February Things

Why is it so hard to do what you want? February's DID-SAW-HEAR-DRAW

Feb 26, 2025

The chirping birds woke me up this morning, which is possibly the best way to wake up.

I can’t believe February is almost over! Looking back on February, I realized I have learned a lot about myself this month, and that’s reflected in what I’ve been doing/seeing/hearing/drawing.

Without further ado…

DID:

This month, I’ve continued to do The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a twelve week “creative recovery” program that helps you undo some false narratives about yourself, about your work, and about a creative lifestyle in general.

One part of the Artist’s Way is to write three pages stream-of-consciousness each morning before doing anything else. Interestingly, I thought I would hate doing that, but I’ve found it almost as natural as eating. I almost crave it in the mornings and have yet to skip a day.

This month was kind of “meh” (post-Thailand blues) and during one of my particular “meh” mornings — I wrote something unexpected: “I want to paint with thick paint on a big canvas.” As simple of a sentence as that is, it stopped me in my tracks! It was like my inner child artist had written that line. I noticed that since I began the Artist’s Way, the idea of painting had come up again and again. But was I painting? No.

I’ve always loved art. In high school, like I wrote about here, I had a really impactful art teacher. I love the feeling of getting messy — splatter painting, painting with thick paint with a big brush, and adding layers and layers of paint. Something about that feels so satisfying to me.

But interestingly, I always stopped myself from doing it — but in sneaky ways. I bought watercolors. I did face paint. I did digital art. And while I like doing those things, and they were close to what I wanted to do, it didn’t quite scratch the itch I had to make loud, textured art on a big canvas.

Why do we stop ourselves from doing what we really want to do? Julia Cameron calls this phenomenon “shadow artists”. Often, a person who really wants to be a movie director may forego being a movie director to become a movie critic. Or, a creative writer may find themselves writing more “serious” content. A children’s book writer may be a children’s book editor. Or, an old-fashioned painter may find themselves doing nothing but digital art.

Doing something close to our dream keeps us safe. If I failed at watercoloring I didn’t really care, because I’ve never really cared about watercoloring. It felt more “acceptable,” less risky, less wasteful, and less prep work than buying a big canvas and using a palette knife. But even with all the excuses I could come up with, my morning pages showed me that my childhood desire to paint never went away.

This month, I learned that I don’t need to keep myself from doing the actual thing that I want to do, no matter how silly or insignificant I might think it is. I can just… do it! It’s okay!

SAW:

I saw/read existential God-Machine content this month (which I didn’t know existed until this month)

I read God Human Animal Machine by Meghan O’Gieblyn. I saw the book title on a random “best books I’ve read” list here on Substack, and really had no idea what the book was about before I began. Boy, was I in for a pleasant, eye opening surprise! The book, at its core, is about O’Gieblyn’s faith crisis. It reads similarly to a memoir, but is mixed in with her extensive research on the intersections between theology and machines. O’Gieblyn went to theology school, and ended up having a faith crisis, which led her into a spiral to find some sort of meaning to human life. In her search for meaning, she became obsessed with technology and finds parallels and intersections between the schools of thought that I had never considered before. She writes:

“Today artificial intelligence and information technologies have absorbed many of the questions that were once taken up by theologians and philosophers: the mind’s relationship tot he body, the question of free will, the possibility of immortality… all the eternal questions have become engineering problems.”

So many of the ideas she brought up had me furiously kindle-highlighting page after page and made me exclaim out loud, “Wow! I’d never thought of that before!” I wondered if reading this book would make me have less faith, but it did the opposite for me. It became clear to me that we all subscribe to some way of thinking, and even with the most “sophisticated” philosophies, once you dig around a bit, are just as crazy as believing in God. So I choose to believe in God. All in all, it was a very fun read.

In the same God-Machinery vein, Jonny and I joined the Severance club this month. We watched the whole first season in less than a week! If you’re unfamiliar with Severance, it is a show on Apple TV that explores the idea of your work life being “severed” from your regular life. The extreme work/life balance, if you will! The people choose to undergo a surgery that makes them completely forget their home life at work, and vice versa. But because of that, they also have no idea what they are doing for work… which comes to be a little spooky! The show brings up some interesting ideas about free will, identity, dealing with pain/trauma, and blurs the lines between corporate and religious institutions. Fascinating!

HEAR:

I’ve actually been taking a break from podcasts, and a semi-break from music. I think my quest for 2025 has become to try to figure out how to be more present in the world. I’ve deleted my social media, I’ve limited my podcasts, and I’ve even limited my audio books. Sometimes I fill my head with so many words of others that it becomes harder to hear my own voice.

Something my inner voice has made clear to me this month is that I need people. My hobbies — art, writing, reading — are all solitary activites. For an extrovert like myself, who gets energy from being around people, there seems to always be a conflict of interest. I am figuring out the balance between nurturing myself in my extroverted nature and my introverted interests.

I am currently at a coffee shop writing this, and I am reminded of why I love to be around people. This is the same reason I think I am destined to live in a big city someday. I find something deeply comforting about doing life with other people — just normal things, like working on a laptop with complete strangers at a coffee shop. I am at a communal table right now, and the same people have been around me for hours. We are keeping each other company in the most basic way — presence.

Here, without distractions, I love hearing the whirring of the coffee machine, the clinking of glasses, the tip-tapping of keyboards, the quiet conversations, the general buzz of life.

DRAW:

Adding onto my “DID” section…

I’ve begun painting! Once I decided I’d follow my desire to paint with real paint, random things have fallen into place (that’s how you know you’re on the right track ;)). I found the perfect table-top easel at the thrift store for $4 (UNHEARD OF), and bought a ton of professional-grade acrylic paints for an amazing deal off of Facebook Marketplace. More paintings to come! <3