I stumbled across this quote when reading Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist Way:
“Question: Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn to play the piano?
Answer: The same age you will if you don’t.”
It is simple. But it made me realize how easy it is to avoid the process at all costs.
For instance, when I start reading a new book, the first concern I have is: “Oh, this is going to take time, should I really do it?”.
By the time
I get to the middle of it, I think: “Well, it’s not that bad and I’m actually
learning something”.
As I
approach the end, I try to speed it up and get done with it. And when it is
finally over, I feel super accomplished.
Then I proceed to start a new book and the same cycle happens again. And again, and again. Until I decided to understand it.
That pain
of having to start something and the knowing you will have to continue will
never be mastered until we fully get a good grasp of the process.
After
comprehending it, it is much easier to identify where you are in it and enjoy
it.
Let’s be honest the majority of our lives will probably be spent in the middle of the book because it is the longest part. And even when we finish with one particular book, there will be others.
So, the sooner we accept that the beginning is hard as the end is quick, the more we can learn to have fun in the middle, in the process.
“We like to focus on having learned a skill or having made an artwork. This attention to final form ignores the fact that creativity lies not in the done, but in doing.”
Julia Cameron
It’s much more comfortable to look at the big picture and realize it takes time and conclude you would be a fool for even trying than to take the baby steps in order to make it there.
I spent a
lot of time this year, trying to master the pain of starting and continuing
something. Trying to accept the process and be friends with it. Letting it be
my teacher.
I tell you, it’s much more pleasant than making it your enemy.
“Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. Focused on product the same creative life can feel foolish or barren.”
Julia Cameron
The good news is process produces results over time. Even though I love this idea, I admit it: it’s hard to put it to action, sometimes. That’s why I always try to observe real-life small progress and see how I have acquired them.
I wrote once about adulting in this article, and how it was so impressive that parents just know things. Their knowledge comes from a life of successive “trial & error” situations.
Recently, I realized that I, too, gained some of this form of expertise. I can now say that I know how to make good rice in 98% of the time.
As unimportant of an event, this might sound as, to me, it made me realized that I “mastered” something I kept working on for a long time until I finally got it right. And that got me even more confident about the process.
We are on the verge of a new year and we may think that there’s nothing to do with this year anymore, but that is not true, because it is all process. Life is process.
Start now
or start next year, it will probably take you the same amount of time. Start
now, though, and you will make it there sooner.
It’s been a long time, months maybe, since I have been wanting to write about family. I do not intend to get in the specifics and polemics of what is a family, who composes it and so and so forth. Rather, I would like to talk about the influence of the family in our overall development. To do that, I will tell three stories you may not know related to three completely different individuals: the American singer and “Piano Man”, Billy Joel; an American fitness youtuber called Mari and a common Brazilian girl, a.k.a. myself.
One of my all-time favorite songs is called Vienna, by Billy Joel. What I like the most about it is how it was originated and, of course, its general meaning. When Joel was around the age of eight, his father separated from his mother and moved to Europe. 15 or 16 years later, after having to track his dad down, he arranged a meeting with him in Vienna. As they are strolling around the Austrian city, Billy sees an old lady sweeping the streets and, in shock, inquired how could that poor old woman be doing “heavy” work at such an advanced age. His father then explained to the twentyish and full-energy son that that lady still had a part to play in society, despite her elderliness. Joel was baffled by the concept of life “not-ending” after its first three or four decades and that completely shifted and shaped his perspective on how he should, would or could approach his professional career as a musician, as well as inspired him to write the song.
A little bit about the story of how “Vienna” was written.
(more…)
I saw a video the other day saying when you are an adult and live by yourself you do not have your parents to say when to wake up, what and when you eat, to tell you to do homework or brush your teeth. You also have to be the one who celebrates your little everyday accomplishments and pats yourself on the back when things did not go as planned. Basically, being an adult is like being your own parent.
In a way, this is exciting, right? More power and control?
Yeah, not really! I mean it’s a bit tiring. I honestly don’t know how parents do it. Because they have to be their own parents, parents of their children and sometimes parents of their parents. And talking about parents, you know when they tell you not to do something because it’s going to go wrong, but you do it anyway and it goes wrong, and you wonder: ‘wow! How did they know?’
Well, I now know how and I’m here to share the secret.
The other day I went grocery shopping for the week. I bought a bunch of healthy stuff such as chips, chocolate, chocolate cereal, chocolate cookies, chocolate biscuits, chocolate doughnuts… You get the spirit, right? I was on a chocolate spree. I thought to myself: ‘these are all snacks for the week, which I will divide equally by day and time of the day and it’s going to be amazing!’
As you can guess, it was not amazing.
The “snacks” lasted 3 days tops and I had no food for actual lunch and dinner. Moral of the story I had to go to the supermarket again. To be honest, that is not the moral of the story, I will get to that. These grocery episodes did happen more than once, I have to tell you. In fact, more than twice or three times. Until one week I actually got it right. I was so surprised I made it to supermarket day (usually Saturdays) and I still had food to have breakfast that morning.
