I've had a lot on my mind lately.
You shouldn't use blogger, you should purchase your own domain name.
You shouldn't blog or tweet at all, it saps your creativity 140 characters at a time. (True)
You should write every day.
You should have multiple drafts.
Don't pretend you're a big shot when you're not.
Don't hold yourself back from being a big shot.
Do it now!
Yadda, yadda, etc. etc.
So here's the thing.
Everybody has to start somewhere.
Am I going to monetize this blog? No. Am I writing for an audience? Not really.
And you know what? For my purposes here, that's fine. I'm not trying to be a big shot. I'm just trying to brain storm, hone my writing and record what I think and feel, in a format that requires a bit of reflection because it is published.
How many times have I started this and dropped off into the abyss of forgotten blogs? Many times. Am I going to change this time? Dunno.
But here goes again.
I've been suffering from artist's block. For awhile now. I think this is fairly common, especially for my generation, which in an article I recently read was referred to as 'Generation Blank.'
The other day I was sitting at lunch and staring at my Thai dessert, stirring slowly and appreciating the uniqueness of texture of a Thai dessert. And I looked at the little greenish yellowish clear jello blobules of sugar matter and thought to myself:
Why am I making this so hard?
Why don't I just go back to the greens, the yellows, the swirls and the shapes?
Not a profound artist statement.
What are you saying with your art?
Who, the hell cares?
I'm saying I have a burning desire to put pigment to paper. Maybe I'll never 'make it' drawing random swirlies. But says who? The nagging voices in my head that tell me I'm not good enough? Years of formal schooling?
Who says I won't take gloopy Thai dessert and the swirly designs I've doodled in the margins of notebooks since I could hold a pen and make something of it? Maybe it'll start out that way. But, as stated above, you've gotta have multiple drafts.
And heck, at the end of the day I'll probably throw some skeletons in too.
Just like you should be writing every day, running every day, reading every day - you should be putting pigment to paper every day for the visual arts.
So who gives a damn if it's a doodle?
