Dave Lukas

  • Weekly Review 6/24/24

    What’s been taking up brain space this week along with what I created this week.

    • Connecting with close friends. Always grateful for their presence and feeling seen and heard.
    • Reminding myself about doing spiral check-ins
    • Trying to give myself grace for not showing up as much in my journal as I’d like as my mileage ramps up for my 50k race in 8 weeks.
    • Reminding myself there’s only 24 hours in a day and how I’m choosing to prioritize my time to have training take up so much of it. That I’ll return again and in the meantime do what I can do when I can. And that’s enough.
    • Wins: getting to the end of another journal, running a total of 23 miles over the weekend, getting transparency and acknowledgement of boundaries, not putting pressure on myself to use the summer solstice and full moon energy “well” while still being intentional.

    Here’s what got created this week:

  • Weekly Review 6/27/24

    What’s been taking up brain space and emotional bandwidth this week:

    • Trying to notice and remember wins for myself cause I don’t celebrate or recognize them as often as they probably occur
    • Finished “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” book by Peter Matthiessen. Great book, eye opening and maddening.
    • Feeling some frantic energy that lingered for the day
    • Being inspired to think about RSS via a blog post from Chris Glass. Do I incorporate it here? Do I follow blogs that way? The way I used to in the early 2000s? Not sure yet, it’s still marinading.

    Here’s what I created this week, despite all the reasons I could have made to not create.

  • Weekly Review 6/10/24

    What’s been taking up brain space for me the past week.

    • Reminder that my energy and emotions fluctuate from day to day. To pay attention and be aware but just let them be and observe. Like clouds passing in the sky.
    • Annoyed at myself for circling on the same concepts. But are they figure out-able? Is there an other side to them? Do I need to move to acceptance that they’ll never be answered? Cause trying to solve them hasn’t worked.
    • The magic of re-visiting old journals. Discovering old practices and ideas. And reminder of the evolution of my artwork. But I have to keep showing up and creating for this evolution to happen.
    • Creating just to live the quote by Sarah Leavitt to make a “pile of imperfect things”.
    • Also reminding myself of what Lynda Barry says about creating to have an experience.

    Here’s some of what I created this week

  • Weekly Review 6/3/24

    Things that have been bouncing around my brain for the past week:

    • Not everything needs an explanation
    • Does this come from a place of needing control? What am I trying to control?
    • Reading obituaries to keep life in perspective and check in with myself if I’m living the way I want
    • My thoughts and overall flow feel dammed up
    • Trying to show up every day in my journal
    • While also trying not to judge myself when I don’t
    • Trying to question the “good enough” voice
    • Quote/questions from Sarah Leavitt: “what if you make a pile of imperfect things? What if your job is experimentation, exploring, repeating, failing, learning, continuing?”

  • Time Disconnect

    When I think about creating anything, I assign a time on how long I think it will take and then factor that into “do I have enough time? before deciding if I’ll do the thing I’m thinking about. The problem I run into is a disconnect on how long the time FEELS vs what it actually is.

    For example, if I think it might take 20 minutes to make a collage, I’ll turn that into what seems like 45 minutes, to which I’ll usually say “I don’t have time to do that”. Despite knowing I’m doing this and also despite knowing that a time constraint can actually help the work get created, I still let it stop me from creating more than I’d like to admit.

    I don’t know how to combat this cause I feel like I consciously know I’m doing it yet won’t correct myself or the make the decision to start the creative process with the acceptance that I might not finish. And that’s ok, I can still create anyway. Even if I can take it 80% of the way there.

    Hoping writing this out and conceptually thinking about it can help me adjust this time disconnect I’m creating for myself. I’m the one putting roadblocks on my creative process. Which on one hand is good to know where the road block is so I can adjust it, but on the other hand I’m battling with myself which doesn’t always fight fair and can argue in circles with itself.

  • Reading Obituaries

    I consider myself to be a spiritual person, but I can’t put it in a box or easily define it. I’ve taken bits from lots of areas and welded them together for my own unique spirituality that works for me. I’ve written about Taoism in a few previous posts, but one of the other branches on my spirituality tree is Stoicism.

    This isn’t going to be a Stoicism 101 post, but one of the core ideas of Stoicism is to think about your own death. Not from a morbid place, but if you think today could be the day I die, it can drive my actions to align with who I want to be. It forces a choice to do the thing or say what I want now cause I might not get another chance.

