Weekly Art Journal – She Did it Anyway

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

This week’s theme is about doing things despite the hardship to one’s soul, heart, life, body, etc. As each time, I’ll just talk some about my personal thoughts and things that came up for me.

I am the queen of “doing it anyway.” I have a deep lack of self-confidence with most things in life. However I just plow through. If there’s one sentence that is common across all the reviews I’ve gotten in my professional life, it’s “Karen gets things done.” I just like to do it. I might feel scared, weak, sad, worried, not good enough but I still do it. I am not entirely sure where the will/drive/power comes from. I think it’s mostly because I really really like getting things done. It makes me feel better than anything else does. So when I listened to this week’s content, I wasn’t sure it was going to apply to me. After all, I am the queen.

And yet.

As each time, I find out more and more things and dig deeper and deeper. This time, as I read the sheets of sentences Melody had written, certain themes stood out to me, so I focused on those particular cases where I felt weak/wronged/sad/lonely/scared/insecure but I did it anyway.

Here are my personal areas:

1. Childhood. For a period of my life when I was in my early teens, I had really terrible friends. They kept treating me very badly. They made fun of me, told me I was ugly, left me out of things, ignored me, ridiculed me, etc. This broke a lot of me and is likely one of the biggest roots of some of my abandonment and loneliness issues. And alas, for this one, I couldn’t really think of something good I did in return. So I picked “She survived it anyway.” And I did. I moved on to make wonderful friends, caring relationships, and more. This is an area that I still do continual work in and will likely keep doing so for a while. I also labeled it “She kept going anyway.” Because I did. I found new friends and a new life.

2. Bad relationship. Many many many years ago, I was in a relationship with someone who was suffering and had problems too big for me to solve. He was angry and he hurt me both emotionally and physically. He loved me deeply and yet it was never going to work out. He had too much anger. But while I left him and I know it was the right thing to do, I marked this one as “She saw goodness anyway.” because he was good. He had survived so much and even thrived in his own way. I bear no ill will. And I know he is well now and wish him nothing but the best.

3. Impatience with my Kids. This is a current issue. I find myself getting impatient more often than I’d like. Yelling. Being crabby. Overwhelmed. I am often not proud of the way I behave. I am working on this though. Every single day. Every single time. I try and try and try. So I labeled this one “She did her best anyway.” All I can do is do my best each time. I mess up, I get up and try all over again.

4. Exercise. I wrote about this at length last week but here’s an area where I try every day. I push myself. I am scared, tired, terrified. I have failed at this before. I know it’s going to be a long long long time. I have no idea if it will work. If it will all be for nothing. I am truly scared daily. And so I picked “She stayed on her path anyway.” Because I do. Every single day. I get up and I do it. Despite fear and tiredness and the difficulty.

5. Friendship/Art. I’ve always had the notion that I am too different and weird. As a kid, most of my friends were nothing like me. And I still feel the same way often. My programmer friends think my scrappy side is a bit odd. My arty friends do not relate to my super-orderly, very scheduled, organized personality. I often feel like an outsider and like the weird one. I feel like I am not creative enough. Not interesting enough. I don’t have that “thing” all the artsy people have. The idea-oriented personality. I am more fact and schedule driven. I often feel odd and outside. So for this one, I labeled “She kept creating anyway.” That’s what I am doing with all these art journals and drawing classes and everything else. Trying to become more of the artsy I guess.

6. Misc. And then I just took a bunch of the others that really spoke to me, like having too much on my todo list, too many emails, domestically challenged, comparing others’ best parts to my worst ones, feeling under qualified, etc. etc. I labeled that section with “She was happy anyway.” Because I am. Happier than I have ever been in my life up until this moment. I feel content and peaceful most days. Even on my crazy days, I have a bottom layer of contentment. So I am grateful. Thankful and happy.

There we go. Another amazing week. I cannot tell you how powerful this class has been for me. If you can take it when it’s offered again in April, I highly highly encourage you to do so.

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