• I made my May 1st deadline! I finished my May Art-video! Posting the 14 one-minute clips today.

  • …major tug-of-wars between my Ego-space and my Heart-Space, my Heart won, and I now have new ART for my 14th Variation of my own Heart Art Brand bundle. 

    If I had been able to do less tug of war inwardly, I might have given myself more time, and changed some things in the movie. But it’s okay.

    Trigger warning for anyone else processing their childhood traumas. I am not sending this to my family, and don’t know who is secretly looking at my website. That said, I heard a wonderful quote by Anne Lamott in a recent interview, explaining to a young mother that it’s a mother’s job to mess up your child. To me it was her way of also supporting the mothers, not just us grownup kids who are trying - through memoir writing - to process our various wounds. There is no “bad person”, there is only inner work. AND ART.

    It’s my job to move past the trauma, and I hope that comes through with this Art-video.

    I have so much more to say about strict Northern German/East Prussian child rearing, including that my mother just wanted to raise a loving, humble, cooperative child vs. a spoiled brat who cares not for humanity. That ‘strict parenting’ was the ultimate Ego-disolver. It’s a delicate balance I never got to test out, since I was not lucky enough to have children.  

    There is also the issue of where does Art and True Self fit in, in a world that isn’t really set up to support either. I am amused by the idea that I am creating my ideal job for myself, considering this is a road I would never have chosen, or anyone else would choose.

    With me and my incredible sensitivity, maybe my mother overdid it a little. Now I am too humble, and would prefer to do all of this in the privacy of my room. Showing up for myself at this point in my life still feels horrible. So I’m going to shut down emotionally a little this month and just post everything anyway.

    But little moments happen - even this morning - when I really FEEL the art that I made.

    ◎

    So I hope you do too. For our Heart-Spaces. 

May Art-Video (full):

The May art-video broken open into a set of 14 minutes with copy, below:

  • It’s my Art Video Day! I’m starting my May Art-Drop with my art video!

    My spiritual design journey All-lines-are-beautiful, which I didn’t ask for, is about doing what I CAN do, and using what I DO have, which for this month’s first ever paper sculpture is working with this stack of color paper.

    Why not use the paper which I once bought to make an online paper-flower store, which was one of my many attempts to figure out how to make money during this 11 year All-lines journey. My heart-space must be stronger now in being able to tell you this…

  • But it hasn’t just been about how to make money, it’s been about learning how to do what I love and make that my living.

    The confusion and disorientation is that I thought I found it. I love art, I taught myself graphic design in my 20’s, I was living my dream career, until at a certain age I was no longer hired, and that’s when All-lines-are-beautiful started.

    But was it ageism? Or was it because I told a lead art director on an interview (!) that I thought his art example was boring. This is exactly the kind of mouthiness my mother tried to slap out of me until I was 19. I only recently put all this together. But she was right, in a protective way, because I still haven’t figured out how to be authentic - my truth-mouth and all - and have it serve me.

  • Maybe there was a dash of ageism in not being hired after 44, but I do know that I moved out West again to be challenged professionally, and the Universe more than delivered.

    I didn’t know there was such a thing as intuitive, inner, divine spirituality, or that I was not using my own true voice during my first 44 years. Most of this journey has to do with learning how to stay in this inner space, and show up for myself, no matter who does or doesn’t give me approval or support, especially my family.

    I needed the time to learn how to like my own art - and my art-process, which, although it is digital, it is not AI, and very very painful to make, because now, my art looks like nothing I’ve ever created before, and doesn’t get anyone else’s stamp of approval anymore.

  • Not even my abstract-art-disliking boyfriend, G. Although I will add that when I make something that he can be positive about, I feel like I am making heart-progress, because it’s making a connection between two different bridges.

    Embracing my art is parallel to me embracing me completely, and so this is my all-encompassing healing journey that feels awful. I have so much resistance showing up for myself.

    –

    The more I am in this American gig culture, the more I see how other people are struggling, on so many levels, too. It deepens my sense of empathy, and I feel such a soulful connection to people who do not have an unfair advantage in life. I always think of Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 “Man in the Arena” speech, about what it means to be in the arena of life, as G and I deal with the metaphorical ‘blood, sweat and tears’.

  • (I added the word ‘tears’).

    Here is my favorite paragraph from the speech:

    “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

  • I wonder what the other delivery-people’s life stories and dreams are? I am inspired by anyone who is in the arena, anyone who is the striving underdog…. I’m grateful for a new part of my heart opening to strangers who are trying to make something with their lives, when all there is is a crazy sense of hope.

    In my mid 20’s my Barnard College-educated ex-girlfriend pushed me to find an inspiring profession, pointed me towards the book “Work with Passion”, which connected me to graphic design. I proceeded to work almost effortlessly in the Brand design world of NYC, and came to love America more deeply for the first time. It was not a path without effort, but I was remarkably unfazed by all the “no’s” and just followed the “yes’s”.

