None of your business: a mantra

2019-07-30_07-22-57

Saturday morning. Nowhere to be, nothing to do. Reading the paper, talking to kids, braiding someone’s hair, letting the dog in and out and back in again. Drinking coffee.

A flash of an idea for a new project skitters through my mind. I see myself, on a morning when the children are all in school and I’m alone, sitting at this same table, notebook open, exploring the idea, following the surprising places it could take me, just like I did at Lynda Barry’s workshop.

A counter-thought arises instantly: What would be the point?

Virtually every day, this tiny interior voice of judgement natters anxiously inside my head: What’s the point?

This morning, almost as instantly, a rebuttal: None of your damn business. Just do the work.

“None of your business.” -Lynda Barry

I think, in some profound way, this mantra is the foundation of Lynda Barry’s workshops and teaching; it’s why I knew I needed to go back again this summer, to drink from her clean, clear well of wisdom. You can waste a lot of time not making the perfect thing you think you should be making. “At a certain point, the question of good or bad becomes obscene,” she says. Placing value and expectations on the thing you are making, a something that communicates in images, that communicates, period, is obscene. Further to that, it’s not up to you to decide.

This is a hard lesson to absorb. And ever-useful.

What is this thing I’m making? What does it mean? What does it matter? Is it good? Do I like it?

None of your business. None of your damn business.

The thing you’re making is its own separate entity. It’s not you. It’s alive in its own way. And it can only exist if you make it. So make the flawed something that wants to made. Get out of your own way. What’s the point? None of your business. Repeat as often as needed.

xo, Carrie

I've been away
Silence is the presence of everything

2 Comments

  1. Amy

    Incredibly helpful perspective as ever — for writing, for life. Thank you.

    Reply

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