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Dropping the spade to reach back to the stars

Someone told me a few years ago that if you’re digging a hole for yourself, then stop the digging. But, others advise that if you want something then you have to dedicate yourself totally to it, one hundred percent, and focus on it, and keep going after it, because if you don’t follow your dream, then you won’t achieve it. If you don’t step forward then you’ll always be in the same place.  But at what point do you decide that the following the dream aspect is actually part of the digging the hole part?

I think the answer to it is to do something that most people don’t like, because it takes them out of their comfort zone, and that is to change the pattern. Change the pattern that is causing the digging the hole part. Because if you don’t,  then nothing will happen. You will stay as you are, and if you don’t make the changes, then you must like it, surely? The argument is, that you are exactly where you want to be if you don’t make any changes – its gotta be!

This week I was re-reading some correspondence that I wrote three years ago, three massive years that have changed my life totally. And the biggest thing that I read in my words was the hope for the future, the plans and dreams, the expectations, the desire to succeed. So, when I fast forward to now, and look at what I’ve done, it hasn’t gone in the direction I expected. So how can that be? I’m wondering.

And I think part of it is in a one word answer – Recession.

I know that there isn’t as much money around as there used to be, certainly to four years ago, people don’t spend as much on spontaneous art, although people still want art, its just more difficult to sell it. People have a thousand more important things to buy before they buy art, bills to pay, food to buy, petrol that keeps going up and up, clothes, nights out, holidays. Art is always at the back of that queue.

But art feeds the soul, it enhances life, it creates happiness, and inspiration, and brightens each day.

And I know that part of my problem at the moment is that some of the artwork that I’ve created in the last couple of years hasn’t sold where I’ve expected it to. And in a way I feel that if I don’t sell the stuff I’ve got, then what’s the point of painting new stuff? So, I don’t. Which means my creativity is stiffled. And I really really don’t like that feeling. REALLY, I don’t. So, where do I take it next to sell it? The internet, or galleries? Or other venues? I was offered the chance to exhibit in London in early January, but felt that it was going to cost me the best part of £800 to do it, and that’s a lot of money to “invest” with no guarantee at all of a return on my money, particularly in January when the weather is bad and travelling difficult, and people aren’t buying art so much. So I didn’t do it. And I know that was a good decision, although others might argue that if you don’t invest money then you won’t get the  return on it, and I know you have to speculate to accumulate, but at what point is it “throwing good money after bad?” since that’s crap business sense, and part of the digging holes part. As I look back at other venues I’ve exhibited at over the years and how much it has cost me for the return I’ve got back, and can see that that isn’t the way forward for me. And don’t think that I judge the “return” as purely sales, because I know that sometimes its networking, or promotion, that is the payment as much as the pound notes.

So, which part of the pattern do I change? I’m not going to ditch all that I’ve learnt to do so far, some things do work for me, and work very well, and I will continue with them, but, its time to make those changes if I want to find that person I was three years ago, again. And I really want to be that person again.