Sometimes we work so hard to achieve something and then when someone says “OK, show me”, we are suddenly plagued with self-doubt. Such was the case for me this week. I have been working really hard on being published this year, striving toward validating my life-long artistic pursuit. My journey has finally lead me to this mountain and I have been climbing it joyfully, filled with excitement, full steam ahead! Several pieces of my work will be published June – August in The Stampers’ Sampler, with a guest artist feature in August. I have been working with the editor and copy editor these past two weeks and it has been a new level of excitement for me. My other endeavor has been to have an article published. I love Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine for their personal articles. I always find new techniques and inspiring words to help me along my journey, so a couple of months ago I submitted a query letter with my idea for an article along with some pictures of my work. The editor contacted me and they want me to submit the whole article and several pieces of work. BIGTIME dancing in the streets from me! But, after my feet got sore from dancing:-) I sat down to get busy and the self-doubting started in. Can I do this? Who will want to read it? Just reading the bios of other contributors is intimidating! I am largely self-taught, no fancy art degree, just a life-long love and lots of hands on experience. When these self-doubts started crowding in, I decided to take a nice long soak in the tub with a glass of wine and a good magazine, CPS, of course. I thumbed through the latest edition and there was an article by Kelly Rae Roberts about Affirmation Collages. This was just what I needed to hear! The funny thing is, this is the issue my artwork is in that was inspired by another one of her articles!! So, I decided to try her method, every time I have a doubt pop into my head I would write an affirmation to counteract it. The first affirmation I borrowed from her as it fits perfectly, “You can never do this” becomes “Do the thing you never thought you could do”. “Where do I start” becomes “Begin today”, “What do I say” becomes “Say it from your heart”. What are your affirmations? I encourage you to write them out and own them. We can do anything we set out to do as long as we keep trying. Today’s project is going to be to incorporate these into an affirmation collage to hang in my studio so that I won’t forget this valuable life lesson. If you want to see this issue look under my past blog posts.