Really?

 I'm frequently encountered with self-professed avid readers who declare with firmness, 

"I don't read fiction. If it's not true I'm not interested in it". 

Yet in most cases the boasters of this rigid affirmation will, without deliberation, watch the spurious tripe put out by modern Hollywood without a second thought and declare it a "good movie". 

It makes me seriously question the validity of there assertion that they love to read.

Passion Smashin

Being passionate about something doesn't mean you're good at it. Likewise, being good at something doesn't mean you're passionate about it. In the field of art, whether drawing, painting or sculpting there are lies that seem to be popular among the artist crowd that, if nothing else, justifies their lack of initiative and laziness. 

One lie is that you will one day be discovered. Truthfully you won't be discovered, ever. Your success, no matter what you do, is 100% your responsibility. Passion has nothing to do with it. It's all about finding your niche audience and marketing to them. 

Other lies:

• It takes money to make money.
• Fake it till you make it.
• If you love what you do, you'll never work hard.
• Failure is not an option.

Okay, I'm not so dumb that I don't get the spirit behind these cliches but the very fact that they are cliches makes the phrases highly suspect. 

It takes money to make money

When I started earning money as an illustrator I did it with material I already owned, and I paid $25 for a space at Traders Village. In return, I made 10 times my initial investment.

When I started Dollhouse Windows, I paid a total of $50 for supplies and by the end of the week I had 10 times my investment.

Yes, it took a little money but not on the scale the lie leads one to believe.

Fake it till you make it

In my profession there is no faking it. Drawing is a skill that must be learned. If I set up a drawing table in Trader's Village, as I mentioned earlier, but couldn't draw a lick, then no one would have paid me a penny. One may fake something, but the customers and clients will eventually see through it. Thats why snake oil salesmen don't stay in one place very long. 

If you love what you'll do, you'll never work hard

Another boner. I love what I do but there are times when I work hard, very hard, and sometimes all I wanted to do is go home. Building my reputation and trust is also a lot of hard work. 

Failure is not an option

This may be true in some occupations such as manned space travel, or police work when people's lives are on the line but when it comes to business and in particular my occupation, failure is a must. Thats how a person learns to get better at what they do. 

If someone who has things of value to offer that will not only enhance others' lives but also his own by increasing income and personal satisfaction, the above bunk can hamstring his desire to even try. I know because that was me at one time. I won't go into my one-time occupation as a night watchman whose primary job was guarding an empty parking lot all night! I can say with confidence that was not meant to be my life's work. Interestingly enough, it was sitting in that cold dark parking lot when my sleep deprived mind decided to challenge the lies. 

The fact of the matter is there is no substitute for hard work and there are no shortcuts to success; It must be earned. Don't make the mistake of sitting around waiting to be discovered when you already have enough to do for ten lifetimes.

A Professional Amateur

 

My studio consists of a cigar box with all my drawing and writing implements inside it. As owner of a professional pressure washing company, I don't own my own pressure washer or for that matter, not much of anything else in the way of equipment. 

I am a reading enthusiast. My intake of books, articles, speakers, podcasts, etc are overwhelmingly self improvement and business related subjects but the fact of the matter is that over the last nine or ten years, since I've been self-employed, not much has changed. I'm no closer to my aspiring goals today than I was when I first began this endeavor in 2011. When it comes to being a professional artist it's been even longer; closer to twenty years. 

I'm a platitude junkie, but here I have to admit that the "platitude", in the truest sense of the word, is a harmless oft quoted, inoffensive slogan used by spineless life coaches or housewives who sell scented candles or essential oils from their kitchen table. My direction has gone from harmless platitudes toward cynical sarcasm.

I'm not a "born entrepreneur" so if I ever hope to be a good example to my generation of working stiffs who desire something more, then much needs to change with me.

"For All Mediocrities in the World"

Best Laid Plans

When it comes to planning, I'm pretty good at it and in fact I've been told by past employers it's one of my strong suits. However, all the planning in the world won't get me any closer to solving problems than sitting around on my hands and doing nothing will. It's important to be able to know the course one will take or even it's just to get started on a first step without actually knowing anything more but actually working the plan is the most important. 

 

Move the Fan

 
I've been assigned the project of a drawing instruction class at the end of March and building upon the experiences of my previous classes, in particular the ones I conducted for The Delaney, the classes are not only going to teach useable art skills but also my personal philosophy on drawing. This philosophy has developed over the years involving not only my experiences in drawing but also of general life experiences that can be beneficial to better drawing skills and attitude. One of the most critical philosophies which will be a thread running through this and subsequent classes is the discipline of habits.

Simply put, we don't need to have the discipline of a Navy Seal to be content with the discipline we use to develop good habits but if the habit is harmful or not changing anything then we need to do something different; or differently.

Are my "rituals" helpful or harmful? Are they changing anything?

Unhackable

 

Kary Oberbrunner recently wrote a book entitled Unhakable. The focus of the book is how easy it is for our lives to be hacked by smart technology like TV, phones, Alexa and other modern devices and the result of this is our distraction from our original purpose. These diversions steal our sense of creativity, ideas, dreams and missions in life. It's not unusual for people to sit around the house and binge watch a Netflix series for 20 hours instead of doing something more rewarding like writing, drawing, building something, having a real conversation or going outside to play.

The hacking part comes when these smart devices divert us from our own mind's ability to think for ourselves. They attempt to tell us what to think, what to buy, how to act and what our values should be. Some are consumed with knowing what the latest update is on social media and how many likes we get on our latest posts.

One possible and very promising antidote is our intentional devotion to personal responsibility. The operative word here is intentional. It's a mindful determination to look away from the hacking devices around us and do something real and tangible upon which we actually make progress.