does a gardener only water their flowers after they've bloomed? does a farmer only tend to their crops once they've shown fruit?

so why do you believe you should only write once you've got something to say? why do you only draw once you've got an idea?

if you really want to grow your craft, tend to it faithfully, and not just when you've got the inspiration or motivation to do so.

just as a flower only grows after it's been watered, the words you want to say will arrive after you start writing, the idea will arrive after you start drawing—inspiration will arrive after you start working.

1.Invest in your art practice. Be generous with time and attention to your art. Take care of what you create. Be proud of it. Respect yourself as an artist. Everything you make is a culmination of many years of search.

2.Start a community of your own. Name it and own it. The chances of you finding a community and being part of it, and feeling like you are at the center of it, is slim. Starting one might be easier than finding one.

3.Build your own breakthrough. The recognition does not come from the outside. It happens when you are ready for it and the world is always curious.

4.The success of making art is not based on sales, fame, following, but if you can connect with others through your art.

5.Art is work. Very hard work and a difficult work to dedicate your self to. The work may not compensate monetarily or bring immediate recognition easily.

6.You know your work as an artist is worth it when you enjoy your own work and you find the process rewarding.

7.Art is a way of looking at the world. It is the practice — a continued act of engaging with the world and reflecting on yourself. It is the praxis — a tool to bring your passion, talent, ability to good use.

8.Art world. You may feel like an uninvited guest at a private party. And there is the common notion that art belongs to the privileged, the ones with an excess of time and money. Most artists I know begin their career modestly, work hard to build their reputation and define their worth. Their work brings the prestige and respect — something that’s difficult to buy.

9.What you are making may be more important than what you might think of it.

10.You don’t need to look like an artist, sound like an artist, live like an artist. However, if you can think like an artist, you are an artist. Unlike everyone else who’s cultural or creative, artists have a unique ability to give form to an idea. Their mind is not only flexible but plastic. It can receive and give form to an idea.

In fact, many societies seem to be structured to distract us, or lead us away from, our connection at every turn: 

-We’re taught to ignore our bodies’ natural eating and sleeping schedules from a young age. 

-To ignore the ways we naturally learn, in schools. 

-To pay attention to TV and magazines and social media feeds to tell us how we’re supposed to look, act and be. 

-To fit within company culture and structures, to do a good job. 

-To fit within a choleric society’s idea of what makes a ‘better’ person: direct eye contact, focus, drive, determination, linear thinking, direction (lol but not too much if you’re socialised as female of course). 

These messages value more ‘material’ qualities, like numbers, quantification, goals, structure, logic, and linear results. We are taught to pay attention to these other things, over our own connection. All of a sudden, the very things that give us the most joy and fulfillment in our lives need to be verified, or proven, or explained in order to be valid. 

Rituals configure essential transitions in life. They are forms of closure. Without them, we would move from one phase to another without a solution of continuity.

They articulate and even narrate space and time. They allow a deep experience of order. They are thresholds, thresholds are time-consuming transitions. (...) The thresholds speak. Thresholds transform. Beyond the threshold is something different, the foreign. Without the fantasy of the threshold, without the magic of the threshold, only the hell of the same remains. (...) Transitions, which take a long time, are now disintegrating, reducing themselves to fast passageways, continuous links and endless clicks.