The post of first sentences.
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve written the first sentence of “my next post” in my head in the last month. My favorite, which came to mind at the very beginning of May, announced, “If my life was an early 2000′s slice of life movie, this would be the part where you’d see a series of repeating mini scenes of me collapsing into bed in various ways to indicate repetitive, exhaustive days in the most efficient fashion.” I always got stuck at what the next few sentences would be. I’m still stuck on what these next few sentences will be, which is why I’m writing this post a month and some change after that thought first entered my head.
One A.M. this morning was about the time I concluded that I wasn’t going to be getting enough sleep. Nowhere near enough to prepare me for the 7:30am shift at my part-time job as a specialty coffee shop barista. Might as well chuck the eye mask and do the one thing I was sure I wasn’t going to want to do after 8 hours of serving as Saturday’s beleaguered cleric of the coffee gods: organize my Google Drive. Amidst the hastily titled JPGs and PSDs, I found a neatly labeled little PDF: “Brick by Brick: Principles for Achieving Artistic Mastery” by Stephen McCranie.
Past Lindsey had purchased this $5 gem over a year ago after seeing an excerpt on…Imgur was it? It’s rare that I thank Past Lindsey for impulsive purchases, but I was glad to have the opportunity to make an exception.Â
See, I’ve been in a bit of a rut of self and artistic improvement. My copy of “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People” stares me down every morning as I trod heavy-footed and half-naked into the kitchen after hitting snooze until the last possible moment. My copy of “The Artist’s Way” judges me silently at night as I sneak past it into the living room for another Netflix or Crunchyroll binge. I have “arts and business” articles sitting prettily on the Pinterest board of a fellow ceramic artist, on my phone, in my hand…
Somehow, still, one chapter, one article, has seemed like too much.
I admit, I – like many people – probably have some good reasons to be incomprehensibly overwhelmed by some 12 pages of Times New Roman. Going through my 20′s was complicated enough before the death of my sister from an accidental opioid overdose introduced a level of “shit getting turned on it’s head” that took my life from Renoir to Goya overnight.
In the aftermath of something like that, yeah, your idea of what a realistic goal is changes a bit. I can’t tell you what an achievement it was the first time I did laundry and put it all away in the same day.Â
Whether it’s a single life-altering event, a day-to-day fight for mental health, or good old fashioned self-doubt, there are so many things that stand like snarky sphinxes between where we are and where we want to be.
Maybe it takes inconveniently-timed insomnia to hit the GO button when you feel like you have no logical reason not to do something you know will help. Maybe, as I read in the witty, concise, and honest comic that is “Brick by Brick”, it’s about finding the smallest possible bite you know you can chew. I think it’s also a bit of that elusive thing called timing: something about the ways I’ve struggled and grown between now and when I first saw that excerpt made the messages in Brick by Brick resonate with me the way they did last night – both for my personal growth and my growth as an artist.
Maybe if I’d read this comic when Past Lindsey bought it, I could have skipped some of the trouble. But maybe now I have more reasons to remember what it has to say.
I always get stuck at what my ending statement will be. I’m still stuck on what the ending statement will be.
Perhaps I’ll simply conclude with a tribute to the man who has graced innumerable birthdays, first days of school, and graduations with his eternal words…
“And when you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind…
Oh, the places you’ll go.”
