I went Michael’s the other day. You know… The big ass chain craft store.

I seldom go to chain stores living in the city, less because of any moral imperative to shop local (though I recommend it) but more because I’m lazy and am loathe to leave the five block radius around my house if I can help it.

However, when I decide that I need an item and I know I can find it at a chain easier than anywhere else, it always kinda blows me away when I go to one and walk in and notice that the store looks like every other one in the suburbs with the notable exception of having to go down an escalator to get to the sales floor.

I went there to buy some scrapbooking paper and cardstock for a bit of an art project that I have rolling around in my head that I’ve still not convinced myself that I’m capable of pulling off…

Hell, I’m not even quite convinced that I’m brave enough to even try.

But after a week and a half of thinking about going to the store, I went and I bought the supplies I would need if I were so inclined to actually follow through with my idea… but not after spending an hour and a half walking through every isle that store just looking at everything.

Somewhere in the middle of my journey I found myself asking myself, “When did I start feeling the need to ask for permission to act creatively?”

I was stumped.

When did I start feeling the need to ask for permission to act creatively?

I have no earthly idea.

There’s a table in my entryway now.

Sort of.

It’s not really a table.

It’s two subs (you know, big speakers that make the low sounds) encased in styrofoam holding up a piece of wood covered in a bedsheet that doesn’t actually fit our bed.

But it’s also totally a table now.

It ended up being the perfect place to display James’ skull candles and the blue fuzzy lamp that he brought me home from Maryland.

I’m still trying to figure out what I ought to do with the picture frames that we picked out of the dump that the church at the end of the street threw out… but we hung them up just to get them off the floor.

I’m really thrilled by the way it turned out. I know some people would look at that and think it’s an eyesore but it ended up being a completely whimsical solution to something that’s been driving me crazy for months… Namely, hiding those subs away.

I don’t imagine it’ll end up being this way forever seeing as James wants to sell the subs… but at least I don’t have to look at them anymore!

I remember having a conversation with a jazz trombonist friend of mine, and I had asked him what it took to be a good musician and without skipping a beat he said, “You’ve got to let yourself suck.”

I felt myself cringe internally, “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

That moment of truth was something I’ll likely never forget.

Unfortunately, letting myself suck is something that I happen to suck at.

I don’t know if I’d exactly call myself a perfectionist, but if I don’t take some sort of immediate aptitude to something, it’s hard for me to keep at it until I’m in a place where I can assign the adjective “good” to what I’m doing.

It’s like I have an inability to truly enjoy doing something until I feel that I’m “good” at it.

This is why I have attempted and then abandoned piano, guitar and violin.

This is why I went to engineering school instead of becoming a graphic designer.

This is why I prefer slow restorative yoga classes over fast paced ones.

This is why I dreaded the costuming aspect of burlesque.

Yet, these are all things I wish I could incorporate into my life and eventually be fantastically confidant at. On a daily basis I sit around and daydream about the day that I’m good at all of these things. These are things that I want for myself.

I want to be proficient at an instrument and be able to play it out and about.

I want to be able to design stunning websites in addition to being able to code them.

I want to be able to take a fast paced yoga class without beating myself up when I hit a sequence of poses that might be beyond what my body is able to do.

I want to do burlesque again and create my own beautiful costumes.

These are things I want.

That’s why my mantra of the moment is “Let yourself suck.”

Earlier this week, my lovely Little Blogger (from After Nine to Five’s Big Blogger, Little Blogger program) Mayra from PonderWonders asked me about how things were going with item #5 on my Life List… Record an album of my own original songs.

To say that it caught me a little off guard would probably be the understatement of the century.

In fact, for about twenty seconds my internal monologue was screaming, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Where did you read that?!” before I remembered that the Life List that I rarely ever update or even look at and for the most part can’t even tell you from memory what’s on it contained that little morsel.

You see, that goal is my most guarded secret. (Except for I guess it’s not because I’m writing a blog post about and well… it was on the list.) It’s that goal that I’m pretty much three-quarters convinced will never happen because I will become the great self-saboteur. It’s the goal that I’m horrendously embarrassed about. It’s the one that if you were bring it up to me face to face, I will turn bright red, my throat will start to close up and I will start stuttering and change the subject on you. Or maybe run away and hide in the bathroom.

