Journal? Landmark?

Rarely have I kept a journal, and I am new at keeping a weblog. Now, looking back, I wish I had started this long ago. There is something about capturing thoughts and moments with language that is different from taking photographs and making paintings. Naturally, words in a journal would be just my emotions, thoughts, and interpretations, whatever they are worth. But at least the journal would be my "memory keeper," so that I could look back and recall what I really thought about a show, or an event, or an experience at the time, rather than through my faulty recall.

[My memory gets hazier by the month.]

Some of my art instructors used to invite us to get into the discipline of keeping a daily sketchbook/journal. I always resisted. After all, weren't the paintings the most important thing? I wanted to keep my marks fresh for the paintings! So for me it was always "either/or"—either I make fresh marks in the sketchbook, or I make fresh marks on the canvas. Somehow I was so rigid in my thinking that I couldn't play with it in a "both/and" sort of way. Now, looking back on more than 20 years of life and art, I feel like I ripped myself off.

[But hey, I certainly knew better than THEY did, didn't I?]

[And if any of my students and former students read this, well, now you know I used to be: "I-know-better." It's a wonder I listened to anybody or learned anything. And the eternal cosmic joke, now, is that I get to teach adorable versions of "me, revisited," which is to say, YOU!!!]

Looking back, I guess I saw discipline as a burden, rather than as a wonderful new possibility. "I'm an artist! Why do I need discipline? I need freedom and creativity, no?"

[Hogwash.]

My generalized lack of discipline has cost me and others, big time, in countless ways. And it permeates my life and work.
Ouch.


And yet I started a blog.
How odd. Why?

What I am beginning to see is that a weblog has a possibility of being for for others, not just for myself.

And that brings me to Landmark.

I went over the weekend to a very intense course given by Landmark Education. Landmark courses have been profound, not for "changing" and "fixing" my life [although that has definitely been one outcome], but for shifting how I RELATE to my life and everything/everyone in it. These shifts occur EVERYWHERE and they are radical. What we get to do in Landmark programs is to expose our hidden "stops," in areas of life that are deeply important to us. This allows new things to become possible.

Well, what did I get out of the weekend?

I invented the possibility of being YOURS.

This was completely unexpected, and is rocking my world.

My art is YOURS.
My actions are YOURS.
It is much more inspiring for me to create, to generate my website (which I have resisted for YEARS), to do pretty much ANYTHING, if I am yours. It is less isolating. Less lonely. Less about that insufferable know-it-all who is sure you don't want her anyway.

What if all people lived like they were YOURS?
What if you lived like you were OURS?

So, for the first time, I am EXCITED about taking on new disciplines.
Like a weekly weblog.
Like designing and keeping up a website.
Like learning new technologies.
Like finishing unfinished projects.
And so on.
And so on.

After all, I'm yours.
I'm accountable to you.
I'm creating art on your behalf.
I'm teaching art on your behalf.

Who I am is the possibility of being YOURS.