Redefining Success in Art and Life
Sometimes it can be so easy to feel like you'll never "get there". A lot of us don’t even know where “there” is, or what sort of life we do want. I lived the majority of my early years in survival mode, so I didn’t really have any clearly defined goals for life other than making sure I had food and a roof over my head. But there did come a time when I achieved those things and found myself saying… “Now what?”
If there is anything that I would define as a moment of clarity in my life about what I wanted, it was when my fiance died suddenly in an accident just before my 30th birthday. I had found direction in a life that we were about to begin building together, and that was my way forward, until it wasn’t anymore.
In the aftermath of his death, there were actually some gifts in the pain. The first was that I had moments of clarity I’ve never had before. Because when death comes, especially suddenly, it strips away everything but the bones of you. And the bones of me said loud and clear that I wanted to make art again - something I’d loved up through high school but gave up during college and when I got a “real job”. My soul had grown stagnant, and I made a promise to myself in those first fragile months after he died… that I would spend my life making art.
Another gift grief gives you is a huge "FUCK IT" button. I am normally someone who is terrified of even the smallest change. But not with my “Fuck-it” button on hand! I quit my job, moved to the country and stayed with family, and changed EVERYTHING I COULD about my life. I got a job at an art gallery, because I'd always wanted to do that. I wrote poetry. I blogged about grief. I took pictures. I made jewelry. I started selling art. I made ceramics. I spoke about grief. I taught workshops. I made paintings. I opened an Etsy shop. I learned how to wander in those years, but I often felt like a failure because I was not "getting somewhere" - i.e. no clear direction or any monetary growth was happening. I was making incredibly deep art about my grief, and sharing my journey and helping others, but to me that didn’t look like “real success” or like I was “getting anywhere”.
Here’s what I know now, looking back, almost ten years after his death catapulted me into my devotion to art…
I was way harder on myself than I needed to be.
A lot of times, direction looks like wandering.
I am still not making very much money, and that’s okay!
I’m still not what anyone would consider “successful” financially. And my career path still doesn’t look like it has any sort of a path to it. But I’m so much kinder to myself about all of that stuff now. Because you know what? It hasn’t taken actually ruined anything the way I feared it would. I think I was feeling unsuccessful for enough years that I finally just stopped being concerned with success altogether. I make things. And I still love making things every day and sharing creativity with others. And it still makes my day.
It has been a long road to redefine success for myself. Success used to be “Did I sell enough?”, “Did I produce enough work?” “Is the work good enough?” or “Did I land a solo exhibit?”. Now success has become “Am I being creative every day?” “Do I love the things I’m making?”, “Am I enjoying sharing creativity with others?”, “Am I feeding my soul, loving myself well and creating a balanced life?” These are the things that I have been asking myself more and more lately in terms of my success, and what a different and more enjoyable world it is to live in.
Are there bigger goals I’d like to get to? Sure. I’d love to travel more, to own a farm and get out of the city, to have a bigger studio space and get some more solo shows of my work out there. But it would be okay if none of these happened because I’m not using them to define my success anymore. It’s become less about specific, rigid big goals that I NEED to get to, and more about creating a daily life that allows me to be my most creative self. That’s where I want to be now.
It’s taken half a life to finally start to believe in a new kind of success. “Getting there”, for me, is about being here every day as much as I can so that I’m not waiting for some far away day to arrive. It’s about trusting that my creativity and intuition will never steer me wrong, and that I never have to fear that I will lose that part of me. I know now, after my long and winding journey thus far, that my creativity is a part of me that can never be taken away. And it is this way for all of us. We just have to notice the ways we are creative, and grow it from those small seeds… which are planted not in tidy rows, but scattered all around. Like the wild prairie that grows and goes through seasons… year after year, our very definition of true success, I think, is to just keep growing.
- With Love -
Sarah
