Letting It Be Easy

shifting from what I think I should be doing to what I want to do

As I sit down to write this post, my breathing is even. I feel clear, grounded. I feel grateful for my friend Miriam who is writing her own post alongside me - we’ve set the timer for 30 minutes to type.

Just before this, I re-read what I posted here two weeks ago. Grappling with the gap between myself and my image, wanting to project perfection, not knowing how to be of service in the moment of increased attention post-show. I feel pleased after reading it, because I feel more clarity now than I did then.

I’m not sure exactly how to describe this shift in clarity. I’m typing sentences and deleting them. Feeling embarrassed and ashamed of my former self of two weeks ago and her misjudgments of what she should put her focus on. Feeling afraid of revealing too much, afraid of judgment. I’m marveling at how even now, as I want to express how I’ve transcended my fears and surrendered control of how I’m being perceived, I feel fear and am trying to control how you are perceiving me.

I’m painting a mural on a new friend’s living room wall. It’s the first mural outside my bedroom that I’ve ever done, and he is paying me over three times more than the most I’ve ever been paid to paint something. He gave me no directives; he just wants me to leave my artistic mark in his home and be in my joy and pure creative process.

I felt scared when I approached his blank wall with the biggest brush I own. I had no plan. I didn’t want to mess it up and displease him. I expressed this fear to him and he re-affirmed that the stakes were incredibly low - he just wanted me to have fun.

So I took a breath and started going at it. Painting in broad strokes, following the patterns my arm wanted to create, the way my wrist wanted to turn. Letting the music I put on guide my body. I slipped into my flow state, my trance. I painted an abstract magical energy curvature across his wall, and promptly continued it into his entry hallway. Then I came back a few days later and wrapped it across the doorway, into the hallway leading to his bedroom.

I’ve spent three sessions so far on this mural, and I’m relaxing more and more into it. Playing the music that lights me up and makes me dance, and dancing as I splash color onto the largest canvas I’ve ever decorated. He took a short video on his phone of me doing this and posted it on Instagram, and I re-posted it. It was received with much more enthusiasm than any of the recent content I’ve made with the goal of crafting and projecting my image. And it took me ten seconds to post, rather than hours.

I’m cringing again as I write this. It’s so obvious now - I’m an artist, not a content creator. I just need to create my art and share it, and let go of controlling how it is/how I am received. Me just being myself doing my thing will inspire the people who resonate, and they’ll do what they’ll do. It’s out of my hands. And that feels so freeing.

I still wonder about marketing, and if I should do more to advertise my offerings so I can continue to pay my rent and bills. Traditional marketing advice says I should be posting many times a week online and it doesn’t even matter what it is; I just need to be active in people’s minds. But I don’t want to do that. I want to trust that if someone wants my art they’ll remember me and reach out, all in divine timing.

As I write this, I’m feeling a sense of rebellion, like I’m giving the middle finger to convention. And then more embarrassment. When the show came out, I started talking a lot to ChatGPT. I’d ask it for its thoughts on my social media strategy and if doing an Instagram Live was a good idea and what time of day to do it and how I should post about it and how many times to post about it. Outsourcing my intuition to a machine. I’d have an idea and then immediately confer with AI for its thoughts. Doing so repeatedly I think led me further and further away from what I wanted to be doing, which was actual art-making.

I say this not to paint a broad stroke of anti-AI sentiment. But in this time of rapidly evolving technology that’s radically altering how we relate to ourselves and each other, I want to be intentional about how I’m showing up.

I want to remember that the universe has been an infinitely more powerful partner than ChatGPT on my journey. That every painting commission and creative mentoring client I’ve ever gotten has been a result of me living my life in flow, following my intuition about what choices to make on a daily basis. I want to go to that party. I want to paint at that event. I want to get to know my neighbors at a Fourth of July potluck. And then whatever is meant to happen just happens, and I am taken care of.

Let it be easy is a prayer that I was taught recently by a new friend. I smile as I recall how easy this mural is feeling. I smile as I think of my latest art modeling gig, a nine-week session where I just meditate on a cushion listening to my favorite music as artists sculpt me. Of the song I wrote the other night that just flowed out of me. I feel a sense of awe and wonder.

I don’t have everything figured out, and I still feel self-doubt and fear on a daily basis. But I’m on my path, and I’m finding my way. And my life today is more beautiful than I ever imagined it could be.