Wake Up & Find Your Creative Calling
Life really does have its way of sneaking up and smacking you on the arse as a big fat wakeup call.
There was I thinking that I'd finally made a decision. Now I'm grown up, I've decided, I'm an artist, pure and simple. I make stuff. I create mandalas to be precise from paper. Oh yes, and I write. I write about digital wellbeing, creativity and shite. I say shite because I write like this. Musings on how ridiculous I am sometimes. And then there's my day job teaching students at the local Uni.
Why did I take a day job? Because I needed to take the pressure away from my art. The stress of client work and social media was literally driving me insane. Now I can make what the hell I like.
Well, not quite.
As Seth Godin says in his new book: 'The Practice: Shipping Creative Work'
“The work is your client. It’s hired you to make change happen.”
Taking a day job means I lessen the financial pressure slightly, and the rest of the time, I can serve my art and not the other way around. I like Elizabeth Gilbert's reference to the mothership:
“I’m just working for the mothership, and I don’t know what the mothership is. I don’t know where the ideas come from, but I am a grateful servant to it.”
Making a Choice
Looking at all of these interests and commitments has recently made me feel like I had to choose just one.
Jack of all trades, master of none, right?
I thought I had to give up one pursuit for another, you see. Stop the stop motion to pursue paper art. Stop paper art to pursue digital wellbeing training. Stop the digital wellbeing to pursue a love of yoga. And so on.
Yet there's been a niggle in my mind all along. Austin Kleon - no he isn't the niggle - he just has a knack of putting into words what I've known deep down all along.
Why do we have to choose? Well, we don't.
Austin helped me straighten out my niggle just at the right time. In an interview with Ali Abdaal, Austin Kleon tells us about an inspiring talk by his friend Steven Tomlinson.
Austin paraphrases Steven:
“If you have 3 passions, you have to figure out a way to keep them in your life even if it’s only for an hour a day or week. Keep them in your life. And eventually, they will start talking to each other. What comes forth might not be a career, but it will be a life.”
Music to my ears.
If you cut your passions out of your life, you'll feel phantom limb pain, like an itch that can't be scratched.
So suppose we continue to pursue all of our passions? By doing so, they'll find a way of communicating and create something truly original in fact.
Don't Discard Anything
At work, I've been creating a series of stop motion animation workshops for my students. I hadn't made any stop motions for quite a few months, while I pursued my digital wellbeing coach training. I didn't think I'd missed the animation. It all felt pretty pointless, to be honest. If I had nowhere to share it, no one to see it, nothing to say, what was the point? It had no value.
However, after making the workshops, I realised how much I bloody love making stop motion animations!
For no other reason than .... well I just love making stop motion animations.
Like I love writing in my diary. Or making objects out of paper. Making mandalas. I love yoga in the morning and walking every day through the park. I love writing and reading about digital wellbeing. I love all of these things. And wouldn't want to give any of them up.
I do actually believe, even though it may not be apparent right now, they are speaking to one another. One interest informs the next and so on. Importantly I don't feel phantom limb pain and can scratch all of my itches.
Art is Sustenance
Making art has been my way through many difficult and happy times, and it's something I could never give up - whatever form it takes.
So this weekend I made another paper portrait animation. For "shits and giggles" as my husband likes to say.
The sense of satisfaction was immense!
Once I'd completed the animation, I came back to the house to get on with the Sunday night bath and hair wash routine with my daughter. We messed around and giggled a lot. I felt relaxed.
You see, instead of feeling irritable, I felt a sense of achievement. I had satisfied a creative craving. Subsequently, I felt more present with my daughter and ultimately a better mum too.
I felt sustained. I felt like I had come home.
Art is Vital.
“Our home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself...So that might be creativity, it might be family, it might be invention, adventure, faith, service, it might be raising corgis, I don’t know, your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.”
I don't think we should ever have to make a choice between our loves, passions, our art. For the sake of our mental wellbeing and to feel like a fully functional human being.
The actor Ethan Hawke describes the call to creativity beautifully:
“It’s a thing that worries me sometimes whenever you talk about creativity because it can have this kind of feel that it’s just nice, you know, or it’s warm, or it’s something pleasant.
It’s not. It’s vital.
So, if you want to help your community, if you want to help your family, if you want to help your friends, you have to express yourself. And to express yourself, you have to know yourself. It’s actually super easy. You just have to follow your love. There is no path. There’s no path till you walk it.”
Listen
However, you have to get to know yourself. And to know your self is to listen. Really listen. Get to know the twists and turns of your gut feelings because they have so much to tell you.
Pay attention to what happens in-between. In the quiet moments. Daydream moments. Standing in the queue moments. Moments when something or someone catches your eye, and your heart skips a little beat. That's your body helping you learn who you really are. Without the distraction of technology. Without influence from what other people think. Without other peoples messaging.
Following your love, your calling, your creative passions, they might not lead to fulfilling careers. Don't put that pressure on your creativity or yourself. But you may just find moments of:
happiness
contentment
flow
peace
satisfaction
The qualities the human spirit strives for.
Don’t Pay For The Knowledge You Already Have
Marketing people know the striving well, and they are continually telling us they can give us the answers for the right price.
What they haven't admitted (and deep down you already know this ), is no product, produce or procedure can give you what your essence is striving for. Marketing potions promising perfection or gadgets guaranteeing gratification is futile because they don't exist.
You know what you need - its already inside you.
You just have to listen to yourself; to all of the pieces of your personal jigsaw puzzle you love and let them speak to each other. That's the place you'll find yourself, your life.
And that, my friends, is priceless.
Have an inspired day
Georgie x