Put earplugs and shades if you must; the artist-blockers are coming (if they’re not already around)

When people you know tell you that you can’t achieve what other somebodies have achieved, it’s your choice to keep walking

Hi there,

Today I have something important on my chest. It bubbles and bursts and it needs to come out;

I think there are too many aspiring artists who suffocate themselves with the imagined success of others (which is largely based on snippets the others have shared of their journey).

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; to grow and to sustain an artistic career are two different things.

There will be growth spurts of massive cash flow and it’s amazing when that happens. But don’t be fooled and think it’s the new normal. After the peak of the mountain there is always a slope lurking for you to slide down.

It’s by design, by the way.

I think it must be this way if we are to stay on this earth. Grounded. Just imagine, if you only go up up up, where will you end up? In space? That must be a quite lonely place to operate from.

I prefer to keep my feet on the grass. I like gravity. It reminds me that we’re all human, not aliens swimming about between the sun and the moon.

When we read stories of tremendous success, all it should do to us is give a hint of what’s possible, not a slap reminding us that we haven’t gotten there yet.

The trap of comparison is real.

I dedicated an entire chapter to it in my book “When Will You Get A Real Job”. No matter how ignorant we are, we can’t hide from the world entirely.  There will be slip ups where we feel like everyone else is higher than us (than we’ll ever be).

Again, I think that this too, is by design.

I just read a brilliant Q&A by

Amie McNee

about the financial reality of her success as a creative and author. What stood out is the same reality that I’ve carved out for myself through the years:

• One thing doesn’t exclude the other; have multiple income streams

• Things change and fluctuate, it doesn’t mean the end is near, it just means you got to learn to surf

• You CAN do it, and it’s ok to be VERY triggered by the successful artists and writers as well as the negative Miss Everybody who may claim differently. Block the noise.
  

Amie referenced how it’s been artist-blockers from all paths of life telling her that she wouldn’t make it. I instantly came to think of my art professor at university. I believe I wrote about her in When Will You Get A Real Job, because her negativity towards my ambitions was, in fact, quite shocking.

I couldn’t understand for the life of me, how someone who claims to be an artist and art teacher, didn’t believe in what she was teaching. Or, perhaps she believed in the pencil strokes, brushes, nude models and paint. But certainly not in the ability of some young Swedish girl to pave her way as an independent artist.

Why is it like this?

Like a paradox-mind-fuck in which real life people tell us we can’t achieve something that other somebodies claim to have achieved. Someone getting a 6-figure deal over here, another making millions over there.

If we really look at it from an objective point of view it’s like an increasingly deep cleavage between vastly different worlds: the land of opportunity and the land of perceived impossibility.

And when we don’t instantly make those millions, we feel as though the impossibility-talkers are right. Their version of reality suddenly seems more true than the other idealized successful version.

Sarina Zoe

wrote something the other day that truly resonated with me. That we won’t reach success in our creative pursuits until we rephrase what success is: fulfillment.

When phrased like fulfillment as opposed to success, it suddenly feels like everybody else’s “success” matters less in our own self-perceived failure (notice! I wrote self-perceived, because what you think of yourself isn’t always what others think of you…. Actually it’s frequently NOT the same, for the very reason outlined in the beginning: As an observer we can only judge based on the snippets you share, not on what you feel internally).

When the goal becomes fulfillment, there’s an internal motive rather than external. Most comparison traps feed on external factors rather than the internal stuff (simply because the internal is invisible).

If we see someone who has thousands of readers, a bestseller badge, a published book and yada yada, we don’t instantly think “she must be struggling”, we probably think the absolute opposite: “wow, she made it, she doesn’t know what it means to struggle”.

And by some measures yes, whoever she is, she did make something. But now she needs to keep on making it and that’s the factor that gets cut out when we compare ourselves to strangers.

We cut out the real-life stuff. We may feel inferior with regard to a snippet, but the overall? We have no fucking clue.

This essay became a bit all over the place, sorry for that.

So, let’s recentre with a productive ending;

When we feel like spiraling down the ugly rabbit hole of comparison, let’s ask ourselves:

• Why do I feel triggered?

Lets remind ourselves that the little trigger is a mere snippet of the total, and that snippets are nothing more than: snippets!

Though the online buzz promotes single-snippet-success stories, as in; everything changed with this ONE thing, reality tastes like a huge soup of blended ingredients that all adds up to an explosion of flavors (both good and bad).

If you deeply wish to make it as an artist, let’s widen the horizon for the potential income streams rather than seeing ourselves as failures for not making it with THE ONE holy book deal, art exhibition (or whatever).

Let’s stop to compare our multifaceted existence to a fragmented story of someone else.

Let’s focus on the fulfillment aspect of our work, how creativity fuels us and others, and for God’s sake: let’s infuse creativity in the number of income streams we can come up with (and we’ll be able to block the external noise altogether).

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this essay, I’ll be grateful if you let me know by giving it a heart ❤️🥰

Have a wonderful weekend,

Elin xx

Ps. Want to read When Will You Get A Real Job? You can download it instantly under the “books” tab on my publication Follow Your Gut as soon as you upgrade.

You can also grab a kindle copy through my site here.