I am back to Portland in a couple hours. The world is feeling small. I have to do something I am not good at, make connections. I am unsocial for all the wrong reasons. I think my overly perfectionist brain does not know how to simply make light conversation. It is always pondering intent and word usage. As if i am incapable of relaxing and letting the interaction flow through it's natural course. Once I know someone this is not a problem. But that is not helpful to me now. Maybe it is the writer in me, always trying to craft the dialogue, or that fool who is thinking there is a right thing to say. A perfect line or word. I must say my desire for perfection has been one of my greatest enemies in life. I have thought of and begun literally hundreds of projects. And so few of them have been brought in to fruition, because they are never good enough. Of course I cannot understand all the angles. I can see many ways in which my obsessive concern for detail has held me back creatively, but i do not know the ways in which the very same traits have behooved my creative process, or are possibly at the very root of it. That is something I feel strongly about, Understanding that all our strengths are also our weaknesses. That there is a reason why we are all so different, because to solve difficult problems we need an ability to look at the question from many different perspectives. Ultimately variety is life.
I feel like my last blog was a failure. I do not think I am really capturing the story of our times, and the struggle of elevating ones beliefs and dreams above monetary success or even survival really. To dare to live a dream. Maybe I should try again, or maybe I have not fleshed out my own thoughts enough to really know what I am saying.
Ok, let's take this from the top. I have drawn and painted my entire life, or since I was six or seven. I n many ways I did not recognize how much it was part of who i was until recently. I knew that I was good at drawing and painting, I received praise. I knew that I enjoyed it. But it was not until I went out into the world and did any job I could find that I actually realized how much focus, how much centered and driven peace I felt while creating art that I started to acknowledge that paint was who I was. That there was a place in my brain that was more alert, more at ease, and more alive while I created art then at any other time in my life. I realized I could not live without drawing and painting. I think at the same time in began to dawn on me that freedom meant being yourself, and I started an aggressive campaign to achieve self expression. In my entire life I can not make all the art I wish to. And so I jumped into living as an artist.
That said I approach things in my own style. It is easy for me to sit in front of a canvas for eight hours. While it is much harder to sit in front of a computer for eight minutes. I am a horrible salesman, I don't want someone to buy something unless they want it. I t just seems like a lie if the purchaser does not truly value what they buy. My attitude has to change, and soon. Not that I want to transform into a cut throat salesman, but that I need to find a way to survive. To maintain my life as an artist, and eventually be able to pay for a home that does not have wheels.
First I had to recognize myself as an artist. Then I had to prove myself to the world and be seen as an artist on the outside. Now, I need to make it work for me. I need to play the game for high stakes. My ability to be who I am.
This perspective makes me feel a certain amount of daily drama. Living in a bus and dealing with cops, and people that are perturbed by my existence makes me feel daily drama. Working every day at art and receiving daily praise while still being completely broke makes me feel daily drama. Just being on the fringe of society while actively doing what I love brings that tension to the forefront. And then, feeling condemned for not approaching life with a basic greed and sole financial concern continues the essence of my story. That's where i am coming from. Who knows where i am going.
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