Three Pesky P's

There are lots of pesky "P" words that can really throw a person off track. Pessimism, procrastination, preoccupation, are just a few of the ones that jump to mind, but the ones that really mess me up are planning,  patience, and perfectionism.  They seem so harmless.  They may even feel like attributes and skills for which one should strive. >> Pause- don't start "shoulding" on yourself.  You know what I mean "I should be more patient."  "I should plan better." "I should be more perfect." "I should not have eaten the entire box of tagalongs that was my victory prize for completing the 5k for the cookies in less than a week's time..." (in my defense there's only like twelve to a box so that's like 2 cookies a day for 6 days... if you ration them).  Shoulding only creates guilt and then rebellion so knock it off.<<  Instead let's say they may appear to be skills or attributes that may be beneficial.

Planning:

Sometimes I think that I am not a great planner.  Oh, au contraire mon frere.  I'm an extraordinary planner.  Unfortunately, I start planning and I can't stop planning.  I think of all the things that could and "should" get done or be accounted for before making a move.  I start to anticipate every possible detail and then... >>poof<<! It's like my brain explodes and suddenly I'm overwhelmed and near out of time.  In all my planning I've lost sight of the bigger picture and I've lost motivation to act.  Dear me, I've lost so much time in planning that I barely have time to get the plan done!  Who's with me?!  So for the next few decisions I wing it.  Then the pendulum swings back towards the middle, until the next time I realize how great things can be when you plan for them.... 

Planning can be detrimental to my creative process.  Holding too tightly to a plan leaves no room to embrace "happy accidents" until a simple 'mistake' becomes an irreversible and devastating derailment.  Sometimes the plan in my head is too extravagant to bring to fruition on the page or canvas; instead of using it as a guideline I could easily become overly frustrated and the half-completed project sits abandoned, shamed under a pile in my studio.  

Lesson learned: keep it simple and (sometimes literally) go with the flow.

Application:  I planned to write about all three of my pesky p's in this post, but something's come up and I'll have to tackle perfectionism and patience another day.

Toodles!