    One of the ways to do this meditation on my own death is to read obituaries. Again not from a morbid curiosity place, but to keep my life in perspective. And also going back to that alignment piece, what will my family and friends say about me? Will I like what they’d write for my obituary? And if not, then I have the choice today to adjust accordingly. And reading obituaries puts me in my place and reminds me I’m not going to live forever and none of us is guaranteed a tomorrow, so live accordingly.

    I had lost sight of this practice and as the universe has a way of working, I was running on the trails today and reminded myself that I hadn’t read the obituaries lately and wondered how I could reestablish that practice. And the universe delivered that today when I was directed to a local paper’s website which had obituaries on it. I had to shake my head and smile.

    It’s a practice I’ve walked away from without a specific intention to, but was grateful to be reminded of it today and to have a place to gain that perspective and allow me the chance to evaluate how I’m living and adjust as needed. Cause wouldn’t me all want that before it’s too late? Well, I know I do.

  • Weekly Review 5/20/24

    Things that have been taking up brain space this week:

    • Feeling stalled out on topics or reminders to journal about
    • The idea of looking at things and decisions with the question “what would a _____ do?” The blank being “artist” or “athlete” or “present spouse” or “attentive Dad” etc
    • The enjoyment of making a mixtape for my father in law
    • Do I create a set schedule to post or write or create? Like every Monday I’ll post something or every Friday I’ll share 5 things from my week. As a way to keep myself accountable for creating and showing up.
    • Feeling stuck and in a bad mood and then creating a collage to try and capture those emotions. And then feeling lighter after making a collage.

    Here are some of the things I created this week:

  • Collage 5/17/24

  • Forcing Things

    How do I know when it’s time to shake things up vs letting things run their course? I ask that question in my creative life cause that’s where I’m feeling it. Also with the hope that the energy in my creative life will spill over into other areas of my life.

    I’ve written a lot recently on flow and not forcing things. So the choice to shake things up can seem like flying in the face of letting life flow cause it feels like I’m intentionally taking action and steps to adjust the course of my life.

    I mean while I resonate with the Taoist wisdom, it’s not like I need to adhere 100% to it. There’s no rules. I get to choose how things play out or not, well to some extent, but it’s not like my life is judged by my adherence to any philosophy. Because I’m the only one who can judge what I do or don’t do.

    So if I want to shake things up, then that’s what I should do. I don’t have to sit back. The choice rests with me and I can also listen to what’s going on inside me to have it help guide me what next steps I should take.

    I think where philosophy can help is when I am feeling stuck and not sure what to do or direction to take. That wisdom can guide me or give me an approach to take to this season of life. Since I don’t want to be the person who just sits and waits for life to happen to them. I want to be in control and drive some of what happens to me. I can’t control everything but I want to have some input where I can. Which means at times like these I might need to act intentionally to shake things up and see where it goes.

  • Flowing In & Out

    The more I’m aware and think about life and the various things and seasons which run through it, the theme of flow keeps coming up which in turn makes me connect to Taoism. I’m no expert but have done a decent amount of reading on the topic over the last couple years and the ideas and themes can impact so much.

    I mean I shouldn’t be surprised cause anything that’s still resonant thousands of years later must have some info that applies and is helpful. Even though I struggle to totally let go and release into the flow of life. Which probably means I need to do that since the work I resist most is the work I need to do.

    But I noticed today being in a state of flow where the creative energy was tangible. I’m a bit annoyed at myself for not taking that energy and making something, but it was this state where I could feel like there was an energy coursing through me and it felt creative or that I was able to connect things. It was a kind of freedom to explore and try things out. There wasn’t a flash of inspiration and I had this vision of a piece of art I wanted to make, but it was this feeling my senses were more awakened and in tuned.

    I mentioned flow cause this is not an everyday occurrence. But now that the moment has passed, I’m reflecting on the concept of flow and how it just flowed in and then it flowed out. And it wasn’t in some great flourish or elaborate thing, it was just like the wind: one moment it was here and the next it was gone.

    Trying not to beat myself up about missing the opportunity to create while that moment was here, but it is what it is. And trusting the flow is part of the work and it’s also about not forcing things. To just let them be and evolve and change how they’re supposed to. Just like a river doesn’t flow water right or wrong. It just does. A tree doesn’t grow branches right or wrong, it just is. Same principle applies to me. To just be and be open to the flow and see where it leads. So I’ll put the win with the fact that I noticed this flow state vs being unaware when it was in my midst. And to know that the flow will show up again.