💕Positivity prime time! Share five things you love about yourself, four things you're excited about, OR three people you care deeply about and why. Pass this along to someone whose posts make you smile💕
Some positivity is exactly what the world needs right now! Thank you for thinking of and passing this message on to me ✨️
I would like to ramble about Four Exciting Things, since having things to look forward to is always helpful as a perspective check for me in particular and hopefully some other people can find something to feel excited about too! ✨️
1) I'm excited to continue refining my art until it reaches a quality I can be unambiguously proud of. We never stop growing as creatives, but we do eventually reach a baseline of accomplishment with our craft. I don't think I am at that baseline yet by a long shot. I have a lot to learn and even though I love the process of learning too, I look forward to the day that I feel accomplished in my work.
How that accomplishment can be defined though is different for everyone. It might be a tangible metric like mastering a certain medium, finding a style, finishing a project or creating a certain piece. Even something as simple as learning to draw a subject that's always stumped them. Sometimes its something more ambiguous, just the feeling or the sense of getting to where you wanted to be. Or in my case, a handful of these things all at once!
2) I'm excited to play new games. Since joining the Soulsborne community, I've been surrounded by incredible experiences, amazing art, beautiful music, thought-provoking discussions and more that has enriched my life beyond what I could ever have imagined. I'm always hungry for more though, and I am constantly looking forward to the next new adventure our community will set out upon even while I repeatedly replay the ones we already have.
That said, I do have my finger to the pulse of a certain imminent DLC right now in particular and I can't tell you how excited I am to finally play it!
3) I'm excited to one day step into the world of video, streaming and other similar creative pursuits. I've been talking about this for ages on my blog by now and have hesitated to commit to any of it, admittedly out of pure uncertainty. The internet is already so populated with skilled and established people that it can feel a little daunting to try and step into that arena as a newcomer.
In general, in a lot of spaces, it's easy to feel like you have nothing new or substantial to offer. But it's the individual themself that brings that newness and substance. Every person has their own cadence, their own style, their own ideas, their own quirks and nuances, their own personality. By and large, those are the things that sell people on your work more than the nature of the work itself in many cases.
It's also important to temper your expectations of yourself. Success often isn't what's important; it's whether you feel fulfilled by what you do. The needle obviously shifts quite a bit towards numbers and engagement and success when your craft is in fact your job, and that is a separate, more complicated conversation. But if your craft is not your business, don't trick yourself into treating it like a business, much less one that lives or dies by the number of likes, shares, views or any other metric it receives.
This is a lesson I've been trying to internalise: the point of creating is simply to create. I'm excited to finally embrace that idea and to fall in love with experimenting for the sheer joy of it again.
4) I'm excited to discover. There's so many things to see, smell, taste, hear and touch. There's millions of new experiences I can't even conceive of that are waiting for us, big or small, thrilling or mundane. Discovering a new song, a new piece of media, a new tool to draw with, a new technique to try, a new food to taste, a new friend to meet, a new idea, a new hobby.
There is always newness even in a world that feels stagnant. I look forward to the things I don't even know I am looking forward to yet. I think there is something very comforting in knowing that, inevitably, something new will come along to enrich our lives even in the smallest of ways, and it can happen today, tomorrow, next week or next year. The unknown can be full of frightening things, but it is equally filled with exciting ones. Even when I feel my worst, I try to remind myself to be excited for the little mysteries.