Chelsea Swan

I have continued my pattern of defensiveness and avoidance and putting words into people mouths and teasing until I can see the frustration on their faces. I am not feeling good about myself and feeling quite unnerved and at sea. I am being encouraged to be more reflective. Not on the process but on the motivations. This is not something I am used to. I have been always just praised for doing work that fits the criteria. There is no praise or criteria here.

Apparently this is my own fault as I have made work about the self, the lived experience, my- self, and now I have to face the consequences. When the session started with the question of what autoethnography meant to me I felt that it was trick to make me feel stupid, to catch me out, to tell me I had got it wrong, to tell me it is not a worth trying to use myself and how I interact with the world as part of my practice. I suddenly felt hurt and sad. I felt that all I had been doing was in line with what I thought of as autoethnography and that if it was not clear I had misunderstood the term or that my work had failed to express myself or my ideas.

The session ended with the overall vibe that I need to be able to speak more about the why and what I mean and all that reflectiveness. I am not exactly in the best headspace at the moment with my health and losing my job and the trip to london coming up and the deadline coming up for which I have tried really hard not to grade hunt which is scary for me, but out of everything this is the scariest thing. The idea that I would have to be open or reveal anything.

I understand that I won’t get much from the creative process or my practice and I won’t move forward in my practice if I don’t give in to being more reflective in this way. I think I was just avoiding it or trying to get away with it. Hoping that if I say a little that it would be read into and from there people would understand and see everything I had been thinking. I thought I could get away with hiding behind the work.

It is hard to break the habit of a lifetime and not be defensive. My biggest fear is someone telling me it’s silly or not a big deal or I am a liar or I am stupid. Even now I want to be defensive and just say it is not fair to ask an unstable person to face themselves or their past. But That’s not really what is being asked of me. I set the requirements. I set the project. I chose the direction. I am just being asked to fully explore and express what it is I have decided to pursue. I am the one who brought it up apparently.

Maybe I just can’t help myself. I forge forward without thinking of the consequences. Much of my life it would have been better to shut up and hide but I have always spoken when I should not have, not only that I have ranted on, I have kept going past safety and got myself in trouble over it. I have always expressed more than I have wanted to. But I am always sure to shut up and hide when it make me feel uncomfortable. I have always got away with that. I have always been able to deflect and distract.

Even now I am waiting for someone to tell me that I am being too much, to stop whining, to stop being weird, that no one cares. I guess that is it. No one cares. I know they dont, why would they. But If I can pretend, if I can protect myself from ever having to hear that then I am safe and can carry on making. If not I will see it is pointless and I don’t want to do it anymore.

Good session overall.

I get the message and will try.