TuesdayTea | Running Out of Space

I shall run the way of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart. Psalm 119:32

Pull up a chair and have a biscuit; it’s time for Tuesday Tea! Let’s talk about running out of space.

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Growth is the outcome of dedicating time, energy, significant effort into bringing something from seed form to a full, flourishing state of being:
From single word to presentation
From cute idea to product
From hypothesis to probable theory
From seedling to tree
From fetus to adult

Ideally, our creative ventures will expand, enlarge and become efficient, effective vehicles. Platforms to stand upon. Programs to implement. Profits bounding from the windows to the wall.
I’m getting macroscopic here. My point is that growth should be expected in life, and lacking growth is stagnation, death.

What becomes apparent when a person, place, idea grows?
It immediately requires more room.

That lily you planted a few months ago has to be moved to a larger pot.

Your child can climb out of the crib herself; she needs a new bed.

A simple to-do list won’t do anymore–that new initiative needs a complete project management system. Not a vision board, a vision wall.

You’ve got so many sketches, you’ve got to get a separate portfolio to keep them in. Your canvases are taking over your bedroom, and your bathroom, and the living room…

You have a thousand invoices to send and 2000 orders to fill before Friday…
You just can’t seem to get to the last 100 unread messages in your inbox…

Your hard drive is running out of disc space–every week.

You hear God whisper, and feel a familiar tug in your heart that it’s time to find a new place of worship, to go into ministry full-time, to teach, to move across the country…

Growth comes with its own pains: uprooting, saying goodbye, switching platforms, bringing on an assistant, learning a new language.

When you run out of space, you’ve got to carve out more room.
This must be intentional!

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been wrestling with my cloud-streaming computer. Although I had saved all graphics & photos to the cloud, I could not figure out for the life of me why the hard drive would fill itself up! It seemed to be happening on its own, like the magic brooms filling the fountain in Fantasia! And I just…wanted to (gingerly but forcefully) shove my laptop onto the floor.
This issue was holding up too many projects, occupying way too much of my time. What’s a frustrated creative to do?

I opened Disc Cleanup manager and to my surprise, my laptop had saved every single solitary update Windows had run since it was assembled in the factory. 162 updates to be exact, all consuming my limited free space.
I had to selectively clean out my system files and old updates to make room for new stuff.
Moral to this real life snippet?

Delete whatever is outdated and no longer beneficial to you.
Clear out all that is cluttering your headspace, even if it presents itself as useful information.
Some of the experiences and connections you have gained over the years were seasonal instructions and assignments, that are now completed. You’ve outgrown your old school of thought. You are no longer dependent on that relationship. That free website platform is limiting your expansion into e-Commerce. Those well-meaning family and friends just cannot grasp the scope of your vision because it was not given to them.

Celebrate your personal and professional growth!
Be thankful that you can now demonstrate greater faith, be more fruitful, more loving. It is a beautiful thing always to grow up, no matter what you let go of in the process; there’s so much more to make room for!

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows ever greater.
2 Thessalonians 1:3

TuesdayTea| Ownership

We had a pop-up #blkcreatives chat this snow day- Saturday on making progress when circumstances aren’t motivating.

I’ve since had a few conversations about creative license, originality, imitation vs theft (brand designer and Director of Operations Auntee Rik shares more of that here )

For me, all these subjects lie under one umbrella: ownership.

Ownership parallels responsibility, and is usually related directly to a problem; you being the cause/catalyst, are also the solution.

To take ownership of anything, you must declare that you have created it. It’s yours by design; you did not attempt to ride someone’s coat tails or take credit for their efforts. (No Columbusing either)
You were present and essential to its conception; you incubated the idea; you desired to launch the product after approving all designs, and out it comes into the world–soaring past your highest expectations? Yes that’s my baby! 😊

A über flawed, hot mess? Yes….that’s…my baby.😅😪😔😒

The cool thing about ownership is learning. Based on overall response, good, bad, indifferent, you gauge success by impact, engagement or another metric. What went wrong? What is working? One thing you cannot do is waylay blame to another party. If the process is jacked up, it’s up to you to implement or modify your systems.
If the product disappointed you in some way, you get to return to the old drawing board and improve.
You could also bury yourself under the covers and scream, I’m not coming out to face this cruel world; I’m shutting down indefinitely!
But what good will that do for you, the creative? Surely, you came up with this outlet or platform because you needed it.

More importantly, who will you be letting down who needs your work? Your expertise, your product, your solutions, your encouragement?

Sometimes we must resist the temptation to look around us and get discouraged or complacent from our environment. We must push out of “comfortable,” take up the challenges (that we often generate for ourselves) and overcome.

