Check your goals and priorities

Years ago when I first moved to Spokane, I needed to borrow a car from my mother.  I was mature and didn’t have a car I could rely on.  I was driving what some would call a beater with a heater but my mother loved that car and it was incredibly reliable.  My husband and I don’t have car payments but we don’t own incredibly special autos.  Every once in a while, I look around at the lifestyles of others and think; “Wouldn’t it be nice?”  Then I take a moment to consider what they must do to have those things.

A collector of mine, travels 2 or 3 times a year to sunny warm places to play.  She and her husband post wonderful pictures of the clear blue waters and the bright sun.  They work their butts off to do that.  They make an active choice to do so.  While I shiver in my home during the winter (not really, we have a wood stove and central heat), I consider what I would have to change in my life to have that.

I would have to give up doing art like I do.

I could still dabble, paint here and there.  Maybe get one or two really nice originals done a year.  I would have to find my stuff each time I was able to sit at my easel.  Tidy up my art space because I would be stacking things in my studio area in between times.  It might take me a half an hour at the least to organize so I could paint.  Pastels give you freedom from drying pigments so I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not my tubes were dried out.  I would have to find the colors I was working with.  Probably need to chase down a chair again because we would have moved it somewhere else.

I wouldn’t be doing artshows like I do now.  No packing, driving, setting up; seeing strangers react to my art or meeting new people in places I have never been to.  My 1 or 2 paintings a year would be shipped to art competitions where I wouldn’t be to see how people saw my work.

Would I like a new car?  I would.  I would like to have a lifestyle that I could trade up my vehicle every two years.  I wouldn’t be doing art the way I am now. 

I give up a lot to do art professionally but; it is always my choice to do so.  I could do something else, but I don’t want to.  There in lies my truth.  My goal is to make art and sell it.  My priority is to live a life that has art at it’s center, my art.  I may never be rich, but I will be happy.  It is the creation of art that makes me happy and that is my goal.

So when every I am driving and see a shiny new vehicle, I check myself to see; will doing anything to make money be better?  Nope, making art makes me happy.  It is an active choice to do so and, I’m good with it.