sanity board and how I help all of us keep track of what's going on in this busy house week after week.
But, up there in the left hand corner, see that?
"All art requires courage."
I've been more courageous as of late. I've been writing again, in the midst of the unpacking and transition of moving into a new house. By writing I mean songs. By writing I mean melodies. I confess I've been a little bit...well - A LOT a bit like a whiny three year old stamping my foot and pouting and screaming, "This is not how I like to make things!!! I want it MY WAY. I only want to be creative when things are how I LIKE IT TO BE ALL THE TIME."
I don't have the luxury of staying up till 4am every morning writing like I did when it was just me and Phoenix. I would sleep for a couple of hours, have morning time with Phoenix, breakfast, walk him to school and then go back to bed till it was time to get him from school and then go to work teaching music lessons.
I struggle with the creative during the day. I'm such a nighttime inspiration kind of a girl. But now I have four boys to care for, a husband I work with, house to clean, laundry to wash, etc. Even if I had an idea during the day, I'm not sure I'd have the time to act on it!
Conversations lately with my dear friend, Betsy Garmon, have opened my eyes to not letting this stage of my life beat the music and the words out of me. Betsy has really shown me that I need to learn how to work with the parameters I have in the here and now. That there IS a way to be a wife, a mom, a producer AND myself.
Betsy and I are going to start a project together. Every month or so we'll choose a word and create something around that word. Sure, it's been done before but LORD I am jumping at the chance to embrace this catalyst and run with it. Whether it's a song, a short story, a painting, I will post my interpretation of the word here and Betsy will do the same on her blog.
I'm feeling courageous. And when I start feeling courageous. Watch out. It's about to get crizazy up in here.
What about any of you? Got any advice? Feel the same way? I want to hear your thoughts, too, please.
"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is." Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark, 1915