If you ever end up delving into any literature / programs about becoming an artist / living an artistic lifestyle, one of the first topics you’re going to encounter is about what they call voice injury or voice damage. It isn’t literal voice damage, like your vocal chords still work and make noises and all that but it’s referring to that little thing in your head that says “I can’t do this.” and then spouts off a dozen and a half different reasons as to why you’re not good enough, worthy enough, smart enough, so on and so forth… End result, your creative voice is injured, battered and weak.

For me, there is no place where my voice injuries are more apparent or painful than when it comes to music. It is in this medium where I feel the most vulnerable and the most feeble…. and oddly, the medium where I am most desiring of achievement.

To move forward, I need to let go of the past that haunts me. I need to let go of the fear of asking for help, the fear of rejection, the fear of being seen for who I truly am. It burdens me and frightens me.

I am primarily a vocalist and a lyricist. I know how to enough music theory and how to play guitar, piano, and violin to rough something out… but not enough to really pull something together compositionally on my own. “Writing Music” in my world is being able to play a few chords and maybe rough out a melody line.

For those of you who aren’t musically inclined enough to know what I’m talking about… it means I need to find other people to play with, I can’t do this one on my own.

And well… that’s scary.

It’s exciting and scary on that level that the idea of having sex was when you were a virgin… Like, you might walk up to someone you really like and say something awkward… “I think you’re cute so we should totally go back to my place fuck and make babies.”

Fucking in this case is jamming. Babies in this case are records.

And I’m a virgin, so like… I’m that person who’s going to probably freak out the moment I have to sing and say I can’t do it, and you’ll probably have to drive me around for a couple of hours trying to get me to sing Avett Brothers tunes in the car and I hope you have a car, or else this is going to take a lot of whiskey and rounds of Rock Band to be able to get me not afraid to sing in front of you.

Seriously, I think having an orgasm in front of an audience of strangers would be easier than singing in front of someone I might want to write a song with would be. (In fact, I’m POSITIVE that’s easier.)

That’s all to say that the life list item about recording an album of my original songs is… at this point… a goal on pause. Occasionally, I get the urge to push forward on songwriting, but then it halts. Little of what I’ve written has made it to the point where I might even consider playing it for someone.

However, there are two songs out there on the Internet that I did for a open mic several years ago. If you’re a clever googler, you might be able to find them. Or if you ask… I’m just too shy to link to them.

Do you have a dream that you’re too scared to commit to? What is it?

It was one of those days. You know, the ones where you blink and wonder where it went and when you go back and do a mental checklist of all the things you accomplished, you’re disappointed by the lack of things crossed off.

It’s not that you didn’t put your best effort forward. Because you did. It’s just that this day, you’d wander down paths that were unfruitful, trial and error and hours worth of work would result in no results because you were too stubborn to admit that you were in over your head.

One of those days that just ends sullen with a song on repeat…

“Stand up. Stand up. There’s a world out there for us,” sings Constantine.

You push through it. You put away you computer and pull out you watercolors and find yourself writing the words over and over on pieces of paper in reds and blues. Never happy with the way they come out. Tossing them on the floor.

Repeating to myself the words of the wise Josh Roseman, “Let yourself suck.”

So you let go, and just start writing the words over and over all over each other on a single sheet of paper to the point that it’s unrecognizable. It’s chaos. It breaks the rules of legible text… and yet, somehow in it’s unbearable rule breaking suckitude, it’s the most pleasing experiment of the night.

So, two weekends ago I ended up deciding to treat myself to a little “artist date” as per the suggestions of The Artist’s Way and I ended up going to TJ Maxx and Marshalls and buying myself a bunch of on sale scrapbooking supplies and paints with the hope that maybe someday I’d actually do something with them.

I ended up taking the day off today because James is working tomorrow and I wanted to spend some time with my sweetie, and while he was busy cleaning the living room I ended up deciding that I was going to give the watercolors a try. This is what I came up with.

I outlined lightly in pencil what I wanted it to look like, and then hit it with the water colors. It’s not perfect, but I don’t think it’s bad for someone who hasn’t touched watercolors since she was 12!