Trying to be perfect?
Some time ago I wanted to write a book about my life. At that time I thought that it is important, at least for me . I was living in Spain for 10 years, speaking and writing spanish better then my mother tongue, which is romanian, so I started to write in spanish. But after a while I become fully aware that the act of writing was for me like a medicine. I did't wanted to write a book , I wanted to get better because I was depressed and writing was like telling to a friend what I was feeling. When I started to feel better I stopped writing. Almost 7 years passed since then and many things happened.
Now, I am an artist, a painter and a craft worker - I use to say to the people that ask what am I doing . But, I think, I am just a creative person. I am living in Switzerland in a little mountain village. I don't speak spanish anymore, or at least not so often as I wish to. My boy friend is Swiss, from german part, so we speak english 90% and spanish 10%. Even though I am living here for almost 4 years I never tried seriously to learn german or Swiss german. I speak already 4 languages, romanian, spanish, italian , english but I came to the conclusion that I don't speak well anyone of them. Was a time when I wanted to be perfect, I struggled with the idea of doing everything perfect and obviously I suffered a lot . The life's experiences taught me that perfection is a "Mission impossible" and an infinite source of frustration and suffering. As a consequence, I started to relax more and more, to accept myself as I am at any moment and to do the best without judging myself .
Yeah ! Easy to say ! Obviously in some areas of life was easier but as I succeed in releasing some believes about how I should be or behave some others were popping up, showing me how much work I still have to do.
Recently I have an experience that pushed me in a kind of crises or let's say it made me analyze again and again my believes system.
But before I want to make a parenthesis. " I want to be clear and set it straight, I am writing this blog first of all for me, it is like a journal, it is healing. I am trying my best to write as much is possible in a correct English . I know, I am faraway from writing grammatically correct but if by any strange chance you arrived here and you read it, try to understand that all the English I know is from movies, books I red, people I talked with and /or corrected me, etc. I am going to explain this maybe in another post. I am writing in a simple English, without fancy words.
Maybe, you question why am I not writing in another language I know better ? Is because I don't like the easy way. Doing it like this, I am also learning new words and I am trying to enhance my vocabulary. I have the believe that if we never try something new, even if is uncomfortable, we will never evolve or, improve, in this case. By the way, I am really happy if you take the time to correct me. End of the parenthesis.
Back to my experience. It was and, still is , a complex one that I have to split it in a few posts. Here,I am going to talk about the first part.
As I told you I am an artist and sometimes I wish to sell my art. Sometimes, I don't care, I just paint and I am happy just with that. Lately a strange, strong desire to sell subjugated me and I started to feel more and more frustrated in not finding a way to sell my artworks. I was thinking all day how I can do it, talking with my boyfriend, reading in internet lots of articles about art marketing , selling, art advertising, etc but I couldn't find anything that satisfied me enough. Finally I dared to ask for help in Facebook. I said "I dared" because I don't like to expose myself, my weakness - obviously, publicly and in general I don't like to ask for help. I always thought that I am strong and able enough, to do everything by myself. Yeah, I know, completely wrong!
So, back to Facebook. I had a big surprise when people started to send me encouraging messages, books, articles and even put me in contact with other people that could possibly help me. Was a big "AHA " moment and a big "slap in my face/ego" . Was the moment when I started to question my self about how many invisible blockages are diving free in my subconscious, impeding me, to be ME, to fulfill my soul desires. Sometimes I imagine my personality like an infinite onion, every time there is another layer that I have to peel and to work with, to understand where is coming from and if it serves me for something or not.
In all this process, one day I noticed that I have some heart pain or at least in that area. Knowing from my father that suffered 2 heart attacks that you can't joke with this I tried to calm me down but during the night I woke up because of the pain in my chest. And I asked my self , what if I die now ?
Obviously, all that advertising and selling problem weren't important anymore but another question came into my mind. A question that I thought I answered it already some time ago when I started to paint - to do what I love most, what makes me happy and makes me forget about time and space and all other things. The question was: are you doing ALL that your soul, desire to do, are you expressing your self truly and openly without any blockages and limitations ? No, I am not doing this ! was my answer .
I still want to try a lot of things through which I could express my self, like ceramics, glass, writing, share my creativity with others and many others. So, I took a little first step. I started with writing, exposing my self to the crowd , uncovering slowly , slowly all the onion layers. For many people is very easy to write and broadcast openly their feelings and emotions, like it is for me to paint them. They can't understand how can be so difficult to say what you feel , what you think. For me also, it is sometimes difficult to understand how the people can't draw or paint when for me is so easy, so natural and effortless. In my case in order to get to write this, was necessary a "near dead experience", almost. :)
