I am a maker of pretty things mostly. They bring me joy and brighten the day. After having searched in myself for some pretty idea, I usually feel better in any situation.

Sometimes, though, there is only ugliness and pain. Or it seems this way, which, in any case, means I am stuck and not creating. Yet at the same time I know that creating sets my pained self free.

One time last year I had hit a very hard crisis with my sweetie. I was ready to let our relationship go, because of all the pain and stuck. Needless to say the ugliness blocked my creative outlet. Fortunately I had a chance to be on a call with the lovely Melissa Dinwiddie that week and she encouraged me to just play with things I don’t usually play and see what happens.

You can see what happened at the top of this post. It is crocheted, wired, paper macheed, feathered and painted. All from things I had in the house. It is kind of ugly but it is free. And it took the weight from me and let me breathe more easily again. I figured out that I do fine on my own, that I do not depend on a romantic relationship and that I enjoy being on my own.

In the end my sweetie and I got back together, we are tighter than ever and have a relationship that I am happy to be a part of. Because I learned to be loved enough in myself, to not depend on approval from him, I get to chose to be with him each day anew. All because I played with something new and gave the ugly legitimacy.

Cross published on http://thenakedalpaca.com

When the frost has gone, the ground looks barren. Covered with the dead residue of plants once alive and green. But there in the recesses, sheltered by the old dead leaves, new sprouts appear. Tiny, almost unnoticeable. And from these sprouts something grand and green will grow. Because even if we sometimes have to shed all exterior signs of life, to shelter ourselves in the deep dark ground, we are not dead. New growth will spring from having drawn back into the deepness.

Remember this.

I was talking to Maria: “I go to a class every day unless something important gets in the way.” I was impressed by her dedication. I wanted that kind of dedication and mourned my lack of it, my failing to integrate a practice into my way too full schedule. I panicked at the thought of not doing enough, of not doing it right. For a moment I listened to the monster that tells me that I will never be a yogi. I also listened to the monster that tells me I need to be a yogi to arrive at happiness.

I went into shavasana, my focus forced into arriving with me in the present moment. I felt my body. The muscles that are always tense. The pointed pain in my hip. The strength ready to be deployed into warrior poses.

I remembered that the thing that I like best about Yoga, that it is just me, my Yoga, my Asana. As the teacher reminded the newcomers to listen to their bodies, I remembered that Yoga is many-pathed. Like a small sparkly quartz I remembered that Asana is only part of my way. I remembered that soul work and turning inward are steps on the eight-fold path of Yoga.

And then I forgot, I was present in the present moment. The teacher guided us into Ardha Matsyendrasana. When I turned, again remembering past and future, I was greeted by a woman with skin the color of midnight. Her feet grew roots into the belly of the world and her hair branched outward carrying the sky. In her arms she held a softly glowing body. Safe. Fully contained. Fearless. As I looked at the soft glowing face I saw myself. I looked up into the eyes of the midnight woman rooted in the world and carrying the sky and I saw myself.

I am both the one held and the one holding. I contain myself. I am enough.

As long as I remember I have been crafting and drawing. I have tried everything that happened to cross my way with never a fear of failure or thinking I might not understand how it works. Music was different, in fact there were many years that I insisted I was completely unmusical.

While my crafting endeavors often didn’t satisfy my aesthetic sensibilities, there were always family members, or friends, who loved what I had produced. I could learn what I wanted to learn and always had something to give away, or admire. Repetition was never boring, because it never repeated in exactly the same way. Intuitively I grasp how the visual elements go together and how these could be modified. Every drawing class I ever took gave me something unique, something my own. It might not have been pretty, but it was unique to my way of seeing the world.

The few times I tried learning to make music, I gave up before something acceptable was produced. I dreaded the “endless” rounds of scales and finger exercises, the repetition to get something just right (or anywhere near right). I would daydream away my practice time thinking about a time when maybe I could arrange elements, or notes in new ways to make something unique. But I lack that intrinsic understanding of tones and how they work together, so all my musical endeavors will always be imitation. I don’t do imitation well when I could be creating something new.

