"The thing you can't stop doing..."
another alchemical prompt from The Book of Alchemy
If you take a look into my archives, you’ll find some other essays sparked by prompts from Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. This has been my ongoing personal project this summer— committing to write 100 of my own essays in response to the prompts by those inspiring writers.
What is it— the thing you can’t stop doing? Is it an insatiable pull toward something, or a drive to accomplish something, or a need to make a difference? Hopefully it’s something that contributes to the world in some way.
Here is my essay in response to Connie Carpenter Phinney’s essay “The Thing You Can’t Stop Doing”, in chapter 9, “On Purpose”, p.235 (Day 82)
The prompt is “Write about what drives you— not what you get paid for, not what others want you to do. Write about the thing you can’t stop doing.”
When I was young, colored pencils, paper, watercolors, any art supplies, really, all brought the greatest thrill. Just looking at them, handling them, brought an excitement of possibility. I wasn’t sure what I would do with them yet, but the possibility of creating something was the thrill. Drawing things. Creating images. Making pictures. The feeling of a watercolor brush in my hand, dipping the soft bristles into water, slowly swirling the brush around in the paint pan to loosen the pigment into just the right consistency— watery for a thin wash or thick and sticky for a stroke of rich, intense hue.
The urge to make art was like a living thing inside me. It wasn’t something separate from me, it lived within me.
A similar urge drove me to the piano, to make music, to use those keys to create sound images. Likewise with the guitar— plucking notes from the strings, making the sexy wooden body thrum with sound, bringing forth music from inside it.
Now, in my late years, I’m driven by a thirst to bring words forth, to get them onto the page to illustrate thoughts and feelings and express ideas, fears, longings, memories. Writing has become the thing I can’t stop doing. Actually, it’s always been there, right alongside the art urge and the music urge.
It’s not so much that I want to create stories— I’m not a fiction writer— I just have words and thoughts and memories that want to come out. Instead of being pulled by paintbrushes and piano keys, I’m pulled by pen and laptop keys. The words keep coming. They want out, just like the visual images and musical notes wanted out. It’s the same thing— they don’t care where they land, or if anyone sees or hears them or reads them, although that is the ultimate goal of art, isn’t it? To share it.
The thing I can’t stop doing is trying to get the images, notes and words out— to self-express in a way that will hopefully have meaning for others, and just maybe bring some sort of illumination into their lives.
How about you? I’ll make a bet that someone reading this totally gets it… let me know if that’s you!
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Totally with you! Mostly.., But, I have the weirdest resistance to doing the things I wanna do like paint, write, shoot.
Unfortunately, even though I have so much I wanna say, so much I wanna express visually, I don’t have that thing where a lot of artists do that are like, “just try to keep me away from my tools of expression!” I am a world class procrastinator! And yet, when I do sit my ass down to pen, paper, paint, computer or camera, I completely lose myself to it! I’m completely absorbed into the creative bubble and the outside world fades away. What the resistance is about, I have no idea. But, there it is…🤷♀️
Karen, I am totally with you on this - it's not about making up stories (though that's a wonderful thing to do), it's about getting words on the page, self-expression, mining my depths for small, bright gems.