I have always been wild about planners, PASSIONATE about them, I could not tell you how many I have purchased in my lifetime with the very best of intentions… and I never used a single one of them.
Oh I may have given it a go, I always, of course, filled out all the info. in the front. I might have even made cursory notes in January, but no matter what kind of planner I was using — and I paid way too much money for some of them — I just couldn’t get into them. Then came the Passion Planner. I actually had one once because people raved about them but I didn’t have any more success with it than I had had with any other kind that I ever bought. But I started watching how people used their Passion Planners on Instagram and I was hooked. When they had a 1/2 price sale the end of February I bought one. I wish I had purchased the undated planner but that made me nervous. And at first it didn’t look like I was going to have any more luck with this one than I ever had before.
If you follow the people on Instagram who use them, well, they are virtual works of art. I am in awe each time their weekly spreads come up in my feed, but I would finally just shrug, shove my Passion Planner under a pile of other things, and figure it was just one more year that the planner would go by the wayside. And then, a couple of days ago, I started drawing again. Last night I pulled out the Passion Planner and drew one Lady, the one in the middle on the top row. I thought that would be it. I knew this poor Lady in the middle of the page didn’t begin to be all glamorously artsy like so many others I had seen but I liked her. I nervously closed my planner and went on about my evening. But I have started something now, somehow the ball got rolling when I wasn’t looking, and I don’t think it’s going to stop any time soon.
Today I drew the Lady on the top right, an hour later I did the one on the bottom with the butterfly and the pug. And finally the one on the top left. I looked at what I had done and thought, well, damn, look at that! It does not look like anyone else’s Passion Planner, nor should it. It looks like mine, and in that moment I fell in love with my planner. It is now here beside me with my big journal and I plan to draw and paint in both of them everyday. Not because I have to, not because I think it is all leading somewhere, but because in these few short days that I have been drawing and painting again I have remembered something — I am a happier person when I am making art. I don’t know why I stopped before — well, that’s a lie, I do know why I stopped, I stopped because, as I said a couple of days ago, it was all well and good to mess around but what was I ever going to DO with it all? And if I couldn’t DO SOMETHING WITH IT, i.e. make money, what was the use? — but I’ll tell you what right here and now, I’m not going to stop again, at least not for the reason I did before. Drawing and painting, I have come to realize, are like taking my vitamins. I can get along without taking them, but I sure as hell feel a lot better when I am taking them. Why would I stop?
You know, I do have ideas of ways my art and writing might work together, in a book say, or how all of it might come together in a course, or a revised version of my “Spontaneous Art & Life Project,” but that is so far down the line it’s not even something I am thinking about now. One thing I know for sure, whatever I create, whatever my work ends up being, it will come naturally out of the flow of just doing what I’m doing. I write everyday, I am drawing and painting everyday, and whatever is going to evolve just will if it’s supposed to. And then there is the planner. I have taken a leap and done something in it that made it feel like my own for the very first time ever. I think I’ve always been afraid I would “mess it up.” Well darlin’ I’m making messes everywhere these days, why should I stop there?
It’s after 7 now. I’ve fed the pugs and come back here to my work table. I haven’t drawn in my big journal yet today but I think I’ll do that now. And I am watching fun arty videos on YouTube, and listening to wonderful things while I draw. This is a perfect night to do just that.
I hope you are having a lovely evening wherever you are. I would love to hear from you about what creative things you are doing that bring you joy, and I would really like to encourage you, if you’ve always wanted to make art but thought you couldn’t, or thought if you couldn’t make money with it it wasn’t worth while, to give it a go. Start, right now, with whatever you have at hand. Any kind of pen or pencil is a start. The day I drew that first Lady in 2013 I had no clue what I was doing, or how I should begin. I made a big circle in the middle of the paper and stared at it for awhile. I finally, nervously, drew two eyes, and I almost quit there because they were so lopsided. Then I thought, “Oh, what the hell,” and made a funny nose and an even funnier looking mouth, and I looked at that Lady and she made me laugh. I was never going to be able to draw the way I saw other people draw, the way I so wanted to, but I could draw like me. In that instant The 100 Ladies Project was born, and 5 years later, almost to the day, I am beginning again. I am giving myself permission to let it be what it will be, in my sketchbook, in my planner, and wherever else they might decide they want to be. This is my “one wild and precious life” as Mary Oliver wrote about and if I can’t spend it doing something that brings me so much joy, well, that would be a sad thing indeed.
