And I wonder, is it the love that propels us and our work forward rather than the anxiety, the browbeating, the struggle, and living in the starving artist tropes?
a vibration shift: how could leaning into love shift your practice, the way you feel about your work, and how it’s received? Shall we find out together?
unraveling, unmoored
One of my favorite contemporary artists, Roberta Boffo, who blows me away with her meticulous detail, shared a photograph on YT the other day, her studio wall filling with her works and she wrote: I will never get enough of being surrounded by my own work… it is peaceful.
I don’t know if it’s the breathwork, the EFT Tapping, or the guided affirmation meditations I’ve been doing, but this hit different.
Some weeks ago, I posted a progress pic of my circles drawing, still in progress. I was stunned but not surprised when the likes, comments, and restacks started rolling in at speeds I’d never experienced.
I was excited and beside myself, but I wasn’t surprised. The secret? I told
via a Substack live over at The Sober Creative that I have been lavishing this drawing with love since I started it.I love her so much. I mean I really love her. Every time I pass her open on the table I swoon and tell her that I love her. I have loved every minute of watching her come into fruition.
I know that sending that love to her amplified her energy and she has been loved by you all, too.
Boffo’s energy also vibrates through every process video she posts, every photo, every update she makes, and every comment she replies to on her posts.
That love is even in the grueling, sometimes painful task of leaning over a 30-inch sheet of paper, making thousands and thousands of stipples, she says she loves the pain with, as far as I’m concerned, a bit more glee than I could muster. But I do most of my work from bed.
So I’m thinking about how all these years of insecurity and fear and faulty thinking and trauma neurobiology (which was not my fault and is not your fault), etc., has prevented me from loving my own works.
I’ve been dismantling my life. And I have found beautiful letterpress prints that took me hours to typeset, print, and trim tucked away like a secret into folders and my response was that I just wanted rid of them.
I have been browsing the small pile of lit journals I’ve been published in which have been hidden in a bin in my old studio as if I’m embarrassed of them.
I don’t openly share works that have been published digitally because I feel like they’re so old they don’t count anymore.
I have been living in fear of my writing, rather than in love and gratitude and appreciation of it and I haven’t been able to see just how this fear has stunted and blocked even my making work with ease let alone putting it out into the world in joy.
For a long time I wondered if I was a writer at all.
Maybe I was trying to force myself into loving a thing I just didn’t love. Maybe it was a temporary medium I needed for awhile and I can just draw circles for the rest of my life. It felt like mental gymnastics trying to convince myself that I needed to love the process of writing.
And yet, I didn’t stop writing. Not ever once did I stop writing completely in the last 20-something years, which is why I have so many wayward notes and journals to sift through now. So I’m asking myself: what is it that I do love about writing?
I love the ideas that drop into my head easefully and frequently, and I love percolating on those ideas, and I love allowing some of them to grow in language, and I do love playing with language, and I love love love watching a collection of pieces that have come into completion develop around me, I love printing those pieces out and putting them somewhere I can look at them and admire them, I love writing in notebooks and I love how many notebooks I’ve filled in my lifetime so far, there are so many.
I love love that there are so so many drafts and ideas and notes and emails and experiences that I sincerely wouldn’t have to come up with another new idea for the rest of my life and I could still publish a full-length collection a year until the day I die (which is I hope many many years from now).
I love that there are so many ways to share my work and connect with readers. And I love that there are so many ways to receive monetary love for this work, I absolutely love, for all its faults, that the internet exists and shifted everything.
I love watching a collection form in my mind and in reality (even though I’ve never allowed one to fully come into form in reality, but I love the idea of it).
And I wonder if, through this juiciness, the ripeness, the delectable-ness of what I love about bringing poems and essays and collections into being, I come to love the process of making them come into being, too.
I wonder if by focusing on what I do love, I might stop browbeating myself into loving the process. Or trying to convince myself that I must love the process. Or worrying about what a project is before it reveals itself to me or what container it must live in —
Or I might stop trying to decide if I’m a book artist or a traditionally published artist or both or neither — or whether I’ll make any money on this drawing that’s seriously taking forever — or worrying about if I’m doing enough or if I’m the right kind of person with the right background and the right connections.
And I might stop worrying about if my brain is too scattered or I have too many projects on the go or that I really haven’t been keeping up with my bookkeeping and don’t have much to keep up with in that department to begin with — or — or —
And I wonder, amongst all this worry, is it the love that propels us forward rather than the fear?
(I know you know the answer to that, and I do, too.)
It comes from actually hanging those poems on the wall and loving on them every time I pass them. From going over them each day, or the latest draft and loving where it’s at in its own process: I love how verbose this one is getting, how I’m trying to get everything in all at once, look how beautifully ambitious she’s trying to be.
What we give our attention to amplifies. If we give our work anxious attention that amplifies, if we give it loving attention that amplifies and resonates.
So today I’m considering my work, all of my work — my drawings, my student work in book arts, my writings, my growing Substack, crochet projects, sewing projects, all the unfinished things — and I’m not freaking out about how I’m going to get it all done or what it might be or whether or not any of it is anything to begin with or who might read/collect things, I’m thinking—
damn, damn, damn, this letterpress print I did is sexy and why on earth do I not have it framed and hanging on the wall? And why on earth did I think the 30+ extras wouldn’t be wanted?!
I’m thinking — that book project, Hypersigil, I did with a friend, and really did sell like hotcakes, in which I handset, letterpress printed, and bound her long poem — it’s worth honoring with a custom box for the printer’s copy and proof book that’s half bound that I keep meaning to finish.
The poems and essays I’ve published are worthy and deserving of being talked up regardless of how many years ago they were published.
The thing about vibration shifts is that by the time we notice we’re behaving and feeling differently, the momentum is already underway and all I have to do is stay on the train, I could hop off and go back to dishonoring my works, but it’s more painful and a lot more work than just staying on the train. So I intend to stay on the train.
But, I wonder — if this is the first time you’re considering such a train exists, chugging along however slowly — if you might be able to step on it intentionally.
If you might go looking for things you already love — or even don’t hate — about your work or about your practice or about your process. Even if it’s that your cat sits with you while you do it or that you do it at all or that you’re still thinking about doing it and haven’t given up hope yet that something might stir even if you haven’t written or painted or whatever for a very long time.
I’d love to hear whatever appreciation rampage comes forward for you.
in gratitude,
invitation to guest post
I love honoring you, honoring your practices of all kinds, from the unhurried practice of baking sourdough bread to the dedicated practice of relearning to read after cognitive disability. Won’t you share them with me? unraveling, unmoored will soon be hearing from poet Priyanka Jaiprakash. Guidelines can be found on the About Page. Please message or email with questions.
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Beautifully written!
Libby, thank you for this wonderful piece. It was the first thing I read this morning and it arrived like a message from the universe. I often think that our creative selves are the most honest, true and vulnerable parts of us; why, then, would we not send them love? But you're right, this is often easier said than done, especially in a dominating culture that so chronically undervalues creative work. Glad to connect with you.💚