Just to let you know, the blog has officially moved.
I’ve now got it self hosted on my own site.
To go there, visit http://www.smlacyart.com/blog.
All the same posts, all the same great content, now entirely owned by me 
Yay. Even though doing this caused me to swear considerable amounts. And yell things at the computer that no small child should hear.
But its done.
And I’m pleased.
So yay!
I woke up this morning upset and drained. I’ve already spilled an entire cup of tea across the keyboard and mouse and had to spend 10 minutes blow drying them to get them to work again. I’m a bit of a wreck.
I’m going through a major healing process right now emotionally, and its really starting to bring stuff up for me. Big stuff. Huge, huge stuff.
And its painful. And it hurts. A lot. Its exhausting both emotionally and mentally.
Its also something that I really need to do because otherwise, its going to continue to impede the rest of my life. Which would be terrible and tragic.
I’ve got major patterns and habits that I’m trying to resolve – feeling invisible, feeling like a child, feeling like nothing I do is ever good enough and like I’m just running in circles, chained to some invisible pole.
And you know what that pole? Its my fear. Its my hurt. Its my pain. Its the stuff that’s happened that I’m not acknowledging. And so its holding me back.
These patterns go deep. They go wayy deep. And talking about them, even if I’m just working around the edges, is big, and scary.
I’m coming face to face with a lot of huge, horrible monsters that I’ve been hiding in my closet. I’m not necessarily re-engaging them (I learned that from Havi), but they’re there all the same. Some of it is stuff that’s hard to realize and hard to accept. Some of it is stuff that I don’t want to believe, even though I know its true.
Some of it is stuff that I just tried to pretend didn’t happen out of a weird sense of protection for the person who did it to me. Realizing that I have a right to feel the pain from it is, well, painful. And I’m noticing that some of these things are causing major blocks for me now, and that’s kind of overwhelming.
And so lately, I’ve been trying to do this whole big wonderful overwhelming healing process and super charge my business at the same time.
Its killing me.
I feel like I can never get enough done in a day, and like I’m constantly (yeah, you guessed it) running in circles.
So something has gotta go. And for me, its going to be the business.
From what I can see, if I can just work through some of my stuff, and gain clarity on my life and my patterns and my hurt, then I would be able to be far more effective in my business. Running myself into the ground with my business is probably not going to heal my pain.
So for the next month, I’m taking the pressure off of myself. I’m obviously still going to paint and blog and do the day to day things necessary to run the business, but I’m probably not going to do a whole lot of marketing or other stuff aside from that. I’m going to give myself permission to internalize and hibernate.
And without deadlines and pressure and ickyness, if I need a mental health day to recuperate and cry and heal and think and meditate, I’m able to give myself that, guilt free.
Because right now, I’m being completely ineffective. And the stress and guilt about the business aren’t exactly helping the stress and pain of the healing process.
And since its also the holiday season, I figure its okay if I actually do take a holiday. And who knows? Maybe relaxing about everything and taking the pressure off of myself might actually help things financially. Maybe I’ll be able to just chill out and go with the flow.
My thoughts are that I can begin the new year with a fairly fresh plate and a little more clarity than before. If I could work through just one stuck pattern, that would be amazing. Working through them at all feels wonderful, despite all my complaining about being scared.
It feels cathartic. Like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Its feels free.
Wish me luck.
If you’ve ever wanted to change the world, you should probably do this.
If you love Seth Godin, you should probably do this.
If you’ve ever wanted to change your own life for the more amazingly better, you should probably do this.
Seth Godin is offering a 6 month apprenticeship for a few select, special people who are nice and passionate and smart and want to change the world.
So you should probably go read the blog post about it - If you could change your life
And then you should go here to read the Squidoo lens about it – Don’t go to business school
Do these things now. I don’t care how old your are, or where you live or anything. This could change your life. This could be the catalyst you need to change you. To become more of you. To fully be just you.
