Notes on Alchemy
A Blog From Javelin’s Desk
No More Starving Artists
I went back to school and became a life skills coach because I see the ways the industry I grew up in is failing to teach the humans that make it up how to care for themselves at the same time as having a career here. It failed to teach me those skills, and I floundered for a long time. This failure to develop life skills while growing artistic skills is all too common for both early career artists, and humans who are technically mid-career now like myself. And it is ending the artistic practices of wildly talented people left, right, and centre.
Experiment #01 - No Expectations Day
Imagine a day where you have literally no expectations placed on you, by yourself or others, for the entire day, no matter what. Don’t want to cook? Cool, don’t cook, order yourself some foods. Wanna stay in bed in your jammies until 3pm. Rockin, let that moss grow you absolute treasure. Wanna play video games, or watch a million episodes of Bob’s Burgers, or sit in the bathtub until your skin prunes, or sort your fibre arts supplies into a colour spectrum? Do it. BUT, only if you aren’t expecting yourself to.
The Myth of Potential
The pressure of living up to this ephemeral potential has been the source of so much anxiety for my little self, and that anxiety has followed me well into my adulthood. And I know I am not the only one. So many humans, often who had undiagnosed ADHD or autism as children, are haunted by the ghosts of the potential that never seemed to materialize.
The thing is, that’s all it ever has been, ghosts.
Why I Like My Labels
There is a metaphor that is often quoted in medical spaces, and probably other spaces too, that says ‘when you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.’ This decidedly western colloquialism is urging people to look for the usual suspects first, not the unexpected ones.
A Lesson In Values
Listen, if you don’t consciously think about what it is you value, those values are still going to be guiding your life, you just won’t notice it. You won’t be able to identify when you made a choice because of this or that, you’ll just be making choices. But what if you could make decisions in a way that feels authentic, in a way that no matter what the outcome is, you can stand by your decision-making process? I am saying, what if you could start making your own decisions, instead of letting your decisions make you?
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