And one day I came to knitting. I struggled at first, because I did not understand it and had to follow the directions exactly. But once the muscle memory developed and I knew how to make different stitches I could deviate and, more importantly, understand what I was doing. Each pattern I bought and knit contained clues and elements to build my knitting library. I learned about three-dimensional construction from string. I learned about decorative elements, about form following function. I started experimenting with combinations of these elements and now I am at a point where, when inspiration strikes, I can just sit down and start knitting. There is still a lot I can/want/need to learn, beading for example and color work, but my knitting “vocabulary” is big enough to produce things that resemble my ideas and that cause joy in other people. And so I came to this thing that might be a business in disguise.

I am learning again. Like how small a part of the design process the actual idea and initial knit is. How different ideas about the easiness of a pattern can be, or what is considered cluttered. How different responses can be to one and the same object. I am learning about how perceived and actual value of a thing differ. Some of the learning hurts, some I accept with grace and some fills little gaps in my internal landscape so that suddenly seemingly unrelated things make sense. I strive to be in this process with love and play. I strive to not rush, but grow this thing slowly and gently instead. And as I learn things I can understand them and modify them and grow my own business culture of love and joy.

Cross-posted to The Naked Alpaca.

Ok, now go back to whatever you were doing and I’ll sulk in my embarrassment at putting the spotlight on something I’m doing ;)

I know what I need, most of the time. That is ruled by my experience-honed intuition. There are even some highly sensible rules in the Book of Paula about what I need. Wether I allow myself to do what I need depends on an entirely arbitrary set of rules. For example there is a rule about not being allowed to go to bed before nine. There is also a rule about always giving preference to productive activities.

Some rules about what to do look very similar to rules about what I need. There is the rule that I need to have a regular start to the day, with a set time for the alarm clock. But that is not the same as the doing-rule about having to get up at that time every day even when I know that sleeping another two or three hours is what I need. Need-rules are soft and nourishing. Doing-rules are hard and punishing.

Of course there is some need for discernment. Sometimes the childish/soft-animal part of me will mask my needs and I see a form that is not really there. Like, I might need to breathe fresh air, but that need is masked by my desire not to go out in the cold. Yes, staying warm is a need, but there are several solutions to that, not just staying inside. So I must learn to separate the need/the essence from the form that my mind suggests.

With Amy’s help I chose the word courage as inspiration and guide for this year. It seems to me that courage is a word that is often bandied about without any reference to it’s meaning. It is, at the same time, very overused and a diffuse idea. So I decided to play around with markers and words on paper a bit and came up with the pictured hexagon. It is a sort-of-enchantment, a clearing of my mind and anchoring of the qualities I want to carry into 2012.

Each time I look at it I discover something new and interesting about it. Today I noticed that Courage was flanked by Wisdom and Sovereignty. Indeed, Courage without Wisdom easily turns into Foolhardiness and Courage without Sovereignty turns into Frustration. On the other side, Courage is partnered with Permission for example the permission I give myself to want what I want, to do what is necessary, to seek safety when I need safety. For Courage to be sustainable it is necessary that I care for myself in the best way that I know how.

Kalyani instigated a Shiva Nata Bookclub over at the ShivaNuts-Blog. The first book she chose was Drive by Daniel Pink. (shorter version here [video]) The discussion is divided into three parts, according to the structure of the book. This is my take on Part I.

As I sit here and type this I am safe, warm, full of food. I write this without anyone telling me to. I write without anyone paying me to. My apartment is messy, showing signs of my creative endeavors. I don’t clean it up without my internal mother telling me that I need to, and after I’m done I get a reward. It works out that way.

