Akiko’s Kitchen

As a photographer I notice that I go through cycles of intense creativity and productivity followed by fallow time where nothing seems to be happening. I am in the fallow time right now.

I have experienced this kind of cycle before and I know that it ends but when I’m smack dab in the middle of it I have a hard time relaxing into the flow (or lack of flow).

This week at yoga class we celebrated the 86th birthday of one of my classmates. As everyone was marveling at how healthy and strong our classmate was at age 86, and talking about how she still works and is active in the community, it hit me that if I live to be 86, I’ll have another 25 years of my life to spend.

How do I want to shape the days and years of my life?

My knee jerk response was that 25 years was an awfully long time to be messing around doing nothing. Maybe I should try to get a job somewhere and do something useful.

Whoa! Wait a minute!

Something useful?

When I pause to take in these words I understand that the beliefs and values of the culture surrounding me are once again surfacing in my own judgments and discomfort with the artist’s journey.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  — Howard Thurman

The Artist’s Journey

I am working on my photography and writing every day. Even though I don’t work for someone else and I don’t collect a paycheck, I work at my art daily. Why do I think that what I’m doing is just “messing around?”

Part of my feelings stem from frustration with not creating any new work that I feel good about in the past few months. And part are simply left-overs from a cultural mindset I have decided to discard (although it still pops out especially during the fallow time).

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”
― Steven Pressfield

When I compare my art to the work of others I often feel that I should be more like them. But when I step back and look clearly at my work I realize that although my voice is different than the voice of others, it is my voice, and my voice has beauty and truth in it.

“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

I often measure my worth by what my work produces—money, success, prestige—while my true worth is immeasurable and unquestionable. Despite only positive experiences of embracing the practice of following joy during the past 6 months, habits of a lifetime do not disappear overnight. I still fall into old patterns occasionally. I forget about the joy and go back to thinking I need to justify my existence.

Then I come back to my true self and remind myself that I am, therefore, I am worthy.

And just in case you’re wondering, You are, therefore, you are worthy.

Becoming more aware of who I am through my work

The artist’s journey is a journey of becoming more aware of who I am through my work. Already I know myself better than I did a few years ago. I’ve learned that I am drawn to beauty like a bee is drawn to flowers, I am a lover of woods, gardens, and nature. I gravitate to light. I am endlessly fascinated with photographing flowers and babies. I like the real deal, and not a lot of pretense or fuss. There is a straightforwardness to my work and an energy of the sacred. I’m not a great portrait photographer and I don’t feel comfortable making portraits of people I don’t know well. I don’t like photographing the darker parts of the human experience. I am not a photo-journalist. My joy lies in wandering in the woods and gardens, noticing beauty in the mundane, practicing mindfulness, and sharing the beauty and joy I experience through my photographs and writing.

There is great value to understanding who I am and fully accepting and embracing my uniqueness.

There was a time when I would have felt that I needed to change some of the aspects of myself to become more like other artists I admire. Nowadays I just embrace the full catastrophe of me and my life. We each have our own “Full Catastrophe” filled with good and bad, difficult and easy.

This is who I am. And it is enough. My art shines out through me expressing my unique voice. My voice grows stronger the more I express it.

Some days the work flows like a river flows, easily and smoothly. Other days, nothing works, nothing happens. It’s all part of the journey.

“A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.” — Neil Gaimen, Make Good Art

What about your journey? Where are you in your own cycle of creativity? Are you getting hijacked by old beliefs and thoughts? Take time to notice and let them go. Celebrate and express your own unique voice.

May you walk in beauty.

A note about the photos in today’s post. All are from my archives; most are early work of mine that I went back and found in a recent review. They represent my unique voice and view of the world.