Up: [[Values]] Related: [[Attention]] Created: 2025-06-05 Updated: 2026-03-11 > [!Orbit] Ian Roberts in *Creative Authenticity: 16 principles to clarify and deepen your artistic vision* > Focus your attention on what caught your attention in the first place. Respond to what is yours. Your truth. It doesn’t matter the subject matter, or the style. You must strip the thing back to the basics of what you feel about your response. What is the kernel here that you want to express? Get to the foundation and then build it back up. (p. 157) While he’s talking specifically about painting, Roberts’ advice applies to every mode of self-expression. Of course, he recognizes that this is not easy. *It takes expertise to strip everything away to reveal the vision. That’s what takes a lifetime.* (p. 136) I think what’s needed is a particular kind of attention that only comes, at least for me, from a simple life. Joe Landwehn is an astrologer who trained as a psychotherapist. When he read my chart, he said > [!Orbit] Joe Landwehn > What you want is an abiding sense of peace and contentment, a quiet joy that needs nothing external to fuel it, a sense of spaciousness and able to be fully present in the moment; a stillness that deepens and expands as you relax into it. You have always been reaching for the wholeness of your being and for a place of stillness as your ultimate destination. That’s why I find the concept of [[wandertivity]] so appealing.