Avoiding negatives is more of a challenge than you’d think. Think about it — one of the first words we learn as we start moving independently of our parents is “No” — to protect us from harms we know nothing about — yet — but also to limit what we can and can’t do as in “don’t touch.” I have found that it continues throughout life though as a self-limiting rather than a self-protecting word. I am trying to change that for myself. I can’t grow if I hear no.<\/p>\n
I have been trying to avoid negatives in my personal writing lately — using positives instead. It is difficult (originally I wrote “it is not easy” — takes much conscious effort on my part but I am trying). “I am not a photographer” becomes “I am a writer learning a bit of photography.” The bells and whistles intimidate me though. Technique, technical, all of that intimidates me. I am a point and shoot kind of girl so have been playing with a couple of polaroids I picked up. The learning curves always slllloooowwww me wwwaaayyy down. I have four pictures so far after trying out different exposure settings on the polaroids. I tried batteries in the flash and tested it to see if it still works (it needs some help even with new batteries — it may have finished its work for this lifetime).<\/p>\n
Where am I going with all this? It’s a personal exercise in accentuating positive talk. “I am not an artist” becomes “I am a conceptual artist and a writer” who has yet to be discovered as I am just emerging. I would like to find my voice. What is my voice? My one true voice — I am very Renaissance in that I am all over the place with so many interests, primarily in the humanities, but also domestic arts and spirituality. Besides being a mom, mate, sister, daughter, aunt, cousin, niece, friend and so on, who am I? What defines me? Where I’m going or where I’ve been? Who am I? What do I do? How am I expressing my creative voice? <\/p>\n
Denise<\/span><\/a> does it with her camera and her blog. Starting out with jewelry and a journey. What about Em<\/span><\/a>? Her voice besides her blog writing voice is sewing, scrapbooking, teaching. For Andrea<\/span><\/a>, jewelry, painting and scarves led to jewelry, photography and coaching. They all write as I do. But they also have a vocation that earns them money. Ironic that I worked for almost 7 years helping others find direction and meaning in their work, however humble. I think it makes a difference when “it’s just a job though,” and you’re content with just a job. <\/p>\n I want more. I want to know my one (or two) creative voices amongst my many creative voices. I want to nurture that voice like the runt of a litter — grow, baby, grow. You know you can. Yes, you can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Avoiding negatives is more of a challenge than you’d think. Think about it — one of the first words we learn as we start moving independently of our parents is “No” — to protect us from harms we know nothing about — yet — but also to limit what we can and can’t do as … Continue reading “Just don’t say no because you can’t”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[631],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}