I found this yesterday and nearly swooned. First I swore at the mean computer for telling me about such a wonderful opportunity. I was trying to brainstorm a million possible ways that somehow I could apply for this. I felt like it was speaking to me – I am creative, nice, smart, and I want to change the world. It just seemed like it was too good to be true, too perfect to be true. And I really thought for a minute there that I would have a chance at doing this.
But then reality hit – it doesn’t pay. And I have no money. I would also have to move to New York City (or thereabouts). The bank wouldn’t give me a loan because hey! I don’t really have any income anyways. And I don’t think “Oh my god, I’m going to go to New York and learn how to change the world” counts as student loan material.
Plus, if I did somehow get the apprenticeship and then somehow got a loan, it would mean that I’d be moving to PEI A) one month later than Jesse and I had discussed and B) we would be starting out with debt straight away. Which wasn’t in the plan. And I didn’t want to completely crush our plans, because that’s not fair. It would mean screwing up everything for one person, which I couldn’t live with.
And finally, the really crushing reality – health. My body couldn’t handle it. I can’t live on my own. I’ve never worked a full day in my life for one single reason – my body cannot handle the pace. Sure I work hard from home – but I can work in bed if I need to. At an actual job? Not gonna happen. At the end of the six months, I would be a mess. I’d be so tired at the end of the day from working that I probably wouldn’t be able to feed myself or anything. I’d be so done in by the end of the first month. A whole six months? It wouldn’t be pretty, that’s all I’m gonna say.
And I won’t lie, I am seriously disappointed. I was so excited about this that realizing that it would never work was kind of killing really. This morning, I’m still pretty upset. I love Seth Godin and for me, the idea of working with him would be like a dream come true. I think the man is a genius. To be able to work with genius? Words can’t even describe how amazing that would be.
I want to do this so badly. But sometimes impossible really does exist (as little as I want to believe it.)
So instead, I’m asking you, dear reader, to apply instead. And I sincerely hope you get it and that it changes your life.
Good luck.
I got this email today, and nearly choked with laughter. This makes so little sense, that I couldn’t even understand why the spammer bothered sending it. Just read.
“I have One wife and two mistressses… I can fuck them all several times per day!
YOU CAN TOO: CLICK HERE
Of these things the first are said by the priestesses the
satisfaction of it had been, so far, his nearest (not smart)
society. Handsome, but rather lifeless. Lessons to the son
who had been ill and away from be made of milk and butter
warmed together, dry.”
Ahh yes. Of course. The priestesses. The not smart society. The handsome lifeless…person? (I’m assuming.) The milk and butter that, when warmed together, is…dry?
Wait. Wtf?
Oh and because I’m a very brave person, I did click “CLICK HERE”. Viagra for sale. I was really expecting something a little more creative than that, especially after the poetry of this email.
Sometimes I think that spammers and scammers must have the lowest average IQ rating of any group of people. Seriously. Do these emails ever work?
And if they do, the people they work on must have an even lower average IQ.
Well if that’s not enough to give you nightmares, I don’t know what is.
I also got a marriage proposal in my junk mail today as well. From a woman. It was delightful. She doesn’t want to die alone, and likes art and reading. Wonderful.
I’ll get right on that.
When I posted earlier, I was lying. I did have something very specific on my mind, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to blog about it. In fact, I was trying to ignore it and pretend it didn’t matter. But I was failing miserably at it, so here I am, back again.
Lately, my blog has been getting about 20-50 hits a day. Which is pretty awesome, considering I haven’t been doing this that long.
But then suddenly, the last few days, my views have been dropping down to about 4-5 hits a day. Now, I know it was American Thanksgiving (being Canadian we always forget about that) and so people were obviously off doing stuff with their families.
But to my fear, that didn’t really matter.
My fear said, oh my god! Everyone hates you! They’ve all forgotten you! You are boring. You write crap. No one cares. Stop blogging you. You fail.
I know this shouldn’t even matter. I know I shouldn’t even care that no one is reading my little blog. But for me, its not even about the blog.
Its about that pattern. That pattern of feeling like I’ve been forgotten.
