Following My Own Path

Posted on 20/01/2024 by Artelle Lenthall

Hello Fellow Children’s Writers and Friends,

It’s been a long time. I planned on apologizing and explaining and listing what you’d missed and… and… urgh. Forget it, let’s just say 2023 was quite the year and I’m looking forward to 2024. Despite my share of poor health, I am so grateful for the clarity and sometimes forced opportunity it provided me.

Completed during Julie Hedlund’s 12 Days of Christmas For Writers

I have reassessed as I generally do at the end of the year anyway, but with a much clearer vision and path for: my own, my family’s and my community’s future. I’m certain you’ll hear more about mine and my community’s path.

The interesting thing is that you may not. I’ve rediscovered enjoying events, moments, time without the obsessive need to share on the socials. I’ve learned again how to simply enjoy, without posting, which bothered me a lot last year, but I simply didn’t have the energy to ‘do the thing’ and post about it.

I’ve dropped FOMO too, it’s exhausting.

I’m following my own path as I should have done all along. Following your own path though, is scary. Until you’re ready that is. I’ve skirted around the edges for sometime now, clarifying, gaining courage, gaining experience, establishing contacts and networks so I feel I good deal braver. If I’m trapped or if I fall, I know I have the hands of my own personal team holding tight to and circling below with the trampoline that I can safely land on and bounce back from.

Confusing? Sorry, it’s not entirely clear to me either, but I know I love to teach, just not in a classroom and so I’m working on ways to do it elsewhere by year’s end. I know I need to create and so I will stop focusing on what might be wanted and instead create what makes me feel content. I know I love my community, so I’ll do what I can to uplift and promote it. To paraphrase Motormouth (Queen Latifah) in one of my favourite Hairspray songs, I may not know exactly where I’m going, but ‘I know where I’ve been’ and that is enough to tell me what my next steps are.

Image taken from You Tube with nothing but respect for the Civil Rights Movement it depicts

A lifelong learner, I’ve finally learned enough to act, or should I say I finally have enough confidence to act, because the anomalous point is that doing the thing is the best way to discover and understand it.

Don’t you just love how focus is out of focus 😆 happy mistake!😊

That is why my Word for the year is Intention, strongly supported by Awareness and Focus.

I’m also making a change, or at least making it official. You can expect four (4) posts from me this year. Who knows, there may be more, but I’ll aim for four.

Farewell fellow travellers,

Savour the quest,

Journeygirl

Posted in Creativity, Road to Publication, Uncategorized, Work/Life Balance | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Rest and Restore

Posted on 12/09/2023 by Artelle Lenthall

Hello again Fellow Children’s Writers and Friends,

The images below are artists’ impression of my brain over the last year. It seems I’m not alone in this, do a quick Google search of brain overload or messy brain and you will find hundreds upon hundreds of images, artist impressions (some quite troubling) of what it’s like when you have too much to: think about, plan, do, desire to achieve, create.

Blurry for a reason!

Notice the order of this list. It’s squif! Realistic but squed. As a creative I have found that creativity gives me energy and yet I often leave it till last, completing all the things I am obligated to do first.

Oh don’t feel bad for me, along with the practicality of being a night owl who creates better at night, we all have obligations and in reality there is also a fair amount of procrastination, giving into the inner critique and genuine fear of creating. Well, not actually fear of creation, more like fear of creating crap and the time I’ve wasted creating it. Logically, I know you have to create crap to be able to create awe-inspiring, but life is so busy and so performance driven that it’s easy to forget the this. It’s easier to fall into the trap of believing all I create must be awe-inspiring or it’s a waste of time. Children, who still thankfully, have some time for the pure joy of creating do not have this issue.

Kids joyfully creating, or me finally seeing sense, either way🤷🏽‍♀️

So once this happened, I finally took the break I needed to think things through and much more importantly, to rest. Funnily enough, in that time I was actually able to achieve more, with much thanks to my family especially my husband who picked up the slack. Guilt of course, followed my every move, however, I learned both to delegate and to let some things go. It was worth it for this alone, if nothing else.

Some way to go yet, but taking a calmer route.

Therefore, I still have an overloaded brain and the child’s bedroom cupboard of my brain does still have stuff jammed in there, behind it all. However, this is what my brain looks like now and I’m happy enough to leave the metaphorical cupboard for another day, week, month. . .

Image taken from https://pin.it/7LLznzX

So until next time, for a hopefully far more writing related blog,

Farewell fellow travellers,

Savour the quest,

Journeygirl.

Posted in Creativity, Work/Life Balance | Tagged , | 2 Comments