Quinn McDonald's Blog, page 78

Spring Will Come

Spring. It’s a season we anticipate months before it arrives. When the nights get darker, and the wind blows colder, we begin to search seed catalogs for the beginnings of Spring. The arrival of the first seed catalog was always a sign that while the worst of winter was still to come, there was a time beyond that when I’d be sinking my fingers into the dirt again.

Gardeners imagine every detail of the garden. We stare at the spot where a crocus will push up through the snow. We hunt for the first leaf bud and wait eagerly for it to unfurl.

What we are really waiting for is change. Specific change. For a shift to bring more light. We are not always as eager for change in our own lives. Nature gives us some wonderful lessons to follow, if we take a walk outside:

We change in order to grow. The first leaf might freeze on the branch, but it comes out anyway, when the sun warms it. Without it, the tree can’t flower, set fruit or scatter seed to become a forest. Our creative life, too, must push ahead without knowing exactly what the details are—just that without this effort there won’t be a creative ground to build on.
 Creativity comes one step at a time. One crocus comes up. One robin hops across the lawn. Creativity is fragile and needs encouragement. We encourage our creative selves one step at a time. We do small things that build into a creative life.
Repetition of success make the next success easier. The first leaf is a miracle, a thousand leaves is a shade tree. A creative life repeats small steps until they become a large achievement.

Jason Poole, a commentor on this site, wrote (about his word for the year), “In Hawaiian, the prefix/causative HOʻO is put in front of a word to–well–make something happen. The Hawaiian word for sprout is KUPU. So the Hawaiian word for “to sprout” is HOʻOKUPU.” It’s Jason’s word because he want to nurture his creativity into shoots and sprouts and honor his teachers. (Read the whole post).

A creative life, like the signs of Spring, starts in the dark, with uncertainty and trust. We believe in creativity even if we do not believe in ourselves. As creativity blossoms and thrives, as we nurture our creative ideas, we push ahead with more ideas, with more certainty, to live a creative life. Creativity can start in any season, thrive in any climate. It just takes the first brave unfurling of a green idea.

-–Quinn McDonald is amazed at the power of words and language. But then again, she’s a writer.

Filed under: Creativity, Nature, Inside and Out, The Writing Life Tagged: gardens, ho'okupu, plants, power of growing

Don’t Forget to Play

Some of you have made resolutions–big ones, small ones, ones you make every year, ones you have never made before. You are focusing hard on keeping them going. Maybe a week into the New Year, you are feeling some pressure to keep going.

May I add something? Please give yourself some time to play. Not work harder. Not work smarter. Play. Not do the laundry first, not check your to-do list. Play.

Play is vital work. It sets your brain up to solve problems. It relaxes your muscles and allows you to take a break from the usual tension, fear and anger. Play is one of the most important activities you can do every day.

What’s play? It’s activities that do not end in a completed project. Play is exploring without expectation of completion. Play is experimenting without any anticipation of a result, of winning. Play is the most important part of your day.

Play is fresh air and sunshine into your soul. Play is a big space to allow thoughts to grow. Play heals. Don’t shortchange yourself. Don’t push it to the end of the day. Don’t discipline yourself out of play.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer who is working on the book on your inner heroes and your inner critic.

Filed under: Coaching, Recovering Perfectionists Tagged: play, problem solving, relax

New Classes for Spring

Ready to take a class this spring? Here are my classes in Tucson and Paradise Valley. (And don’t forget Madeline Island in July!)

Tucson

Monsoon Papers. (While these classes are for Paper Works members, a year’s membership will cost you just $35.)

Date: Saturday, January 26 10am – 4pm

Location: U Of A Modular Classroom

4101 N. Campbell Avenue  Tucson, AZ  85719

Cost: $100 plus Material Fee $5

Originally created in our monsoon storms, this wild surface decoration technique is fail-proof. Pieces of paper transformed with inks and gilding into dark, rich colors or bright, intense ones. It’s messy and unpredictable, so leave your controlling urges at the door—and be surprised at how the paper develops! Use your papers for folders, book projects, constructions, collage.

I’ll be teaching three classes at Paradise Valley (AZ) Community College.

March 9, 2013

9 a.m. to noon

Art Journaling for Perfectionists, class number 220116

Details and Registration on this page:

Started a dozen journals but never finished any of them? Love the idea of journaling but never get the results you want? Most people have a gap between their ideal journal and their ability to make it happen. Perfectionists suffer from this more than others. In this class you’ll make several pages using different techniques for both writing and design, and create a journal using only your favorite pages.  Review the materials list.