And it comes up often, more often as of late. I feel invisible, forgotten, ignored. An art event I did forgot to put my name on the promotional stuff. Someone I called claimed I hadn’t called them at all, when I’d called every week for 3 weeks and they just kept putting me off.
Its this feeling of jumping up and down and yelling my head off and nobody noticing. Its awful.
I feel invisible, forgotten, ignored, unimportant, unworthy.
All patterns for me. HUGE patterns for me.
Patterns that I’m still trying to work through, and still feel guilty about for not being able to fix them overnight. These patterns come up in my relationships all the time, especially with Jesse, and I cannot even tell you how ashamed I feel.
I sit there, trying to explain that this is my stuff, and I can’t help that I’m crying, and that I just get freaked out by certain things, and all in all, just feeling ridiculously silly for having these fears and worries and what ifs. And not knowing what to do about them yet. Not knowing how to heal them. And wanting desperately to have them healed rightthissecond so that I don’t have to feel guilty about them anymore.
I’m still exploring these patterns and piecing them together and putting them into words, so that they’re no longer just these nameless, wordless fears running amok in my mind. I’m trying to label them, categorize them, acknowledge them so that I can heal them and put them to rest.
But there’s a lot of junk going on down there, and its going to take me a long time.
So today, nobody reading my blog triggered some of that stuff. This weekend, a disagreement with Jesse triggered some other stuff. At least I know its my stuff, and can speak up about that.
If only I didn’t feel so damned guilty about all of it.
This week happened? Really?
Because I don’t remember it happening. But the calendar says its Friday, so let’s get started.
Warning: It’s been a crazy week, so this is gonna be long.
Awesome Thing #1: My friend George!
George, as I described earlier this week, is an awesome friend. He totally helped me out this week by getting my work into a super exclusive place that I can’t even talk about on here, because the only way I could get in was if I swore to secrecy.
Yes, my life is that intense. (Not actually.)
Either way, he opened some doors for me that, being 20, I would have probably had to kick down before they let me in. He’s got age and experience and networks on his side that I don’t. But he let me share them this week, and for that I am totally grateful.
Plus, he gave me the world’s most awesome pep talk and afterwards I just felt so much better about life, that I went home and painted for hours. You can’t buy inspiration like that. He helped me overcome my creative dry spell as well, so all in all, he’s just an amazing friend who is suppotive and encouraging and inspiring.
Am I lucky, or am I lucky?
Awesome Thing #2: My creative dry spell is over! Woohoo!
When you go through a creative drought, life is pretty awful. It’s like pulling teeth, every single day. With a spoon.
But now its over and I started several billion pieces this week, some of which I will be posting right here, right now. Oh yeah. I’m totally stoked about these paintings.
Work in progress by Sarah Marie Lacy
Work in progress by Sarah Marie Lacy
Work in progress by Sarah Marie Lacy
Christmas present for a friend by Sarah Marie Lacy
Ignore the crappiness of these shots but my light sucked today. When they’re finished, I’ll shoot them better.
Awesome Thing #3: We didn’t kill a cat. Trust me. This is a good thing.
Last night was kind of traumatic and really strange.
My mum was giving me a ride over to Jesse’s house, and there we were, going along, minding our own business, when we both looked to the right side of the car and saw a cat about to get completely mowed down by our wheels. (I would have you note right now, the right side means it was the passenger’s side. My side. Which means I made eye contact. It was horrible.)
We own cats. So killing a cat – definitely not cool. Which means that we were both freaking out. My mum slowed down immediately (traffic was slow, thank god) and turned onto a side street. We were both having a conniption, her more than me though, so I had to pretend that I was calm and in control. (Big fat lie.)
I’d looked behind us and couldn’t see the body of the cat on the road, so I looked at my mum, and was like, “Holy shit. I think its stuck under the car.”
And then we both heard meowing.
You cannot even comprehend how fast we got out of that car. We looked underneath, both of us fearing the worst, and we couldn’t see anything. Nothing hanging down, nadda. Which for us meant that it was really stuck under the car somewhere, like up in the engine or something. My mother at this point was hyperventilating and so I called my dad, who was all like, “Well what do you want me to do?” and I was all, “I don’t know, what the fuck do you want me to do? I have a seriously hysterical woman on my hands and a cat potentially stuck in the car. You tell me.”
