There’s Something About December…
There’s something about December that makes a lot of us a bit wiggy. I wonder what it could be.
Oh, yeah. That.
Let’s talk a bit about that.
Parties We’d Rather Not Be a Party To
I actually know some gregarious artists who love parties. If you’re one of them, you get the extra donut this morning. Go enjoy it. This post is about the rest of us.
We’re the ones who don’t do parties well. Parties fill us with a whole lot of queasy unease. We’re not anti-social. We just feel awkward. Out of our element. Even more on the fringe than we usually feel.
We artists have a hard enough time getting out of our arty bubble the other eleven months of the year. Add a measure of forced frivolity and it’s no wonder that a lot of sensitive souls would like to skip the whole blessed month and go right from Thanksgiving to January 1.
Without the hangover, if it’s all the same to you.
Gentle Soul, Meet Creative Spirit
Here’s the thing. The gentle artful soul might be happy spending the entire holiday season under wraps, but the creative spirit actually needs to be out and about. It needs to engage with the world and soak up the creative energies of the universe because those energies fuel our artful lives.
Even in December.
So what can we do? Must we approach this entire month with our guts in a knot? Or is there a way to extend our comfort zone to encompass holiday gatherings that we might like to go to if only we knew how to enjoy them?
Maybe there is.
Social gatherings can feel uncomfortable to us in part because we often tend to set aside certain parts of ourselves when we go out and about — the parts that we’re not altogether sure of, the parts we feel we need to defend, or explain, or apologize for.
The parts, in other words, that our artful hearts find most precious. And most in need of protection.
As artists, it’s usually the artful self that stays home when we take ourselves out into the world. No wonder we feel awkward. We’ve split ourselves in two and left the best of ourselves behind with the cats.
Getting Out the Door with Our Whole Self Intact.
It helps to remember — this month especially — that we’re on a Creative Adventure. And that we’re on it no matter where we are — at home with our paints or hovering near the spinach dip.
It’s all the same adventure.
As a fellow traveler, you know that one of the first obstacles you’ve had to overcome on this adventure is the tendency to hold your art — and your artful heart — at arm’s length. We rarely start out owning either one. We often start out apologizing for them.
As we walk our path, we learn to bring our art more fully into being in our lives. We allow it to express itself in daily, routine ways. We become more fully present to it, and in turn we gain a more integrated self.
Someone we’re more comfortable taking out into the world.
Even in December.
A Delicious Alchemy
As your art becomes something you live and breathe on a daily basis, it informs who and what you are no matter where you are. It’s a delicious alchemy. You think you’re just learning to call yourself an artist, only to discover you’ve gained the gentle assurance you need to get out the door intact.
Art works in strange ways.
The more you let yourself be in relationship with your artful heart — present to it, integrated with it, made of it — the less you’ll feel a need to defend it, or explain it, or apologize for it. Or leave it behind. It will just be a part of you. Like your hands and feet. Your funny laugh. Your fondness for spinach dip.
You may never learn to love holiday parties. But you can learn to be present for them by being present to yourself.
Your whole self. Artful heart and all.
