Awhile back I was emailing back and forth with an art friend about messages received online with negative intentions. A month or so before someone who runs another group online sent me a long rambling email telling me, “Hey I don’t want you to take this the wrong way and I don’t think you suck, but I don’t want to be associated with you, and by the way, you suck.” The way the message was written she wanted some sort of apology for an imagined slight, it took me off guard, and the tone in which it was written ticked me off. I collected myself and fired off a response. She fired off another long rambling email which again beat the dead horse of me sucking. I fired off another response and her another. After the 3^rd exchange I realized I wasn’t going to get anywhere, no matter what I said or did this person was always going to think that I suck. I stopped responding. I let it go. I let her go.

In my conversation with my art friend I suggested that my friend shut out the haters, block their email and IP addresses, give them the finger and go on with her life.

The realization that I came to today is that is not what I did with the person who repeatedly said I sucked, you know, for my own good, in a patronizing “this hurts me more than it hurts you tone.” I let her go, which is inherently different from shutting her out. I said my piece and when I realized we were never going to see eye-to-eye, I let her go.

Fighting with someone who wants nothing more than the fight is a pointless activity. It detracts from the real good that can happen and from your reality. Life doesn’t need to be full of drama for it to be exciting and full of wonder.

I did learn from the experience. I learned that if someone comes to me first spouting sweet nothings about how great I am and then pretends to be a friend that they can turn on a dime at some perceived misstep. In the end I did block her email and IP address, I did that first, before I realized I’d let her go. I have to think that the conversation that I had with her before blocking her was as useful as the act of blocking.

This negative Nancy’s wanted nothing more but to tear me down to build herself up. But why? Some might say she’s jealous of my success (I run 2 websites that don’t make money, um yay?) or that she wants what I have. I asked myself all kinds of questions immediately after the interaction what exactly had I done to incur her wrath? I wanted to know where it came from. I wanted to explore it learn from it.

In the end I wasted a lot of time pondering her words and her anger, wondering if she were justified.

I let her throw a wrench into my life.

I gave her control.

I took the control back and let her go.

What does this have to do with art? It’s the time suck, the time I spent worrying about her I spent away from art, I let it get me blocked up and upset. Online interactions can sometimes leave me  feeling grumpy and tired and sometimes I just need to let go.

Perhaps I've been going about this wrong.

Maybe looking at it all from the wrong angle, perspective or what not.

The question and analysis I SHOULD be doing is looking at what I've got and not looking at what I don't have.

I should see what I CAN do.

Rather than focus on what I CAN'T do.

See the difference there?

it's not a subtle or minor shift in thinking, it's a major shift.

Here's what I'm going to do:

• Clean my studio, yeah get it organized, I did that winter storage area thing again.
• Look at the art I really like doing and do it.- bookbinding, art journaling and painting. I like all of it so why aren't I doing it MORE?
• Drawing things from life (more on this in another post)
• Get back to my writing, this has gone to the wayside as I focused on so many other things.

Getting into that fender bender a month ago jostled my noggin, and not in a good way. It let me seep down into what I call the pit of dark. It's an angry lonely place. I blamed the other person, I blamed the road, I blamed the brakes. I said a lot of "if only" and "I should have's" and "I would have's" and other assorted garbage which only served to lower my head further into the pit.

So sunday while I drew my friend in her fabulous 40's vintage clothing (killer red heels oh my!) I had this thought that I needed to own the fact that I'd let myself slip and get into that dark rut.

Here I am taking ownership of it.

Now lets get out of it and see what can happen.

Paul wrote about his (anti)business plan over here.

Dale wrote about negativity over here.

I’ve been feeling the negativity. It’s a scary time. The US is at war, again. Japan is a disaster zone. US politics is a god awful mess. Then I’ve got the personal is political thing going on with my old HS deliberating a GSA group. Add to that my 2 recent car accidents and my sewing machine being FUBAR, and well, you can see a recipe for disaster.

Sometimes I get sucked into it.

But I look at the whole of my life and realize, I’ve got it pretty darn good. Sure, I need another $500 that will need to materialize, but I’ll get a new sewing machine eventually and the car will get repaired.

I think to next month and I’ve got an art show coming up and should have another during the summer.

I have to think that’s pretty darn sweet.

Paul’s thought’s ring true. I do the blog for free, yeah there are ads but they don’t bring in much and I’ve gone over why I have them here before so I’ll avoid talking about that again. When I started to screen my adds so that only comics, Etsy shops and a select few make it through, things got better. It makes sense for me to allow Etsy and artfire sellers to advertise here. ArtJournaling.ning.com is free. It will be free for as long as I’m in  charge of it. Why? Because I want it to remain being the best place for people to learn about Art Journaling.

And #10 on his list rings true. I’ve noticed that some of the blogs that I’ve loved and some of the other stuff have boiled down to schtick and are no long honest representations of the person behind the scenes. When I STOP being me on my blog, I hope someone will call me out on it. Point it out to me and tell me I’m not being me.

On her blog, Dale, wrote about unfollowing negativity. This is something I’ve put into practice. On facebook I went through a culled out the most negative people. People I no longer wished to read their hate and vitriolic posts. People with whom I felt only negativity. They seemed to respond to only stuff they didn’t like and sent out barbed comments. Unfollow. Unfriend.

Who needs that?

I realized a few months ago that I can invite negativity into my life or I can close the door on it. I’ve chosen to close the door on it.

Today’s Wordy Wednesday is late and a little different.

In my lifetime I’ve seen enough loss to drugs and alcohol that I’d never like to see it again. Friends in high school and college got into drunk driving accidents and died and later people from back home overdosed on various drugs. I grew up in a small community and my high school only had 400 students and 88 in my graduating class. Where I grew up you know everyone, people who were your friends and those who were not.

I got word on Monday that a guy that went to my high school and was a few years behind me died. He was a talented musician who was doing well with his music. He’d broken into the local music scene in central Maine and essentially he was doing well.

But, he was, according to various people I know and the news paper article linked here, addicted to drugs and booze. While I did not know Ian on a personal level, he was friends with my ex and I’d seen him perform on more than one occasion. He was a great performer and an amazing musician. I’m sad that drugs have yet again taken someone who had talent.

One might say that this is a symptom of a greater problem, one of the extreme amounts of drug use where I grew up. One could say a million different things. Right now what I’ve written is all I can say.