Art Block and Storytelling

In all the craziness of the last month or so, I have not been working on my art journals much and I miss them.  I took them out today in hopes that I would feel like I could get back into the process...I feel like I need it to feel human again.  I just couldn't...I felt like I didn't know what to do or how to do it...I think I will re-watch some of the Teesha Moore's videos again to be reinspired. I can hear my inner critic whispering things to me, "Not good enough. That's not how you imagined it. Not an artist."  Those whispers act like a net, catching all the creativity and holding it away from me.

On another creative front, I spent several evenings this week with friends and I felt a similar block in storytelling mode.  All my stories are the same stories I had two years ago, or five. I don't have as many experiences that turn into some funny story and I don't tell the stories enough to keep them fresh.  The art of the story is in the detail, it is in the telling of the specifics that the story comes to life, the fluid movement from beginning to middle to end. Now, I find myself editing the parts that  I am not proud of, or that I think other people will have judgements about. Those silly, painful, embarrassing, less-than-brilliant parts that I want to put away somewhere are the essence of these stories. At the same time, I find that I don't want to just be a silly girl in a funny story - I find some of the self-deprecation difficult sometimes.

I hover between wanting to just create new stories and wanting to embrace the stories of my life and reclaim the details and make sure they don't disappear.  If I don't do something with these moments, they will fade into obscurity. If my stories fade, so do I. We are all a collection of moments and when we share them, we create stories.  Without stories, we are just momentarily present and each fleeting moment goes by so quickly and then it is gone.

It is a strange dilemma I find myself in.  For now, I choose embracing the stories.  Without them, I lose another identity - "The Storyteller".  Without that, I'm not sure I know who I am.