To Those Who Failed To Live Up To Your Dreams - Or Had To Let Them Go

Hey guys, I'm Adam from this pixel and welcome back as artists, depending on where we are in our

live

s, professionally, personally, medically, socially, there are many different factors, many different elements that can come between us and our careers as artists. , our productivity as artists and what I. I want to share with you it is a very important message that I have seen arise more than once and it is not a problem that will affect you in the short term; very often it is something that can affect

them

in the long term. career something that can span years or even decades and can be affected by many different types of problems personal problems social problems professional problems technical problems the list goes on and that is that sometimes you simply cannot produce art, sometimes producing art is not A Smart move, sometimes you have to make some bold decisions and step away from being an artist.

What really motivated today's talk came from two places at the same time, one from an email I received from someone who shared with me an incredibly personal, incredibly vulnerable message and He reached out to me, of course, I won't say who, but He approached me and basically told me that I had spent decades of my life looking for another job and even got a degree and even started working in a completely different field. no art related field, but all this time he felt like he never had the chance to satisfy the artistic side, he took the practical approach, took the logical step and pursued a career and degree that paid the bills and did so successfully, but He finds himself many years, decades later, realizing that he can no longer stay away from this side of himself, he can no longer deny this aspect of his being as an artist and he came to me in a very humble way and said: It's too late?

I missed the train? that's how it came to me and, despite being in my early 20s, I know that even at 16, 18 and 20 I hear very young students complaining about the fact that they've missed the boat or feel like they should be older. success at that time in my life I know people very close to me who are quite young or say this and it's really ridiculous to hear that at my age, 40 years old, but there is a second person that I know very personally. who is very dear to me, who at a very vulnerable time in her life spoke about how she felt worthless, a feeling of not really having any true purpose or value in her life and so she began her career, she began her life at an age early. follow the arts and pursue a career in art that at a very young age, before even getting too far off the ground professionally, she decided to take a very big step and again, in her case, abandon that side of herself and dedicate herself to a business further. career oriented and again got a degree, did extremely well and had an amazing life, so these are two examples so far and I have a third and that is one that I have already talked about on my channel, my mother, my mother, who was a beautiful artist who was a single mother, had three children to raise on her own and little to no money and a degree in fine arts, she produced a painting, she was sitting in her studio with her canvas and a brush in her hand and on a canvas White she painted a cauldron, a witch's cauldron, and three pairs of children's feet protruded from

them

, which she always described as a symbol of boiling her children a

live

if she does not take any important steps, because while she decides to continue with the art .

It is a death sentence for her children because she will not be able to maintain a life. So what did she do? She went back to high school and got her high school math and then used it to go get a BS in computer science and I ended up becoming a computer scientist and had a very profitable career for many years afterward. In only one of these cases did my mother understand and accept the fact that she, despite her career choice, was still an artist. and she never presented herself to me as a person that she could, but she was not the type of person, she never considered herself abandoning anything, she always considered it as a simple addition to the list of her knowledge and, out of irony, she ended up becoming one. one of the first people to do computer graphics because he had computer science and fine art, which was a very, very rare combination of skills, something very different from today where we all do computer graphics, it's common now , so it's not uncommon to see people who have an affinity for different types of technical and artistic careers, but she is a rare case and she was someone who had a particularly unique perspective on these things because most people who meet in this position, that is, the two people who approached me, they don't don't feel that way, they feel like they gave up who they are, they felt like they gave up who they really were meant to be, they were failures in a sense and to that email I received in that email I received my I responded to him when he said he had given up on his

dreams

, he gave up on being an artist.

My response to him was that she actually hadn't given up on being an artist at all because I heard the way she expressed herself. he heard what art meant to him how he put it into words how he felt it he wasn't describing his quote abandoning art in a practical way as a logical or illogical career choice that led to outcome A or B he was very excited About this, this it was a very personal email and in that I could see very clearly from the outside, looking at his and what he was writing objectively and artistically, I saw that he was talking to an artist and I told him that you never stopped being an artist, you just abandoned the work for the moment because he had to eat and that's why I congratulated him for his bravery.

I congratulated him on his perseverance and his courage in being able to step away from something so significant and recognize the fact that it is inherent to him. I told him you're an artist whether you paint or draw or not, and that was the big message and the fact that he devoured it every day, every year that went by while I was doing this other career, was a testament to that because if he wasn't truly an artist, if he found satisfaction and money and success and extended personal satisfaction by doing something else and realized he didn't really give a shit about art, it was just a hobby, he wouldn't do it.

He prompted him to send me a message. He listens to my videos and something about the way I communicated in my videos really touched him on a very personal level and he remembers that I talked to artists. The way I'm talking now is with artists, I'm sure. There are a lot of professionally minded, hands-on technical people who aren't necessarily artistic and who might listen to the way I talk and consider me a little silly or a little romantic or unrealistic, but that's not my audience, my audience, artists. and the fact that I touched it on that level means that I was communicating with an artist and he felt it from an artistic perspective very deeply now with this second person who felt this feeling of worthlessness and felt like he had given up.

