Have you changed your life?
Introducing Diary of an Artist, a new section as a part of Found Poems
Alright, I know, it’s been a while – I have learnt only now in the 7th year of enduring the English winter, that I need those wintry months to retreat, hibernate in the cave of myself, before emerging back into the world. I am more animal than my intellect has let me believe all these years. Spring has come, and the new roots I have been developing are ready to reach out of wet muck.
With this shedding and opening I’m now starting a new journey of creative discovery. Found Poems had started as a way for me to give a little bit of my energy out of my relentless days for poetry and art. The practice of noticing and and finding poetry/art ended up slowly moving inwards from the periphery to the centre.
My life has changed so profoundly since I started this newsletter that I felt the need to begin afresh. With the central premise that finding poetry is just the beginning to living it.
While Founds Poems will continue as a poetry curation newsletter, this new section Diary of an Artist is my attempt at documenting this period of remarkable change and transition that I have a hard time believing on the daily. A year ago my workspace was a lot of wires, external monitors, computers and impeccably designed furniture - a place where I spent the day looking at my screen. I was burnt out, chronically ill and felt like I was painted into a corner with all of my career leading up to this stage; a stage I no longer cared to be in.
The walls of that room are now splattered with brush marks and paint. Screens and electronics have been banished and there is enough paint, canvas rolls, oil sticks, paper, swatches and colour experiments that have now begun taking up the rest of the house. My weeks have lost the structure of 9-5 or weekdays and weekends - a flexibility I never knew I needed, as I tried so hard to get a strict work-life balance.
This newsletter is my attempt at addressing a theme I come across routinely in my conversations with friends, ex-colleagues and women I coach as a part of my coaching practice - of creative fulfilment. I truly believe we are all inherently creative - but the relentless routines, conventions and shoulds of daily life limit our ability to nurture that part of us, the one that most nourishes and fulfils. Over the coming issues I aim to share more about my discoveries and experiments with art-making and life-making and I hope you’ll share yours with me as well.
Now when I think about my favourite lines from Mary Oliver’s ‘The Swan’…
“And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?”
I can confidently say - I have.
x
sana
This newsletter has been a free resource that I have been writing for over two years. If you have over the years enjoyed reading these newsletters please consider supporting this work by buying me a coffee (or more) here https://ko-fi.com/sanarao
You can also support me by buying or sharing some of my art, sharing this newsletter, across your socials or forwarding to that one friend who you know needs some inspiration.
If what you’re after is some more inspiration yourself, I recommend The Sample, a newsletter that curates a new type of newsletter to your inbox every time, or check out some books from my curated Bookshop.org list.
oh how this has my Heart recalling Mary Oliver:
"There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time."
💙💙💙