some breakthroughs ...

more zinnias, zinnias, zinnias - top photo - sweet & colourful lilliput zinnias and the view from my studio/office late afternoon - sigh

Fear doesn't go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.

Some breakthroughs ... arrive out of nowhere and often just when you've convinced yourself that that there are no breakthroughs a comin'. Yes, that high speed breakthrough train speeds into & stops at your I'm an artist (current fantastic project) station. Lots & lots of ideas, worries, colours, frets, insecurities & potential failures pile out of that train and bustle off into the distance with their bags, packages & parcels leaving me standing alone on the empty, silent platform - not a breakthrough in site. I turn, take a big deep breath and begin my long walk home realizing that the time has come, the one I've been expecting all along, the time I've known would surely one day arrive. The time that the important breakthrough doesn't arrive. 

Then suddenly ... I hear commotion. I turn around quickly and halle-freakin'-lujah - I see that plenty o'ideas, colours, plans, patterns, icons, techniques, more ideas & even much needed and crucial action steps are being heaved gently off of the breakthrough train and onto the platform. I jump up & down, I clap my hands, I do a little dance, I yell hooray ! hooray ! inside my head. I post photos of beautiful, cheery, happy, colourful lilliput zinnias for today ! this morning while writing in my journal having coffee in bed ... my breakthrough arrived, just as I knew in my heart it would.

Fear is good.*
Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. 
Fear tells us what we have to do. 

Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. 

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.

* it might be good, it might be really good in the end ... but it feels at the time like pure hell

quotes from The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield