Lisa Call

Yes

I say yes too much. I agree to do things that I don’t want to do because I don’t know how to say no. And then I have much less time to make art than I would desire.

It seems like saying no isn’t something we are taught how to do. Upon reflection it isn’t something I’ve taught my kids how to do.

We are taught to say yes.

To be nice. To avoid conflict.

Often the result is we aren’t nice to ourselves. We don’t keep our best interests in mind and hence we don’t do what we want to do and often what we need to do.

Art is a priority in my life. To keep it a priority, I need to learn to say No better to opportunities and offers that distract me from my artwork.

Positive No

I recently listened to the book The Power of the Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes and found the information invaluable in learning how to phrase a no in a more positive way.

The idea is to state no in 3 parts:

1) Yes – say yes to what you want
2) No – say no to what you don’t want
3) Yes – suggest an alternative

While I need much practice in using this formula, the few times I’ve tried it (with varying degrees of skill, as it is a skill I need to practice) I have found the experience to be more positive than negative.

While I listened to this book on CD borrowed from the library, I’ve also bought the book as I want to refer back to it. It’s only a few dollars used on amazon.

How Do You Want to Spend Your Time

While thinking about saying no, it reminded me of a poem I used to have on the wall in my cube at work a few years back: The Act of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye.

It’s an absolutely fabulous reminder of the value of saying no.

It’s time to put this poem back up on my cube wall.

The Act of Disappearing
by Naomi Shihab Nye
from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. © The Eighth Mountain Press.

When they say Don’t I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say we should get together
say why?

It’s not that you don’t love them any more.
You’re trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

 
You can listen to Namoi reading the poem here:

The Past

I used to put in 20 hours a week in my studio. Always. Every single week I’d prioritize the creation of art and I would make sure I found the time to make art.

Then I decided I needed to change my life. I wasn’t happy, things weren’t working. I was letting things into my life that I didn’t absolutely love. I wasn’t making choices, I was just letting life happen.

So I took some time to discover what I really wanted. The first step in this process was to eliminate things from my life that weren’t working. The boyfriend, the clutter in the house and eventually the house.

This lead to the remodel project, which I’ve been writing about weekly since last August. Wow. I contacted the contractor in July – we started the design in August. That is 10 months of construction on my brain.

The house has been 99% done since the end of March but I needed April and May to settle in, get the punch list finished and write about the process.

The Present

So now – here I am – where am I? I certainly have changed my life. I love living in Denver vs. the suburbs. I love living my life with intention. I love my new home and new studio.

The turmoil is over and when I look back it’s been 2 1/2 years since I’ve been at this place (the year prior to my move my father was ill and passed away, as did 3 other close family members) with no big things to distract me.

This is a very exciting and scary place to be. I know myself. I know this is the time when historically I am very likely to create yet another diversion to keep me from having to answer that scary question:

"What Do I Want?"

It’s good to know this – to have the awareness. Because this time, I’m not going to do it. No boyfriends, no more moving, no more building. This is it. Just me and my dreams. Time to create them.

The Plan

I’ve been working on answering that question last 4 months. Thinking about what I love doing. Writing, reading, thinking big.

I’ve made tons of notes on scraps of paper it’s been fun to hint around at the answer to the question. Wonderful fun ideas coming up daily.

This dreaming part, which is wonderful and fun and vitally important, is now ready to take a more definite shape. I have a good idea of what I want, now time to make it concrete.

I’m ready to move from dream to plan so for that to happen I am putting the following task on my todo list daily:

- Planning – 30 minutes or more

I’m taking all those wonderful ideas and pulling them together into a cohesive plan that I can take action on. Priorities and systems and schedules.

And all of this is very fun, but it’s also pretty scary. Cause it’s a lot of work. Because all the big dreams that my right brain came up with, my left brain is saying "You are going to do WHAT? Do you know how much work that is? Do you even know how to do that? "

So I think those thoughts and still I move ahead, cause in addition to distractions I’m not letting fear stop me either. I just think about the next 30 minute planning session and I am making steady progress forward – turning the dream into reality.

And, because first and foremost I’m an artist and love creating art, the other thing on my daily todo list is:

- Create Art – 1 hour or more

I am committing to returning to 15 hours (or more) of studio time every week. I debated going back to 20 but decided I’m doing more art business work so I’ll stick with 15 for now.

I’ll let you all know how things progress.

Studio Posts

I’m not quite done with my posts on building a studio. Next up will be a post on my studio storage.

Tomorrow I plan to catch up on all the blog comments I’ve failed to respond to the last few weeks and see if there are other studio topics I need to cover based on the questions.

