It’s very easy to get discouraged when creating. You can beat yourself up with your unworthy thoughts – I am a failure, I didn’t do that very well, what’s the point, etc, etc.
We are our own worst critic and often have such high standards for ourselves we fall short of achieving them and then feel like we have failed. Where did these ideas come from? Are they really true, or something we have adopted as a self defence mechanism?
This past week I have had to surrender to my “lost days” as I call them. The days in bed with Covid where I gave up trying to do anything, including my daily artworks. I had those initial failure thoughts but also knew that I had to surrender to the circumstances I found myself in.
It took over a week before I was able to get the courage to open up my new travelling paint-set I had bought it in London just before I got sick. When I finally opened the box, I was daunted by all the plastic wrappings around the individual paint colours which required some effort to unwrap. Too hard I thought and put it aside.
At this point I nearly gave up on my dailies. I asked myself, have I lost all motivation? Do I really need to continue with this self directed project? And yet I also knew that if I set myself up at the table, played some jazzy music and systematically unwrapped each colour, I would be more than halfway there.
It worked! To celebrate, I used each of the colours in the paint-set to break the impasse. All was not lost! I retrospectively created little vignettes including one with the number of “lost days”.
Oh! the joy to be using beautiful paints. Why did I ever think I needed to compromise on quality. They are half the weight of the other set of watercolours I lugged around for 4 months and double the quality.
Always at the back of my mind was the “I’m not good enough” thought, that one that holds you back from investing in yourself. I hadn’t bought this same Windsor & Newton paint-set before I left because it was double the price. Now when I look back at it, this was a false saving. Hindsight is a great teacher.
I now have new motivation and a renewed resolve to always buy the best I can afford so that I have good tools and materials to work with. It doesn’t matter that it is for my “dailies”, these always point the way into new directions. I may even take up more painting. Who knows. My lost days have not been lost…
Covid days - the first week of July. My dailies, (from left) A view from my window, the number of days in bed…