'Poetry is taking place...'

Thanks Elizabeth Gilbert for sharing today, this lovely quote from Philip Levine: 

’Dont scorn your life just because it's not dramatic or it's impoverished or it looks dull or it's workaday. Dont scorn it.

It is where poetry is taking place if you’ve got the sensitivity to see it, if your eyes are open.’ 

Doing life imperfectly is all there is. I started today not too sure if a 'day off' was a good idea, bless me. So many things I could be doing: attending to the many and various needs of business startup, clearing clutter in my ongoing minimalism project, painting the words I need the most, currently re-working ‘EXTREME SELF CARE'.
Let alone writing to the landlords re the botched repairs, updating my website, you get the drift. 

© Maggie Sawkins 2014 All rights reserved 
My art work on Etsy

Yet today I’m following a suggestion to put one foot in front of the other and get out and about on this glorious nearly-spring day. Walking through the sunlit city has been a joy. Seeing Marlene Dumas’ amazing portraiture at the Tate Gallery, practising being 'off' on a Tuesday. I'm listening to the sublime harmonies of First Aid Kit and looking out at the sun and  the workmen dangling on the facade of the new Tate as I write. 

I tend towards an attention-deficit habit, a butterfly mind, always juggling ‘too many’ projects. Gradually though, simplicity is coming. Thirty minutes at a time, I’m reducing the paper of years of work as an employed then freelance mediator, a trainer of mediation, public speaking in schools, art teacher, illustration student, freelance artist. 

And so much has got so much simpler. More spaces in my home, letting go of the ‘evidence’ that I worked hard. I believed someone, who with his love of the harsh put-down, once commented once that he’d ‘never seen me work hard for anything’. I took that comment and let it damage me. These days, I know he was wrong and I was wrong to believe him. I'm curating my life's work to date: letting go of the things I don't enjoy. Finding ways to love my life - not wait for it to be 'better'.

Loving the sky today… big expanse of dusty blue with the smoggy horizon, soft sun on city cranes and buildings new and old. A glorious day. This moment is all we have. How do we make choices each day to do the thing that suits us most, whilst bringing in the dollars and keeping home and self together. Do we have to suffer to live? We are making new choices each day - finding a way to live and thrive, whether we are creating the self-employed shape that work can be, or riding the merry-go-round of a 40 hour work week. Whatever we are doing, we are creating. It doesn't have to be perfect. And don't scorn it. Poetry is taking place.

Thank goodness...

© Maggie Sawkins 2014 All rights reserved
My art work on Etsy

In a lovely meeting of opportunity and effort, I’ve joined a new tribe. I applied for a third time to a course that I really wanted to do, and have been taken on. We will study, practise and stretch around the skills of entrepreneurship, along others in the creative tribe of 100 young businesses. And I feel at HOME. 

This is relevant because for so much of my life, I haven’t known where I truly am, as Ken Robinson puts it,‘in my element’. I’ve been cloudy in my awareness of what suits me or how and where can I best do my thing. No longer willing to plump for one of the many areas that I could work in, but yearning to occupy ground where I can really use myself, flourish and feel happy.

Some of us find our place in our teens on a degree course, by finding a job that works or moving from one that doesn’t. But some are quietly adrift in the world of work for years, not really finding a place that suits.  We show up (80% of success according to Woody Allen) and will be loyal, most hard-working of employees. Yet all the while, we don't know how to find our metier and natural contribution. As shape-shifters, we adapt as we go, doing our best - often doing really well - yet feeling dreadful and occasionally desperate, as we tread the rat race wheel.

I have very vivid memories of moments when I knew things were really, not good. It was not a living hell - more a slow death eating away at my life energy. Energy which had been squashed so often in order to comply, adapt and endure. 

What I needed then, when the ‘soul-destruction’ of the job I was in was dawning on me, was to stop. All I knew was how to keep going, try harder - too afraid to recognise just how much I was suffering. Eventually something stopped me. I'd submitted a paper on the risks of my current role to my new boss. Eventually when I found myself in tears for the umpteenth time, in my office, I called the employee assistance people and metaphorically held my hands up. I was done, I admitted defeat. 

I know this story (with different elements) is familiar to many. At that point, I was recently married in my 40s, sole earner with an ill husband no longer working. I'd picked up the shortfall and was existing on a cocktail of exhaustion, (steadily doing too much at home and at work), resentment (‘it shouldn't be this way 18 months after marriage…’) and bloody-mindedness: 'I have to keep going'. I started to white-knuckle it each day.

