“Coffee and Milk,” (conte, and pastel drawing), Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008   

The weeks have passed quickly and as I have been focused on getting my art out of the studio and into the experiment of having it be bought by real people, the task of putting together blog entries has fallen off the list.

The simple act of drawing, sketching, searching for inspiration, and playing with colored pastels has been inundated with business plans and annual budget projections and meeting with bankers and merchant vendors and weekly market managers. In the beginning, I became impatient with these “business” chores, as they seemed like distractions, disengaging me from the act of actually pursuing art.

And yet the mere act of attempting to plan out the next year, the act of calling bankers (who are not stiff or unapproachable at all, by the way), and the act of interacting with other businesses has allowed me to begin to tweak my own business plan. The simple act of exchanging ideas, of being forced to talk to people about what I do, and what I’m thinking of doing, has allowed me to bloom as an artist.

I am realizing that this journey of attaining my own creativity is taking me through a complete, circular revamp of myself. It is showing me pieces of who I may yet become, of who I was and have lost, and of whom I am today. It is showing me not to be afraid, or to be afraid for a minute and then push forward. It is pushing me to attempt to drop in on chamber of commerce network mixers (I’m still working on my fear of that one).

And every day, it is forcing me to identify and respect myself, as I sell my creations to the world. It is giving me the confidence to allow my customers to see my art through their own eyes, to interpret it through their own experiences. It is a quiet interchange, between these customers and myself. I have stood quietly, seeing men and women look through my stack of greeting cards, and look again, and pull cards out and think, put them aside, and keep looking. Sometimes these customers are kind enough to share with me the reason for their choices. These conversations have become part of a thread that adds to my own art, my own journey.

And I find myself craving these days when I drive to the weekly markets, set up my booth, and await these customers. I eagerly await a new face that will share with me a story that I have never heard before, a story that will inspire me to keep going, to keep creating. Their stories will become part of my story, and it keeps going and going, in a path that will survive for years, for generations.

This is something I never planned to achieve, this comfort in facing potential customers. I have grown comfortable in the fact that people will keep walking by my booth without a second look. That is okay. I have grown confident in my own work, and realize that my history, my memories, my interpretation of the details of life, have found compatriots. This is okay too.

It is with that confidence, small as it may be at the beginning of this journey, that I tackle all the other harsher realities of being in business. Yet I am beginning to learn and feel comfortable in the fact that I will always be standing on shifting sand, if only a little more comfortable than I was a month ago.

“Tree of Hearts,” (conte, and pastel drawing), Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008

It never fails that when I write or think about something, the universe responds and overwhelms me with support and information about the same topic I’ve thought of. So in response to my latest blog entry, the universe has provided me with this matching inspiration:

• The same church sign that dared me to jump in, this week says: “It is too soon to quit.” Could this have any better timing?
• In watching a little league game, I overhear a 6-year old yell out: “You don’t have to swing if you don’t like it.” We may be trying to force things to happen because we need money or for something, anything, to happen, that we go down a road that ultimately ends in disaster. Trust your gut – if it doesn’t feel or look right, however promising it might seem - trust your gut, even if it means letting what seems like a good possibility pass by.
• Creative Every Day has posted too very fitting entries, one about rejection and one that contains a very inspiring poem by Marianne Williamson that will keep me going daily.

What are you thinking about, contemplating, worrying about? What are the little signs, all around you, guiding you forward?

“Forest of Offerings,” (conte, and pastel drawing), Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008   

This week, I participated in three art fairs, and in each one, I met up with a person who was on the edge, the cusp, of following their dream. In some instances, it wasn’t particularly a full-time dream, but they were on the edge of either staying true to their personality or wanting to fit in with what the world deemed appropriate. In all three instances, I was more than happy to tell them to stick with their gut and to allow the world to see who they really were. As Luann Udell stated on her blog, and I’m paraphrasing: There has never been anyone like you before on this earth, and after you are gone, there will be no one just like you ever again. So, with uniqueness comes a “responsibility” to share that individuality with the world, in whatever creative form you decide.

In “The Boss of You”, by Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears, the “Personal Measure of Success” exercise asks that I write down what I defined as success (and what I highly love about this book is that while it has business savvy, it strongly encourages you to think outside of just making money and taking over the world). What surprised me, and what I kind of had known all along, was that part of my definition of success was encouraging others to follow their own path (even if it meant they wanted to be an accountant). In many instances, we all find ourselves facing a multitude of roads, and some are proven and tried and successful, and there are others that are unmarked, treacherous, and scary looking. If the Attaining Creativity blog entries can be a light along that scary path, one of the many lights, I will count myself successful.

The wonderful, and also scary, thing about unmarked paths is that each one of us will explore and find different curves and stretches along our journey. Because of our beautiful uniqueness, none of us will travel exactly the same path. And that is a beautiful thing, because it will make our story even more individual, a story that can be passed on to future generations and maintain its individuality through the ages. What we will share is the spirit, the daring of the journey. We will share the downs of spending days cutting down trees that seem to overwhelm us and the ups of reaching a clearing from where we can see the whole valley below us.

With technology that allows millions of us to share our stories, we can also find comfort and inspiration in how others are faring in their journeys. We can pass kindness forward and help others out when they are feeling low or uncertain. We can ensure that people know that they are worthy of success, and so much more, and that they shouldn’t settle for anything else.

I will end this entry with this: I sit here on a foggy, rather sad looking morning, after an unsuccessful fair in which I sat for hours without making a sale. As I listen to this song and think of the movie “Love Actually” I remember that with death comes life, with loves lost comes new loves, with mistakes come success, and with trying anything new comes heartache and smiles and an unexplainable feeling of delight. Ups come with downs, but the trick, and the secret, is that eventually the sun will come out again (as it is right now), and life will remind you, subtly, in the little details, that beauty is all around you and within you. Life will give you a kick in the butt and demand that you share yourself with the world. So, pay attention to the little details. If everything else around you feels overwhelmingly dark, look for the little light that remains. Follow it, nurture it, and watch it grow until the room is ablaze in fire. I know, I know how difficult facing that darkness is. Keep going forward.