In Proverbs 24:30-34, we find a neat tale about ownership:

King Solomon passed by a field owned by a sluggard: a lazy person, who lacked good sense. It was overgrown with thorns & weeds; the walkways were disheveled; tools in disarray and rusted; fences broken down, goats munching on all the plants! (Ok, I added that in there.)
You see, the lazy person owned the property by right; but did he take ownership by taking care of it? He chose to slack off on the important, everyday tasks, chose to sleep in and be undisciplined. Through a myriad of excuses, he ruined his inheritance.
Being irresponsible backlashes on you first. Then it ripples to affect those lives you’re destined to touch.
On the other hand, true, righteous ownership brings major opportunities!

Do not let us grow weary in doing good, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we don’t give up. You are planting seeds right now for your legacy; it’s yours to own.
What’s your harvest going to yield? Weeds? Or wheat? Cultivate what you yearn to manifest by taking ownership of what’s yours and staying disciplined!

TuesdayTea | Escapism: The Uphill Battle

Usually after I choose a topic, these writings come relatively easy to me. But not today.

Today, I wrestle with procrastination. Today, I wrestle with the outcry of the urgent and my sluggishness. Though I would much rather crawl back in bed with this migraine, and sleep “it” off, I must get to the root of this issue:

Excuses surface when we’d rather not put that same energy into the challenging things.

Escapism is related. Like the giant’s castle at the top of the beanstalk, our favorite fantasy perches atop a matted network of interwoven excuses and busywork. We hinder ourselves from using our most productive hours to get the tough/tedious/overwhelming jobs done.

I know how my brain operates, you say.
I thrive and produce the best work under pressure. I can clear my space later; it’s just a bit of organized chaos. I’ll just check this one email/Facebook group/Instagram post update…and there you are, 3 hours later, with the same pile of work on your plate.
You didn’t just get caught in the undercurrent of the Internet rabbit holes without intention. You touched a toe to the waters edge and decided to jump right in. Why?
Because escape appeals to our sense of vicarious arbitrary adventure, and our comfort.

See, practicing escapism is not limited to recreational drug use, partying, or emigrating to Europe to avoid student loan debt. It’s simply seeking a way out of the present by pursuing an alternative reality.
We often escape in an activity meant to be mindless: daydreaming about exotic places while perusing tumblr or Pinterest, tossing back drinks and dancing the night away, fantasizing about the glory days of high school or college, hookah and hookups.
We let our minds wander in daily quests for intrigue (consuming click baiting articles along the timeline), philosophical wheel spinning (sitting inside holistic food stores discussing the plight of the community without taking concrete action), indulging in RPGs building and conquering imaginary kingdoms.
Who doesn’t want to be the hero, the expert, the attractive warrior, or the sage at the city gate? All without doing the worthwhile work to yield tangible results! We get to pose, to cross our legs, and that is a dangerous place to reside mentally.
I’m not against these extra activities.
Just don’t get sidetracked from your purpose while pushing agendas and pursuing worthless/irrelevant things.
Here’s the thing about a fantasy lifestyle:
It is unwise to invest in something made to divert your time, focus, and power away from what you’re meant to do.
What you’re SUPPOSED to do, who you’re meant to become is still ahead of you, not behind you. Fruitfulness lies beyond your distraction.
Escapism leads to procrastination because we settle in the comfort of the fantasy. We eat the lotus fruit and forget to carry on with the odyssey. When you feel as though you are skating uphill and you would rather take a detour, remember a detour is not a shortcut.
Escapism is not a viable solution to feeling displaced/hopeless/bored/discontent.
Your problems will follow you wherever you move; wherever you go, there YOU go.

Solutions?
1. Schedule a quick break. Take 5-15 minutes to recenter yourself, to reevaluate your available time, adjust your priorities, eat a protein-packed snack, rest your eyes.
Recharge.

2. Schedule your margins. This is dedicated goof-around time, daydream and doodle time, space for sudden interruptions in your day, breathers. Decompress.

3. Put an H on your chest and handle “it.”
Your fiercest “it” is the giant you’ve got to slay first, from a cover letter to a blog post. I prefer to focus on that top scary it for 1 hour. Getting that one task/phone call/list done provides momentum to do the next big thing.

4. Create your focus points.
If you’re anything like me, you get overwhelmed by lists and lists and lists of #allthethings. Even if you write them down and place them where you can easily be reminded, sometimes that’s just too much! Info overload! Get your vision board and target ONE image on it. Bold, underline, circle it, and turn from your screens to look at it when feeling stretched.