At this point, a very nice student was walking past, whom my mother stopped and asked if he could help us. Fortunately he lived right there, so he went and got a flashlight so he could look under the car for us. (Whoever you are, dude, I owe you.)
I went off to see if I could find this poor cat’s body, in case it wasn’t stuck under the car. So there I was, walking up and down one of the main streets in the city, staring at the curb of the road, gnawing on my knuckles. Who looked insane? I did!
I couldn’t find it. I was super upset, because that definitely meant that this poor cat was stuck inside our car. But when I got back to where we were parked, the student couldn’t find any sign of it. Not even any blood.
And then my mum and I realized that we’d never heard a thud. We’d both just assumed that because the cat was right there, that we would have had to hit it.
But by some freaking miracle of god, that cat managed to turn around and run away, without injuring a hair on its head.
So for that, I am ridiculously, wonderfully grateful. Still completely freaked out but very, very happy that cats are speedy creatures. Wherever you are, kitty, I hope you’re okay. And I’m sorry that we nearly killed you and probably scared the living crap out of you. Hug.
Awesome thing #4: I drew a life road map!
In the spirit of figuring out what my life’s ambitions are, and assuming that because I’m an artist, maybe drawing it might make things a little bit easier, I decided to draw myself a life map.
It was actually pretty cool, and it showed me all of the things that I do want to do with my life. There’s a lot. And some of them are pretty huge too. I’m not sure if I’m admitting to myself yet that I really want to do all of these things, but they’re out there, which is good.
I was undecided about whether I should post it here or not (like, does anyone even care?) but if you’re interested in seeing it, tell me in the comments or email me and I will post it for you.
Awesome thing #5: I had an epiphany.
About which I’m not going to go into extreme detail here. Suffice it to say, I know what my block is between me and my ambition, and it was a memory that I tried to bury, but I wasn’t doing a very good job.
When I was 16, someone who is very close to me and whose opinion is important to me, told me, during a bad bout of depression, that I would never accomplish anything great in life because I was sick. That same year, they also told me that I was a very nasty person and that I wasn’t a fighter.
How much do you wanna bet that those words are what’s holding me back now? I’d bet my left kidney on it.
Awesome thing #6: The CFS Ninja is now up and running. Yeeee. Go check it out (but only if you have CFS, ME, or FMS. Because otherwise, it’ll pretty much mean nothing to you.)
http://thecfsninja.wordpress.com/
So it was a week of big, crazy stuff for me. I’m almost a little bit wiped out by it all. Think I might go shopping with one of my friends this afternoon, relax and unwind a little bit.
Hope you all have a fantastic weekend and I’ll see you next week!
I talked about money issues the other day. In my attempt to resolve them, I decided to borrow some money books from the library. Turns out they really got me thinking about my journey the past year and so I thought I’d share my thoughts with you here.
Desire
So you know how I said the other day that I felt like there was this disconnect between me and my ambition? And the lovely Kate mentioned the Artist’s Way, and that fear is often the thing that blocks us, and I thought, yep, she’s right on.
So I sat and had a conversation with that fear this morning. And I think I’ve come to some sort of conclusion – the life that I want to create, the things that I want to accomplish and the goals that I am passionate about are huge. And that scares the bejeezers out of me, because I feel like, who am I to want to create this totally awesome life? Who am I to think that I could even do any of this stuff?
Two years ago though, I did think I could accomplish all of these things. I felt like I was walking a path. Which brings me to something that I don’t often talk about, but I’ve decided that I’m going to today.
Faith
I don’t often talk about faith, or spirituality, I think because mine is very personal, and doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of my family’s. (Father and sister are fairly atheist, my mother was raised a strict Christian.)
For me, the Artist’s Way strongly influenced my ideas about a higher power and intuition, I think because they really resonated with me. So let’s just say I believe in a conscious universe.
