Friday, July 6, 2012

transparency

My head and my heart are skipping all over like an indecisive fly buzzing around. I am a creative person AND I'm completely distracted. Thoughts are like lightning, I have flashes of inspiration or direction- everything is illuminated and for a brief second I have answers, I can see clearly, and then the world goes dark again. The chaos I can't turn off in my head is like an insane electric storm, intense bursts of light flashing constantly while inspiring are impossible to hold on to. It's best to just duck inside and wait out the storm. The only problem that comes with that is in my case, the storm never ends and I'm spending my life waiting and waiting for things to clear so I can actually DO something and follow it to the end of the road.

Metaphors are the way I make sense of things. Thanks for humoring my expressions. If its confusing I apologize, this is the best way I know how to communicate what's going on with me.

Transparency.. someone thanked me last week for mine, I was sharing in a meeting for alcoholics anonymous. I've been going to meetings for about 9 months now, and what I've learned in the process is that honesty and transparency are critical and life saving. I have been really closed for most of my life, showing what I make up others want to see and hiding the bits that I make up they don't. The result has been an unfortunate double life, I've been alone because I don't trust anyone, and it almost killed me.

My art, my feelings, my expressions of self are crucial, as I'm beginning to trust. Being willing to try something different and have an open mind will keep my heart and my life congruent.

I realized that I haven't written much on this blog. My pictures have been the focus, they've made me money, gotten attention, and distracted the world from seeing what's going on with me. My photography saves my life and it also has been a major part of the wall I've built around myself. Essentially I've been saying "don't look at me, look over here and see this beautiful image that is a lie, because I refuse to let people actually see my soul."

Why am I writing so personally now? I've been struggling with what I want to do for a long time, I start so many projects online and off, I have so many ideas, I fly around and things changes from one moment to the next. I've finally decided that I want to continue to keep this blog, I want to be personal- it's not just a business blog, it's not necessarily a journal blog. Mostly I just want to be real here and have this be an outlet of creative expression as I continue to get vulnerable and real. Maybe this new honesty will show in my work and I'll go to levels I haven't imagined.

I want to write more, and I want to be okay with people being able to see me. I grew up writing my heart out but as I started breaking inside, I stopped because words share too much and that felt unsafe.

If nothing else, I hope that my effort to expose myself inspires you to be a bit more real yourself, and then maybe in this enormously populated world we can all feel a little less alone and a little more alive.

Here are two pictures I took in the elevator yesterday. They are a metaphorical representation of what I've tried to express in this post. I'm attempting to let people see me and look into my life.

Untitled and this is me being okay with that:
Untitled

- Posted from my iPhone Pin It Now!

1 comment:

Holly Anderson said...

Heather, I love your honesty. And it DOES all make sense. I think you have a great attitude. Thanks for sharing. <3 you