Faith, creativity, being in the moment and stirring the universal energies

This has just come out of having a coffee with my friend R in Starbucks yesterday.

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At the end of August at the end of my contract for my summer job I decided to change the way I normally do things - to take a leap in the dark. I decided I needed to get a six month contract to support my lifestyle. To this end I started to search for jobs and contact agencies - inbetween I caught up on my social life (neglected for two months)and tried to get a creative project moving. So for 4 weeks I've been parking myself in my producers office 3 or 4 days a week - we with the help of Google puzzle over websites in Norwegian - phone people and in all have been working hard at every contact we've unearthed to get what we need for this project. Result bugger all. Of course things really are in the early stages and I'm still hopeful that something will happen - we have to keep on keeping on. Meanwhile I'm keeping body and soul together doing some freelance work for a friend. My underemployment being a boon for her trying to finish an important component on a project she has to make some headway on. But the uncertainty is getting to me, applying for jobs, not getting them, keeping going with the creative stuff with no guarantees. Then worrying that I will get jobs but then not have time for the creative stuff. You can imagine the onslaught of niggling worry.

My friend R is in a similar position. Former burned out silk painter she took a leap in the dark a year ago after doing The Artists Way with me and committed to a year long course to train to become a freelance photographer. She's just done her last session and all the students were talking about what stage their fledgling businesses were at. The course had a strong marketing element which is great. Many former students have gone onto make good livings but fitting all the components together and believing that there will be the paying customers out there and in the meanwhile keeping body and soul together is a huge matter of faith that 'everything will work out'.

I too need to just keep on putting one foot in front of the other and to worry less about the what ifs then whats and why whats which float around in my head.

In the meanwhile all my badgering of poor producer. Yes many of my meetings with S involve prodding him. Yesterday he gloomily said he'd applied for a course in high level training / networking which he heard about in the course of our international phoning/emailing but hadn't heard back and he was sure that he hadn't been accepted. So I prodded and badgered and made him look at the websites of the other courses available (I'm a strong believer that getting yourself out there is valuable and brings returns not always obvious ones). I left him in peace to meet R. Late last night I got an email from him saying he had been accepted on the first course!

I do believe that we have to go out and stir the universal energies. This has been in fact what we have been doing this month. The problem is that you have no idea of what the results will be when you do it. I know I've done things thinking 'this will be good for me' and they haven't where as others have had amazing results. By the way stirring the universal energies doesn't seem to be dependent on the 'upbeat positive attitude' thing. Doing it anyway - that application, email, phone call is the important thing. Doing the action and the mind will follow.