My latest craze
Fermented kumquats. And an epiphany.
A 5-minute read
This week brought the sun and a classic car rally to the island (always fun to see), and the 3-year anniversary of a significant moment for me. But before I tell you what that is I should pre-empt it with a wee bit of background.
I have this thing that I do (Maybe you do it too …?) where I come up with an idea or find something that interests me, I get super-passionate about it, research and obsess over it, become fully immersed in it, and then for some reason, the energy fizzles out and I’m left wondering what just happened.
It happened not so long ago with fermenting of all things. I was big into veg preservation for … ooh about 6 months! I bought every book I could find on the subject, every possible size of jar, and every fermenting accoutrement.
I received wonderful fermentation-themed gifts: a box of glass pebbles to weigh down the veg, a beautifully carved and oiled wooden pickle-packer, and the Noma Guide to Fermentation - a seminal cookbook (although there’s no actual cooking involved) from the legendary Danish restaurant that has pushed the boundaries of fermentation to levels you wouldn’t believe - and have probably never even considered. After all … why would you?
I signed up for kombucha and tempeh workshops. We had a kitchen full of Kilner jars stuffed with veg bubbling away in various stages of decomposition. At night I soaked oats in homemade coconut milk kefir which I gobbled up each morning with a side order of fermented banana.
Lunches and dinners were accompanied by a smorgasbord of multicoloured sauerkrauts - which were surprisingly delicious and oh-so gut-friendly! I even started an Instagram account to share my fermenting exploits!
Then suddenly. Almost as quickly as the obsession began - it stopped.
Before that, it was a website built to offer guidance to people with irritable bowel syndrome. (I used to be a nutritionist so that’s not as random as it sounds.) It had a cool name, a lovely colour palette, and gorgeous images. I wrote a series of empathetic and informative articles with just a smidgen of Glasgow humour to keep things real.
Then pooft! Not interested.
I did yoga every day for 6 months. Then. Nada.
This boom-and-bust behavior is a frustrating and at times expensive habit. My dad was the same. Home-brewing one month. Classic car restoration the next. After a flurry of enthusiasm the bottle green 1930s Austin sat desolate in the drive for a couple of years, weeds growing up around the spokes of its wheels.
Eventually, my mum had it towed away. The manuals and the barely-used tools went with it and we never spoke of it again.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t ever stick at things. I ran a therapy business for over 15 years. I have various qualifications from diplomas to an honours degree that took a consistent and prolonged level of commitment to acquire. But every so often there comes along my ‘latest craze’. I’ve now come to recognise the pattern, enjoy it while it lasts, and don’t beat myself up about it.
So where am I going with this? Oh yes. 3 years ago, May 2020. Who could forget any month in 2020? But besides the world being in a scary state of shutdown, for me, May 2020 was the month I began something that, much to my delight, has grown into a consistent habit that I still feel passionate about.
I was just over halfway through an online art course with Art2Life called the Creative Visionary Program (CVP). Prior to that, I’d not long discovered that I enjoyed playing with paint and wanted to learn more. I had thrown myself into the course and was painting every hour I could - sometimes still in my pyjamas at dinner time because I’d picked up a brush after breakfast and got so engrossed that I forgot to get dressed. (Mmm … I can see now that this had all the makings of a ‘latest craze’.)
The phrase ‘I am an artist’ had never passed through my mind never mind passed my lips. But I wanted that. And I wanted it SO much that I began to say it - over and over.
Actually, to be honest, I didn’t just say ‘I am an artist’. There was a bit more to it than that.
Nicholas Wilton who heads up CVP is totally rockin’ a creative life. He has so much energy and infectious enthusiasm for what he does and from what I could see, unlike some artists, Nick wasn’t riddled with self-doubt or self-criticism.
So I reckoned that if I was going to be an artist I was going to be an artist like THAT - one full of passion, and curiosity, and love for whatever I was creating. So rather than going with the mantra of ‘I am an artist’ (my plan was to repeat it until I believed it) I decided to go all in, be a bit more specific - and bling it up!
Overnight I went from describing myself as someone who loved playing with paint to telling myself that ‘I am an artist and I friggin’ rock!’
This might seem massively egotistical and borderline ridiculous but just think about it for a moment. I was not saying that I was better than anyone else. This had nothing to do with what anyone else was creating.
This was about how I wanted to feel when I painted. I didn’t want to feel anxious, or negative about myself, my abilities, or the artwork in front of me. I wanted to be an artist and to LOVE being an artist no matter how accomplished I was.
So although I had started painting before May 2020 I do think of that as the time I ‘became’ an artist.
And, thinking about it now, maybe it’s that sense of identity that’s the difference between the habits that stick and the habits that don’t.
During the fermentation craze, if you’d asked me ‘What do you do?’ the answer would not have been ‘I’m a fermenter.’ I don’t know if that’s a word never mind a job or a vocation. (It sounds more like something from Harry Potter.) But even if it was I would never have described myself in that way.
It’s true that I was highly enthusiastic about stuffing veg into jars but stuffing veg into jars was not part of my identity.
Whereas ask me what I do now, or in fact, at any time during the last 3 years, and the answer will be a resolute, happy, and delighted, ‘I am an artist.’ Even at the end of 2022, when I had to stop painting for a number of weeks because my studio was too damp to work in - I was still an artist.
I used to be a clinical hypnotherapist and would regularly work with people who wanted to stop smoking. One of the main aims of the treatment was to help clients lose their identity as a smoker. After all, if you’re not a smoker - why would you smoke?
And the reverse is also true. If you see yourself as a being a smoker why would you not take a cigarette? It’s all to do with identity.
I am an artist. I believe in myself as an artist. Making art feels like ‘being’ me. It feels like I felt when I was a child and I painted and drew and made things! I never questioned it then - I just did it.
But I left school early, and went to college and the art teacher was a horror who quickly managed to knock any creative joy or confidence out of me. My life went in another direction but even though I didn’t paint for 34 years the next time I was let loose with some paper and paint and invited to play - it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
Because at my core I have been and always will be an artist. It’s just that for 34 years I was presenting as something else!
I didn’t start to write this to talk about the importance of identity to my art practice. That came to me, in a ‘ping!’ moment about 3/4 of the way through. I just knew that how we describe ourselves - to ourselves - can be powerful and thought I would share that.
The thing is - we all like to think of ourselves as being honest so naturally believe the thoughts that pass through our minds. Whatever thoughts you have about yourself are most likely linked to a deep-seated belief about what you are capable of, or what is available to you. And as we all have a tendency for unconscious bias your unconscious mind will find ways to prove you right.
So if that thought is (as it was in my case) ‘I’m just someone who likes playing with paint.’ when in reality you want to be an artist - that thought has to change. When it does, because your unconscious believes everything you think, (just think about that for a moment!) your unconscious will start to change your behaviour to be in line with that new thought.
Before you know it, you won’t just be thinking that you’re an artist you’ll feel and behave like one too! And as time goes by the thought ‘I am an artist!’ will become the belief that kicks ‘I’m just someone who likes playing with paint’ into touch!
Back in September when I handed over a sizeable chunk of my life savings in exchange for the aforementioned damp studio I did have a niggling thought ‘What if this is just one of those crazes?’ but I can see now that I don’t need to worry.
This craze is not going to wane because it’s not a craze. It’s the outward manifestation of the belief that I now hold about myself.
I am an artist.
It’s part of my identity.
And that, for me, is something worth celebrating!
* If you’re not on my mailing list and you’d like to be, please click here to sign up. It'll be great to have you with me and I’ll let you know whenever I publish a new post.
