Can we leave realistic in 2024?
Don’t kill your magic ✨
Hi there,
Can we leave realistic pursuits in 2024 and enter dream land in 2025?
I’m tired of reading about all the ways we should lower the bar. To have realistic expectations for our creative pursuits. To not get disappointed.
Maybe it’s the exact opposite we must do?Higher the bar. Dare to dream bigger than your wildest imagination.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s how we break the pressures of expectations and how we can finally experience more creative freedom than ever. Because we’re not really supposed to make it anyway, which makes everything a win?
I don’t want realistic expectations. I want dreams.
By the way, I’m speaking specifically about art here.
Which artist was helped by thinking small?
Which artist was helped by staying within the lines of what’s realistic?
Which artist flourished by limiting themselves to one thing?
Art and creativity aren’t realistic.
Their very nature is the OPPOSITE of realistic. It’s not realistic to be creative (or to feel creative) every day of the week. Perhaps not even every week?! Creativity doesn’t work that way. It’s a muse. It’s a play. A game. It stops working when we get too serious about it.
I think I need to make another clarification of what I mean:
Goals and dreams aren’t the same.
It’s when we let goals dictate our actions, that I think we lose the part that made us want to pursue the arts in the first place.
As soon as we get too strategic. Too structured. Too goal oriented, we turn our creative lives into a job we dislike. This is not rocket science. Everyone talks about it. Especially the artistic purists who claim that this is why it’s better ”for the quality of the art” that one must keep a day job to pay the bills.
I disagree.
I think the problem is that we are so conditioned to not dream or let our heads ”float among the clouds” as soon as we attempt to monetize our artistry, that we kill our own magic.
Stay dreamy. Be more dreamy. Because no successful artist reached their status by dreaming small or staying within the limits of realism.
Focus on the art at hand and your dreams at heart and I promise you, you’ll find more magic in 2025 and beyond 💖
Have a wonderful last day of the year,
Elin Xx
Cheers to more dreams 🥰🫶🏼
Also, why is how profitable it is the key measure? We need space to dream, fail, soar, and make our voice heard/seen.
Elin I saw this in a documentary the other day "You have the right to work only, but never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive. Nor let your attachment be to inaction." Your line "It’s when we let goals dictate our actions, that I think we lose the part that made us want to pursue the arts in the first place." made me think of this. Thanks for this newsletter today. I'm writing and publishing my memoir on Substack in 2025 and I'm absolutely terrified. But your reminder that art is supposed to be about swinging for the fences and detaching from outcomes was very helpful today.