Once that is done I’ll need to think up another theme for my blog posts for June. Hm. Somewhere I had a list…

Another post on my series on Scrum and how it relates to my art business. You can read all of the posts here: Scrum and Art.

Product Owners

There are 3 roles that people can play when they are on a Scrum team: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Team Member. All 3 of these roles apply to activities I do as an artist so I’ll cover them in differing amounts of detail. I feel the product owner role is a key role so I’ll probably talk about it the most.

A product owner is responsible for something called a Product Backlog in the scrum world. In simple terms this is a list of things, called user stories, that need to be done. In the software world this is the set of requirements of the system being implemented. The product owner creates the back log and, maybe more importantly, they prioritize the items on that back log. They are the ones with the vision for what the product should and could be.

Today I became a product owner for one of the scrum teams at work. As the former requirements engineer of the team, I got elected (and I agreed) that I would do well in this role, as writing user stories is a lot like writing requirements. Okay, actually it’s the same thing. The entire team will help out with prioritizing the list and the vision as we all have a vested interest in the outcome of this experiment.

The Artist as Product Owner

This role of product owner applies to me as an artist in couple of ways.

First with my art itself, I need to determine what type of artwork I want to make. Oil paintings? Textile paintings? Ceramic pigs? That’s all pretty straight forward and obvious that an artist needs to do this, although not always easy. Nor is it always simple to restrict ourselves to just one or even two mediums. Today I found my self hunting through the Denver Art Students’ League class schedule thinking about taking oil painting classes.

In addition to the art, I also need to define my art career business objectives and prioritize the activities. Should I blog or should I enter a juried show tonight? What is the ROI (return on investment) for each of these activities? How long will it take to do these activities? Should I have a facebook account? Should I sell my art on etsy? Should I make reproductions of my work?

Some of the aspects of scrum can help me figure all of this out. Or at least organize it in a way that will help me see what my options are. The first piece is to figure out what the art product backlog is – what are all the projects and business ideas that I have. For those that like the Getting Things Done lists – this is very similar to a project list, although with more detail so prioritization and estimation of the size of the job can be more easilty determined.

The other day I created a bunch of user stories for my art business, in the next post I’ll share info on the details of that activity and what goes into a user story.

Remodel Update

The builder has come up with a very cool design for my house. Scope creep (ie it’s getting bigger) is occurring again but hopefully not horribly so. It is by far the best design so I’m excited to see some plans soon.

A huge bonus will be I don’t have to move out of my house for them to do the remodel. I was not looking forward to moving out a few months after moving in. The last design, which I eventually rejected, involved picking up my house and setting it in the backyard to put in a basement. Hard to live in a house when that happens. The new idea is just a backyard addition, with some remodel work in the existing house to fix stuff in need of repair. Not as much entertainment, but more realistic.

Priorities

In my series of posts on holding intent I’ve talked about some of the quotes I have on my studio wall. Here’s another related to priorities:

My Take on the Parts

What: I need to identify the specific tasks, or at the minimum the next task, that will get me to my goal. Without this breakdown of the parts it’s hard to identify the next action I should take to achieve a goal. Priorities imply that there are things to choose from, I need to identify those things.

I: There is only 1 person that is in charge of me reaching my goals – and it’s me. Taking responsibility for all of my choices and actions is a huge help in reaching my goals. It is not the internet’s fault that I waste time reading email and blogs, it was my choice. If I don’t like that choice and I can change it.

Doing: If I just sit around it’s unlikely my goals will be met.

Right Now: Worrying about the future or stressing out about the past isn’t going to move me forward. It’s when I stay in the present moment I make progress.

Closer: This is a process (and not a quick one), not a destination. Doing things gets me closer to my goals but I need to be patient and enjoy the journey, because without that the goal is rather empty. For me it’s about a life time commitment to living life one day at a time with the intention to be the person I want to be and living the life I want to have each day giving my situation in that exact moment.

Ultimate Goal: If I don’t know what I want and who I want to be, it’s kind of hard to make progress in that direction.

The Universe

On Alyson Standfield’s recommendation in January I signed up to get Notes from the Universe. I love these emails each morning as they make me smile and remind me that my thoughts do become my reality. Today’s was particularly relevant to my topic:

Where are you spending your time?

Structures #57    ©2006    33"x 66"

Putting out Fires

In a recent post titled Managing Urgencies Seth Godin writes:

Do you have a plan?

A long or medium term plan for your brand or your blog or your career or your project?

You can have grand visions for remodeling your house or getting in shape, but if there’s a fire in the kitchen, you drop everything and put it out. What choice do you have? The problem, of course, is that most organizations are on fire, most of the time.

In my post a few days ago about getting things done I talked about how excited I was to be making progress on projects that previously were ignored due to lack of urgency of the project.