Were you to tell me to write this post, were you to offer a reward per word written, it would be a lot harder. Were my internal mother to just disappear, my apartment would not see the other side of a broom in months. It doesn’t work out that way.

I’ve talked before about my monsters, how they have a whole bunch of opinions on what I should do and how I should behave. Should is a word they use often. Sometimes they also try to bribe me. It doesn’t work for anything that needs more brain power than reading the instruction sheet. Unfortunately they never seem to choose doing the laundry to get all should-y about.

The great thing now, is that I have a whole book of evidence to wave in their general direction.
Motivation requires different approaches depending on whether the task requires finding new solutions and creative approaches (write a blog post/ intrinsic motivation), or if it requires following a protocol (doing the laundry/ extrinsic motivation). For the first type you really just need to set up a good environment, fair pay, a workspace and then let loose on the problem. Rewards, pay per piece and praise help protocol problems be solved in good efficient ways, or you go and punish people for undesired behavior. If I know I get to watch the movie afterwards I’ll get the laundry done sooner. If, on the other hand I try rewarding myself for blog writing, I might even produce something but it will be of lower quality than otherwise and will decrease the likelihood of me wanting to write a future blogpost.

If I apply this to my burgeoning knit-things business, then I would be motivate to knit more of the same thing by people paying me for them^[1], but I would be motivated to think up more knitting patterns simply by the way my mind works.^[2] Turns out that’s a fairly good representation. And it also nicely demonstrates that the reward needs to be big enough to actually motivate the desired action. Offering me 50€ for something that takes me 8 hours to make plus materials is not enough.^[3]

So what does this have to do with the Monsters and even Shiva Nata? Well should-Monsters are basically internalized versions of extrinsic motivation. The pattern is: You should do this, or this thing that is bad will happen. Our monsters ruin our ability to get stuff done, or to move on growing our sweet little thing/ business. And Shiva Nata helps us resolve that pattern. Simple really ;)

More on that topic, when I’m done reading Part II.

1. fair pay, no less
2. I can’t really stop it.
3. We’re more in the 200€ range.

I opened a new project in OmniFocus. It was titled:The Alpaca on the web
And suddenly questions started pouring forth (including spelling and grammar mistakes). It seems that OmniFocus with its brain dump qualities is a good place to think.

• Make a page on DITW that showcases the designs.
• Make a list of Blogposts to write about yarny things
• Do I really want a yarny things blog?
• What is my relationship to writing about knitting?
• How can written things about knitting be incorporated into DITW?
• Is the naked alpaca just the pattern selling branch of my bussiness and the yoga/string part is part of DITW?
• What is the point of the “I make things”-Tumblr?
• What about really just wanting to own the domain The naked alpaca?
• Would people even read my blog if it was more heavy on the strings?
• But isn’t it that the strings are a huge part of me and the blog is about parts work?
• Shouldn’t I be writing these questions into my journal?
• Why is this scaring me all of a sudden?
• Does other people calling me an entrepreneur mean I am one?
• And what if I am? does that oblige me to take this more seriously?
• Why do I believe that if I have a bussiness that I need to invest untold hours into it to make it work?
• Why can’t I just continue doing teeny, tiny baby steps?
• Is that even my thing? Whose is it instead?
• Do I need to make my bussiness fullfill some arbitrary measure of success, wehter financially or emotionally?
• Do I need to set a goal for it, appart from writing six patterns and teaching one person to knit?
• How long is too long to get a bussiness out of it’s baby shoes?
• Can there be any answer but one that is highly personal?

**********************
This I ask as you plant a comment: Please don’t give me advice. I don’t want you to answer my questions for me. It is enough that they are here. Not everything needs to be resolved right now. I feel like I need to be in this in-between place right now. Remember: we each have our stuff and we let people work on it in their own sovereign way. What I would like is if you answered the questions for yourself, or if you had your own questions, or if you just said hi. Hand-on-heart-sighs and sparkles would be greatly appreciated, as would silently waving hello.