Starting Fresh

We love starting over. It wipes the messy slate of our past clean, and lets us start fresh. We can put on a new face, a new attitude, a new effort. It seems like we can create a whole new identity when we do a new article, book, or website.

The gallery is in Yarmouthport, Mass.

Soon enough, that new effort is overwhelmed by the old ideas fueling the effort–the old us. Alcoholics Anonymous figured this out years ago when they said, “If you are a drunk in Cleveland, moving to Peoria for a fresh start isn’t the answer. You’ll be a drunk in Peoria, too.” It’s a wise saying, although a
tough one. (AA never pretended to have easy answers.)

When I went to Catholic school (I’m not a Catholic, but that’s another story), I loved seeing my friends go to confession. They’d say their prayers and their sins were wiped away. Poof! Just like that, they were brand new and sin free. Unfortunately, the old habits didn’t vanish, and my guess is that the same sins got repeated in the confessional time after time. And since there were different priests, no one really noticed or cared, and little personal growth resulted.

And that’s the danger of new projects. They seem free of the past baggage, but they are not free of us. We show up with our past, and relive it because it’s familiar. In a few days that new project looks like the old us. If we don’t like the old us, we’ll hate the new project, too.

Teresa Jennings Robinson read this post and sent me the gorgeous hand-lettered quote she made for her art journal. See more of her work at rightbrainplanner.com

I have friends who are start-up junkies. Addicted to new beginnings, these eager people will start up a company with the fervor of Ron Popeil selling the Veg-O-Matic. But they aren’t good at running a company, which seem tedious and boring, so they dash off to do another start-up, leaving the clean-up team to handle the rest.

The phrase I hear most often when people find out I’m writing another book is, “Oh, if you need some creative ideas, let me know. I’m really creative!” When I ask if they would help with some research, checking some facts, I get turned down. “Oh, no, my skills are creative ones!” I never say it to them, but creativity is not defined by one brilliant ideas. Creativity means showing up every day to do the hard work. The book I am writing is hard work. It’s satisfying, and I enjoy it, but it’s not fun and doesn’t involve sitting in Starbucks drinking coffee and writing. My editor has often reminded me that books aren’t written, they are re-written. I often think of this at midnight, when I’m re-writing.

Creative work is hard. We want to give up, we hate what we’ve done in the past, we want to do something fun and new. Yet what gets the work done is moving steadily ahead, when it’s not fun and not new. The secret to creativity is determination and persistence. Learning from your mistakes and getting up every time you fall is what the real creativity looks like.

--Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach. She watches her clients start a lot of new projects for many different reasons. Sometimes they figure out why.

Day 22: It’s OK To Be Imperfect

Day 22: It’s OK to be imperfect.  (If you just landed here, you can catch up by, starting with the first post in the series.)

Brene Brown's book is a must-read for every imperfectionist. And perfectionist.

Wisdom from the comments:
Arlene Holtz noticed, “I have also skipped a couple of days of writing since I started – not deliberately (well, at least not consciously). . . . What was different for me this time, was I noticed I hadn’t written, and even “missed” the writing. In fact, I was really relieved to get back to writing the very next day. It feels like it is becoming a real part of who I am.”

Marianna Dougherty wrote, “I do sitting meditation and sometimes get great revelations as a result. Not during the meditation but later in the day or another day. It’s the process of quieting my mind and the daily practice that brings about results.”

Diane Becka had no problem with walking everyday, “On the days I don’t want to, I do it mostly because I haven’t missed a day. So even in bad weather I find a way to walk just so I can feel I’ve kept this commitment to myself,”  but hit a rough patch on the writing, “Journaling has been another matter. I just couldn’t make myself start. I bought more blank books, new pens. Nothing. Every day I would read how much the writing was helping others, all that you were learning from it, and the more I read, the harder it was. I let the expectations I had grow until there was no way I could meet them and it was overwhelming.”

Bo Mackison said, “I find it hard to do the writing and the walking, maybe if I had made the commitment to do one, got that down and then added the other it would have been easier. ANd I have no ambition to walk in cold or snow or sleet or winter mix. . .”

*     *     *     *    *

What causes most people to quit a new habit? The same thing that causes most people to abandon their New Year’s resolutions? It’s not that the goals are too lofty (unless made in a hurry under the influence of drink or peer pressure), but the mistaken belief that one mis-step “ruins it all.” It doesn’t. One mis-step, one missed day, one incomplete page is just that–an imperfection. It doesn’t invalidate the intention or the goal.

Quote from Brene Brown's book.