This had become my default behavior:

Add up enough urgencies and you don’t get a fire, you get a career. A career putting out fires never leads to the goal you had in mind all along.

Last year I entered a bunch of juried shows instead of working on some bigger projects that require more effort and will take longer to yield results. Juried shows are easy, fill out a form and send off a CD and some money and there is illusion of progress when the acceptance letter arrives.

Stagnating in the Fire

Problem is these shows don’t do much for my career anymore. In the beginning they were great. They were the big goal and they got me what I was after, a resume filled with quality shows to give me the foundation for bigger things.

Thing is I’ve been doing this for 10 years – my resume is plenty long with lots of juried shows – they no longer provide much value and they are starting to look like they are my career and not just the initial step forward.

The past few months I paid the price of having entered all those shows putting out fires of the resulting acceptances. Doing paperwork, packaging and shipping work.

No time was left to work on the bigger projects like completing the redesign of my website, sending out my first studio newsletter (a project that has been on hold for over a year as it is never urgent) or lining up gallery representation. Things I’ve clearly identified as important for moving me forward.

Small Steps to Move Forward

As I said a few days ago. No More!

Basically I’m doing exactly what Seth mentions here:

I guess the trick is to make the long term items even more urgent than today’s emergencies. Break them into steps and give them deadlines.

I’ve identified the big projects that will propel my art career forward in a big way and now I’m defining the next steps that need to be taken to create my new reality. When I look at my next actions list I want to look at actions that are simple and easily doable. Things like:

• Determine List of Newsletter Articles
• Write Introduction to Newsletter
• Select template for new website
• Create header for new website

I don’t put ‘write newsletter’ on the list as that’s just too overwhelming and I won’t ever get to it.

Deadlines

In addition to the small steps I’m also setting deadlines as Seth mentions. Now I’ll make one of those goals public as it’s fast approaching and I’m committed to making that goal.

My first studio newsletter will be sent by March 31. I’ve already made some nice progress on the project and am excited about it. [sneak preview: I'm making 3 new aceos (artist cards) inspired by 3 pieces from my Markings series. These will be available to my subscribers via my newsletter].

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Structures #57

I posted an image of Structures #57 in this post a year+ ago but the color was off. I recently got this piece back from the art center where it was on display and rephotographed it. These are more accurate colors.

I love the blue thread over the red fabric in the surface stitching of this piece. Actually I just love the entire thing. A few years back I said I didn't use much red, now I'm finding I'm using it more and more and really love the results. Maybe Cathy Kleeman's influence, she uses red often and well.

 
Are you putting out fires?

Structures #96    ©2008    16.5"x 28"

Toxic People and Behaviors

I was reading an email yesterday that recommended making a list of all the people in my life and putting a + or – next to each of them to see if there is a pattern for the toxic people in my life. I put a bit of thought into this but didn’t get far. My mind took a leap and I started thinking that the non supportive/negative people in my life were most likely a result of negative thinking and behavior on my part.

Seemed to me instead of focusing on the symptom (people I’ve allowed into my life that I feel are not supportive) that I’d be better off focusing on the cause (my own negative thoughts and behaviors). I can’t change the behavior of the people in my life but I can change myself.

I also believe there are no longer people in my life that I feel are unsupportive. I’ve found that as I focus more on the positive and once I got clear in how I wanted to be treated, the people that didn’t share those choices moved on. As I shed my negative thoughts the people that came with those unhealthy patterns also disappeared.

Not To Do List

Many books about getting organized and getting things done talk about the importance of making a not-to-do-list. Here’s mine. If I catch myself doing or thinking these things I change my thoughts and behavior to something more nurturing and positive.

• Negative thinking.
• Getting hooked into other people’s negative thinking.
• Complaining.
• Criticizing.
• Whining.
• Gossiping and Colluding.
• Checking email 4000 times a day.
• Reading blogs more than 1 hour a day.
• Surfing the internet when I could be doing something else (which is pretty much anytime).
• Checking Blog and Website stats more than once every 2 weeks.

To Do List

I’ve also thought a lot about my priorities and where I want to put my time and energy. Here is my short version of my to-do list:

• Being self accepting.
• Being authentic.
• Being honest.
• Being kind.
• Being generous.
• Being gentle.
• Complimenting others.
• Feeling gratitude.
• Living in the present.
• Going for walks.
• Working in my studio with no expectations.
• Hanging out with my kids.
• Spending time with my friends and family.
• Gardening and cooking.
• Living healthy
• Living life effortlessly.

Not Finishing

A final no-to-do – leaving my artwork unfinished. I thought I had Structures #95 and Structures #96 finished but last night as I was packaging them up to mail them off to my solo show at Lux, Fencing In or Keeping Out, (opens April 4 – more on that tomorrow or thursday) I discovered I didn’t have the hanging mechanism (a fabric tube) or labels sewn on to them. Oops!