35mm slide mount journal

April 6, 2013,

9 a.m. to noon

One-Sentence Journaling, class number 220117

Details and Registration on this page:

Six-word autobiographies are hugely popular right now. Take this fun trend and turn it into a gift for yourself or for someone else. Instead of a big sheet, we’ll use slide mounts to create a 2 x 2 accordion-fold journal using acrylic paint, decorative tape, rubber stamps, and colored gel pens. You’ll learn the writing technique, try out several ideas, and make at least two journals. Review the materials list.

April 13, 2013, 9 a.m. to noon

Poetry, Lost and Found, class number 220118

Details and Registration on this page:

Found poetry is the collection of beautiful, meaningful words you find hidden in a printed page. Without you, this poetry would be lost to the casual reader. Surprise yourself with the simplicity and satisfaction of the technique and delight your friends with handmade cards of found poetry. First you’ll play with technique, then learn how to make cards that can be sent or framed for gifts. Review the materials list.

And don’t forget the great art retreat for this summer:

July 22-26, Madeline Island, Wisconsin

Magic and Metaphor: Mixed Media Conversations With Your Inner Critric.

An amazing art retreat in Lake Superior that covers deep writing and intuitive art. What will you do for five days? Join a class of creative explorers and confront your inner critic.

Full Description: Your inner critic squawks about lack and attack while you chase it out of your studio. It always returns, and you lose deep creative time patrolling the edges of your consciousness to keep the inner critic at bay.

Through deep journaling and intuitive art, this class will help you develop inner advocates with strengths and powers to challenge the inner critic to a real conversation. Maybe the inner critic has a point that’s useful. Maybe not. Now you’ll know.

Classroom and accommodations at Madeline Island. Hold your space for $85 now.

You will develop a series of cards with art on one side and writing on the other. The cards can be used for brainstorming, creative discussions, idea selection and swaps. You’ll use guided visualization, deep journaling, appreciative inquiry, and spontaneous association for writing and bricollage, ink-as-paint, resist techniques, and found poetry as artwork.

You will also make Monsoon Papers, my technique for surface decoration on sheets of paper to use as folders and envelopes for your cards.

No art experience is necessary. Journaling experience is helpful, but not required.

Cost: $425 for five days. Update: Here is the information on lodging and meals:  Shared lodging is $80/night, private is $120/night.  Meals (that’s breakfast and lunch) are $125 for the week.  Dinner is on your own—a  wonderful opportunity to experience the sights and sounds of Madeline.

Register online  or Contact: Jenna J. Erickson, Director of Programs

Madeline Island School of the Arts

978 Middle Road,  La Pointe, WI 54850

715-747-2054

Filed under: Quinn's Classes Tagged: fourn poetry class, journaling class, monsoon paper class

Miles of Roses

My visitors and I were driving to hike the White Tank Mountains (in Mirage, AZ) to see the petroglyphs. We saw, in the January-bare fields, plants, about three feet tall. Acres of them. They were blooming.

“Roses,” Eva said. I couldn’t believe it. Fields of roses? Yes. We got out of the car to take photos. As far as the eye could see, fields of roses, mostly red. Some white and a few pink.

They must have been growing for nurseries or florists. There was not a scrap of fragrance in the air. Either way, it was an incredible sight.

A good surprise for my visitors who are flying back to Switzerland tomorrow. And one for me, who never expected to see roses blooming by the acre in the desert.

 

Filed under: Nature, Inside and Out Tagged: blooming roses, roses

Making It Better for the Next Person

Is the world off kilter, or is it just me?

My idea of how experience might influences behavior:

Running the gauntlet

Here’s what seems to happen instead:

Bad experience —–> anger —–> resolution to be fair when it’s your turn to lead —–> repeat the injustice when you get the power.

Instead of “I hated the short maternity leave when I was having my baby, I’m going to make it easier for the next generation,” I’m hearing “I didn’t have any leave, I don’t see why you should have it.”

It doesn’t sound like leadership, it sounds like revenge. Maternity leave is just an example. I’m seeing this vengeful behavior in mentoring, regulating job loads, hiring practices, loyalty, even fidelity. Is this improving life and work?

I understand how it happens. It’s well known that children of alcoholics often becomes alcoholics themselves, simply because it’s all they knew. Children with abusive parents often become abusive adults because it’s how they learned to handle power.

Must we now see this effect in business? Employees with bad supervisors grow into bad supervisors themselves. Time to break the cycle. It won’t happen at the top. You’re going to have to take your anger and change the outcome. Retribution is like stabbing yourself a thousand times to punish the other person. You can start to change the world today. By being fair, even when you were not treated fairly.

--Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach who works with companies to develop a business culture in which people can thrive, not thrash.