It does, however, make it easier to add another missed day to the stack. And that’s where the self discipline comes in. If you skip a day, be aware of it, be conscious, make it a choice. And the next day, make it a choice to return.

Change doesn’t happen all at once. Change happens when we replace one action with another. And the more often the replacement happens, the more likely we are to repeat, until we have a new habit. In an email I received, someone insisted that if they forgot one day, they would have to “start over,” they added, “with nothing.” I know that’s how AA does the counting, but I don’t think that’s true with journaling. You have something. You have begun to walk down a path. You are exploring your motives and excuses. That’s not nothing.

Of course, if you want something positive to happen, you will have to kick yourself occasionally to keep doing it, and you will have to do the work, but you will always do your work imperfectly, because that is the reason we keep learning–every imperfection is a chance to learn something new.

What have you been learning as you go along?

--Quinn McDonald is a journaler and creativity coach who is exploring the habit of journal writing with readers of the blog.

Image: the saying from Brene Brown is available for purchase from this site. I am not recommending it, I’m simply letting you know where it’s from.

The Fresh Start

Fresh Paint Gallery is in Yarmouthport, Mass.

We love starting over. It wipes the messy slate of our past clean, and lets us start fresh. We can put on a new face, a new attitude, a new effort. It seems like we can create a whole new identity when we do a new article, book, website.

Soon enough, that new effort is overwhelmed by the old ideas fueling the effort–the old us. Alcoholics Anonymous figured this out years ago when they said, “If you are a drunk in Cleveland, moving to Peoria for a fresh start isn’t the answer. You’ll be a drunk in Peoria, too.” It’s a wise saying, although a
tough one. (AA never pretended to have easy answers.)

When I went to Catholic school (I’m not a Catholic, but that’s another story), I loved seeing my friends go to confession. They’d say their prayers and their sins were wiped away. Poof! Just like that, they were brand new and sin free. Unfortunately, the old habits didn’t vanish, and my guess is that the same sins got repeated in the confessional time after time. And since there were different priests, no one really noticed or cared, and little personal growth resulted.

And that’s the danger of new projects. They seem free of the past baggage, but they are not free of us. We show up with our past, and at the first decision, we repeat mistakes. In a few days that new project looks like the old us. If we don’t like the old us, we’ll hate the new project, too.

I have friends who are start-up junkies. Addicted to new beginnings, these eager people will start up a company with the fervor of Ron Popeil selling the Veg-O-Matic. But they aren’t good at running a company, which seem tedious and boring, so they dash off to do another start-up, leaving the clean-up team to handle the rest.

The phrase I hear most often when people find out I’m writing a book is, “Oh, if you need some creative ideas, let me know. I’m really creative!” When I ask if they would help with some research, checking some facts, I get turned down. “Oh, no, my skills are creative ones!” I never say it to them, but creativity is not one brilliant ideas, it’s showing up every day to do the hard work. The book I am writing is hard work. It’s satisfying, and I enjoy it, but it’s not fun and doesn’t involve sitting in Starbucks drinking coffee and writing. My editor has often reminded me that books aren’t written, they are re-written. I often think of this at midnight, when I’m re-writing.

Creative work is hard. We want to give up, we hate what we’ve done in the past, we want to do something fun and new. Yet what gets the work done is moving steadily ahead, when it’s not fun and not new. The secret to creativity is determination and persistence. Learning from your mistakes and getting up every time you fall is what the real creativity looks like.

–Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach. She watches her clients start a lot of new projects for many different reasons.

Thanks to the Unknown

Last night, I dreamed about the house fire again. In 2002, in August, our row house caught fire and burned. Poorly trained roofers accidentally set the roof on fire. It started as a smoldering fire, which they didn’t notice. They left for the day, leaving a cannister of propane on the roof.

Fire photo by H. Peter Clamann ©2006

An unknown man across the street was sitting on his balcony, enjoying an after-work drink, when he saw wisps of smoke, followed by flame, licking around our roof. He didn’t waste any time. He ran across the street, and banged on every door, including ours.  There were more than a dozen houses in our cluster.”Your house is on fire, get out!” he yelled.

My husband stepped out to see if it was true, and I went to the phone to dial 911. The fire department was on the way before I left the house.

You never want to see the home you owe 28 years of payments on with a “Condemned” sign on the front door. Neither do you want to walk up the stairs in the company of the fire marshal to see the night sky clearly through the hole in your roof, and have the confused fire marshal ask, “What room was this?” as you gaze in a charred mess that is piled with books and thigh-high in shingles and debris. It was amazing that I could look at him and say, simply, “My studio.”

