On Frivolity

Ooof.

Life has got terribly serious of late, hasn’t it. One need only take a peek at the news from between fingers clamped over our eyes to lose all of one’s sense of joy and delight in an instant.

It feels like I have to delve really deep to rediscover my inner child at the moment, and temporarily forget my responsible (and inclined-to-be-rather earnest) adult. The best way I’ve discovered so far is dance, although I’m always on the hunt for more.

So it was encouraging to stumble across Russell Brand’s interview with Julia Cameron (author of my much loved artistic guide ‘The Artist’s Way’ that I mention regularly and often and will continue to do so!), that Julia speaks evocatively about delighting our inner child, and indulging in activities we might shrug off as being ‘frivolous’. Even, ESPECIALLY, in times like this.

An exercise she suggests to explore (outlined in The Artist’s Way), is this one:

If I didn’t have to do it perfectly, I’d try:

Russell asks Julia in this interview about ‘laziness’ and how to get over apathy (where perhaps we are not indulging in any seemingly negative addictions or activities, but we might not be feeling the desire to do the work), which Julia addresses simply with the phrase:

‘laziness is just fear in disguise’.

Relevant to me daily, as – although I can kid myself I’m being ‘creative’ and ‘productive’ when writing this blog, publishing poems, writing my short stories (all of which are creative endeavours of course), I am still not doing that which I know I most need to do as the very first priority (beyond basic self-care and exercise), which is painting every day.

And so, once again, to paint!