Can't silence that yes....

So the end of the Week One is rapidly coming to a close. I'm not sure I'm ready to see it go and move onto another chapter. I wanted to post a little bit about some of the core negative beliefs I've uncovered. I didn't really do the exercises that Cameron laid out, but I used the tasks and the reading to make note of certain things I've discovered.
I will say, just as a side note, that for another life I would like to be a songwriter/singer. I know that is most unlikely for this lifetime - but I nourish that impulse in me by singing in my car and while doing housework and just enjoying lyrics and words in songs.

These are things I noticed this week and I'll just list them at random. I had someone in my early life who when they were displeased with me in some way (usually something I said) would shut me out and stop talking to me. I'd have to read this person's mind and figure out what it was I said or did wrong. Then just as suddenly everything would be fine as if nothing ever happened.

Then there was the time in fourth grade when all the girls in my fourth grade class and the girls in my bluebird troop stopped talking to me. They shut me out because one of the more powerful girls in the group got her feelings hurt by some joke I said to her. I don't even remember the joke but I'm guessing I said some piece of "truth" she didn't want to hear. When I went through that experience I had nightmares for a long time and would wake up sleep walking and yelling in my dreams.
I like to think I am over these things, but this week I had a new insight that these experiences are part of the reason I don't often put myself or my artwork out into the world. I am still living under the false belief that I will offend, hurt, bother, or in some way express some "truth" that will cause me to be shut out or silenced. In fact, this belief has run my life so much that I see how I now do it to myself. I silence my artist before she can speak. I see a pattern in my life where I will have a small success like a show of my work. Then after it is over it's like I just stop. Suddenly, I don't want to do photography anymore, or clay. I recently did some mixed media work that also had some of my writing with it. Do you know I have had thoughts that - I need to be just a writer. Suddenly, I don't want to do the visual art. What will happen if I have a small success with writing? My guess is that I may silence my writer too. I see how I've spent a great deal of energy anticipating the reactions of people around me in order to make it "safe" enough for me to express myself and always fearing the unanticipated mistake that will cause me to be abandoned. Then after expressing myself, even if others don't shut me out, I somehow create it by stopping my work.

I think blogging may just be the antidote for me. Anyway, I have noted this week that my enemy is the silencer. And maybe the censor works overtime to make sure I don't grab too much attention and bring on the mute wrath of the silencer.

I also realized this week that my clay artist really and I mean really needs to get out there and fill her well. It may be just as simple as that. In another blog installment I'll have to tell the story about getting my own home kiln and how that has nearly silenced my clay artist. Between my artist date and reflecting on the need to fill the creative clay pond I recognized that my clay artist needs some support some contact with other clay artists. She's lonely. So, I'm signing up for a clay class. And maybe a weekend workshop too. And as synchronicity would have it I went to the library this week. On the shelf that has all the recent arrivals was a book called The Figure in Clay Contemporary Sculpting Techniques by Master Artists. (I won't try to link it to Amazon because those links don't work for me and I don't know why???). Anyway, I was so excited. I often go to the library not looking for anything in particular. I just let a new arrival jump out at me and take whatever it is as message from the universe - "here study this, discover this" So imagine my delight when this book came to me. I felt like I'd been heard. I felt like with the morning pages and the artist date and my new intention to unblock myself as a clay artist I was given a reply of yes.