Two years ago, I really felt like I was walking a path with my art and with helping people with CFS. Even a year ago, when I had my first solo show, I still felt like I was going in the right direction, like my heart was being pulled along by a small, still voice. I knew little about business or marketing or anything like that, but I was hopeful and ready to try anything.
But then I started learning about the business side of art, and became completely confused. Suddenly, I needed a business plan, and goals and a marketing plan and a USP and ads and branding and an image and story.
Wait, I’m a corporation?
I was completely thrown off, but thought that this was what I needed to really be successful, to truly make a living. I needed to create this whole other thing, this thing where my personality was hidden and I was this faceless, corporate entity. That was how you made money.
So I buried my personality, and went to work being a corporation. Do you know how much money I made after that? Well let’s see…
Pre-Corporation (Oct. 1st-Dec. 21st, 2007) – $1250.00
Post-Corporation (Dec. 22nd, 2007 – Nov. 27th, 2008) – $539.00
Yep. I made twice as much in 6 weeks last year than I did in 11 months this year.
And I’m not trying to lay any blame – I don’t think that I was corrupted by the marketers and business people of the world. I just think that I inherently misunderstood what they were trying to show me. One person at the very beginning explained it to me wrong and I was led to understand that your personality had nothing to do with business and it was all about charts and psychology and manipulating people to buy because your marketing messages play on their fear or happiness.
Which I now know is wrong. But all that marketing and business stuff I learned? Totally still important and vital and awesome.
But what’s really important here is that I’ve noticed this happened. And it also means that I can change it.
So I’m going to start injecting my personality back into my business and my website. I’m no longer going to worry about the psychology of my business, or my marketing messages or my “story.”
I’m going to let myself be me. Which, by the way, is completely and totally terrifying. Because for some reason I think that all of my customers are GM employees with no sense of humour or spirituality and everyone is going to just think I’m a quack, and no one will ever again buy a painting from me.
And you know what else I’m going to do? I’m going to let a little faith come back into it. I’m going to start listening to myself again, and see if I can’t start feeling like I’m back on that path. I’m a little lost in the woods right now, but I’m pretty sure I can find it again.
And I don’t regret losing it – I feel like I needed to go through it to really get how important the “Me” factor is in my business. I learned that trusting myself and my own instincts are my best bet for success.
Oh, and the fact that I’ll be ten million times happier.
For the past few months I’ve had a creative dry spell. If you’re an artist, you know what I’m talking about. For me, I’ve been stuck on the painting of my best friend, as well as a couple of others. But months were going by and I wasn’t finishing anything. I felt like I was running in circles (Ha…another recurring theme for me.)
But once I finished the one of my best friend, I could feel the juices flowing again. And oh boy, today, I think I’ve hit my stride.
I think a lot of artists give up when they hit that creative drought. It can seem so long and pointless, and we worry that our creativity will never come back again. Patience is the key – I like to think of it as a long, uphill plateau – you’re still going up, but from where you’re standing, everything looks flat. For me, it feels like a resting place, where I can recuperate, and re-energize, and build up my creative resources again.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated and angry – I definitely do, because you can only rest for so long before the urge to run again returns. Unfortunately, you can’t force it. It’s something that happens naturally. And I’ve found that consistently after a drought, my creativity improves dramatically. It’s like I come to a tall cliff, and because I’ve been resting, I can climb it full tilt. Like a lot of things, creativity is cyclical, and both sides of the circle are equally important, even if one of them drives us nuts.
Sometimes though, that push you need to get to the end of the plateau is a voice of encouragement and I got that yesterday.
George is an older, local, professional artist with a helluva lot of experience under his belt. For some reason I can’t fathom but I’m also not going to question, he’s taken me under his wing and goes out of his way to help me out and show me the ropes. I am ridiculously grateful to him, and learn more from talking to him for 30 minutes than I do on the internet in 4 hours. He gives practical, realistic advice, but he also gives me something more – he respects my work and my style for what it is, and never tries to change it. He offers advice on improvements and techniques and things like stretching your own canvas, but he understands that I paint the way I paint, and knows that I’m the only person who can teach me more about my way of painting.
