It’s a Miracle!

Yeehaw! I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but I’ve been so busy creating that I’ve hardly had time to post in the past week or so. Right now I’m waiting for my paint to dry on the first of several journal pages I’m working on for the “Heart and Meaning” pathway of my Creative Entrepreneur Mandala. It took a few days to work up the courage to cut up the writing from the journaling prompts for this exercise so I could use them in my visual journal pages. I’m so glad I did though, as the process allowed be to literally cut away the irrelevant bits and the occasional negative self-talk that snuck in. It also allowed me to take all the bits and pieces and move them around and more easily find patterns and uncover more ideas about what’s most important to me. The whole Visual Journal thing is really starting to click for me. The way it engages your brain on multiple levels is really pretty fascinating.

After my last post, I did indeed explore Lisa Sonora Beam’s website, CreativeEntrepreneur.biz. I signed up for a free teleseminar, which I participated in today. Participants were offered a discount on upcoming online workshops, and I jumped at the chance. I’m looking forward to having access to the private forums and getting feedback on the pages I’m working on. Even without the workshop though, I really so glad I bought this book and so glad that I pushed myself to actually do the exercises.

The Creative Entrepreneur Revisited

After posting about the book The Creative Entrepreneur last Thursday, I sat down and started working with some of the prompts and exercises. I wanted to make a quick update post, as a follow up to my initial impressions.

First of all, let me just say that in the very first paragraph of the book it’s explained exactly why I was rather frustrated with this book. It’s not for me. It’s for people similar to me, yes, but it isn’t intended for people in exactly the place I am, and the author says so upfront when describing the sort of person she hopes to help. “…for the creative soul who is blessed with passion and purpose yet cursed by the seemingly mysterious realm of strategies and skills that are needed to make an idea real.” No wonder I felt like she skipped over helping the reader find purpose, it’s assumed that the reader is starting from some level of passion and or purpose to begin with!

That said, once I actually sat down with a notebook and the myriad fine point Sharpies I got for Christmas and started working with the prompts, I actually DID start to find some of the answers I’ve been seeking. I now have an impressive stack of papers covered in colorful scrawls and – even more encouraging – doodles. In fact, I’ve spent several hours now just working with the first project, The Creative Entrepreneur Mandala. While it hasn’t magically changed my life overnight or anything, the deceptively challenging questions like “What do you value?” have helped me gain a surprisingly level of focus and vision. Who knew I had such a strong desire to teach? Or to create beautiful arrangements and displays? And what’s really impressing me is that I’m slowly starting to find way to put those pieces together to form something of a roadmap, a plan for integrating all the things that are important into a meaningful, fulfilling life. (Not just career or job, but a LIFE.)

So there you have it, a lukewarm review and now a glowing one. Take your pick. I have a hard time believing any one book will completely solve all of life’s problems, but just at this moment I’m willing to put this one in the “Seriously Good Mental Power-Tools” pile.

In pursuit of visual journaling

Here is a snippet of something I made last night. I guess you could call it a visual journal page. I’m still a bit tentative to call it that, as I’m still sort of in research mode, trying to get some kind of definition for what it is, if only in my own head. I suspect the term “visual journaling” is one of those terms that can encompass a lot of things and means different things to different people.

I got my copy of the book The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real in the mail the other day, and promptly devoured it. I intend to reread it, going through it more slowly to try out some of the exercises and prompts. Initially, my main goal was just to further my understanding of self-help through art and journaling. It definitely helped with that, but what I was surprised to find was some left-brained power tools, geared toward the right brained thinker. Great advice on setting achievable goals and creating strategies for how to achieve them; and this advice applies to anything, not just business. The author advocates using the methods for non-business goals specifically so that you can flex your left brained muscles. I liked the book so well that my next step is to explore her website, Creative Entrepreneur.

My impulse to visit her website is motivated in part by the fact that as much as I enjoyed the book and found it helpful, I found the lack of depth in some areas a bit frustrating. While the are journaling prompts along the lines of “I’ve always wanted to…” and “My creative dream is:” are designed to help you get focused about starting a creative business, for me it’s kind of putting the cart before the horse. My problems are not finding the chutzpah to make my dreams real, or narrowing my focus from broad to manageable. I’m having trouble finding the chutzpah to dream in the first place, or narrowing my focus from staggering and spastic to something that simply doesn’t make me feel like I’m in danger of spontaneous combustion.

I suppose that’s what journaling – and similarly, blogging – is all about. Working through one’s inner Stuff. I’m jealous and angsty because I wish I could be a bit more focused and confident. I feel like a freak because I don’t know ANYTHING about what I want from life except that the entrepreneurial drive is strong with me. But really? That’s probably very common. So I’ve got some added weirdness from being more left-brained than most artists, and the depression and Asperger’s issues sure don’t help. And that sucks. Now I’ve vented, and complained, and possibly not made much sense outside my own head (my apologies if that’s the case.) Well, perhaps that’s just the pressure valve I need, and I can go into the studio and try again to use some of my new goal-setting tools to work some of this out.