I had come to a decision yesterday about my work and I now need to do the next steps to make the decision happen. No, I'm not leaving. But I realized what I want to do more of and where I believe I can add value while not dreading having to wake up in the morning on a weekday. I am anxious because there are people I don't want to feel bad about my decision. I am nervous because I will essentially be volunteering to go into yet uncharted waters.
What does this have to do with my being an artist? Lately, I have been writing a lot about my dayjob work. I have yet to find that harmonious coexistence between my art and my dayjob in terms of time and energy but finally, I believe I can truly say it will just be a matter of time and that time won't be long. I expect to have some kind of balance within the year. I still have five months left and I feel relatively confident I can do it.
It has been my life's "holy grail" to live a decent enough life and be able to practice what I love. In the bigger scheme of Things, my passion is making art which includes story making, painting, collage, and being an agent of hope. As I grow in my current dayjob, I realize that the very same things are what make the work meaningful for me: I want to make stories, synthesize data, find and illustrate patterns, and be an agent of change for the better. It's the missing link I couldn't see or find before in my previous jobs, even when I was a freelancer.
What made it possible now? That's where trusting the process comes in. I had to learn long and hard. I had to experiment, make mistakes, try again, fail, and fail better. Took chances, took risks and braved through the odds. And all that somehow eventually led to the path that led to a place where what I wanted could be possible. All the failures and mistakes that came before cracked me open enough to let the light in, so to speak. And now I get a second (or third) chance at a life.
Am I tired? Oh, hell yes! But right now I am in that space of hope and inspiration. And so I move forward.
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