He also offers encouragement, in a way that makes me want to run back to my easel and start painting without feeling like I need to brush off all that cheesiness. You know what some encouragement is like – “You’re just wonderful. The world wants you to shine, Sarah! Just shine!” Ick.
While this might work for some people, I usually just want to go take a shower after.
With George, he just tells me to stick with it and to keep hacking away and that my work shows something extraordinary that he doesn’t often see (blush) and that my best bet is to go into my room, say to myself, “Alright, this is what I want to do, now lets get damned good at it” and to work away.
Phrases like that are like lighting a fire under me – it awakens that drive and ambition that can sometimes fall latent during a dry spell. I got home and all I wanted to do was paint and paint and paint. I started 2 new paintings with ideas for more tumbling out. I’m looking at other paintings, auction house books, Old Master books, studying, learning, absorbing, with the goal of creating the best work that I possibly can. Its a heady feeling, and one that I missed.
So you’ll be seeing lots of work in progress photos up here as I try to keep track of all of the ideas in my head.
Ooooh, its so exciting. These are the times I live for.
I have a weird problem. It’s not even a problem really. I don’t know what I’d call it. Let me attempt to explain.
I can find opportunities galore. I don’t know why, but I just have to breathe and I get opportunities, especially related to my art. I make friends easily, and I have this rather large support system of people whom I respect and admire and who support my dreams and goals.
First off, let’s just say – how absolutely amazing is that? I am completely and totally blessed that these people are in my life. I don’t know what I did to deserve them, but it just rocks my socks that these people support me and are willing to go completely out of their way to help me out. How wonderfully awesome is that? I still can’t even believe it.
So yeah, opportunities and marvelously supportive people just seem to flow into my life, and this makes me so insanely happy.
Here’s my problem – I can never seem to monetize that. And I don’t mean that in an icky, dirty way, like how can I make money off of all these people who support me. Oh no. I don’t mean that at all.
What I mean is, with all of these opportunities that come my way, I can never quite seem to turn them into cash. It’s like I have this gigantic mental block between me and the money. (Probably pretty similar to the one between me and my ambition…food for thought I think?)
I think that a lot of artists have money blocks. Ever read the Artist’s Way? Julia Cameron goes into a lot of detail about that, and rightly so. As artists, we automatically buy into the stereotype that all artist’s are starving artists, and that’s “just the way things are.”
But what if it wasn’t?
What if our attitude towards money and art directly impacted how much money we make? What if we weren’t convinced that making money from our art would be selling out? I’m not proposing here that if we all just thought differently, we’d become millionaires. That’s a little far fetched. But what about thousand-aires? What about, making enough money on the side doing our art that we can afford to buy ourselves those little luxuries, those vacations, that beautiful easel?
What if your attitude towards money changed, and instead of thinking that it’s impossible to get, that its easy to get? Or at least easier than impossible. How would that change things?
Because the way you think about something directly impacts what you do about it. If you’ve already decided that money is impossible to make from art and that selling your art means selling out and that starving is “just the way its supposed to be”, what do you think the odds are that you’re going to be out there, meeting the right people and trying for the right opportunities? What do you think the odds are that you’re going to even notice that those opportunities are there?
They certainly aren’t odds that I’d be betting on.
And I’m not trying to judge here – I fall into this way of thinking a lot of the time all the time. But I notice that it’s definitely a trend for me – if I’m focused on what I can do, and the opportunities that are out there, and develop a money consciousness, I make more money. I sell things. I get opportunities. But if I’m focused on how hard it is, and how much it sucks, and how I’m busting my butt and nothing is ever gonna work out…well all of my good stuff just dissipates. It’s kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.
You can do what you think you can do. Nothing more, nothing less.
I often think that I can’t make a lot of money at art, or ever be successful. I often feel like I’m failing. My results reflect that a whole helluva lot. It’s obviously not something that you can change overnight. But I believe that attitude and mindset are 90% of the battle. If you can change those things, then you can probably change your whole life.
It’s definitely a work in progress though.
Thoughts?