5. Commit to It’s Done.
Commit to the task. Envision yourself at completion. Make a countdown if you have to, and reward yourself for making it! That’s where those margins come in!

Now, back to this data entry assignment I was supposed to be polishing 😉

What’s your favorite distraction? How do you combat the urge to escape?

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Tonight, it goes down: winter solstice, the longest night of the year 2015, with rain accentuating the soft notes of this atmosphere. I am spending these next 10 days or so being acutely introspective, reorganizing for the coming months.

As I clean out my online closets and choose the useful things, (including whether or not to delete this blog and start anew), I feel a familiar wave of nostalgia and bittersweet release wash over me. Every year I know I have grown just a bit more, even with the missteps. Earlier this evening, I began a dedicated hour of content creation, that extended itself well over three hours once I found my About page. I really hadn’t paid it any mind in the past couple of years, so I proceeded to skim, and tears filled my weary eyes. It was as if my younger, more naive self had written a letter full of sunshine for me to read 4-5 years later.

Sometimes, the only one you need to encourage you, is yourself.

here is what MikaRedfoxx (cringe, cringe) had to say to me:

“Introducing Me. Me=Mix of Everything

steadily flowing streams of consciousness washing through my being and flushing out all the mixed up washed up thoughts tumbling about in a dryer without any fabric softener so they remain coarse and raw and

Matter-of-fact Expression, Modern and Eclectic taste, More Emotional than the average sensitive soul

Math Equations &chemistry sets and poetry&paintings

strength intelligence passion compassion sympathy empathy logic art talent writing randomness

Measure of Excellence. encompassing a creative force to be reckoned with.

I fall under so many labels: twin, bigsister, eldest daughter, niece, amiga, hermanita, peer, classmate, [contributor,] Africana neo-soul internationalist hipster stuck in the 90s, retro and forward-minded…

I create, it’s what I do: make up blues songs that I never seem to have the means to record, poetry &prose, random choreography to catchy tunes and handshakes with my best friends, deliciousness in the form of BROWNIEEES!! paintings, paper sculptures, drawings, mixed media collaborations between paper, fabric, paint, lacquer, ink, charcoal, oilpastels…

I am Cherokee, Blackfoot, Seminole, Mexican and African-American, and a woman shifting and moving underground..

I seek to discover myself, to be more aware of my limitations as an artist, as an intellectual.

O winds of cynicism don’t blow me away just yet…I want to color someone’s day…”

Not to mention that bit I had removed about being a Scottie (if you don’t know ask somebody about us) and some other rather ratchet phrases I deleted. How hilarious and yet how profound, that is how I estimated myself. I’m no longer seeking out limits in that sense of containment…

Here is my modified, “mature” statement, cut and pasted between this youth manifesto and my poetic artist statement in my website, http://www.miaanikaart.com:

“In the series, Microcosms: Depth and Darkness, I explore the energy and dimension of paint through abstraction. Using acrylic and ink, I create dynamic spaces on small squares through value, texture, various mark making, broad brushstrokes, and sweeps of color. I have expanded this project to large-scale works.

In the Tempest series, I record my transition into “the real world”, a journey full of sudden financial downturns, spiritual upswings, rapid mood and environment shifts, and loads of apparent missteps. But then, then there’s the light, and the breeze and the calm, and then plunge. I cover a full 2 seasons in A Wee Book of Storms, and medium paintings.

I am Mia Anika, a black Millennial creative exploring and expanding in Atlanta, Georgia. I actively work as a visual facilitator, painting instructor and freelance artist, and plan to become an art therapist in the next few years.
I relate to the world graphically: I process emotion and atmosphere and regurgitate in living color. I paint and craft, insert and remove myself as a therapy–it serves as my
psychoanalysis. I attempt to reclaim what’s perceived as loss. I facilitate others’ healing by inviting them to participate through the creative process.

In my work, I incorporate the power and intrigue of language; I restate pictorially and think in visuals, ascribe significance in lyrical description. I communicate with gestures and colors, generating spaces with my hands. I am motivated by identity and relationship, by mood and atmosphere, by serendipity. History and I have a casual dialogue which leads to breakthrough.
I am committed to building community among young creatives of color, restoring families and groups’ sense of serenity through creative expression.”

There is something to taking yourself seriously: You must pursue that to the end of communicating and demonstrating your value, because no one else can. I can articulate in prose now, haha. As a human and esp. a creative, you constantly self-edit.
Sometimes I cringe at old work…other times I can appreciate my rawness…

what a time to be alive.

Have you rehashed old content to make improvements? What’s been your creative evolution? Share in the comments below!