If not today, tomorrow?
With the following thoughts in mind, my hope for the next 10, 20, to 30 years is to continue finding new ways to do what I love. Right now, that is creating and sharing art. In the future I hope for that to evolve into something that would amaze the person writing and even reading this today. Whether that’s you or me, we won’t know until that time comes, will we?
After a year like the one that has just passed, it is painfully obvious that control of one’s surroundings is imaginary. The situations and places we may find ourselves in can change quite quickly. Predicting the future is not a worthwhile pastime. However what I have learned is that our own reactions to the happenings around us are within our control. We get to choose how to respond when things are easy, and this can affect the way we respond when things get difficult.
For me I began to gain an interest in both making and sharing art around the same time at the end of 2019. I started making art because it made me happy and I wanted to share my art because I saw that it could make others happy. I was first inspired to share my art after being a part of an art sale through my church. Being among other artists who were already following dreams of selling art to the people that would love it the most was a very memorable experience for me. It made me realize the possibility that people I’ve never met could take an interest and a liking to the things I had made. I wanted to continue finding people that could be impacted by my art.
My first thoughts were to place my works in public spaces like coffee shops and things, or to attend more shows and sales. But then, along with everyone else in the entire world, I had to adapt my plans and pause them due to the pandemic. This event in history feels like one that has already and will continue to change the way the world works. Much has already come from switching to an even more digital experience from a more physical and tactile one. Perhaps the world was already headed in this direction but it had to do so much faster. A collective realization that history is not strictly about the past but also a combination of the present. This makes the future an even less tangible idea. The present is all that we have in addition to the subtle promise that tomorrow will come and be any different. The reality is tomorrow will always be what it says it is and today is when history takes place and changes occur.
I am not the first to realize any of this but I am the first to experience it for myself. It can be overwhelming to think so far into the future. But if we continue to wait until tomorrow for the changes and things we want to happen, tomorrow will never get here. So my focus is on short periods of time to reach my long term goals. I am not going to set deadlines but rather check in on my progress and current status toward them. This way I do not need to waste time forgiving myself for not achieving as much as I thought I could in a strict timeline, but rather understand that progress can continue to be made. Then one day when I am my future self, maybe I’ll snap out of it and realize all that I’ve already accomplished. Until then I suppose I’ll keep creating and learning. Thanks for lookin’.