  • Doing a radical career change at age 26 would never have been possible in Germany, where I spent my first six years, and where half of my family lives. I had a new kind of love for the States that was different from the way my American-German family was more focused on US flaws: let’s create protective universal health care, like Germany has, for starters …

    Here I am again, in my mid 50’s, changing my career for a second time, out of necessity. Even though it is not the carefully laid out plan I had hoped for, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. This gratitude for my position in life is not something my German family understands. Well, neither does my American family. Okay fine, neither does anyone I know.

  • Had we moved back to Germany, which was a constant pull, not only would I never have been able to ‘gift’ myself the graphic design profession, but now, my career would definitely have been over. In America there are 2nd, 3rd and 40th chances. Everyone, not just artists, can take all our love and spirit and belief, and run with it. Courage is the springboard. This is uniquely American idea, connected to a healthy, wholehearted democracy. I imagine how much more we can do, the healthier we get individually and collectively …

    I know that I fit into this current system in many ways, and I have benefited as a white woman, so I don’t use the word ‘freedom’ lightly. I think of the word freedom now, because it’s an idea that has taken me an age to embrace. Freedom is this tiny inner space of having the courage to make something out of nothing.

  • I am free to write and create art on my terms. Even and especially as I start these Art Drops, a part of me - my ego-space - just wants to follow someone else’s instructions.

    Synchronicity happens now, as I cut the paper for my paper sculpture-of-the-month - the shapes start to look like a Phoenix rising. Working with paper calms me down. The reason I bring paper art into my life isn’t because it’s practical to cut paper for 10 hours, and for another 10 + plus hours glue it on. It’s because it helps me dream with my heart, not my head. It’s listening to an un-practical inner space, time to intuitively process my failures.

    And then, new ideas come too, and that is the beautiful and fulfilling part.

  • ‘What we resist, persists’, and so I have to stop and acknowledge this mental and physical LOOP I’m in. My ego-space criticizes me for “still being in the same place” because I am still supporting myself financially through gig work. I am aware of the looming backdrop of the American dream, and our group-focus on financial success.

    But I’m not in the same place, spiritually speaking.

    For my May Art Drop I am leveling up. I am doing what I said I would do. Invitation-less. I am making things I’ve never made before. I am using Adobe PremierePro in a way I’ve been practicing in smaller ways; I am making paper sculptures and graphic art in a new way; I am using my new words for my art; and I continue to believe in my little against-all-odds online store.

  • When the nausea leaves, there is a tiny piece inside me that is really pleased with what I make. And I know that these decisions and action steps are more important than the nausea.

    These quotes draw me in on a soul level: one from Rumi, “Wherever you stand, be the Soul of that place”, and the other from Eckhard Tolle, “Accept your reality as if you have created it”.

    I have to BE the Soul of delivering pizzas. I have no other choice. I also have to give myself credit for creating wide open time for myself every morning to write and work on my art. I MADE that.

    Soul: I rarely have contact with the people I deliver to, but that day just when I was leaving, I heard a tiny “thank you” from an old man who didn’t need to open his door to thank me.

  • I waved back and said, “Welcome, thank youu…”, and he waved some more. This was a deeply fulfilling moment. … And then I remembered my childhood, tagging along with Dad when he visited shut-ins and nursing homes, as part of his pastor job. There was so much joy in these visits, connecting with people who are forgotten …

    The spiritual idea ‘Accept your reality as if you have created it’ pisses me off more, but that’s the big spiritual Loop, and connected to ‘what you resist, persists’.

    I have been practicing inwardly not to fight my job so much. To surrender to it a little, which is not giving up on my dreams, it’s just not fighting it so much … Letting-go is not a German characteristic, and I don’t think it comes very easily to Americans either …

  • When I make the decision to fight my reality less, there are more super sweet things happening. I know my heart is opening more, which is somehow connected to my purpose.

    The other week I had a day - one whole day - when I was intensely un-bothered by anything. There were no THOUGHTS in my head. I was just 100% PRESENT. It was the most incredible peace. Interestingly, it wasn’t because I didn’t have wine the night before, or because I slept well, or because I swam or walked. All of which are important and interesting threads in my life.

    And even if I don’t have this kind of complete peace and stillness every day, I am onto it now, because the thing that is happening underneath all the art, writing, sleeping, walking, swimming, eating and drinking joyfully and healthfully - I am HEALING.

    We can heal!

  • When we show up for ourselves, we create a new inner landscape - our heart-spaces!, and that’s where all the hope lies.

    And it can start just from a stack of paper in our closets.

    Love, Anne

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