Embargo Backwards is Ograbme!

08.10.26

I've been swimming upstream, bucking my own current for many years.

This is seen in my choosing to settle for the limited satisfactions of commercial art, to "control" my instincts and "moderate" my intuition, to act as a model and example in my many roles, professional or personal. I felt that outside approval was paramount and so I began to lose my internal sense of what matters most, my own self-approval.

Something has shifted, like a switch flipping in my head, and suddenly I see clearly the old emotions of inspiration that carried me in my youth. The specifics are different now, but the feelings are unmistakably familiar to me. As i begin this work, I get that old excitement, the motivation that used to keep me awake at night once I had taken on a new project that appeared worthwhile. This project has all the signs of being like that - the flood of ideas for it, the fantasy of future work on it, the ease with which it seems to fall together...

I have physical discomforts that actually abated for a time last night as I lay, waiting for sleep, pondering the implications presented by my emerging sense of what to bring to this site. The evidence seems pretty clear that some of my physical difficulties have been due, in part, to my unwillingness to accept who I am and what I think. The pains are not gone, but they showed me last night that they will respond to a changed mind. I have reason for optimism.

This is not to say that I'll no longer entertain commercial assignments. What it does say is that they are only a portion of what I now do . I'm liberated to use all of my skills, and freeing myself to engage in the artmaking process will only augment what I can do for my clients. I'm better at integrating my experiences in ways that are expressive, and while I'm delighted at the prospects for me personally, I can also assure those who would contract for my services that I 'll deliver more than they expected.

From this expanded perspective, I can see the rough outlines of how everything fits into this site. I can express my ideas, display my visuals and grow the site's content by impulse. There's room for any subject I deem appropriate, and room even for things I've not yet considered. This announces the joy I feel in my creativity - that what I have learned so far in this life is sufficient to nuture this project for an extended period without my enthusiasm waning. The stream now takes me in its natural direction.

I'm happier and feeling more purposeful than I have in many years.