Gearing Up for the Effort
I’ve been reading about writing lately, and a lot of the advice from various authors is that you need to write 300, 400, or 700 times before you get noticed, get traction, and start seeing results. That’s really gearing up for something big, and if you don’t have the time to do multiple posts or articles daily it can take several years before you really get there, which means you have to love what you’re doing to dedicate that kind of time to repeatedly failing or producing into the void.
I recently saw that in my town there is an art festival of sorts, where you can enter your art to be in a juried pool for voting and set up a booth to sell. How fun it would be, I thought, to aim to do that for next year! To dedicate to practice and experimentation with my art to have something good enough, novel enough, colorful enough, to show off to the world and maybe sell a few pieces and become a professional artist! It wouldn’t be enough to live off of but it would be cool to call myself a professional artist for having sold some art. It doesn’t have to be objectively good, it just has to build a connection with someone. And I think I can make something people want to connect with.
Having that goal of something to look forward to fills my imagination with ideas, and now I only need to find the time to sit down and create the art. That’s gearing up for the effort of creating, but it feels fun and hopeful and exciting, something worth striving for even if nothing winds up winning or selling, that is, it winds up a failure. That’s okay, because it's about building my connection with my art first. Testing limits, taking risks. Doing all of that without ramifications because the biggest task is just showing up in the first place. And then it becomes about showing up repeatedly.
And you know what? That scares me, showing up repeatedly, whether for writing or for art and for both. Life just gets in the way sometimes, and it can become days or weeks or even months before either is attempted. And then I have to start all over again (at least it feels that way). Or it can feel like a slog, like I’m just driving for the sake of driving, not for the actual enjoyment. I’m scared that I can’t do it, that I can’t do it well, and that maybe why should I even bother? I’m scared that I can’t show up and create on the regular.
But here I am tonight, making another go of it. I don’t know if I will show back up tomorrow until tomorrow comes. I can’t see the future, and it's a waste of time to try to act on the future when all I have is the present to live in. So I’m happy with where I am today. I won’t shame myself for missed days. I’ll just remind myself each day of what my hopes and dreams are, and see how that fits into the priorities for the day. Some days kid, marriage, dogs, day job will take over or need to take precedence. And that’s okay! Other days I’ll get to have my time for creation. And that’s when I’ll need to make that choice to create over any other activity that I can be doing.
Gearing up for the effort is conscious and it is a choice. You don’t get to 400 without doing 1, 2, and 3 first. As they sing in the sound of Music, “let’s start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start.” I see the opportunity for enjoyment, first and most of all, and I see the opportunity for some level of success, whether that is becoming a “professional artist” or getting attention of other types. The journey is certainly going to be worth it, even without external success.