Confession of an artist: My three-letter addiction

A Zen master once wrote:

If you want to experience something fully, you must first clear your mind. If your mind is clear, true knowledge is already yours.

What gets in the way of clearing our mind?

Ego.

Those Eastern guys had it figured out.

Soak, incubate, and then, when you’re ready, strike.

But it’s so hard to get out of my own way sometimes. To trust that the good ideas are coming, that good work is happening, even if I’m not getting famous or rich.

Deepak Chopra says:

Reality shifts as you do, and when you change your perception of being separate, the one reality responds by shifting with you.

The ego-based world with all its demands, pressures, drama, and excesses is highly addictive, and like any addiction it needs a daily fix as well as denial that there is any way out. –Deepak Chopra, Are you Addicted to your Ego?

Old and new marketing

Used to be, you would “toot your own horn” to get “ahead,” right? You’d go up to some big city and put in your time and network and do favors and win some back, and get there. To the top. Of the pile.

But there’s always been, will always be, another way.

The new way is taking a stand. It’s knowing and making it known what you believe in.

You might not shout it from some rooftop, and you might never get picked up by mainstream media or made into a film, but you will have done something pure and honest.

You will have lived honest and true.

On making it

So many artists, writers, and designers feel like they have to Make It. They have this craving to be known. Win awards. Be in books. Have their name preceded with “award-winning nantoka.” Whoops. Just slipped into some Japanese there. Nantoka means “random stuff.”

Fame.

I get that. I really, really do. I used to be one of those people.

Had whole conversations during art school about whether being good is its own reward.

Many people want to be recognized. Fair enough.

The problem is when the wanting to be gets in the way of starting to.

So let’s erase the ego.

_ _ _

Without white space, we can never make Art.