How easy it is to forget

It’s very easy to forget your own advice. I mentioned in my last post it’s important that you remember this whole process takes time. As a matter of fact, I believe I mentioned that it 'was’ the most important thing.

Having my studio organized the way I wanted it and everything in order, I started painting last Monday… And painting more, and more, and repainting, and touching up, and painting again. I’d paint throughout the day and when I wasn’t painting, I was researching material for new paintings & drawings, updating my website, ordering a few items from Amazon that I needed, and the list goes on and on. It would be late at night before I saw my pillow and when I did, I was completely exhausted. At the same time, I felt like I could have been doing more. I’d occasionally find myself forcing some creativity that just wasn’t there. If I wasn’t putting in a typical ‘corporate’ day of work, then I felt I was letting myself down.

This is where I got lost in the chaos. Even though things seemed to be moving along, just not at the speed that I wanted them, I was working 15+ hours a day. Some friends that I voiced my concerns to let me know that any time I was actually spending on my art was ‘time worked’, not just the time I had a brush in my hand. After I realized this, I then started looking at it more like a football game. You have practice, scrimmages, film to watch, and all sorts of other preparation. The game itself is just a few hours, but a team doesn’t just show up on Sunday to play, go home for a week and then come back the following Sunday to repeat the process all over again. All of that work outside of game time is what makes both the players and teams great. Most of us are only concerned with the game and tend to think that this is what the players get paid to do. The thing about this though— they aren’t going to be in the league for long if they don’t put in all of the work behind the scenes.

In my corporate job, which I’m still sort of stuck in (in my head), I showed up at 8am, worked to 5pm, sometimes later, and then was on call throughout the night and weekends. My work was predefined for me most of the time, or at least the schedule itself, even if it did get hectic. That type of structure was incredibly easy to get used to and was nice in its own way. Now that I’m away from that, I have this idealization that if I’m not churning out product day in and day out, then I’m not being effective. There’s a lot of work that goes into a painting, even before the brush hits the canvas. That part is easy to forget. Great paintings take many hours to complete and lots of work in between things to turn out what you hope to be a masterpiece. I used a sports analogy above, but it can be anything, i.e. building bridges, a musician, launching rockets, etc… The final product itself doesn’t happen on its own. I’m reminded of a lecture by Alan Watts where he said “A conductor doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition.” I’d highly recommend watching this to understand more. I needed to watch it all over again just to put things back into perspective. We’re supposed to sing or dance while the music is being played. :)

I mentioned in my last post that this blog isn’t necessarily for everyone. Those that already have their schedules in place, their pieces in the correct order, and are successful or even somewhat successful already will find most of this boring. This blog is more about my experience and what I’m attempting— the mistakes I’m making (so that hopefully you don’t repeat them), and what helped me and what didn’t. I know there was a gap in between my last post and this post, but this goes back to what I described above. Now that I’m getting my thoughts and time more organized and working on a much more manageable schedule, I hope to update this blog more often. My advice for now is to slow down and don’t run yourself into the ground, thinking that only the act of creating is the only way of producing art that you love.