The Struggle is Real

A growth mindset

From the Dust series - Before.

I have 2 halves of my writing book. Back and front. I write in the front half if it feels like something for Substack or I write in the back if it is more of a rambling, journal esq entry. Perhaps, sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference!

Today I couldn’t decide between the two. I mean, does it really matter?! Not at all, no. It’s the distinction in my mind I guess. I’ve been much more…. scattered…. lately.

Butterflies

Being in my field of thoughts is like trying to catch butterflies. They’re there, just within grasp and then gone again. Some days I have a net and I catch hold before it is lost again. On other days, the butterflies aren’t even in my garden.

Now I am thinking, but do I need to write? Am I stifling my flow? Is it a negative to have nothing much floating through my mind? Am I not trying hard enough? Or perhaps the reverse is true and I am trying TOO hard!

My current flow state is down to a trickle at best.

I read a great article yesterday by

Kate Brook

On writing and meditation in which she discusses having difficulty being able to meditate and write within the same phase. One does not facilitate the other. It got me thinking. Is this the same with my writing and my painting? And then I remember, I write to connect with self to help with my painting. To write thoughts. To write around evaluating process. Writing about my painting is like having a discussion with myself. It helps bring my awareness to fleeting wisps of things that occur to me. However, as Kate said when she replied to my comment later,

maybe in painting there’s more room for just being intuitive and allowing your work to sit somewhere beyond words without needing to be explained…..

And I thought how beautifully she described that.

I am an intuitive painter and this state of flux I’m in is even more pronounced with my painting.

There is definitely no flow. At all.

It’s my job

It’s my job to work it out. What’s causing the dam? If I can figure it out I can develop my practice to release it.

I do know it’s crucial not to give up at this stage, even if at times it’s very tempting! As awkward and uncomfortable as it feels, I know it is a period of growth not a death of creative ability. It will take time and no doubt it will frustrate me beyond words. Like when you find a favourite necklace at the bottom of a jewellery box and the fine chain is in the most intricate tangle. Do you throw it away because you know it will take the patience of a saint to unravel it? Or do you take it in hand with your frayed patience and vow to undo each knot at a time? That’s how it feels right now.

The push and pull

I do know there’s treasure to be found. It’s the push and pull of being a creative. The flow is sometimes more of a drip. Allowing frustration and doubt to seep in just extends the whole process. And it is a process.

Growth and discovery can’t happen overnight, with no effort involved. At least, it’s a fortuitous and rare moment when it does happen that way, serendipity. Rather, a growth spurt comes from a stuck stage. Stuck from being content - happy the way things are - no momentum or little motivation to change them. Or stuck from trying and not getting results you’re happy with. Butting your head against a tree (brick walls are cliche). Striving but failing.

Fog on Howarth Moor. Photo by Susan Mills

Stuckness isn’t failure

Stuckness isn’t failure. It’s a state. Stuckness is a place to expand from. To explore from. Perhaps the trick is to allow it to lay there, like a blanket of fog. The only way through the fog to find the path is to try different directions. . .

One path leads to more of the same. One leads to the bright lights of the city - no thank you! One leads to a building site and eventually you find the path that leads to the sunlit meadow filled with wildflowers, bees and birds (yes so cliche but it’s definitely the path I would choose).

Either I stay in the fog, or I work my way out and I don’t want to settle for more of the same. The desire is strong and it’s willing me to find my Arcadia within my art, within my process.

There’s been a long period of rest that precedes this predicament I’m in now. A period of illness too. A hibernation. And so it’s inevitable isn’t it that the growth will come because like a snowdrop fighting it’s way out of the cold dark earth to burst out into the light, my determination will get me there.

It’s nature, it’s the circle of everything, the ebb and flow.

Trust the process and relax and enjoy it for the answers will appear.

Sue x

Snowdrops watercolour by Susan Mills