I smiled and said ‘good job, Ana! You did good this week! Good on ya…’. Another part of adulting is that you talk a lot by yourself. It actually makes me laugh as I write because my mom used to and still do talk by herself frequently and when I was younger, I never quite understood the reasons. Now everything makes sense and world is one again.
Now, onto the parents’ 6th sense secret.
The truth is repetition sort of brings that experience knowledge no one else can give to you. I did have to go under the same problem a few times to figure out what and how much I eat throughout the week as well as how much I should eat. And it was a type of expertise I never really had to master being in a controlled environment like home.
Parents know this stuff because they have been over the same thing enough times to have a good idea of what is going to happen. Like, for instance, how you should buy more than one soap bar because there’s a chance the soap will end in the middle of the week and you will have to stop at the supermarket just to buy soap and will end up buying something you did not want to buy, like, per say, a chocolate croissant.
I did learn this returning home from a grocery shopping day really proud of what I had bought and thinking how I was becoming so smart. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Creating new habits and sticking to them is definitely one way to learn. And this can be applied to many things. For instance, our personal projects and goals. Or whatever really. When you constantly work on something, improvement is imperative.
I’m happy to be getting there, slow and steady, but surely.
Now, the real moral of the story is: I strongly dislike grocery shopping.
Well, as a matter of fact, we were. Last year, I even thought of quitting all social media because, in my opinion, it was more harmful than it was beneficial. And no, I have never been what you can call “a popular girl of Instagram” or any other network, also I haven’t suffered in consequence of it (as many Instagrammers have) and, to be honest, I have had positive experiences with all the social media I was involved with. But, somehow, I began to believe the self(ie) world was very time consuming, superficial, and stressful.
At the time, I was writing my final paper for Uni and I was reading so much Sociology and Communications articles. One, in particular, caught my attention, which was written by Professor Luiz Martino. In his piece, in Portuguese called “A atualidade mediática: o conceito e suas dimensões” ( I don’t know if there is an English version), he defines the concept of atualidade mediática which I will freely translate here as “mediatic actuality”. It is a sphere of social happenings that we only consider an event as a fact if transmitted by the means of communication. For example: if an earthquake reaches Japan right now and no news media talk about it, the event would probably stay known only within that affected community. When the event gets broadcasted then it enters the circle of the mediatic actuality.
I’ve managed to apply this concept to the usage of social media and it is possible I have failed miserably, but I still think it is worth sharing. What if we post what we post in the urge to prove that we have done the things we have done? What if everything we post is only an attempt of turning our lives into a succession of really “cool” events? Weekly, daily, hourly we update our social network in the hope people still remember us, in the hope people care about our opinions or what we like, in the hope they think we are pretty and highly consider our existence. Or worse, what if we only post things to prove we are living so that we validate our existence as if we didn’t do all that work we would simply not be “real”? I couldn’t accept to be “played” like that, to quote Walt Whitman: “I exist as I am. That is enough”.
I was decided. I made up a whole plan on how to quite it all which now seems very impractical: I mean, collect everybody’s email and try to stay in touch just was not going to happen (yes, it was my idea). Instead, I’ve learned how to deal with social media, in a way that attends my beliefs and also makes me feel comfortable (an approach that can change anytime). Some people have this all figured others have never really thought about it. In any case, by no means I am trying to convert you to my way of thinking, it’s just a perspective. You are free to do whatever you want. Be happy!
Enough small talk… This is what I learned so far from my experience and by trial and error:
The followers and the likes, the posts and the intentions
The followers, the likes, the shares… These are the instant needs of most of them. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube… With their different mechanisms, they ultimately encourage us to expect these reactions. I don’t need to say about some consequences of this dynamic, for that you have many scientific and non-scientific articles.
The rise of the digital influencers, and here I mean mainly on Instagram, have had a profound and special impact in this “necessity”. The fact these people were once “people like us” somehow made us believe, not only we could live like them, but that we should. They’ve become the pattern, the model to be followed. And all the respect for those who are trying to build an image or a career with social media. Me? I was not. Why was I caring about the number of people I don’t know that was liking my pictures? So, to solve that I made all my social media private and restricted to the people I know only.
Also, I started to question why I was posting what I was posting. Every time. So much it became a habit. Of course, I still “expect” the reaction of the people within my social circle, but I know with fewer people comes fewer likes and shares, etc. And even if I receive few likes or none at all on a picture I liked I would be okay because I know what made me post it. I began to understand my intentions in sharing and exposing any event in my life. Whether I thought it was a great picture or an interesting movie I’ve seen if I thought it was worth sharing I did it.
Last, but not least, I became way more observant of who I was following and letting influence me. It’s not only about the usage of social media, but it has a lot to do with its consumption as well. I keep following some celebrities, those who have fulfilling messages and refreshing content. With the time I have leftover I just go do anything… literally anything productive!
And you, how do you use social media? Have you ever thought about these things? Let me know!
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