His

dreams

felt like she was a failure, he felt like she had no purpose. He had pretty much the same mission message to share with her because he had been away from his artistic side for so long that he felt at that time or in At least he expressed it to me by saying that this was the only thing he really tried to be and

failed

, so he decided look for something a little more practical, but that practical choice of job she made never satisfied her, it was just a job, so she spent much of her life feeling quite insignificant as a person and that kind of meaninglessness resonates with everything she you do, it resonates with

your

personality, how one of the things that caused this was a very defensive nature, a feeling as if her character could be attacked all the time and the reason she felt like a character was attacked was because she felt a vulnerability with his own character as a human being.

Imagine how that affects you in everyday life. It's not like that, it's not a very dramatic death, it's a slow death. toxic drip that eats away at you that corrodes

your

heart slowly with each passing year and I listen to her speak I listen to the way she describes her worthlessness and again I felt one deep thing and it was that you are an artist, that is what your value is that You are an artist, but this is what diverted you from that path. This is what led you away from realizing that you have lived away from the art world for so long that you have been exposed to and evaluated yourself based on the values ​​of non-artistic people your numerical value the amount of product that you could produce how much praise you receive from a boss for fulfilling certain duties but from an artistic perspective very often a reward is not so much financial although that is definitely also a reward, but it is personal, it is a personal sense of achievement, it is taking advantage of something about yourself, find a voice, find a means to express yourself more fully, more honestly, purer, more powerfully than you are capable of before and I told him I said the reason you don't value yourself is because You are not analyzing yourself in the right way, you are analyzing yourself practically when you should be analyzing yourself artistically and I said because you are not surrounded by artistic people like me. a part of the artistic community.

I communicate with the artistic community. An artist would realize that fact very quickly because she would hear it from her peers, she would hear it from her fellow artists every day, but she doesn't. She is surrounded by business people. She is surrounded all the time by professionals in that sense of the word, people who show up to work in a suit and tie and do not value the same things that I told her, you must be, you must be seen with different eyes and you also need to see yourself. with different eyes understand the fact that this is who you are even though you haven't done it for decades that doesn't take away from who you are and this is my message to you today understand something Being an artist is not defined by how much you hold your pencil or paintbrush or Crayola Crayons or whatever you use to create art and make a mark on a page which is 10% of what it is to be an artist. the tip of the iceberg the meat and potatoes the dark web of what it is to be an artist is everything else it's not what you do but who you are on a very fundamental level you believe you feel you express your value and create through a lens very unique, you take for granted what you were born with, it's not just a job, it's your DNA, it's your biology and you have to realize that even if you walk away, don't be afraid to have to make practical decisions in your life.

I have expressed Many times in the past I had to step away from what I was truly passionate about to acquire skills and have opportunities that would allow me to earn money to improve in business or in communicating with people. How much I enjoyed the experiences I had chatting. With people as a waiter I loved waiting. I find it very physical, satisfying, social, he gives you free food very often, you know, you learn to deal with easy and difficult clients. I loved that experience. I did not care. I also had the opportunity to experience being an administrative worker and working in a call center doing telephone customer service.

God, I hated that job. Oh, superficial existence, but I did it, I did it and I have that life experience to benefit from. communicate with people reduce tension with difficult clients how I would approach clients and learn to deal with them diplomatically how to calm anger. I also did phone surveys and a shitty little call center. I have experienced it and it is a memory for me. No, I don't regret having that memory, it taught me a different side of life, it expanded me emotionally, mentally and socially, so why regret that it's not something I wanted to do throughout my life? but it is a chapter of my life that there is no reason for me to ignore, but I was always aware of one fundamental fact, no matter what it was, that I was doing at its core, I was an artist and I benefited from being raised by a mother who shared that understanding with me, so I never questioned my worth and my purpose as an artist.

I always recognized myself as such because I was raised by an artist who took that step in her life and today I extend it to you. To understand something, there will be many times in your life when you will have to make the smart decision and the smart decision may be not to draw, not to paint, not to dedicate yourself to art, maybe you have children to feed, maybe you have to pay rent. , maybe you are You will be evicted soon if you don't get together and the more you continue to pursue this determined pursuit of art at the expense of everything else in your life, it will not put you in a position to live a fruitful life you are being stupid and irresponsible when you're not doing what you have to do to pay the bills and don't worry if you have to do that, don't worry because you're never going to stop being an artist don't be afraid to let it go for a while if you have to don't take for granted how deep in your blood is being an artist you take it for granted because you don't realize how much thinking, feeling, behaving and expressing is all tied up in the reality that you are an artist, so have a little compassion for yourself, take it calmly and don't be afraid.

With that being said, thank you so much once again for joining me today and I love you all with all my heart and happy painting take care.