My Life No. 100!
Well, here we are folks! My ONE HUNDREDTH “My Life: In Balance”!
This started as an experiment last year that came to me during a 5-Day Fast. I’ve been exploring ways in which I might unleash more of the energy I’d like to put in the world: my creative self together with my growing wise-ass-don’t-give-a-damn self.
I’ve learned, you will never heal the world until you have healed yourself, and I’m at the stage where I understand that childhood experiences, and brain-worms stuck in unhelpful grooves, sometimes need to, want to, and CAN BE JOLTED.
What better way than letting it all hang out?
I was meditating on Day 4 of my fast–I was probably just really hungry! LOL–but the second I “had it,” the moment the balancing design came to me, I made a note on a, you guessed it, yellow Post-It that said: “Make this is trope for CarlaGericke.com,” my website where I regularly post about exerting my fullest practical effort in the Free State, i.e. “My Life”.
The first one said: “Crushing Mob Rule” vs. “Becoming a Populist”.
In short, this “My Life” exercise was my own devised cognitive behavioral therapy, done in public, to help me let go of my perfectionism, my inner critic, and my fear of judgement.
The rules of this game were:
1. Telling myself there is no wrong way/No judgement/Nobody cares! <— That’s freeing, not depressing, btw. One of my most popular ones was “Nobody Cares!” with a sad face on one side and “Nobody Cares!” with a smiley face on the other.
2. I had to post the first take, unless the writing was illegible. I did about 10 over, and only on few had more than 2 takes. <—This was surprisingly hard bc of the brain-noodles trying to thwart forward progress: “But the line is skew!” “But the ‘A’ is wrong!” Exercise override function: IT DOESN’T MATTER!!!
3. No deadline beyond “Just do 100 to start; doesn’t matter how long it takes” <— Important because one of my issues is if I set a goal for myself and I don’t crush it immediately, I give up because I’ve “failed,” instead of either a) creating a more aligned goal, or b) giving myself grace for the slide and then continuing on my merry way.
4. I told myself after I’d completed a hundred, I would figure out a book. I realized the other day I can start using the content in other ways, too… Maybe 3 minute vids on what they mean to me/universal truths, as I eke out this book, probably as I add some essays.
I appreciate everyone who has followed along so far, commented, and shared your thoughts. I’m so happy I figured out a short and sweet way to show you some of what’s in my head!
As humans, I think this is our main compulsion: To be seen and understood, but here’s the kicker: You cannot be understood if you cannot articulate your thoughts.
For years, while advancing a successful legal career, I knew my real desire was to be a writer, you know, the people in the business of articulating their thoughts. I remember how, after I returned to college in my mid-30s to get my Master in Fine Arts, angst-y students would ask, “When can I call myself a writer?”
When you claim it.
I started saying I was a writer in 2008, after I sold my first story, but it didn’t feel non-Impostor-real until I held my first book, THE ECSTATIC PESSIMIST, in my hands.
But, over the past year, I’ve realized, I want more: I want to be an ARTIST.
The moment I wrote “ARTIST???” in my journal (yes, with all the question marks; hey, not all the self-confidence and self-awareness comes at once, m’kay? 
), it made sense to me in the same way the Post-It series did.
Why this word? Why does ARTIST give me freedom in a way that I need to embrace?
Because through ***habitual*** journaling, I now understand that to me, the label ARTIST is freeing…
Art is subjective.
Art is permission to be weird and not care.
Art is misunderstood.
Art is individual.
Art is trying to make sense of your own thoughts, your own imagination, and the world around you, through your own spark.
Art is showing your soul and hoping someone likes it.
Art is continuing to create, even if no one does.
Art is unstoppable.
So am I.
And so are YOU.
For Louis’ birthday, we went to see art made of Lego and eat really good hole-in-the-wall dim sum. Yum!
Art is not optional. Neither are birthdays! Happy birthday to Louis Calitz xoxo To celebrate: The Art of the Brick on…
Posted by Carla Gericke on Sunday, December 18, 2022
This week’s My Life (in Balance) series, No. 23-26.
This week’s My Life (in Balance) series, No. 15-18.
This week’s My Life (in Balance) series, No. 10-14. For context on the Manchurian candidate joke, there’s this batshit craziness coming from the left… I don’t even know what this means (or even where it came from… I just saw a random FSP post about it)…
People seem to be digging these! 🙂 Backstory: I am a bit of a weirdo who tends to spend waaaaay too much time in my head talking myself out of presenting the things I do.
Not not doing things, doing things and then not sharing them with anyone. That’s my issue.
Some people struggle with producing, I struggle with the confidence to put what I make out there. Or rather, I… used to? Or, at least, I am… learning to not care as much but rather just do it. If people respond, GREAT, if they don’t, tomorrow is another day! Neatly summed up by this one:
This series came to me during my last fast, from September 6-10, 2022 (yes, that’s 5 days!). I’m going to consider it either divine inspiration or madness due to hunger, but what the hey, I’ll take it!
Here are a couple of additional ones from this week. The “Donut” one is the most popular thus far.
Since this week was pretty good for me in terms of focusing on “making things (badly)” <—the permission I have to give my own mind in order to put things out there, here are a few other images I made using some apps. I use Prisma for different effects and Layout for general stuff.
I am growing! Even though I don’t have any real measurable skills as an artist, I have a burning desire to share what is in my head with people. While forest bathing the other day–fancy for ‘walking in the woods’–it occurred to me that at its very core, all being an artist is, is simply having the confidence to let your unique freak flag fly and share whatever YOU create with the world.
Simply. Yet we know, things worth achieving are hardly ever simple.
Making art is creative (selfish). Sharing art is confidence (selfless).
Somewhere in my journey to adulthood, I was told I was the “smart one,” and so, in law school, I started to suppress my artsy side, with occasional relapses into beehives, hot pants and fishnets, and drugs, lots and lots of booze and drugs, on the weekends.
Even though I’m grateful I developed my logical, rational, legal-minded side, I do regret not continuing to do personally fulfilling “fun stuff” like singing, dancing, and painting, at least as hobbies. You don’t have to be great at something to take pleasure from doing it… and who knows, with enough practice, you might even become good!
I was doing an interview with NBC Boston recently. In response to a “what’s next” type question, I said I’d like to “retire and become an artist,” mostly in jest (I will never really retire), but the interviewer glommed onto it, asking, “What kind of artist would you like to be?”
The question stumped me for a second–Wait! Isn’t being a writer being an artist? Remember how it took you more than a decade to call yourself ‘an author’ without having a full-on impostor-panic-attack!?!–then I said something like, “Well, I’m an author, and I dabble in painting (e.g. I painted the dogs you saw in my office), I take a lot of nature and food photographs, I cook, and, who knows, maybe in the future, I will have my own One Woman Show!”
(I will and it shall be called, “Disturbia.” :P)
But as I was answering, I was aware of that voice in my head, you know the one, Cunty McCunt, telling me how pretentious I sounded, and how dare I lay claim to such idyllic dreams! Who do you think you are, she started, but when I heard that second-person voice, that “you” voice, the one you have to teach yourself to hear so that you can snap her back in place–which is NOWHERE NEAR YOUR DREAMS–I re-framed my negative thoughts to this: I am who I am and I will do the things that feed my spirit and make me happy.
I am who I am and I will do the things that feed my spirit and make me happy. Like a well-rounded, authentic, balanced human-being. One who has, through hard lifestyle choices, including changing to a keto diet and quitting alcohol, developed the confidence to show you her crazy… as ‘An Artist’… one Post-It at a time!
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