We do it because we love it. Thats how!
Here I find myself writing at 12:30 am after having checked my grown up responsibilities off the list. I’m Working during the hour that would be leisure time in order to get my newsletter out on time. Did I mention that I’m sick?
This little vignette is somewhere I find myself often. Frequently burning the candle at both ends to pay the bills, keep my body and mind right, to give the people I love the attention they deserve and do this art thing. Here I am both trying to squeeze an illustration out and compose the first draft of this very blog.
I think many of us find ourselves here.
There’s a part of this that feels insane to me, especially when I look at the metrics and all of 12 people read this? Why not just hang it up and watch big daddy with my lady? Why not cash it all in? Especially because we live in the age of entertainment and short attention spans so who’s going to read this? But I choose to be honest with my passion, my passion may lack a certain virality. That is a pill I’ve had to swallow.
What I want for myself doesn’t fit within the 30 second attention span that all of social media is trying to cater to, and maybe if I just bent the knee a little more, did a few trends here or there, did Inktober or whatever it’s called every year thing’s would be different for me. But I don’t have much time left to do this at the end of my day, and I don’t want to spend the little time I do have chasing trends.
Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes we have to work with no end in sight and even when we do we still don’t get the attention or respect we feel we are due. This is why I am writing, I’m not writing this because I’m discouraged, I’m writing this to reframe the goal.
I don’t make art to get people to click a heart button on their screen, I didn’t start drawing when I was four to obsessively worry how the algorithm is changing. I started doing all of this because I love it with everything in me, when I’m doing it suddenly everything in the world is ok.
It is easy to get discouraged because it can be so hard at times, it can seem like the whole thing is set up to knock us down. That the only way we are gonna make it is either by being in the right place at the right time or curating what we do to the exact specifications of the platforms that host our work.
Here is the big reframe, I am trying to make a world with my work, I want to make an ecosystem of my own away from all the rules of the road, and maybe that’s a road less traveled, but it’s a road I feel such a joy riding on.
I’ve swallowed a pill recently, maybe it’s that I’ve set the illusion of grandeur aside that I’ll ever break through this sort of glass ceiling into some minor fame. What lies on the other side of that is reality, I’d liken it to Neo taking the red pill. I can’t hold out for what I have no control over. So what do I have? I have the present moment. I have two hours every evening after my girlfriend goes to bed. I have the beautiful style and talent I’ve been so blessed to have, I have the beautiful people I’m so fortunate to meet through my art, I get jobs that pay me well.
What I’m trying to say is, we need to set the lofty goals and expectations aside and see what we actually got, because chances are it’s far more valuable than what we don’t yet have.
After all, all we have is now. now hurts. I’m tired now, I gotta pay $1,200 of bills coming up in 15 days now, can’t it just wait now? The answer is no it can’t wait. That’s why I’m here now typing this instead of playing Zelda right.
I’m about half way through the 1,150 issue One Piece manga, I am so enamored by series creator Eiichiro Oda’s tenacity to maintain a nearly flawless weekly issue output since 1997’. That is what I want for myself. There are two things there I highly admire. He has created a world for himself where he can do whatever he wants, and he has had the gumption to stick to telling his story for over a quarter century. His work is such an integral part of his life.
Now I don’t currently see myself making something quite like One Piece, but what I have been trying to get at since I made a commitment to making a monthly blog and newsletter, is to start teasing out what my world would look like. What would I draw and say every month if I have a magazine, and I’m starting to see. I don’t know where this goes but this feels like a true start to what I want for myself.
Pursuing our passion can be so unforgiving and often thankless, but I love this more than anything else and I want to do this for the rest of my life and that is why I will continue to burden whatever pain it saddles me with.
How do you feel about all this? What sort’s of struggles do you go through with your work? do you relate? Let me know
Thanks for reading.
-SMH
