In my last post, I mentioned that I’ve been wondering how I want to use this blog and played with the idea of tracking my artistic journey. I’m going to run with that as it’s the primary focus in my life right now.
Over the last few years, I’ve tried to incorporate art into my life as much as possible. It hasn’t been easy. Juggling the constraints of adult life, self-care, work, and family is something I’ve found to be incredibly challenging. In the past ten years, I’ve been diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, and Executive Function Disorder, and while that explains a lot, it doesn’t tell me how to stay focused, plan and organise my time, regulate my emotions, or deal with impulsivity to name a few.
A common scenario is this. I started my second year of uni on a high. My bullet journal was up to date, I’d read all the novels and readings over the summer, I spent time sorting out my timeline for assignments and tutorial tasks and every day I checked in to make sure I was on track. What I forgot to do was allow time for life. As the weeks progressed and outside commitments came up, I found I was getting further behind. My stress levels rose, things got forgotten, essays got pushed back and avoidance started to kick in. By the end of the semester, I was so stressed and so far behind that I had no capacity to deal with a crisis, failure was inevitable. I know that sometimes shit happens, but this shit is a recurring theme for me.
Or I decide to implement a new health regime like meditation. For the first week, I diligently make time to meditate, and I love it. Then somewhere in the second or third week, I ‘forget’ that I’m creating new neural pathways and before I know it, three months have passed and I find myself saying, ‘Oh, that’s right, I decided to meditate each day. Wonder what happened?’ It’s frustrating and demoralising.
I’m still learning to work with a brain that seems determined to sabotage my every attempt to move forward. For those of you who haven’t come across this voice yet, and I doubt there will be many, my companion appears in the form of a well-meaning parent who is scared to let go in case I get hurt. This parent has very firm ideas about what is the right path for me.
‘You’ll never make money as an artist, why don’t you become a secretary?’
‘This is going to hurt, you know you can deal with it later, don’t you?’
‘Are you sure you want to wear that?’
‘Yes, I know you’ve made progress and have achieved so much, but…’
You get the idea; negative self-talk has been a topic of discussion for decades. Thankfully, I’m screwed up enough to need therapy, so I get the benefit of regular opportunities to learn new life skills. One of those skills has been learning to put myself out there and teach my brain it is safe and worthwhile to trust both myself and other people. This is scary! For anyone who has experienced trauma or rejection, trusting feels like the stupidest thing you could do. Opening myself up for that pain feels like self-sabotage, but I’ve come to realise that withdrawing from humanity means missing out on love as well.
About ten years ago I read an article by Mark Manson, he asked, “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” https://markmanson.net/question
His article resonated with me on a lot of levels, and I began to question the goals I was reaching for. At the time, I was studying science at university and as much as I loved it, I found myself becoming increasingly depressed. Why was I doing this? Will I use it for anything? Who am I doing this for? I was also avoiding doing the one thing I’ve always loved, creative writing. Mark’s article forced me to evaluate how much struggle I was willing to have in my life to achieve my goals. I looked at all the things that were hard about the science pathway and asked myself whether I was willing to work that hard to become a scientist. On nearly every answer, I said no. It was depressing as I was already at the end of my second year and because I realised I was trying to prove something to someone else. This wasn’t my pathway.
After a while, I decided to ask myself the same questions about being a writer. Keeping in mind that at this point, my writing consisted of morning pages and a lot of crappy poetry sprinkled with a few gems and some half-hearted attempts at drawing. I jumped online and researched the challenges of being a writer and formulated them into questions. Every single question got a big fat yes! For this, I will struggle, I will burn, I will break. For this I am willing to face rejection, to lose sleep, to keep trying repeatedly.
Because writing means everything to me.
I can’t imagine a life where I don’t write. I’ve been dreaming about this for as long as I can remember, but fear of failure kept my dreams small, and fear of rejection kept me from sharing what I write. Well, I’ve been rejected multiple times and I’ve survived every one of them. I’m learning to see them as lessons rather than failures, and I’m finally listening to the voice that knows this is my path.
Considering this knowledge, I joined a couple of writing groups; one local and one online, both very different. The local group is heavy on sharing and critiquing, while the online one focuses on dedicated writing time. I also had a few semesters at uni where we had to critique the writings of other students. I’ve slowly learned that putting my writing up for critique is doable; sometimes scary, but often very rewarding. I’ve also found that sometimes the critique you get is biased and knowing how to take what is useful on board and let the rest slip away, is helpful on so many levels. Allowing my work to be critiqued is making me a better writer and teaching me different ways of viewing my writing and the world around me. It also showed up all the cliches in my writing.
Last year I participated in National Novel Writing Month NANOWRIMO https://nanowrimo.org/ for the first time. The goal is to try and write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. I went into it with the idea of ‘Let’s see what I can do.’ I didn’t write a novel, but I did reach my word count. What I came out with was ideas, scenes, and characters for a trilogy. It was bloody hard work and I take my hat off to anyone who manages to write an actual novel in this time. It would have been so easy to give up. My wife and I contracted covid in October, and by November I’d developed pneumonia, followed by gastroenteritis and conjunctivitis. My body was falling apart, but my head and heart were determined. The funny thing is that being sick gave me cause to slow everything else down. No one wanted me around while I was sick, so I was able to dedicate my time to writing, and I did it in a way that allowed me to rest whenever I needed it, and work when I could.
What I also gained from this process was the realisation that if I dedicate myself to something that appears unreachable, I can get so much closer to it than I ever dreamed was possible. I’ve come to appreciate that I don’t know what I can do because I haven’t done it yet, and that’s fine. What I can do is show up and give it a go. Moving forward, I know one of my biggest challenges will be learning how to find the balance between my dreams of writing and art, and my commitments to work, self-care, and the people I love.
This week I submitted a short piece for the Tasmanian NANO Spring zine which will be distributed at The Small Press Zine Fair next month https://www.facebook.com/events/583435487325065
This is way outside my comfort zone, and I was nervous about having a go, particularly as the theme of Spring wasn’t resonating with me. I spent a few hours dot-pointing ideas, eventually deciding that I don’t like spring; so, I wrote about that. I considered using a pseudonym, but in the end, I just went for it. I’m glad I did because the few people who’ve already read it, liked it.
Over the last week I have found myself exploring the zine world again, I had no idea it was still so popular. A friend and I had a go at making zines many years ago and I still have them. I pulled them out to have a read and discovered two very interesting things. Firstly, they weren’t very good, were full of advertising, and had very little creative content. Secondly, I was so proud of my small contributions and I remembered how much fun we had making them. I didn’t give it much more thought, but every night since I have found myself waking up through the night with ideas for zines. Maybe I’ll explore this one a bit further and see where it goes. The idea of doing something that allows me to combine my love of writing with my art is very tempting.
For now, keep reading, keep writing, and keep creating.
Keep doing whatever makes your heart soar.
Namaste
Annie
A.L.A.S
Images © Annie Christie-Whitehead
From L to R: Creative journalling page, Ulverzine 2008, heterometrus sp., shading practice from Visual Arts course in 2021, painting: random ideas of a moonscape, “Together” My first attempt at painting submitted to the Minds Do Matter art exhibition in 2010 – winner of the People’s Choice award.
lifetimes of gratitude 