Is Procrastination eating your life? Check your motivation!

I had the Very Best of intentions, a mile-long “To Do” list, a five-week research & arting trip to pack for, piles of Clutter I planned to tackle “soonest”, and a shiny new business that was slowly sliding into obscurity, but there I was, hiding from it all with the covers pulled over my head.

Can you say “Procrastination”? Caught out, I felt profoundly guilty.

Deciding [after 50-some years] to tackle this monster head-on, I went to the internet for help. Typing procrastination into Google, I watched in dismay as it produced 4,650,000 hits. There are websites that promise to Cure it, Stop it, Overcome it, Manage it, Study it, Research it, Make War on it, take a Quiz to see if I Have it, distinguish the Good procrastination from the Bad, discover Why I have it, Prime Myself for “concrete thinking” — even learn a Mathematical Equation for it!

Gaaah! This was clearly no place for DIY; I decided to take my moral bankruptcy to a professional.

Imagine my surprise at being told that solving procrastination is Way Easy! Caused by insufficient motivation to produce the desired behaviour, one need only discover sufficient motivation!

Well, d’oh! That wasn’t very motivating.

It was mid-November, the business I had created to fill the income-gap from reducing my hours at my day-job should be busy filling Christmas orders, but I couldn’t seem to get new items loaded to my shop or do the mandatory marketing! Whenever I so much as thought about doing it, I felt as if I were pushing against the well-known “immoveable object”! What was up with that?

It wasn’t difficult to find the obstacle: I had run into a glitch when my host changed its software for uploading images, and a flurry of emails to customer service failed to resolve the problem. The pictures of my jewellery meant to lure customers were showing up as thumbnails and couldn’t be seen without a magnifying glass!

It took Two exhausting Weeks of clicking every single button on every single page of the application to find the problem, and when at last it was fixed, I couldn’t stir up the energy to load new items. For even when the application was running well, it took me ten or more minutes to input the information for each item, and too often the app would time-out, losing ALL the data I had input!

No wonder I was procrastinating! My motivation to avoid annoyance and frustration was Greater than my motivation to get new pieces up on the site!

The professional and I considered my motivation to earn income from the site and concluded that it was insufficient to balance my annoyance-avoidance. However, a little more investigation showed I was Highly motivated to keep my day-job limited to half-time but might not be able to do this unless I received income from the site.

Well that was easy! End of website procrastination. As for the rest, well…when you’re not motivated, you’re just not motivated!

I wonder if any of those 4 million websites tell you this.

(image courtesy of Wordle)

Changes coming to The Art of Transformation!

I’m making changes to this blog — it’s been the “poor relation” of my art life, receiving occasional recognition, but never serious attention.

I’m going to fix that. It’s time to transform The Art of Transformation!

I intend to use this venue to address some of the issues artists face — especially artists for whom art is a Journey to Discover the Self.

I have been an artist on a Journey of Self-Discovery for a very long time — longer than I even knew I was an artist!

I can’t tell you how to do it — but I can tell you how I’ve done it [and am still doing it!] and share the help I’ve received along the way.

I want to talk about, and share, resources available to you, and tips for making the most of your journey. I want to show you that your Self is not missing — it’s only hidden behind the masques you’ve worn as Self-protection. My Self was hidden for forty years behind protective walls and body armour. Believe me — if I could find my way out, so can you. And you will have guidance, and a compass, to assist you!

So join me, won’t you, on the Self-discovery Trail.

Life, Change, Death and Transformation

I’m sure I was half-cat. If you want to upset a cat, change something. Cats do not care to adjust, adapt, take change in their stride. They complain, sniff, stalk about, and, if truly indignant, poop on your pillow. So much for change.

Unfortunately for us cats, Life IS change. It’s animated, exuberant, dynamic, energetic, vigorous, moving, CHANGING.

Mr Al tried to teach me this, but back then I was certain that if only I could get it Right, change would stop. If I could get it right, that perfect homeostasis would be mine for ever. Perfection. Stasis. No more uncertainty.

I struggled to become perfect.

Not surprisingly, this did not happen. Instead, once he’d reached his prime, Mr Al’s lungs gave out and he died. Now there’s a Change for you!

I tried hard to “get it”. Life is Change, he had said. Growing up is change, moving is change, working is change, every aspect of living was change . . . and death — well, death was the biggest change of all!

But that would mean . . . that death was the biggest part of Life?


Change, not cessation. Was that a sort of — metamorphosis? Could death simply be a form of . . . transformation?