Weekly Art Journal – The Two Karens

Today’s page was week three’s homework for the Soul Restoration class.

This week’s theme is about the strong and weak selves. I don’t want to talk a lot about the details of the content since it’s Melody and Kathy’s content but I’ll talk some about my personal thoughts and things that came up for me.

The art is a two-pager in my album. Just fabric I cut up and then the images and text on the right side are by Melody and the text on the left is also by her. The image on the left is a norman rockwell painting which I cut up. Nothing extraordinary.

I have always believed that the things that make me strong and weak are one and the same. The same traits help me succeed and excel and they also cause me to fail and to break. For example, I tend to be loyal to a fault. When it comes to positive people and situations, loyalty is a great trait. It makes you a great employee, a wonderful wife, and a desirable friend. But in the wrong hands, this can easily crush you. I follow through and work hard and do not give up easily. This, too, is wonderful when it comes to solid jobs and relationships. But when I am in a situation like TFA where I was drowning and I still wouldn’t let go, well it’s just stupid. This great trait doesn’t serve me well. I love deeply and endlessly and this causes me to be paranoid during the weak times. My self-doubt makes me work harder and try more and be grateful more often and feel less entitlement. All of which are good. And yet self-doubt is not so great.

The self doubt also makes me want to say yes to everyone and everything because who am I to turn anything down? And yet then I get stressed and frustrated and I don’t treat the people I love as kindly as I should. So I am learning to say no. Even when it hurts. Even as I am scared the person will hate me, will think i am a diva, will never offer me any other opportunities. Even with that, I am learning to turn down things that will stress me out or set me up to fail.

So my strengths and my weaknesses come from the same core and the same traits. When I am in a bad place, they come out in extremes and spiral downward. When I am in a good place, they help me get better and excel more. So the lesson here is to:

1. embrace who i am. the good and the bad since one cannot exist without the other
2. try to keep myself in a good place for as long as i can since success and good mood definitely builds on itself

Since this is true of me, it’s also true of everyone around me. My husband, children, parents, friends…The things that make them the people I love are the same things that cause their weaknesses. David’s carefreeness and laughter are why he sometimes doesn’t pay attention or focus as much as I’d like him to. Yes, I wish he could be better at that but if I force him to focus better, will I lose the carefreeness too? Am I willing to give up the good, just to not have to put up with the bad? I ask myself this all the time and the answer is no for all of my personal traits. And the answer is no for the people I love. So each time they “mess up” I remind myself that it’s the other side of the token I love and I will endure it because I love this person and this is how they are.

Knowing how I am in a spiral and how my traits manifest themselves in a weak spot is beneficial for me so I can recognize the signs. So I can tell the people I love to watch out for them and so I can ask for help when they’re coming. Also so I can do some preventative work to try to keep myself in the “good” place more often. But things happen. Life’s very cyclical. So there will be bad days. That’s inevitable.

And there we are. There’s more of course. About not comparing, setting achievable goals, being ok at being mediocre, looking for supportive people, shedding the bad. Learning to walk away. I can go on and on.

Details:

Weekly Art Journal is a weekly project for 2011. You can read more about it here.