Filed under: Coaching, In My Life Tagged: anger, Kindness, leading, power

Making Change Work for You

We are now four days into the New Year–heading toward a week. How are those resolutions coming? I’m not a fan of resolutions, but I am supporting several people who made resolutions to change. They aren’t having a good time.  Because even when you want to change, it isn’t easy. What makes change hard? Two major factors: yourself and others. The rest is easy.

Change can get derailed if you don’t enlist your family and friends to help you.

When you decide to change, you have your past to wrestle with. You choose the path to change and suddenly your inner critic pipes up. “What’s so wrong with who you are now?” “Love yourself the way you are, change is a sign of self-hatred.” “Can you really keep up this behavior?”

If you want to change a habit, you’ll have to substitute the new behavior for about two months. That’s as long as it will take you to establish the new habit in place of the old. Most people say one month, but two is more realistic.

One to substitute the new action and make it a habit,  the next to overcome the pushback from your friends and family. No doubt about it, they will be the longest two months of your life. You will invent a thousand reasons to go back to the old behavior–it’s your birthday, you just started a diet, you are stressed, now is not a good time. But like having a baby, there is never a perfect time, you have to gear up, crank up your determination and get busy.

Just when you do, your friends will start chipping away at your resolve. They will give you excuses to fail. They will tell you they like you the way you are. They will whine that you don’t need to change. Why are your friends so focused on sabotage? Because if you change, they will have to change. They will have to get to know the new you, they will have to change the way they treat you . And your friends don’t want to change. It’s too much work. It is a lot less work to complain until you quit changing.

Your friends can be persistent and threatening. Most people don’t like confrontation, and they do like their friends, so they cave in and go back to being “normal.” And there goes the path to success.

If you are determined to change, tell your friends you plan ahead of time and enlist their help. Ask them to support you before the chorus of complaints begins. Often asking for support not only makes friends understand that this is important to you, it helps you be clear about what you want. And talking about the change helps you be clear about what you want for your future.

That doesn’t mean your friends will always support you, but it gives you a better start. And a good start is the best way to start toward a good finish.

–Quinn McDonald is changing. And it’s damn hard.

Filed under: Coaching, In My Life, Inner Critic Tagged: change, friends and change, New Year's resolution, resolutions

Quotations for Thursday

We are celebrating family, and spent half the night talking. So, some quotes to keep the cheer going:

Migrating birds via MyOpera.com

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.   — Jessica Hische

It takes courage to be an artist. Twice. First, it takes courage to bring a vision into the physical realm. Then it takes courage to show it to the world.       –Serena Kovalosky

We must use what we have  to invent what we desire.  --Adrienne Rich

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.    –Harvey Fierstein

 

Filed under: Quotes Tagged: Art Quotes, journal prompts

Let Go, Let’s Go, and Choosing

Several of you have asked what my word for 2013 is. Rubber Rabbit, who knows a good deal about doing and giving up, chose the same word: Let Go.

Here’s why I chose it: It’s something I need to learn how to do better. To look at my work plate and let some of it go. For every (significant) new project I take on, I will create a guestimate of how much time and effort it will take, and then take the equivalent amount of work off the plate.

As I have discovered over and over again, I can’t have it all, and certainly not at the same time. I want to teach online classes, in person classes, coach creative people, finish the inner hero book, cook up another book (new concept, still half-baked), teach a new class  to introduce the inner hero book, put out an e-book, teach classes with all the contributors to the book. . .the list goes on. Even if I put all the ideas and tasks on a timeline, there is not enough time. So I will have to Let Go of some of the ideas.

There are emotions that are no longer serving me. Guilt, regret, some anger, fear. I’ve squeezed all the learning out of them I can. They won’t compost into joy, energy or peace. Time to Let Go.

I have too many art supplies. Projects I thought I’d do, supplies I thought I’d need, purchases of materials I thought I’d have time for. And never did. Items I have no talent for and am not interested in learning. Time to Let Go to people and places who will love them and use them.

There are possessions in my house that I am holding onto for reasons of guilt. Things I don’t want or use, but that my parents thought were important enough to cram into the few possessions they brought with them. They need to bring someone else something else. Keeping something out of guilt is a terrible reason to own it, make space for it. I need to make space for space.

And then, a slight variation. It’s time to get into action. Not huge leaping ahead, but the smallest thing that I am capable of doing. Not making a video, or publishing an e-book, but doing tiny steps toward figuring out how to make it possible. Looking where I want to go, seeing if the road is clear, and then, well, Let’s Go!

—Quinn McDonald is looking forward to the discoveries of 2013.

