Great Expectations

The pressure one puts on oneself is second to none.
I don't know why we grow up to expect so much of ourselves? Then we beat ourselves for it when really nobody else but ourselves set us up for fail, and the impossible goal.

I spent so much of my life planning out every bit of my life.
I remember having short term, interim and long term goals and I had a clear vision of the things I was going to have achieved by the time I reached a certain age and when that didn't pan out I was devastated. But because I am bull-headed and stubborn, I tried again and again only to fall flat on my face and reach the lowest of the lows. Being from a family of overachievers , this was really a hard pill to swallow.

Recently, chatting with a friend over glasses of wine and smokes - listening to her wallow and remembering my own bitter sweet memories...I realized if we didn't set such high goals and expectations of ourselves, we may not only be happier but more successful.

Its a common storyline -people who became a great success, they really were not thinking of becoming successful in their chosen, they just wanted to do what they loved and be happy in their lives.

Not saying that we need to be all laid back and flow with the wind- but we need to loosen up on the expectations a little bit....maybe it will lessen the heartbreak.

This spread was created in the natural light and dark (I had power outage on Friday the 13th - in the slideshow you can see one photo by candle light which was quite nice).

I covered the page with paper napkins... painted it brown with some splatters of white.
While that was drying, I drew the girl and heart on the glued pages of my 1st art journal (which didn't pan out- but I love the thick pages in them and use them) painted them with dollar store acrylic paint. In the case of the girl I did some prisma colour penciling as well...The tear is in Sharpie believe it or not!
I  then tore the heart apart and stuck'em with some dollar store white glue.
Stenciled some words with dollarbin stamps from Michael's (I'm such a dollar girl lol).
Here is a picture of the final:

here is a slideshow of the process: