The Artist’s Path

The artist’s path to success is not a straight line

it is curvy and bumpy, weaving this way and that…

The straight path does not lead to innovation

Nothing interesting or important ever happens in a straight line. In fact, it is the quickest way to the wrong place. And do not pretend to know where you are going, because if you know where you are going, it means you have already been there, and you will only end up right where you started. ~from the play, Snake Talk

This is so true of my artistic journey…it has taken many a winding road during my lifetime. And I have taken my share of side trips to the wrong place…excursions in the school of life I like to call them. All occasions for growth…some painful…some not so much! Art imitates life indeed! 2011 has proven to be the best of times and the worst of times…

And I have gone around and around the same mountains many times trying to find a different place…but always ending up in the same place and starting over again. It is only when I venture off that known path that I discover new things about myself and discover new ways to create.

This year my word is SOAR. I soared into 2011 with much gusto and really big dreams. Success was visible on the horizon and I was moving like a freight train toward it….arms open wide ready to embrace it…

and then

just as quickly as it had appeared…the mirage that was my dream was snatched away and slowly disappeared altogether…try as I might to make it come back, it did not…and alas I was alone on the path..out of breath and out of ideas and out of the heart to move forward.

My coach says that I should share my story…as I know it and then…let it go. SO I share:

I was thrilled to be part of a team of show girls at Cool2Craft Network. I had a vision and a purpose. I was realizing the final piece of my media trifecta dream…my own television show! I worked tirelessly for months, sometimes 18 hours a day. My skills and vision were blurred and compromised and judged unworthy. Two episodes in~my show was cancelled. I was erased from the website in a matter of minutes. Almost as quickly as the dream was realized, it was gone. Vanished…without a trace…no second chance…no recourse…

I was heartbroken, devastated and my ego had suffered a bruising blow….I had taken that flying leap off the edge of a cliff and discovered the me that was SOARing was falling to the ground…

PLOP!!!

Let us not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving Spirit.

“To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives-the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections–that requires hard spiritual work.”~Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

So like the phoenix that arose from the ashes, I am doing the hard spiritual work of someone who was trying to be something I am not to please someone else~slowly picking up the pieces, repairing my broken wings and inching my way to the edge of the nest. I am just looking over the edge right now, clutching my Cre8tive Compass…not prepared to take the leap as yet…but almost ready…almost….