two scarves from latest painted warp - done - well, woven, anyway....
Human beings really like to be in their comfort zone. They really don't like being uncomfortable. Not much surprise, really, as if you are feeling uncomfortable it probably means that you are experiencing a certain level of 'danger'. And we all know that survival of the species depended very much on avoiding danger!
But as a creative person, it is necessary for us to sometimes leave our comfort zone, no matter how uncomfortable that may be.
For example, learning something new is uncomfortable, especially for adults who wrongly suppose they are supposed to know everything already. :}
One of my mentors always said that if we aren't making 'mistakes' we aren't learning anything. The challenge being, of course, to understand that a 'mistake' in weaving is not terminal. Nobody is going to die because a warp didn't act nicely in the loom, the weft wasn't quite the right colour, the drape of the cloth wasn't as luscious as envisioned.
The last couple of days I've had a chance to visit with some friends and I confided that I was having a really hard time breaking through the barrier of getting words down on paper for The Project. As we talked about it I remembered that I started Magic in the Water about 6 times before it gelled. As soon as I realized that it didn't matter what I wrote, just that I wrote something - anything! - with no thought that those first few words would be writ in stone, suddenly the opening of The Project fell into place.
This morning I opened a Word file (Word was open anyway for another job), wrote down the title, the introductory quote that I knew was going to open The Project and wrote the first sentence.
19 whole words. Wow! Count 'em. 19 of them!
But they are down, and they feel right. And I know that now I can slip through that barrier and begin.
