DAY TWENTY
You know those days where life hits you with an unexpected blast of social confusion, anxiety, or that awful moment when you realize you’ve made an honest, clumsy mistake?
Yeah. Me, too. I know those days INTIMATELY. *Gigglesnorts*
On those high-anxiety days, your creative practice is going to be easier to ghost. You might find yourself wanting to skip it so you can go hide under a rock somewhere, but that’s not going to help. I promise you. And expecting your creative practice to fix everything isn’t going to help either.
What it will do though is give you an opportunity to sit with whatever happened, take a few deep breaths, and let whatever it is you’re feeling flow through you. Terrifying, I know, but I’ve studied this and I practice it. If you let it arise and fully discharge it gets to *leave you*. If you suppress it, you’re stuck with it for much, much longer.
I came to the table today needing to shake off a massive dose of anxiety. Instead of fighting it, I decided to apply the antidote directly to the canvas. My intention was clear:
Adorn The Flaw.
Notice I didn’t say “fix it”. I didn’t say “erase it”. I didn’t say “banish it into the outer darkness and command it to never darken my door again”, though that would be very tempting. I said “Adorn”, and what I mean by that is “love on it”. Whisper sweet nothings to it and tell it everything is going to be okay, because true fact? IT IS.
I pulled out the gold paint (my cue to the universe that I need a little divine intervention) and went to work. I focused on the figure, adding gold to her crown and dark sepia shading around her features and leaves.
But the core move was this: I intentionally highlighted the figure’s wonky eye. I tended to it. I wasn’t fixing it. I was offering it compassion, using the highest-value paint I had to say, “Yes, you are imperfect, and I cherish you.”
When we make an honest mistake—in art, in life, in a social interaction—our impulse is to hide it, paint over it, or carry the anxiety of it all day. Adorning the flaw is a deliberate counter-move. It forces you to offer self-empathy to the part that feels awkward, wrong, or messy. It gives you permission to say: “I messed up. I apologized. Now, I’m going to honour the humanity of that mistake, making it a feature, a cherished part of my story.”
What is the ‘wonky eye’ in your life right now? What flaw, mistake, or moment of imperfection are you ready to stop fighting?
Don’t fix it. Don’t hide it. Adorn it. Center it. Make it soup and give it a cuddle.
Let it be part of your story.
See you tomorrow.
xo
Effy
P.S. Folks who are in my classes over on Into The Wild (my teaching network) or Patreon are getting video content every day throughout the course of this challenge. Folks who are subscribed to my YouTube channel will be getting video updates weekly or so. There may be stuff going up on TikTok. There will definitely be posts going up on Instagram.
Of course, this spot right here will ALSO serve as my studio diary, so I hope you’ll bookmark the site, and hey! EVEN BETTER! I hope you’ll sign up for the e-list, which I’ll use to let you know when a new post goes live. If you want the project PDF, here you go!