Camp Magic Beans

"I spend a lot of energy managing the mind game in this line of work. There are so many things to get snagged along the way and slow us down–performance issues, perfectionism, the complex relationship between art and commerce and the way you can read that sales sheet like it's measuring your whole worth. One thing that helps me keep things light and not too significant is to frame things in terms of a game that I'm currently playing. When Jen Lemen came to visit last week, we were both at the end of the games we'd been playing for the end of the year, and ready for something new. We came up with a 12-week action burst that would focus on daily production goals that will dramatically expand our body of work. This is a big game. What would your landscape look like, if 12 weeks from now you had 50 new paintings, or 100? If you had 50 new poems and short stories? What if they weren’t all amazing–don’t you think the odds are that plenty of them would be? That it would feel good to fish for the best from a vast ocean instead of a puddle of projects?" --Jen Lee on the Portfolio Project

This blog post has rocked my world. Go. If you have a creative bone in your body, which we all do. Just go. Even if you swear on a stack of Somerset Studios that you don’t. Please. Go now. Watch the video. Marinate. You will relate. And you, too, will be inspired.

I have read and reread Jen's words. As a result, I have come to terms. I have taken responsibility. Last year stank for me, creatively. The second half of the year before didn't smell much better. See, I have one of those old-fangled, full-time jobs. Some say the kind from which any real artist would be wise to create her escape. It is demanding. It can be depleting. But, gosh, I love it. I honestly do. Having it, even loving it, shouldn’t make my artisticity any less real. Yet the only thing that I have made in a very long time is it, this job, into my excuse for why I have not thrived at anything I deem to be my passion in this Workshop of mine.

*sigh*

It was far easier to blame my job than to confess that I let myself get the best of me. Ironic that the purveyor of I-AMulets can use some affirmations herself. I don't know, exactly, where I got snagged along the way. It doesn't matter. Not really. What feels right to me, right now, is forward movement. A clean slate. A deep breath. A big push.

A big game.

Which is why I am so inspired by the Portfolio Project. Although my aspirations are not necessarily about cultivating a portfolio, they are about dramatically expanding my body of work ... in whatever form(s) that may take. So with dramatic expansion as my focus, I have decided to send myself to Camp Magic Beans. Just like the Portfolio Project ... with beans.

I have taken the first steps and laid the foundation. Camp Magic Beans starts for me on Monday, January 26 and runs for 9 weeks through the end of March, before I leave for California and Reiki Master Teacher training. I carry into Camp my mini-manifesto for 2009. Show up. Put out. Be willing to get messy. And I should add to that DO NOT critique the out-putted. Produce. Rejoice. Move along.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Dramatic expansion requires dramatic immersion. The daily production goals of which Jen speaks. This is the part that makes me feel a bit itchy and reluctant. (Must resist the urge to check my e-mail. Again.) After 18 months of excuses and diversions, I am not sure that I remember how to show up. What do I do once I get there? What if I don’t feel like it? And in the snarl of my thorny gremlin, "Isn’t it inauthentic to do it anyway?" Gasp! Putting out seems like a sweet dream I had a long time ago.

Thankfully, among many things, I am a stubborn believer. I have been around the block (and literally blocked) enough times to know that if I can ride out and through the initial turbulence of seemingly overwhelming stuckitude, it is pretty much smooth sailing thereafter. But here's the catch. The only way through it is through it.

I will show up. I will put out. And I will wear play clothes.

One of those aforementioned first steps, taken with a smidge of shyness, was to announce Reikifest which just so happens to coincide with Camp Magic Beans. I have made available 40 one-hour appointments for a free in-person Reiki treatment. If you are a friend of Jakk’s Magic Beans Workshop in the Greater Cincinnati area, you should have received an e-mail very early this morning. If you didn't and you are interested, here is the scoop. I have not offered Reiki treatments on this scale before, so I think this counts as putting out. Yay! Hope to "treat" you soon!