| What Mizza said: "Realize that you are an artist." What perfect, elegant statement. And so very true! I'm a professional artist and have been earning 50-100% of my living through my art for about 20 years. I sold a publishing company I co-founded about 5 years ago and was so burned out, bitter, and over the art world that I went through a devastating creative slump that took 3.5 years to dig my way out of. It was the first time in my life I didn't create art in some form daily. I was convinced my creative talents were either atrophied or dead when business idea after business idea either failed or were abandoned. I was fortunate, however, to have the ability to take several years off and just tinker. Once the burden/responsibility of creating solely for monetary gain was lifted, everything changed. I would say, "Let me build this idiotic thing I'm thinking about today!" The sillier the idea, the more I welcomed it because, after all, I'm not an artist anymore and my career is over. Just the process of saying "f-it" and trying damn near anything has turbo-charged my creativity. So much so, that I feel the way I did when I was a child. When you completely relax, get your mind out of your own rear end, and just try neat - albeit meaningless - crap, amazing things can happen. The point is not the failed side project! The point is all the beneficial things you learned/solved for/figured out to make something cool. They stay with you and will benefit you in ways you can never, ever expect. Recently, I decided I wanted a vertical clothesline. Stupid, right? Something nobody would ever buy. (Oh well.) I have a very shady back yard and wanted the ability to move my clothes to whichever point in my yard had the most sunlight given the time of day. Just the process of figuring out how to get an entire load of laundry quickly onto this contraption and then have it fold down into nothing when not in use was an intense creative exercise...especially because I have no engineering background. I could go on and on about how side projects with no hope of monetary gain saved my grits. (Love this community...finally something on which I can offer "expert" advice. ;) ) |