Sitting here at the end of 2017 thinking about making a Facebook post but as I started to write it I thought it would be more appropriate as a post on here. Starting this page in 2011 I kind of had the perception that this would be an easy page to manage and that I had a bunch of ideas in my head that were just waiting to be unleashed. I only found that to be partially true, while I have been creating paintings and sketching out ideas it hasn't been at the rate I anticipated or even at times I found acceptable. Being realistic I think creativity and inspiration are closely tied together and I do think they exist in finite amounts. When running low on inspiration it's kind of like a rechargeable battery running low on power and there is a need to re-ignite the current inspiration or find new inspiration to move forward. Unlike a battery running low, how and when to recharge that inspiration is not always consistent. Maybe a landscape or a particular area was inspiration at one point and after making one or more pieces based on it but at some point there is a need to move on.
Another factor into my lack of posting is self consciousness. I've started many posts and stopped them because I felt they were too personal or too negative. Posting about negative isn't bad in and of itself it's more about how the negative is framed and often times I took a step back and read some of these posts and I never wanted to frame any writing pieces as if I were a victim of circumstance or in any way that I felt would illicit pity or could be perceived as me attempting to illicit pity. So when drafting these posts out, I would re-read them and if the tone got too dark I would stop writing and leave it as a draft so if I ever came back and could reframe it I would. I also really wanted to avoid making excuses for not posting consistently and when I wrote posts if it sounded that way I would stop.
Looking back at that I don't regret that approach perception becomes reality and honestly I haven't been in a good place when it comes to writing. Artistically I do think that while I wasn't creating consistently enough by my standard the fact that I was creating was very important and the fact that I never let that aspect completely go away is something worth pointing out as well. The standards I put on myself may have been unrealistic and they were standards created by me which caused stress that I could have done without. Which in turn made blog posts harder to create causing me to create more stress on myself and so on. Ultimately this experience is making me more prone to try to keep myself in check because there are external things beyond personal control that do add stress and there are things that are exaggerated in the mind that cause stress. It's not a simple process but as humans we live, learn and develop ways that help us navigate this world.
Moving forward I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing and that's ok. There are some things that I'm looking to research in 2018 that I hope will help me develop artistically and there are things that I stopped working on or didn't complete in 2017 that I can finish in 2018. Realistically I do think that this particular page may be dead. But I also may occasionally post on here, I may not. All I can do as an individual is take things one day at a time. Ideally I would love to have all of the creative energy I can muster and run a blog, youtube page, website, store and help others tap into their muses. But I'm not going to do all that in a day, a month or maybe even a year. Things happen and sometimes we need to learn from those things to make our shit better. See you in 2018