People told me how lucky I was that the house didn’t burn to the ground, how great it was that I could buy new clothes and furniture. One of my neighbors complained the next morning that she hoped I wouldn’t leave “that mess” –the contents of my studio that the fire fighters had thrown out the windows. I was mad at the gawkers who stood around, taking photos of my ruined house, of me, sweaty and dirty, picking up my art life on my front lawn. When I think about that time, I think of the art show promoter who refused to refund my booth space fee when I told him that I couldn’t participate in the show in two weeks because my studio burned. “No refunds,” he said, and I knew he didn’t believe my story.

In the dream, however, I remember the people who helped. The neighbor who let us stay in her house, adding our three cats to her six and her neice, nephew and their child–6 of us in her two-bedroom space. Of another neighbor who was going on vacation and insisted we use their place while they were gone. Of another artist who sent me a 20-pound box of art supplies so I could get started again. Of the insurance adjuster who arrived before 8 o’clock the next day and organized the repair.

Most of all, I remember the perfect stranger who ran over from his house and prevented ours from burning to the ground. I wanted to thank him in some way, but I wasn’t even sure where he lived. He left when the fire engines squealed to the curb. He saved lives on that day, as if he did it every day.

To thank him, I wrote a letter. “One of your neighbors saved lives. He did it without thought of reward. He left before we could thank him.  All we know is that he lives on this street. I thought you’d want to know who lives among you, who your neighbor is.” I went on to describe how his fast, self-less actions had brought the fire department before the row-house fire spread to other roofs. How all the neighbors left their houses with pets and children, scared, but safe. I distributed the letter to every house on his street.

In my dream, I see the man and thank him. And every time I wake from that dream, I am grateful all over again.

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also teaches people who can’t draw how to keep an art journal.

Recommendation: Pet Moves

You won’t find a lot of specific recommendations in my blogs. I’m not much for pushing products and services, but when I find something that is great, I will pass it along. And I found one.

We had to move our cats from once coast to another. There are several ways to do this: take them in the car, take them with you in the airplane, or ship them commercially.

All three of those were out for various reasons. The car was being towed behind the van; airlines will let you take one cat on the airplane, and not more than two on a flight; commercial airlines won’t take an animal in the hold if the landing temperature is 95 degrees or above.

It used to be my art desk, now it's a cat perch.

After asking (sigh) for advice and receiving an interesting mix of distasteful (“there are a lot of cats in Arizona, just dump them in Virginia”), impossibly complicated (“Post on Craig’s list for people leaving for Phoenix the same day you are, arrange to have them each carry one cat and you meet them all at the Phoenix airport and collect the cats”) and absurd, (“I’ll take one, just bring it to New York,”) we got a really good piece of advice–use a pet travel service. I didn’t even know they existed.

There are several, we used All Pet Travel. They arrange to place cats on climate-controlled, pressurized airplane compartments, using various airlines. The cats are watched as they make connections, collected at the destination and kenneled until you pick them up.

We took the cat to the airport to save a little money. The service isn’t cheap, but it is worth every dime. At the airport, the cats were taken by hand, not dumped on a baggage belt. We got a text message when they successfully made their connection in Houston. Then they ran into a bit of trouble.

There were monsoon storms in Phoenix and the plane was diverted to Tucson. This is where it gets

Staying cool in August

good. A representative from All Pet took care of them in Tucson till the cats could continue the flight to Phoenix. They arrived in Phoenix, were taken to a vet, who called me to tell me all three had arrived safely. Because the Tucson flight had required many cages to be close together, our cats were given a flea treatment and inoculated (all with my permission) against the upper respiratory infection that had nearly killed Buster a month ago.

I had been told that when they arrived in my apartment, they would stay under the bed for days. Not so. They cheerfully inspected the premises, tried out the tub for instant cooling, and learned about traction on the wall-to-wall carpet. These cats have lived with hardwood floors for the last seven years, this new experience was like having a full-length toy.

I might add that I purchased a tightly-woven sisal doormat and put it in the apartment for scratching purposes, and they took to it immediately. No scratching the rug.

On Wednesday, they will have one more move, but this one relatively short. They will be loaded back into their airline crates, put in the car and driven to the new house. They will have a lot more room, three sliders to look out of, and a hallway of carpet to race down.

While Aretha, originally feral, seems to have been spooked the most, she is eating and staying close to me. Other than that, they all three had a successful and healthy trip. And I’m happy to recommend the kind and helpful people at All Pet Travel. It was worth the expense to have healthy animals loving Arizona.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach who successfully relocated to the Phoenix area. She runs workshops in business and creative writing. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2008 All rights reserved.