Today folks use GPS – that lovely satellite based how-you-get-there tech thing that you can sit on your car dashboard. It speaks to you – it says: turn left, turn right.
The cheaper versions don’t speak out the names of where you’re turning left and right. And they don’t necessarily tell you which of the 3 upcoming “turn rights” is the correct one.
I only know this because I experienced getting very lost using a lovely British-accented GPS system in a girlfriend’s car.
This system can be fun to use. It can make you feel all whiz-bang, up-to-date, cutting-edge even. And it can also get you very lost. Husband is always sharing stories of the bands coming to play who’ve used GPS and wound up miles (and hours) away from where they need to be.
If you’re going into unknown territory, GPS won’t work because it hasn’t been charted well enough. Charted “some” can leave you as lost as none at all.
Which brings us to a continuation of my last post, and why people are getting lost. It depends on what you can see and your vantage point. (See my previous post here on “seeing” and “vantage points.).
Learning how to make art doesn’t necessarily make you an artist. What makes you an artist isn’t even selling your art (although if you need to support yourself, selling your art is a good thing). Being an artist (however you define that, from visual artist to marketing artist) is about persisting. It’s that easy. And that hard.
The starting point on your map is the decision to get from here to there and in the ongoing decisions to persist when the terrain gets rough, when you’re in the valley with all the pretty green stuff that beckons you to rest and ignore the next mountain (from which, by the way, you’ll get a new vantage point).
Being an artist is all in figuring out how to use what you have available to you to create physical from abstract. This requires trying things out to find out how the parts fit together or don’t – pointing the way (note: this is map talk) to what may be needed but is not yet at hand; then, figuring out how to find or make what is not yet at hand.
10 Steps to Creating Your Dreams:
- Clarity of purpose.
- Willingness to do the hard and deep work that will get you to clarity and keep your focus on clarity.
- Acknowledgement that it cannot be done “overnight.”
- A list of what you know now.
- A compass of some sort- trusted spouse, friend, coach – to help you figure out what you don’t know (how to step to the side from the known).
- Willingness to invest in a compass be it school, or experience or a person or yourself.
- An hypothesis to guide your path through trial and error.
- Trial and error.
- View adjustment because of new information.
- Repeat. Monthly, weekly, daily, hourly – as necessary to return to clarity.
Wylde Women’s Wisdom
Remember, what you’re after is a feeling state, not an object or event. When you’re in that feeling state, using imagination as your “telescope,” … you haven’t created an illusion that life is good and your real dreams will come true; you’ve dispelled the illusion that life is a bitch and then you die. Martha Beck
2 Comments
There is research that indicates that people who use GPS consistently actually lose their ability to “feel” themselves in a new space. Apparently our innate ability to locate ourselves in relation to the landmarks in the area has to be exercised to function correctly. I’m thinking that there is a correlation to the idea in your post of needing to be able to see your vantage point.
Well put! It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. Doing what you love to do is success in itself!
Even if it is a destination you desire, such as you want to be in x number of galleries and earn x amount annually, there is a road map. it’s in the form of helpful blog posts and books by those who have been there before you and are willing to help you along your way – and it’s also in the people who have been through it and are where you’d like to be. Just ask them. 🙂