Start now, whatever it is that you long to do, find a way to do it. There’s no time like the present and really the present is all we’ve got. And if you start doing your dream thing today you will be opening up a whole world of possibilities, anything might come once you begin. It’s what I’m counting on, and there’s no turning back now.
Onwards and Upwards!
The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda
you are so right on, you are back to/forward to your true authentic wonderful talented hopeful spiritually motivated artist/writer self. wahoo!!! nothing makes me happier than seeing your ladies — the one with flowers and a vine in her hair, the one with a kitten peeping over, they are truly marvellous, maitri. and i know i am not alone in thinking so. but the most important thing is, you are following your bliss, having fun, believing in yourself and your ladies and pugs and paintbrushes… and those wonderful hair-do’s and adornments!!!!
xoxox
ka
Thank you so much sweet Ka, you made me smile really big ALL OVER with all you had to say. You know, I’m playing, that’s it, I’m playing, and it’s not just that I haven’t played in a long time I never really learned how to play. In my childhood because of what I was going through I was really afraid and hiding. I wrote in my little spiral notebook and it truly saved me but I never really learned to play, and I have led a very careful life, physically, and spatially in the world my whole life. Art was dangerous for me because there was no way to contain it, if you tried you killed the spirit of what you were trying to do. I think my Ladies are going to morph into wilder and wiser and more playful beings as they go along. When I am creating one I have ideas that make me giggle, and if they are making me feel that way then I know I am on the right track.
I’m so glad you like my Ladies, and you know in a funny sort of way the “community of women” I wanted to create I am creating right here and now, I am drawing and painting them, I am bringing them out of the ethers into reality. I think these are the women I’ve been waiting for. And gracious me they’re a sassy, unruly bunch! And I wouldn’t have it any other way… 😀
Love you honey…
M. xoxox
It’s so delightful to see all these ladies with their various accoutrements and pets. Thank you for sharing them!
Thank you Joan honey! 😀
I’m having so much fun, and the accoutrements and pets are the most fun of all! They are making me kind of giddy happy, and gracious, doesn’t that just feel so good! Such a funny thing to have, several days ago, kind of hit bottom emotionally and then bounce back up to a better place than I’ve been in in a long time, but isn’t that how it so often happens? I had had a hard few weeks, kind of spiralling down and down and I finally hit bottom and, with the help of all of you dear friends here who took the time to comment I was able to wake up and begin to rise again.
You know I really do want to teach my Spontaneous Art & Life course again some time because it’s all about making art for the joy of it, not having to have had any training or background or fancy materials but just making marks on paper and watching them blossom into your own unique way of expressing yourself, and paired with a journal process that works with it to establish a practice that helps you in life. There’s so much there. But now is not the time to concentrate on that, now is the time to live it each day here and watch it unfold. That is what I am doing. And I so appreciate you who are here cheering me on.
I am sending you so much love and a big hug. May we each find our bliss and revel in it each and every day, no matter what form it takes…
Love it! Especially the lady with the cat! 🙂
Thank you Victoria honey… 🙂
I love your ladies! They make me happy. They’d make lovely giclees and they would sell, Maitri! Right from your website.
I have one in my kitchen (you can see it on my blog in the list of images down the side; it’s captioned “Happy Hour with Blondi”) that was painted by Wendy Ann Klein of B.C.
I purchased it online out of a huge and humorous and heartful variety of options.
Her paintings are also sold as prints and as greeting cards.
-Kate
Thank you so much Kate. Some of them are up on my Society 6 page but a lot of other art is there too that really needs to come down. You can see what’s there at:
https://society6.com/maitrilibellule
I need to get in there and clean it out and put new things up but really I never made much money there. If people actually buy prints I make a little money but if they buy the Society 6 products like mugs and such you make very little money, but it’s fun anyway. If I really get going with this I will look at new avenues. I have a handful of giclee prints from other artists I’ve gotten through the years and I love them.
So many possibilities! 😀