Several times in my past articles I've mentioned Jonathan Fields and his The Good Life Project. I recently listened to one of his "best of" podcasts where he interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert in 2015. The podcast is entitled Creating your Life in Real Time. I may have even listened to this podcast before. But this week when I listened to the podcast again, it was like a lightning bolt of clarity. Handling fear may be a bit of a heavy topic but it does relates to creativity in that often times fear can be a stumbling block. Fear of showing you art to other people. Fear of thinking your current work is going to look like crap. Fear of people not even caring about your art. All yucky things. Handling fear can help you clear your mind so you can focus on your art without the negative voices. In addition, fear can sneak in to your daily life and you just become accustomed to thinking it may be "normal" to worry this much. All fear.

Elizabeth Gilbert has the most gentle way of dealing with fear. She said she first thanks fear for helping her and all of her ancestors be safe. This was surprising. She said she doesn't really like the whole outdoor extreme sport language around fear which goes like...Kick fear to the curb. Stomp on it. Destroy it. Yeah, that didn't sit well with me either the more I think about it. And then she wisely said sometimes the more you fight something the more it fights you back. Her approach is so humbling. She said she takes fear by the hand and walks with it throughout her day. Literally talking to her fear. As she is writing she is even talking out loud saying, "Yeah, I got this fear. Creativity and I are doing this thing here and you can come along, but I got this. No one's going to die here. It's just a novel." The imagery is just wonderful. It makes me want to smile. It helps remove you from being a victim to one of being a leader in your thoughts. What a refreshing concept.

So far I've been blessed with the ability to create my art in a rather fearless away during the act of creation. The fear comes later or before. But now I will have a gentle reminder of not letting fear take the driver seat. Fear only gets to take the lead when I am really in an unsafe situation like being stalked by lion on a safari in Africa or sledding down an icy hill that goes into a road, etc.

I highly recommend you listen to this gem of a podcast. You only need to click HERE. After you click the word HERE, just click on the red circle with the arrow to hear the podcast directly from the Good Life website. This conversation is so full of many things I feel are important in life, like being curious, like listening to that voice that propels you to continue learning about something just because you want to and it seems like the right thing to do. Enjoy.

I just have a few more days in my Windows 1.0 series. My design process is to start with a grey square. Then I add warm color small rectangles all around the square like a frame or window. Hence the name of the series. In my latest square, I decided to mix it up and add some very small pieces that have a slight curve. All in good fun.