Thankfully, the endurance addiction did bottom out. I could no longer focus on a project, reading didn't make sense and all energy left me. I picked up The Joy of Burnout: read a paragraph at a time, and went to my first Workaholics Anonymous meeting. We are here to thrive not to survive, as Maya Angelou so neatly puts it. 

That was over ten years ago. Lots of interesting work has come along and I've had great opportunities. I’ve let go of bookings that repeated resulted in migraines. There were dealings with the DWP, that'll test anyone's sanity. There was a family health crisis which put us all under stress for months, with three near misses. There were gradual baby steps taken to turn the ship around, whist living on the barest minimum. It's a long story. I'm so grateful people encouraged and supported me. Picking up the paint brush helped and then I started to write... 

This is where you find me.

Through it all I've had lovely awakenings. I've finally been learning the lessons that it's never too late to learn. Life is about enjoying, living each moment. I'm now expert at having fun for free. I learnt to love the birds outside my window, relish my local park and feel each change in the seasons. As a dear friend said the other day, ‘it may not have been easy, but it will definitely be worth it'. I've found new tribes... I'm amongst people who get me. I feel at home most of the time actually. It's all worth it, nothing is wasted. 

Conversation with God (whoever you think it may be)

You may have read, what I imagine must be a great book by Neale Donald Walsch, with a title something like this. Not having read it myself, this is however what came to me this morning when I woke up feeling low. 

At one of the many times when I was needing solace after the end of my marriage; one goes on needing it over the years, as many out there will know; I went to stay with a group of nuns in Bedfordshire. Not being of a religious bent, I went for the spirit of the place, the quiet, the garden, the simple services with plainsong and the kindness. 

One of the sisters offered to be around should I want to talk or have some spiritual guidance. And that was so wonderful. To be offered the presence of a person just to be there for me. Not for payment, not for obligation, not even because they already know and love me, but just to be there and hear whatever I’d need to share and offer some thoughts. It brings tears to my eyes just telling you about it. Being heard is a true gift.

© Maggie Sawkins 2014 All rights reserved
My art work on Etsy

Thankfully this one morning it came back to me. The exercise Sister Esther I think, had suggested. To write my problems down and then answer them with my non-dominant hand as though God is speaking through it. Perhaps the closest we can get to hearing the voice of something other… in my book at least. 

'So what I need to do today...', I thought, 'is write to God and see what he says'. Here is how it went:

Me: God, I woke up dejected, I’m thinking about A and how she has made a success of HER artistic talent - could I have done that…? And she’s created a beautiful home, has a lovely man gorgeous kid…  could I have done differently if I’d done what she did…? Then God, there is all this mental clutter that comes in: ‘its all too late’, ‘I’m never going to work out how to get my art off the ground’, and ‘is that the thing I need to do anyway?’ And ‘how come I can’t kept the flat tidier?’ and ‘what about all the plans I keep forgetting that I made on paper for my business?’ and ‘I’ve forgotten about doing everything'  and then ‘I had yet another migraine at the weekend, post-training… what a mess I am… ’, and ‘should I go to this event on crowd-funding or am I kidding myself… ?’ God, why am I so self-critical? 'I should stop being so self critical', 'I should have stopped that by now, having worked on all my unhelpful character traits in such detail…' then 'was it all a waste of time, why hasn’t it worked?' And finally ‘Oh, maybe I need to talk to God…’ 

God: For goodness sake, shut the F up and get on with something you enjoy… you have a lovely flexible life and there is no big boss making it hell - except YOU! 

Me: Gosh, I didn’t expect you to be quite so blunt. I thought you were all loving and kind… no need to be RUDE! I feel a bit sorry for myself now… Even God is being nasty to me. 

God: Oh well, take what you like and leave the rest. I’m off to sort out Syria, Gaza, Nigerian emailers pretending to be the UN. That and mulling on how to get democracy to work everywhere… and finding a way to help those deluded militant boys who think killing will create a wonderful world… If only they could regain the ability they were born with to see this truth: that peace is the answer. That and anything we can do to help everyone accept themselves and find a way to accept others. And you can help with that… 

Me: Yes, I can help others and I need the help too. I teach what I most need to learn, no doubt about it. Try softer. Take risks. Be who you are. Start with the end in mind… I do know that I have something to offer. No use fighting when life can be wonderful. I can appreciate all I have in this moment. Thanks for the help God. Take it easy. Speak again soon, have a good day. 

God: You too… all you need is love. Go well. 

Me: How did the Beatles know that so young? Well here I go… Good Morning God x