Tales From Denise James: Missing (and Finding) Motivation

Haven't had the focus lately to do what I "should" be doing. Been having trouble finding the energy to do much of anything and worse — at least to me — I fell off the writing bandwagon. This blog. The one thing I'd been doing completely for myself, the commitment I made to myself and kept, the thing that gave me such comfort and catharsis — I felt frozen and unable to write. It didn't make sense, it still doesn't make sense.

I have the time.

I have the freedom.

I have the stories.

Why has it become so difficult to write?

Part of me believes that I'm still hiding, wanting (and not wanting) to share with my readers what's buried inside — what's hard, what's sad, what's shameful. My publishing friend Susan tells me that unless it's a misery-memoir, it just doesn't sell. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, to give you insight, here are the titles of some misery-memoirs:

Damaged Hidden The Saddest Girl in the World Mummy Told Me Not To Tell

That isn't my story. My story is ordinary and my story is extraordinary — just like so many others.

So while I try to find my missing motivation, the one thing I have been able to get out there to do, the activity that I never lack motivation for is thrift-store shopping. And what always speaks to me when I'm hunting for thrift-store treasures? Art. I just have an urge, a calling to ferret out the great, hidden, discarded art that is waiting for a new home.

Art makes me happy and always fills me. Does it do that for you?

Last week while browsing I came across something that I didn't need and wasn't even tree art (which I collect) but it seemed old and finely done and I just couldn't leave it behind. I picked it up, asked the price, put it down, and a millisecond later picked it back up. It needed a home. It was coming with me.

This is the image up close

The framed size is 13" x 18"

I came home — art in hand — feeling very guilty. Did I need this piece of art? Did I have a personal attachment to it? Was it fabulous? Well, I certainly did not need yet another piece of art. And while I'd been to the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, I didn't have an emotional connection to it in any way and to be truthful while it was haunting and beautifully done, it wasn't drop-dead fabulous. I was feeling I shouldn't have gotten it. I should be networking — not buying art! But there it was.

Enough — I told myself, no more art! Not until you've gotten some work!

Flash

NO flash

But then, when I was barely looking, in fact I was on my way out of the store and wasn't even going to look at the artwork, I just started a quick flip through the piled-up,on its side, stack of discarded art, ignoring the really ugly stuff, by-passing the junk, pushing aside the commercial, mass-produced art that's sold in every big box store and just as I about to escape empty-handed, there it was. A piece so surprising it screamed out to me with its red metal frame and its gorgeous shocking emerald green lily pads crowded with sleek black-necked Canadian geese with their graceful and stream-lined bodies darting to and fro beneath these gorgeous two-toned green lily pads.

I could not (repeat) could not leave without this stunning piece. Income or no income, guilty or not, frivolous, undisciplined — call it what you will — art motivates me.