I’ll chalk this one up to my Getting Things Done approach to stuff starting after I dropped the ball on this work.

 
Do you keep a not-to-do-list?

Dandelion, Oil on Canvas, 10" x 10", ©2007 Shan Bryan-Hanson
 

Too Tired to Think or Move

A few weeks ago I had a few nights in a row where I got very little sleep. As a result I was pretty wiped out for a few days. I went to the day job, checked email, chatted with kids, and that was about it. I realized that a very big key for me for holding my intent is to be well rested.

Not a super profound thought but it’s easy to fall into the trap of saying ‘I don’t have time to sleep 8 hours a day’. I find when I do that I end up getting less done. So really – I can’t afford to not sleep 8 hours a day.

Maybe I’m just getting old. I remember staying up 4 days in a row my last semester of college when I was 22 to complete a huge assignment in one of my classes. There is absolutely no way I could do that now.

In any case its bedtime because I have to be up at 5:30am to do yoga before getting the kids to school. I’ve only missed 2 mornings of yoga since Jan 1. It’s been harder to hold my intent of starting my day slowly with yoga and journaling with the kids home but its become a routine and it’s very important to me so I’m making it happen.

Art Trade

I love the above painting by Shan. She posted it on her blog in October last year and I went back and looked at it often thinking it needed to live at my house. I saved up enough to buy it earlier this year and was thrilled it was still available. I was even more thrilled when she asked to do a trade and selected Structures #71 in exchange.

Shan used to be one of my favorite bloggers. I loved her writing and obviously I love her art. She quit blogging last year and I still miss reading her thoughts.

Holding Intent – Related Posts

Transitioning and Intent
Holding Intent – Part I [Realistic Goals]
Holding Intent – Part II [Excuses]
Holding Intent – Part III [Focus]
Holding Intent – Part IV [Enough Time]
Holding Intent – Part V [Self Care]
Holding Intent – Part VI [Fear]

Structures #14    ©2003    29"x 35"

Enough Time

Most everyone has heard the story about putting rocks and pebbles and sand in a jar (if not look here). The basic idea is you have to the do the important stuff first or you won’t find time for it. The other stuff will fit in around the big stuff.

This is my version (another of the notes I have posted in my studio):

When I first read this quote years ago it was a good reminder that I really do have time for all the important things in my life. To me this said it was about making the choice to do so.

So I put this quote on my wall to remind me that I chose to believe I have time. My thoughts and attitude about my life create my life. If I believe I have time, I do and I truly believe I have enough time.

I remember showing this to a friend that is always stressed out and saying how busy she is. Doesn’t matter what she’s doing she’s harried and complains about lack of time. She looked at this sign when I put it up and said "that’s not true". Years later she’s still living her life on overdrive saying she never has time for all the stuff she wants.

Maybe she’s busier than me. Or maybe we just view life differently. I know I have time for a full time job, kids, family, friends, home, a garden, laughter and also an art career. I believe it – so it is so.

Priorities

There may not be enough hours in the day for everything I might possibly want to do but there is always time for the stuff I really really care about. That’s the other message I get from this note on my wall. That’s it’s about identifying the important stuff.

If I start feeling overwhelmed I review where I’ve been spending my time. Is it on important things? Generally when I’m feeling stressed I find I’ve been spending my time doing things that aren’t all that important. Like checking email a zillion times a day or writing a blog post when what I really wanted to do was work in my studio. Unconscious behavior like this is a good way to get off track.

When I refocus on the present and get back to the tasks that I currently feel are important my life, goals and intent all just fall into place.

Sifting out the Junk

When I go for days, weeks, month and maybe even years not putting time into something I claim is important, I take this as a sign to reevaluate how important that thing really is to me. If I’m not finding time for it, does that mean I need to let the thing go? Instead of being a priority maybe it’s really an energy drain. Often I find that to be the case.

I have to be careful here, because sometimes I’m not doing what I want for other reasons. Fear often being one of the biggest factors, which will lead me to my next post.

Right now my brain is say Didn’t you say you were going to get Markings #19 finished tonight?  so time to stop writing and get to the studio.

Popsicles

For a few years I had the above photo on the wall right in front of my sewing machine. Some time after completing Structures #14, at the top of this post, I realized I’d finally made my popsicle piece. So I took down the photo and glued it into my sketchbook. It’s funny how inspiration works even though you aren’t consciously aware of it at the moment.

Related Posts

Transitioning and Intent
Holding Intent – Part I
Holding Intent – Part II
Holding Intent – Part III