Filed under: In My Life, Opinion Tagged: let go, moving ahead, Word of the Year

Starting 2013 With Textures and Shadows

No matter what your word for the year is, it will have shadows and light spots, textures that feel smooth and right, and times it will feel rough and uncomfortable. To celebrate the amazing work of choosing a word for the year, here are some interesting textures and shadows.

This wonderfully detailed shot of round rocks has been white-washed. They are what the first homes were made from, sometimes with adobe and sometimes without. 

Here is the whole house, showing a non-whitewashed side.

Isn’t this wonderful texture? i love the regularity of it.

It belongs to this palm tree. Neither a coconut nor a date palm, this one has what looks like pleated seeds. Lovely to look at, tough to pull out of a pool filter.

And finally, two beautiful shadows that can become edging patterns in a journal.

They were originally from a fence decoration popular in the 80s.

Notice everything. Live it. It’s the only 2013 you will get.

-–Quinn McDonald writes about the creative life from Phoenix, Arizona.

Filed under: In My Life, Journal Pages, Nature, Inside and Out Tagged: creativity coaching, shadow, texture

Thoughts For the End of the Year

This was a year of big leaps and painful stumbles, of problem solving and getting it wrong. Then righting myself and finding balance. For a bit. For me, that’s the point of living a creative life. Not bliss, not smooth sailing, but a mix of everything.

Do not become complacent with victory; do not become frustrated with defeat.

It gives real perspective on both the high and low points—deep enjoyment of the highs allows me to tolerate the lows. And for me, that’s the point. The lows aren’t defeats if I can keep the highs in mind. It’s the distance traveled between them that make the highs and lows work, and they work together. Not one at a time. And it’s the effort for both that needs to be honored. No one deliberately screws up. We were on the way to something else when we realize we were heading in the wrong direction. Often at full tilt.

Because I find hope a false emotion (often a great mask for the inner critic), knowing that success and failure come in waves makes both of them bearable.

Hope allows me to think that mistakes are accidents and success is “who I really am.” Hope pushes me to think that all things will end well. But they don’t. Some things end badly. I am neither my great success nor am I my embarrassing failure. The red-ink ancient Chinese chop up there says, “Do not become complacent with victory; do not become frustrated with defeat.” Good point. I am a spirit in motion, traveling toward and away from something at the same time.

This year brought me the gift of saying goodbye well, when my father-in-law died. And the gift of great, unbridled pride and unconditional love, given me by my son. And an acceptance of letting go of the long struggle over a quilt my mother never finished.

My biggest disappointment (in myself) came when a treasured client quit in anger, and stalked away.  Much of coaching success depends on self-management, the realization that I am a space of energy only. I do not “make” clients succeed. I do not “cause” their failure. But when a client is careening toward a decision fueled by anger, it is hard not to try to wrest the wheel of decision-making out of those clenched hands, and try to fix, correct the path. It’s overpowering to want to avert disaster.

But I took a vow in coaching class, a vow not to fix, not to give advice. Because fixing and giving advice doesn’t allow for the client to see that learning-important mistake and live it. Instead, giving advice allows for blame and anger toward the coach instead of measured consideration of personal decisions.  The best coaches I know are masters of “no advice”.

In the following weeks, I knew I could give the client an easy out. Go back and pretend the careening skid hadn’t happened. Fix my image of myself at the same time. Make myself kinder, at least in the rear-view mirror. But life doesn’t work that way. This was a client decision. My work was to accept that decision.

Some things can’t be mended, fixed, healed or backed up. Consequences are what we choose when we choose an action and make the decision.  I had to accept that every illusion I had of wanting to change the outcome was not my work to do. The client was behaving true to personal human nature, turning away from the change that was suddenly no longer worth fighting for. Painful as it was, I had to step aside and let the future happen, whatever it will be.

And that’s a good lesson to pick out of the smouldering disappointment. You can explain, but you cannot understand for others. You can learn to accept what is. You can give up hope that somehow, magically, history will forget and back up and we can live a day over again, wiser now. Every parent in Newtown, Connecticut would pay dearly for that. But it cannot be. I cannot decide not how to change the world, but only how to change myself.  We talk about forgiveness a lot, insist on its power, until, of course, it is up to us to forgive. Then it seems impossible.

This has been a year rich in lessons–on change, accepting, forgiveness, intention, focus, letting go, growth. All of those are words that you, my blog readers, have taken as your words for 2013. All are good. You are the brightest, funniest, wisest people I have never met, and I hope to get to know you all much better in 2013.

Words are powerful. Choose the ones you want to live by well.

–-Quinn McDonald wishes a few deep hours of reflection for everyone this year, and the deep joy of acceptance.

Filed under: Coaching, Creativity, In My Life, Links, resources, idea boosts Tagged: creativity coaching, no hope, Word of the Year