Saturday, February 2, 2013
This is continuing my previous blogs
Day 143 – Inadequacy
Day 144 - Inadequacy - a child gymnast
Day 145 - Inadequacy - Child's Play
Day 147 - Inadequacy - forgiving childhood play time
Day 148 - Inadequacy - Reading difficulties
Day 149 - Inadequacy – Self Created Reading Difficulties
Day 150 - Inadequacy - Preparing Food
Day 151 - Inadequacy - Preparing Food – Part 2 - Preparing Wraps
Day 152 - Inadequacy – Preparing Food – Part 3 – Farm Chicken
Since I was a child I "knew" about myself that I'm not creative, not talented in the arts and crafts. My sister was, my best friends were, and I wasn't.
I remember drawing in class at school, and always feeling frustrated when I would compare my stick like images to my friend's realistic and accurate drawings, it has always been an accepted joke between us friends, mocking me for drawing these round faces and stick like figures, all very symmetrical, no creativity whatsoever. Back home it was the same, my sister never made fun of me but she could draw and doodle so nicely, she would paint on the walls of her room and I was always jealous of her talent, comparing myself to her and knowing within myself that I could never do anything as pretty as that.
The lack of talent I saw myself as, included not liking my hand writing, and of course I compared myself to my sister and my friends, which had such nice and "girly" hand writing where as I had messy and unclear hand writing, like a boy's. So basically any form of artistic / creative expression using my hands as tools I would judge as less than those around me, and condemned myself to believe I am inadequate.
Years have gone by since that drawing class memory or since my sister doodled on her walls, though I still held on to this self belief of being inadequate when it comes to creativity within any form of artistic self expression through using my hands, as drawing, writing, painting, sculpting - anything that I had packed up in the definition of creativity -it didn't include crafts that I didn't define as creative such as sawing or hammering or cutting, with such crafts / skills I didn't have that self believed inadequacy, it was very specific to anything I defined as creative and girly. It's like I've taken anything that I define as creative / artistic and girly, put it in a locked box, and threw away the key - truly believing that I don't have any access to such expressions.
A few years ago I decided to walk through this self belief because I saw everybody around me enjoying themselves through self expression creativity such as drawing - it looked fun when other people were doing it and I saw that I was limiting myself based on self judgment and that I actually never really gave it a real chance, so I went to a 6 meeting sketch class to learn the basic skill and maybe allow myself to open up to the point - I just wanted to learn to enjoy myself through drawing, I didn't want or expect to be any good at it, I just wanted to be free of this self judgment that has been preventing me from enjoying myself through drawing .
During the class I still participated in lots of self judgment based in comparison and competition, but there were moments, when I let it go and just allowed myself to sketch, and I remember this one time I was sketching a pine cone and it suddenly popped out from the paper and came to life, it was so awesome, I couldn't believe it - I had done it, I broke the "I can't draw to save my life" character, as I have finally proved it wrong.
A few weeks later I drew my "master piece"- I copied a photograph of a child's face from a book, and when I was done and put down the pencil, I couldn't believe I drew it, I put it on my wall and stared at it, I could have easily convinced myself that a spirit came through me and drew it, because "I could never have done something so nice" - I realize that even though I broke the character, I actually didn't - being able to draw was so out of character for me, that I couldn't take it in as myself, I experienced it like an inner conflict between my self belief and this picture hanging on my wall - of course I don't believe some spirit drew it through me, and I realize it was in fact me who made that sketch, but the experience was of disbelief, like a form of shock, I couldn't really accept that I did that, within it I also experience a form of doubt as to whether I could ever repeat it again. I did try drawing since then, but didn't give myself the time to do it properly and then I just lost interest - I think there was / is a fear within me that I end up proving to myself over and over that my self belief was wrong, that I am not inadequate - I wasn't ready to let go of this point of inadequacy, so I didn't continue drawing and kept on to the belief that I can't.
In the last 10 years I've had some experience with working with children, and even though generally speaking I am confidence in working with them, when it comes to creativity the experience of inadequacy still takes me over, and I sabotage myself through not creating the posters / signs / activities within the justification that I am incapable of doing them properly, if any task requires any level of creativity I still, to this day, allow the experience and self belief of inadequacy to direct and control me and I do anything to avoid doing it. "I don't want to do it", because I still "know" it will turn out bad, I am left frustrated that doing such tasks is a part of the job - I still compare myself to others that creativity comes easily to them, I then project the comparison and experience of inadequacy onto the entire job, and compound it into believing that I am not fit to work with children because I am not creative enough.
I will continue with self forgiveness tomorrow
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1 comments:
Cool realisation about the locked box and throwing away the key. I just remembered locking my mouth with this screw like movement throwing away an imaginary key within which I now realise I screwed myself not expressing myself unconditionally in the moment. I commit myself to unlock my boxes as well lol. Awesome self transformation Maya, thanks for sharing!
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