licking the dirt

ironically, on the days when i most feel like my work is shit, or that everyone else is doing it better, or that writing is a waste of time, or that i feel unsucessful, i will receive the most thoughtful sincere, heartfelt and moving emails about how something I wrote has affected they way someone looks at their life. and all at once i am humbled and grateful and rejuvenated. coincidence?

i don't believe in coincidences. i think it is the universe showing me it knows more than i do.

how often have i wished that all my money worries, life worries, relationship worries, health worries, (insert random worry here _______) would disappear in a flash so i could live and work happily doing only the stuff that i love.

and yet i also know that there is something about learning to survive that is helping me grow. and that contrast makes life interesting. living in that tension.

often i worry that something will happen and i will not be able to make my art again. and then i think about that really hard for a moment and start to laugh. that is not who i am. my whole life is a creative process. every piece of it. i know that deep down.

there is a quote from picasso that says something to the affect of if he were imprisoned and had nothing to create with he would make a painting by licking the dust (or is it dirt?) off the floor of his cell. (I am paraphrasing quite a bit but you get the idea.)

yes it is the ego that makes us fear failure and causes us to want to compete, but it is the soul that actually drives us to create.

and we never have to worry about that going away.