It only counts as a mistake if you’re choosing not to learn from it
Monday Musings
Here’s your mantra for the week! This week’s card is from my Cards for Creative Courage oracle deck, which you can get it here or here.
I’ve been wanting to write this post for the past two weeks, but life keeps getting in the way – as it does these days.
As I already mentioned to the backers of the Tarot for Creatives Kickstarter, it’s quite a ride, turning one’s parental home into one’s own. Add to that the (other) changes I’ve been making in my life, my business, my everything, and I can’t be surprised that it’s been virtually impossible to sit down and get some words down.
What has been surprising – to me, anyway – is how OK I’ve been with it. By now, I’ve accepted that I won’t be meeting the deadline for Tarot for Creatives, that I’m not writing every morning like I have been for the past couple of years, and that has helped tremendously as I’ve been navigating the mess that is currently my life (hello, Tower card!).
And I know this mess is going to turn into something beautiful sooner rather than later, so when I say ‘mess’, I mean that in the best way possible. It is a mess, both literally and figuratively. But I’m figuring it out. And it feels like I’m been giving myself time to do so for the first time in ever. To observe, to tweak, to go with the flow of this major transformation as best as I can. Which is probably why I’m able to enjoy the transitions as they happen, as things fall into place, both big and small.
Don’t get me wrong, I still feel rushed to sort through everything nine times out of ten, but it’s becoming easier to acknowledge the part of me that becomes triggered as soon as I slow down. I’m not comfortable with it (yet?), but it’s not affecting my actual pace the way it used to. I might feel like I need to speed up, but I don’t. Or, rather, I hardly do. Triggers be triggers, and this is an old pattern for me. One I’m finally unravelling, unlearning.
This is exactly why I don’t see the way I handled the Tarot for Creatives Kickstarter as a mistake. Yes, in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have pushed myself to launch the campaign a month after my mum passed away, but I’ve learned so much from that decision.
For one, a major reason why I launched the campaign in September – completely ignoring my intuition, by the way – was because I’d already postponed it once. It was supposed to launch in May, but breaking up with my then partner had thrown me off my writing schedule, so the book was nowhere near finished. And I don’t like running campaigns for books that are less than 95% done.
When I moved the campaign to September, the plan was to finish the book while my mum was in hospital and then recovering at home, so it’d be mostly done by the time my preferred starting date came into view. A great plan, if I say so myself.
Of course, that’s not what happened. Instead of the surgery going right, it went wrong in all ways imaginable. Instead of taking care of my mother, catching her up on Virgin River and Bridgerton and writing while she was resting, I spent most of my time in the ICU or on the phone with them, family, and my mum’s friends. For some, having a parent fight for their lives might be a source of inspiration, but my muse checked out the moment things started going downhill.
And my muse remained absent, through her passing on, the funeral arrangements, the stress of whether or not I’d be able to keep the house, the sorting through her stuff, the making room for my own, starting the process of making it my own home... It’s been a lot. It still is a lot. And while I’ve been wanting for my muse to return sooner (because I really wanted to finish this book and honour the promises I made during the campaign), now that she has – I’ve started working on Tarot for Creatives again two weeks ago now – I’m actually surprised she’s already back.
At the time, I didn’t feel like I could postpone the campaign again. Because I didn’t want to let the backers down I’d already amassed, and also because I was somewhat pissed off that the Universe was making it this hard to finish a book that 1) I’ve been feeling really driven to put out there and 2) that people were clearly waiting on. It triggered my dormant ‘let me prove you wrong’ tendencies, which overrode the inkling I was already feeling that maybe it was better to wait a few more months.
Of course, the only one being proven wrong was me. And what I’ve been proven is that doing something because you don’t want others to have to wait on you is not a good reason to push yourself. Pushing something because it’s the only way you know how to raise a fist at life and the curveball it just threw you isn’t either. What I should have pushed was the new deadline I’d set for this project back when my relationship stranded, because that would’ve been the best choice for me. And that’s the only reason I should ever listen to in my creative work, whether something is the best choice for me in that very moment.
There are more lessons I’ve learned in the meantime, but this feels like the main one. It’s a biggie, too, and I can only imagine how brutal the repercussions would have been if I had acted like a dog with a bone, hell-bent on proving I could do this thing while my entire life was being uprooted. What a blessing I’ve learned to surrender and recognise my patterns somewhere along the way.
Now to never repeat that same pattern again and only ever launch a Kickstarter campaign when the book is virtually finished.
If I don’t, and I miss another deadline, let’s file this one under ‘Mistake’ after all, OK?
xx Mariëlle
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It sounds like life has been really challenging for you this past year. I hope things ease up soon.