Instead, Just Get Busy!

It’s week four in Scribbled Lives (a closed Facebook group with weekly challenges) and the prompt was one word – dragons! This is the year of the dragon, and as you can imagine the calligraphers in the group have amazed us all with their creative letters and dragon illustrations. I am not an illustrator, so I felt challenged and a bit unskilled when I saw their work and had not yet been inspired to create something about dragons. UGH! So what to do….

I ended up harkening back to my childhood, remembering the words to the Peter, Paul & Mary song that was turned into a children’s cartoon about Puff the Magic Dragon:

Puff the Magic Dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the Autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee

-Peter, Paul & Mary 1962

I wanted the dragon to be inspired by green, like in the cartoon. I also wanted to play with bleach. I created the ‘scales’ as a background, then wrote the green letters, followed by the word dragon in bleach. I splattered the bleach and the green ink to add a little texture. Not bad if I do say so myself. VERY different than anything else in the group thus far.

It can be hard to see other people’s work – their lives, their homes, their relationships, their appearance – and not compare ourselves to them. In this American culture, that seems to be the go to state, the state of comparison. The internet makes that process even worse. The challenge is we are comparing to what we see which is most likely not the full picture. We cannot hear the voices in their heads, the challenges they face, or the emotional and spiritual battles they are fighting. Maybe they are comparing themselves to us as we compare ourselves to them? So what to do?

First, we need to turn off our ingrained habit of comparing ourselves to others. The life we ‘see’ is not their real life, it is a snapshot crafted and composed for just that moment. No one on FaceBook actually cooks all those recipes they post, or smiles in every moment they spend with heir family, or have a clean, creative house every moment of every day. It’s a lie! We all get bed head, we leave dishes in the sink, grumble at our family and get stumped when trying to create something out of nothing.

Second, we need to focus on what we are doing right now and stop worrying if it is good enough. We need to give it our best and then move on. None of us are perfect…none! Got that? Put that comment into your head and let it play over and over and over again. None of us is perfect. We cannot deliver on what we THINK other people are thinking. We can only deliver with the skills and talents we have at this moment in time.

And finally, we need to get busy doing. Let go of the thinking and DO something, anything, even if it doesn’t look like what anyone else is doing. Live your life your own way and have fun doing it. Comparison is the root of depression and will bite us in the buns every time. We will always fall short when we give in to comparison, so instead just get busy.

Obviously I had to give myself this speech as I was comparing and falling short in my own head. Then I got busy, and it turned out okay. Now, on to the next piece…I encourage you to do the same. Instead of comparing…Just Get busy!