What do you do when you grow tired of your own excuses?

Posted on by

Alcohol Inks on Yupo Paper 11″ x 14″ By Louise Gallagher

I don’t yet have my studio built-out in our new home. I’ve been using that as my excuse to not create.

Yesterday, I decided I’d had enough of my own excuses.

All my alcohol inks and paraphernalia were in one box. I hauled them upstairs, set myself up on the island and began to create.

It was a dream day. A day for calm and joy. Centredness and exploration.

I haven’t used alcohol inks and Yupo paper a lot. One evening course recently with the amazing Allyson Thain and that’s about it.

But that’s the joy of creating just for the joy of creating. I don’t have to ‘know the rules’ or even worry about following them. I simply have to be willing to let go of expectations and dive into exploration.

It can be so easy in this time-challenged, expectation-riddled world to fall into the trap of believing spending an afternoon and evening creating is ‘doing nothing’.

It’s not. Nothing.

It’s everything without having to be anything.

And that’s where freedom, creativity and inspiration exist. Beyond the spaces between expectation and demands, rules and commitments. Beyond ‘have to’s’ and ‘you’re on a schedule, don’t lose it’ is a world of possibility where magic happens. If only I get out of the way of forcing it to do it my way, or expecting it to appear on my schedule, in my life-inbox the way I want.

I lost myself in the art of creating yesterday with no expectation of creating anything other than space to savour the moment and be one with The Muse.

While C.C. watched football games and hockey on his laptop in the bedroom, I muddled around with inks and paper, exploring what happens when I let go of having to make it look this way or that, and fell instead into the freedom of letting it flow.

In that space, worry subsided and I was reminded once again, to not take myself so seriously. To ‘go with the flow’ and let nature have its way. My job isn’t to direct nature. It’s to create the space for magic, wonder and awe to appear naturally amidst all the struggles, upheavals and mistakes of every day living, and amidst the beauty too.

This world is filled with angst. With turmoil and pain. And it’s filled with beauty.

When I release my need to make sense of the turmoil and fall instead into surrendering to the beauty, I create peace, joy, harmony within me. And in that place, magic awakens, miracles arise as I free-fall into being present to the wonder and awe of creation.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thank you Kerry Parsons for reminding me of my creative nature and inspiring me to connect once again with The Muse.

16 thoughts on “What do you do when you grow tired of your own excuses?”

    • Me too! In answer to your question — I do sell it but haven’t been using my website to do it lately as I haven’t had time to update it. 🙂 Mostly, I create it as gifts and generally, once a year, participate in an art show that allow me to sell it. However, I haven’t been able to do that in the past year as a) we moved and renovated our new home; and b) I’ve been busy at work! 🙂

      Which is all to say, thank you for the lovely inquiry. I’ll work on getting my website updated — but if you’re interested in a specific piece… we can talk! 🙂

      Thanks Beth ❤

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

  6. Good for you! Finally that niggedly little sub-conscious voice got through to the surface. Looking forward to seeing more of your works.
    P.S. Did this creative burst have any effect on C.C. and the completion, or is it the start of the work on your studio?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • Actually… it did! We had a long discussion last night about getting it started — in fact, we’ve rejigged our entire concept for the downstairs space — so the wait has been worth it!

      And for now… I’ve left my inks on the kitchen island to entice me to explore some more! ❤

      Like

      Reply ↓

Real conversations begin with your comments. Please share your thoughts.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.