Sharika Roland

Write it down

Life is so brief. What do you leave behind that’s really something. Things are ok but what you learned is better.
I wish I had a book of thoughts that my parents and grandparents had written down. I wish I knew them that way instead of how briefly we really talked about big things. That’s really why I’m writing this blog It’s for my children and grandchildren. Well I only had one child but he got married so I consider his wife my child too . They had two children and how life is you really don’t spend a lot of time talking but you can write.
Write it down because you will forget you will forget all the little things .
The past eleven years have little things recorded .
It doesn’t have to be big things that matter.
life is mostly tiny moments of insight,

You can write it down for you also . It’s fun to see how our thinking changes with new experiences . I don’t know if you have total recall, but I sure can’t remember most things , especially the little sweet things. Glimpses and insights that God mercifully gives you .
Each life is breathtaking in the grand scheme of things and it is so easy to forget it even happened .
But you can write it down and capture a little of that gift each day . You can put that day in a little picture frame of words and go back and visit it again .
It’s something only you can do. It’s something only you can know and it’s something only you can give .

I was the weirdest kid to have been raised by normal parents. You’d have thought I was raised by gypsies or actors or at least hippies but I was not. When I was six, I decided to have shows and I would get neighbor kids to “perform “ acts. We would have no starting idea. We would just start acting. Singing , Dancing and telling jokes. Like a variety show. I was 6 and unfortunately for my younger siblings and neighborhood kids they had to play too whether they wanted to or not.
We would sell tickets for a nickle for this fabulous show. Oh yes.
I remember my Parents would come to the shows and the neighborhood parents and unfortunate children who thought this would be fun.
I was 6 . But it got worse than that because I also acted like that when I was 18. I went to the Paramount in Seattle and marched in and talked to some guy who was there and informed him that I was going to do Absurd Ballet in America. I did not know what that was but I thought I would create it as I went. I put an ad in the newspaper looking for dancers who wanted to create something new. I got a few responses from people that I probably shouldn’t be hanging around with.
it seemed to me that if you just get an idea you should do it. Like the idea was directional and you should obey it.
Now , looking back it is amazing that I did not get into all kinds of trouble but somehow nothing bad happened to me .
This brings up the question about which ideas are good and which are flat out bad because sometimes a seemingly at first glance stupid idea can lead to something miraculous .
As a creative my job is create and that can be a messy and sometimes silly thing.
When I was in California I went to college at a community college in Oakland. I had a free career counselor . He asked me what I wanted to major in. I said poetry. Haha he said why don’t you go into acting because you are pretty. So I took an acting class. Yuk all the people were so crazy( as if I was totally normal) and that’s when I started being a painter. See how that worked. Totally rational . Here is the thing I’m glad I did every weirdo thing just to see what would happen and now that I’m old I think I should up the anti and just see what happens . You never know something good might happen .

After working for 6 months on the inside of the garage turned studio we are done .
and everything is different that our first plan.
I had a couch recovered to go into my new wild studio and after I got it back it didn’t work in the new space

I don’t know how any interior designer actually does a story board. Yes here’s one idea but then along the way better ideas evolved , that must happen all the time to designers. Those tv shows make it look so easy , but it’s a process.
With the studio done it is minimalist and clean and it will want to different paintings. A completely different style ,

I will give the studio what it wants. I will do what I need to do .
And it is scary and I don’t know why .
is the caterpillar afraid to go into a cocoon for fear of what comes out. No he just does it because of compulsion.
Oddly as it sounds I’m doing the same thing .
but here is the reality. If it was somebody else I’d be cheering them on but I’m aware of me so that’s something to get over.
it’s been my experience that feeling scared us not self preservation but the fear of pain.
what possible pain could there be in painting something new, fear of rejection ?

That should be so low on the reasons you don’t do something.. That should be the lowest rung on the ladder.
But sometimes that’s the hardest to overcome .
you just have to do it .