resistance Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Dora Sislian Themelis Art

Is Procrastination Resistance? Uh, Yeah

Sorting out the hows and whys of dodging Mr. Resistance has become a full time job. I wish I could say painting is my full time job, but that’d be a stretch considering I spend plenty of time resisting it.

Weird, right? But so it is.

Surfing the idiot net today in search of inspiration, and using that excuse, I found this wonderful cartoon on the Hyperallergic.com site titled Is Procrastination Productive? Funny how my daily schedule is just like this cartoon, art vs anything other than art. It’s ridiculous, but it’s the truth in it that makes this hilarious.

Guess it’s not just me? Heh heh.

Productive Procrastination by Lauren Purje — It’s not like you’re doing nothing.

Tuesday, The War of Art, and Wow

Yes, wow and The War of Art in the same sentence! I know you will want to know why and I’m about to explain. As you’ve noticed, I’ve been re-reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, to get my mojo back in action. It’s not an easy thing to push aside resistance and overwhelm. It’s the bane of an artist’s life. Mr. Resistance drops by with Mrs. Overwhelm and they end up having a party at my place without my permission. They’re lousy house guests, too, leaving all manner of distress in my house.

My quest for artistic sanity began quite a while ago when I decided I needed to purchase and work with The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Breaking through artist block with various tasks was a welcome relief to the drudgery that comes with the fear of making a mess of a lovely, perfectly white canvas.

Read it, did it, passed the test. I hummed along quite well, for a while, working on my paintings in small segments of time, mostly twenty minutes. Worked well until it happened one day that it didn’t work.

What are you going to do? It happens.

In comes another great book, The War of Art. The kick butt writing style of Steven Pressfield and how he over comes resistance helped me get back on the horse, so to speak. All good. Until it happened again. Dead stop.

I don’t know how that works, but it works really well to stop me from getting anything worthwhile done. Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Pain-in-my-neck show up and it’s over. But lately, they don’t stay as long as they had in the past. With my copy of Pressfield’s book close by, and writing about it here, I’m back.

So for the Wow part: Here I am, writing my little blog, working hard on developing this new platform, discussing my displeasure with Mr. Resistance when I received an email to my brand, spanking new dot com email address. I didn’t think it even worked. Mr. Pressfield’s literary representative contacted me saying she read my blogpost about his book, and would I like a few copies of it along with two others he wrote.

Would I? I was doing back flips! Yes I would, and thank you so very much! They arrived last week. I was so excited I couldn’t even think straight to start reading.

I need to breathe.

I’ve decided to have a little fun with my lovely gifts by spreading the love, the words, and wonderful direction these books can bring artists of all stripes. First I have to figure out the what and the how of the idea in my head. And if WordPress acts nicely and cooperates, we can enjoy a little contest of sorts.

Stay tuned.

Back to The War of Art: Resistance Only Opposes in One Direction

RESISTANCE ONLY OPPOSES IN ONE DIRECTION
“Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.
So if you’re in Calcutta working with the Mother Teresa Foundation and you’re thinking of bolting to launch a career in telemarketing…relax. Resistance will give you a free pass.”
from The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

Isn’t that nice. Mr. Resistance will tell you “Oh that new painting you’re working on? Don’t bother working on it. It’s not coming along so well anyway. Why don’t you just go fidget with some of that junk in your dresser drawer instead.”

Rather than pay any mind to what Mr. Resistance says, we should brush him aside and push harder to finish that painting and accomplish a new goal.

Yes, that’s what we should do, but do we? No. No, we don’t. We, I, listen to his murmurings, his whispers, and my brain believes him, even answers him saying “Yeah, you’re right. That painting isn’t working out the way I thought. I’ll wait for tomorrow to work on it.” And there it all goes down the drain.

It’s just that easy to take the short leap off the path.

Back to The War of Art: Resistance is Fueled by Fear

RESISTANCE IS FUELED BY FEAR
“Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.”
from The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

If we can manage to ponder this idea that Mr. Resistance has no strength, that all the fuss is fed by our own fear, the question is: How do we identify said fear, and more importantly, how can we conquer it?

Resistance, the Brain, and the Process

Developing a new website is a big deal. If this WordPress thing doesn’t kill me now, nothing will. And for that I’ll be grateful. In the midst of my mess here, figuratively and physically, painting happened. Imagine that? Actual work took place at my studio table. A day of productivity is a welcome thing. Needed, and necessary.

