You are an artist.
You’ve graduated from art school, or you may be self-taught. You’ve done portraits, spec pieces, gotten shown in a gallery. Perhaps you’ve had work published in a major magazine or book. You’ve been a small part of a large effort that got a lot of press. You even worked on a project last year that got over a million views on YouTube. You may be a painter, or an interior designer, or a graphic artist that makes websites.
So why don’t you feel fulfilled?
You aren’t alone. Millions of people just like you wake up, have wonderful ideas, create stuff all day, and even ship once in a while. Artists like us make the world beautiful; if it were not for us, all we would see are concrete walls adorned with posters to get you to buy things with badly combined stock fonts. But for many of us, the process of what we do just doesn’t fill us with joy like it used to. Once upon a time, we would pick up a crayon and fill blank pages with entire worlds. Fast forward to now, when we make things without even thinking about it, and the end result is quickly forgotten in favor of the next project to pay the bills. Or maybe we aren’t even able to pay the bills… maybe we have a non-creative job that we feel stuck in, and when we come home, we have chores to do and then a few quick minutes to create stuff that we enjoy creating until we have to go to bed, only to rise again in the morning and repeat the process. That is, if we even have the energy to steal those few minutes.
Whether you make a living from your creative work or not, you are at the core a creative person who needs to be making stuff. And you need to be enjoying it. You need to see meaning in what you do.
If you have had any of those feelings listed above, then this site is for you. We will talk about the meaning of what you’re experiencing, the causes of it, and the effects. We will also talk about ways to deal with it, so that you can live freely each day, satisfied with both the work that you do and the result it brings. So what would that mean for you? Can you imagine it?
- Can you imagine a world in which you actually want to get out of bed every day? A place where you can be truly yourself, knowing that you are living out your full purpose in life, which is to create things for yourself and for others, to make the world a more beautiful, meaningful place to live?
- Would you like to be able to say to speak to others about the gift that you bring to the world, and to have an energizing verbal exchange about that work? To be able to articulate your uniqueness to the world, in any medium, not just visually, but also verbally, with writing, with music, and with any other way in which humans communicate?
- Would you enjoy being able to pay the electric bill, or make a car payment, or pay the rent with the creative pursuits that you enjoy every day? To not just be fulfilled in creating the work, but also benefit directly from the work itself?
- Would you like to be supremely confident in the value that you bring to the world, that you offer something special that people want to buy? That they are in fact, excited to be a part of? And that they are not only glad that they parted with their money to buy the thing that you created out of thin air (with the help of parchment, or paper, or whatever), but also that they are now part of your tribe, your story, your fanbase?
I think everyone is entitled to live out their true purpose in life. Some people call it a calling, or a destiny. But it definitely is something that you will know when you are living in the middle of it. And you know when you aren’t.
The fact of the matter is, you have an ability to see, to look deeply within yourself and draw things from within. As artists, this can indeed be a double-edged sword, because this same self-sensitivity can keep us withdrawn and afraid, unwilling to share what we find in there. Many of us try to hide it. Many of us also carry battle scars, or worse, and to explore those depths would mean facing those hurts and we are just not able to do that. However, I believe that the exploration of our psyche can be gently accomplished with creative pursuits. Whether we paint, draw, write, or play, I think if we are intentional in our efforts, we can sort through what’s there. It may not be easy at first, but eventually the healthy artist will get to the point where he or she can share freely with others, making no apologies about what is shown, and allow the meaning that’s locked in there to be appreciated in its own time. Which begs the question: how does one accomplish this new self-examination? How do we break through the barriers to our productivity and sense of fulfillment? Who can we talk to that understands our unique situation? I hope this can be a place where we can come together and share these questions and solutions with each other. Because we don’t have to be alone, living out our creativity in solitude. Loneliness and isolation only compounds these unhappy feelings we have.
Why not share with someone who understands?
If you are coming to the table with questions, please feel free to share them below. We are a community of mythbusters eager to dispel the resistance within you.
