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It takes me so long to complete a page…

I took the photo using my iPhone, so please excuse the quality.

I have trouble writing irregularly but still neatly. I tried anyway and a temperamental brush helped too.

I also found these lovely scrapbook paper at a store just a few streets away - yay! - and I've been fighting my squeamishness at actually cutting the pretty paper for days before I finally got those pieces on the page.

Do you have trouble deconstructing existing pieces of art (even something as small as a piece of patterened paper) to incorporate into your own pages? I guess this has something to do with my insecurity, with believing that another person's artwork was better than anything I could pull off.

But an art journal is a place me to explore techniques, to expand myself and my creativity. I should grit my teeth and let go (sounds contradictory?). But even though I can logically understand this argument, it is still a struggle for me to actually act on it, to believe in myself.

Have any of you watched Sucker Punch? It was only a "pretty movie" at best, but there was one line in it that stuck in my mind, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."

That line relates to my struggles in a way; I am still trying to find out what I stand for, what I'm trying to get across. Am I creating pages to put down my own emotions and recording my own mental growth? Am I writing down words of wisdom for future generations to come? Or does it all just come down to my desire to create pretty pages to show off to the world at large?

My mind is unsure of the answer to these questions, or to what the question actually is; does it matter in the end? Or does it all relate back to what kind of person I am, what I stand for.

Perhaps the art journal is to help me figure this all out. If I let it.