Putting aside resistance, trying to keep myself in the now instead of thinking about what I should’ve done, and what I could do tomorrow, the moment came. I grabbed it with both hands. The paints were available. The watercolor block was on my table. Photos I took in the fall were strewn across my table too. All I needed was to feel a pull toward one of them. Motivation is such a difficult thing to capture and the brain is a strange friend.

My brain talks way too much, and says things to me that I wouldn’t say to my worst enemies. Why do we do that to ourselves? The brain goes on and on about hurtful thoughts, talking such trash. And we listen to it, ingest and digest it, and spit it back out by doing absolutely nothing.

Someone come and kick it out! Guess what? That someone has to be one’s self. Get with the program, already!

Enough with the trash talk, let’s get to the art.

In the next photo you can see how I started adding shadow and trying to define the areas. The last photo is the second day of working on this watercolor painting and it’s starting to look like something I could be pleased with.

You may or may not remember, but it’s the process that is really the focus. Kicking out Mr. Resistance is part of the gig. Returning to the painting is the second part. Resistance has to be toppled to make time for the work. But, and the but is a big one, then I have to get back to work. It’s such a long story.

Back to The War of Art

RESISTANCE IS UNIVERSAL
“We’re wrong if we think we’re the only one struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.”
from The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

Isn’t that wonderful? So we are not alone. Everyone, not only we creative types, experience our own kind of resistance. Maybe other people don’t call it Mr. Resistance like I do, but it’s safe to say it happens to the best of us.

The thing we most want and need to work on or at, is exactly the thing we seem to avoid doing. Amazing isn’t it?

Decision Equals Commitment

Information sometimes comes at the wrong time. The brain is not ready to accept certain ideas, facts, data and the like. However, the information presented is digested and the time eventually comes when we need to make a decision. The decision, then, becomes our responsibility. Decisions lead to action.

Recently I had a choice to make on another online program. Take the course, or don’t take the course. The course would have been beneficial in that I would not learn anything business-wise any where else, given the fact that I am not going back to school. Please, not at this stage in the game, and not for business.

The deciding factor was finances. This course was pricey. Okay, I would learn things I didn’t know, but the question hung on me: Would the cost translate into actionable usage? Would it benefit me in ways I would see in concrete form. Or, would it benefit me in time, with more help, needing more learning? I just couldn’t justify the price at this point. With plenty of other ways of getting information at my fingertips right now, I passed on the course. Next time around I’ll rethink it.

Someone would be making money, not necessarily me. For now I’ll just Google whatever I need to know.

But the course presenter sent out a free and informative video workshop with good thoughts on moving ahead and making things happen. A big take away for me was the idea that we need to make a decision first, and that decision, what ever it might be, is a commitment. Once we make a commitment, we take action.

“Once we take action, the Universe bends to support you,” the presenter emphasized. That statement struck me, reminding me of the book I read a while ago The Science of Getting Rich, by Wallace Wattles, from 1908, I think.

I get that. Making decisions is like saying there’s no B.S. now, you’ve got to get things done. Take charge. Act. Be a doer. Push it. Do it.

Making the commitment was the easy part. Kicking out Mr. Resistance is the hard part.

Resistance Makes me Knit

KnitBabyHat — Knit Baby Hat ©Dora Sislian Themelis

Well, here we are at WordPress, trying my best to get myself together and move the blog along. Mr. Resistance is doing his very best to make me crazy. If Mr. Resistance doesn’t make me crazy, WordPress definitely will do the job.

It’s a steep learning curve and it’s embarrassing how hard it really is to be up and running. Everyone says Use WordPress, it’s professional looking, it is so easy to use, you’ll feel like a rock star. To be perfectly honest, I feel like an idiot. This is stuff that kids probably can do blindfolded. Me? Meh.

First you need to find a host. Then you need to decide on a “theme.” After that, which in itself could give you anxiety, you need to configure the whole shebang. I don’t know who those people are that think this is easy. They must be making money telling people anyone can do this.

Who are those people?

Little old artist me is doing her best to keep it together, yes I am.

Who could paint? This is ridiculous. But I can knit! Yeah, knitting is happening here. This adorable little baby boy’s hat was knit in one sitting while watching some dopey thing on TV. Lovely blue wool yarn will keep a baby nice and warm. Sized to fit a newborn to maybe a year old. My granddaughter pulled it on her own head the other day and she’s two and a half now.

I won’t be comfortable with this new platform until I’m done customizing it, and learning how to even add content. Typing my thoughts, wrapping them around my photos, adding captions, and whatever else, is taking up much of my energy.