I’M NOT AN OPEN BOOK when it comes to how I view most things. Well, I am opinionated and stubborn, just ask my family, but I don’t often share much of myself with the world. I’m not a huge Twitterer, and I don’t do Facebook as well or as often as I should for business. I don’t blog often enough, or showcase my amazing clients as much as I my inner self wants me to, but my outer self busyness keeps me tangled in the tasks urgently in front of me for that day or that week. Despite all that, surprisingly, I am a writer. I love to write and journal. I am not so clear in speech as I feel I can be when I write. I didn’t say I’m a good writer – just that I am one. I’m often inspired several times a week to write on topics that move me. From photography, copyright topics, art, or just something important that’s crossed my path. So many times I write everything in my head in short dialog bursts, intending to get to sharing it, and never do. All that to say that there are many more things that I’d like to share, but don’t – for lack of time (business stuff) or preserving my private life and inner self which I value dearly among the flutter of social media.
But today, I wanted to share something that came across my path that was/is powerful enough to move me into motion this morning and a wonderful message to creatives. Yes, watch now before you continue reading.
I may be one of the only people who read Elizabeth Gilbert’s, “Eat, Pray, Love” and found it more annoying than enlightening. A discussion for another day, but this point leads me into why watching this TEDx talk changed my opinion on who I think she is – post “Eat, Pray, Love” – and why I respect her more now. Although I’ve never had the success that Elizabeth Gilbert has had, which brings on the fear of never being able to “top” what I’ve already done, I can relate so well to what she says about being creative, fears that go along with creating, and the association of our profession having success linked to manically depressed, alcoholic, suicidal and oppressed artists/writers/creatives. Being creative is a risk. We take the risk because we have a need to express the ideas that move through us. Being a creative, then becoming successful from it, then having more life to live to create even better things is a monumental pressure to a creative person. The process is similar to life.
We are born (we create something new) – We change and grow (we go through the process of creating a tangible thing) – We accomplish life goals (we produce a finished piece) – We are acknowledged for our life successes (we put the piece out into the world for others to judge) – Our physical life ends (our pieces have been expressed, out in the world, taken in, celebrated, they, then too, become old).
Once we’ve created our best works, the question becomes what do we do now? The fear is the thought of not living up to our best again. Never creating something so beautiful again. Overwhelming to the soul of an artist, ending this life seems like the only way to start again fresh, in a new life. Must be why suicidal tendancies are prevalent among extremely talented artists. If you take anything away as an artist from what was said in the clip, take this: Continue to show up. That’s it. Show up. Do your art. Do your part. Live in the moment of creativity and just BE. The rest will take care of itself. Keep creating. A huge part of what makes me love doing my photographic art is that it just is….it’s the process, the doing, the revealing, the change, that make it beautiful to me. If no one else thinks so, that’s fine by me. I’m just going to show up.
by holly
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