Or: How I Learned to be an Artist by Being Ok with Where I Am Right Now.
I never posted my 2022 reflection. I got to it later in January, rather than over my time off between Christmas & New Years, & things started to get busier at work - which was followed by a year with lots of changes and frustrations. It was pretty draining, though I think it's moving me towards some important growth. And my reflection on last year feels like a good touchstone for what I hope for 2024.
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I think I stumbled into my yearly reflection blog. I couldn't seem to find something that felt right to write about before now, but I was praying and I realized it was obvious. Gratitude.
I'm grateful that I'm where I am as an artist and a person. That I actually am doing art on most days. That I finish most of what I start and what I don't finish isn't neglected out of anxiety but simply too many ideas and too little time. That I feel like, if I were given a project, I could probably figure out how to do it, instead of just panicking; I have some ways of processing through a project that make it doable. That I enjoy art as much as I do when I could be sick of it or just made anxious by it. That I did a real commission and wasn't too excited about it but now I'm almost finished and it was a great experience! Challenging but good. Maybe good for me because it wasn't my go-to thing to draw and it was challenging, but it was good. I've come a long way and I'm getting to a place where I feel ready to seek out doing art professionally.
People always said "You'll never feel ready."
However, they meant we'll never feel perfectly equipped, with every skill and every technique and every way of processing through how a project might be done. Of course, I'm not completely ready! I never will be unless I start being able to tell the future! (hahaha- *how terrifying that thought is...). I couldn't handle my anxiety, so I couldn't finish things - so of course, I wasn't ready. I didn't have any discipline, so there's no way I would've gotten everything done on time - so of course I wasn't ready. I was only creating based on my whims, with no emphasis on learning and growing so I didn't have the tools I needed to work through challenges - so of course I wasn't ready.
The sense of being ready that I have now isn't about the end result being perfection; it's about knowing myself and knowing that I can trust myself when I encounter challenges to stay and not run. Really, it's that I trust God, that He can hold me together through the storm of anxiety. That His strength is greater than the influence of my brokenness.
I guess If I were to say something to those out there who might need it, it would be: If you don't feel ready, then say "No" to being rushed. Take time to ask, "Why? Why aren't you ready?" It could be simple fear and that you just need to dive in. Or it could be that you need to work on yourself first, to be a healthy person, to create out of a good place instead of a bad one. Keep in mind that you have time. You don't have to become a well-paid artist tomorrow. There are ways to get by in the mean time if you must. Learn to be ok with where you are first.
I'm surprisingly frustrated by how long it took me to realize all this and how long people tried to help me get "out there" without asking me if I wanted it or was ready for it. I guess because it feels like they all assumed they knew best without really talking to me. Saying "I'm not ready," was so easily dismissed by everyone as just an excuse as they wielded their "encouraging" platitude of "You'll never be ready, just do it!" It felt invalidating. And then, instead of working on myself, I tried to push myself to be the artist I felt people expected me to be instead of working on the artist and the person I was to someday be ready, to be healthy.
Being a healthy artist now though ("healthy," remember, not "perfect"), I know I owe to God. It sounds sort of over the top to say this, but I don't know if I'd be here if not for recognizing my anxiety for what it was while having art as a tangible way of dealing with it, and it is God who put artistic tendencies in me and equipped me to overcome my anxiety. Not that I don't still deal with it, but it doesn't rule me very often anymore. I can feel the symptoms of panic while knowing it's just my body reacting and I don't have to let my heart and mind follow along in its wake, joining in the panic.
None of that guarantees I'll be the artist I want to be... not in this life, I guess. To say "You have time," when you don't have the hope of Heaven is to say, in a sense, "Pretend you have time - because none of us really knows how much time we have left." And that's true. For me, however, I know God has made me an artist for a purpose, even if it's only for our mutual joy, and there will be plenty time for that in Heaven, in the presence of the Fount of All Creativity. When I say "I have time, so I don't have to become a successful artist tomorrow," there's a degree of contentment with where I'm at (Art is no longer something I'm trying to leverage to escape the things I fear), as well as an acknowledgment that, if not in this life, then in Heaven at least I will have opportunities to be an artist. I'll be given the chance not to make something of this world, but of the Next, to be creative in ways I couldn't even conceive of on this Earth, to be shaped purely and without the filter of sin by the Creator that made all from pure imagination. This excites me but also brings me peace. Peace, because of knowing that I am not racing against a deadline, that I won't "peak" in this life, that I won't run out of creativity, that someday I'll create freely in full safety with no worry of judgment & for the pure joy of it.
I don't have to be everything and all of it now, this instant, or else be a 'Failure' (...whatever that really means when we often learn and grow via failing). There is time and it is worth it to accept that time (& the challenges of being ok with being in that time). It is worth it. We don't have to rush. Take your time.
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How apt this is. Little did I know that 2023 would be a blur of tiredness and frustration that pushed back my art dreams another year. Yet I also know that I've grown a fair amount: I've improved with color, tried out new stylistic things, realized some of the hallmarks of my style, finished my 2nd paid project, completed a two-piece paid project that wasn't commissioned by someone I know, and made art more consistently (somehow!) among other things.
So what does 2024 have ahead? Of course, I don't really know, but maybe it'll look a little, ironically, like overcoming my fear. Yes, I make more freely. I finish artwork all the time now (a thing I couldn't make myself do a few years back). But it's so easy to be comfortable. I hope 2024 looks like putting myself out there in spite of my fear and seeing at least a little reward back from that - whatever that looks like.
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