Shhhh I'm "Working"

Everybody wants the appearance that they're hard at work. I mean our thoughts are. They constantly move throughout the day. "A new study has suggested that an average person has 6,200 thoughts per day." -2020 article. So imagine the artist brain. So many passing ideas with very few actually acted upon. I mean really I could fill a wall of books of ideas that I've had. Where is the follow through?

I could be our fear of failure right? Our apprehension that our ideas won't be as good as our plans laid it out as. How do we know that? On the other side there is the fear of success. I've had that one. An idea being so great and beautifully executed that you seem to eclipse yourself. Well that sucks.

How many drafts do I have of this blog that I've just never hit submit on? Why not? Is it my follow through? Do I just fall short of greatness because I won't hit the post button? Or is it a deeper, more crippling fear?

Just to let you know I don't have the answers to these questions for you. For me however I know the TRUTH. I like creating. I like sparking ideas that inspire others. I am slow to act. I want it to be perfect. To be the vision I laid out and inadvertently my brain gets swept up in the latest fad or post and then I feel my work or vision change. I am over stimulated. This is why I imagine artist go on retreats and fellowships to create. To distance themselves from the main stream, live like monks, and create. This is why I am still not done with my "retirement" or "sabbatical". My bills no longer need my commissions to survive off of my art so I've pushed the pause button.

In truth I am "working" but not in the way we do for the gram. I am exploring, refining, studying, reading, and learning. I keep thinking I'm going to restart soon. All I know is when this cocoon falls I will have completed what I wanted to see not what my bills demanded.

Approximately 8 months later since my "Being an Artist Is NOT Enough" and here we still are. Look I get it. We feel pressure to hustle, to be ON, to work work work work work, but honestly ya'll I'm not running towards any project right now. I cherish my peace. I cherish my workouts. I love grad school. I love my job. I abhor the reality that the world is "re-starting". The truth is I can't work even at a fraction of the same capacity I did before. I won't. I will not. Why not? Because being overworked is a capitalist idea, because why would I, because dammit I just don't want to. Whatever guilt I feel over it, I release.

I truly hope peace finds you reader of these ramblings. I'll see you on the other side of this cocoon with new wings. What are you releasing in 2021?

​Love & Laters!