What’s funny is just this morning I organized, shook the rug out, and swept the floor in my writing cottage. All in preparation for the fact I’m hosting a client on Thursday for a one-to-one SoulCollage® session.

And then I decided to make a mess. On and off for a while now I’ve been dabbling in mixed media with images, paint, paper, markers, pit pens, and dodads.

It was about two years ago that I began to feel this inner nudge to just want to play with art in a different form than writing. But I kept putting it off because I have a hard time making a mess and mixed media can be untidy.

But it was around that time that I also decided to add another table to my writing cottage as a way in which I could give myself “permission” to play. My space is 10 x 12 and already has one table where I write and one where I have an altar set up and where I do my oracle card readings. Neither area where I wanted to create a mess.

It’s taken me a while to start creating because after I set the table up I liked the look of it as my art space, my markers, and paint brushes so neatly arranged, but still, I didn’t want to make a mess!

Slowly, but surely I’ve been allowing myself the freedom to play and make all the mess I want. For me, it does help to already have an idea of what I wish to create or like today the fact I’m creating something as a gift.

But what is my resistance to being messy? I’ve been kind of a everything-in-its-place girl for as long as I can remember. One thing that stands out in my mind is when I worked outside the home. I’d have to have the kitchen clean and dishes all put away, and the bed made before I left for work. I couldn’t stand the thought of coming home to a “messy” kitchen and the bed not made.

I think likely because two of my values are home and beauty and the fact that home is my soft place to land to have things scattered all over the place does not fit with my idea of calm. I can actually feel a nervous energy course through me at times when clutter has taken over. I just have to take the time to put things back in their place and once they are I feel much better.

But this learning to be messy – at least when sitting at the table and playing with art – is starting to grow on me as fun. Though I haven’t yet mastered how to leave the mess out on the table quite yet and more often than not, I just have to put everything back in its place. 

One thing I have noticed, just as when I’m in the writing zone that when playing with art, all the supplies scattered around me, I lose all track of time. It’s like all the components of art-making that surround me in their disarrayed fashion are the keys to allowing my mind to take a rest and my spirit to soar into another world.

Perhaps, just perhaps, I could get really used to this idea of messy!

xo,

Barbara