In all my art and writing books, I get the advice to heed your subconscious...that's why you do timed free writing and let yourself choose images and colors in your art without thinking about them too much. I thought I would take that advice and use this unplanned journal page to do some writing about what it might mean. You see that the woman is riding her rhinoceros, and it looked to me like she was riding into a grotto - a sheltered, cave-like place. I decided to start with that and see what happened, and here is what I wrote on the page - I am sure some of this has come up in this blog before...it's one of my constant struggles for the past three years or so; I can't seem to get away from it:Why is she riding into the grotto? I looked up the word grotto before I used it and it was defined as a sheltered place or cave. I know that I sometimes feel like I want to run off to a cave. She looks more peaceful than I usually feel, and even though her body is taken from a drawing of Jezebel, she has the posture of a drawing of an icon or some holy person. I definitely feel like I could use some sheltering. I am so tired of striving and I don't even know what I am striving towards and I don't think I am accomplishing it, whatever it is. I know that most days I just walk around feeling the pressure weighing on me of all that is undone in the house, or things I want to do that I am too distracted by the day's duties to do. I am so tired of always feeling like I am failing somewhere - there is always work undone, always a mess somewhere. I am not worried about finances, amazingly, even though Husband is not working. He has taken over paying all the bills, something I have done for about three years and which always weighed on me. I told him if he was really going to take care of it I "wasn't going to worry my pretty little head about money".
What do I feel like I need to be sheltered from? I need to be sheltered from my own expectations of myself, which I have come to believe are too high. I simply cannot do well everything I think I should. I get so tired because I never really let myself sit down and rest, even though I am not often very focused so I don't get much accomplished despite always being "Busy". I need to be sheltered from discouragement, although I know no one can really shelter me from that. I have been so much more discouraged these past years. I have always been a person in whom hope springs eternal, but I have not experienced that recently. I often feel beaten down, stressed, like I am failing at all my roles. One of my goals is to just learn how to be instead of just always doing. I want to live my life moment by moment instead of being trapped in my head with my Inner Critic.
