Preparation Amounts to Nothing

It has never been a goal of mine to make money off my my art, but the more I paint, the more I realize I love the process, and the more the paintings pile up. However, the more I paint, the more I realize I could never have someone commission me for a specific piece of art because I have no idea what I am doing. Seriously, I don’t believe there has ever been a project of mine that turned out the way I wanted, or came out how I imagined. The results are never quite what I originally expect. I don’t often plan my art for this reason; either from a lack of my technical skills, a mistake I need to cover, or simply the ebb and flow of the creative process, I can never seem to paint the entire picture that started in my head. But that is one of my favorite things about painting. When I sit down in front of a blank canvas, I just start doing. I let myself unwind and stop thinking about my stressors, and there’s rarely a time when I don’t like the results. All of the paintings in my gallery have turned out differently than I anticipated when I started them. Some took years for me to figure out, some hours. No matter the time frame, I always sit back while varnishing the finished piece, and marvel. Nothing I set out to do turns out the way I expect. I think that is the theme of my life recently.

I have tried to go about many different ways to achieve my goals, and none of them work out the way I expect. For instance, I once tried to draw a cute picture of a smiling quokka, and it ended up looking like a polar bear instead. I also tried traditional publishing for my first novel, and I didn’t find any agents who wanted to take on my book. But over the years of pushing ahead and querying agents, I have molded my story to the finest edition I possibly could have. Then once I started to understand that traditional publishing might not be the route I am destined for, I returned to school after a five year hiatus thinking the answers to all my problems might lie there: get a degree in English, work in a field adjacent to writing, then go from there. But you know what I figured out? I hate school. The first semester back I dropped all but one of my classes, and could not wait for the last one to be over. But I don’t think I wasted my time, because at the end of the day, realizing I hate school allowed me to understand what I want for my life as an unnegotiable fact: write, paint, create, share. And even going beyond my personal experience, my entire family is always thrown surprises that end up being blessings in disguise.

It's too easy to get pulled beneath the current and forget that all we need to do is tread. Fighting the opportunities we are given, or even the ones taken from us, leads to focusing on what we don’t have. And let me tell you, life doesn't align with our plans. Sometimes what we want just so happens to be what we get, but often, we are left wondering what we did wrong that led us to failure. But we didn't do anything wrong! That's just life!

I’ve spent many years fighting the results of my preparation, and it left me crawling with nothing but frustration and bitterness to show for it. It was only when I changed my outlook—seeing what I gained from so called failures, rather than what I thought I should have had—that I was able to start releasing that bitterness. Personal growth occurs when I realize I have no control over how life unfolds, but instead I can learn from my disappointments, and sometimes even learn to appreciate them. Yes, I might have been really excited to paint a forest, but if it turns out to be a mountain range instead, that’s okay. Mountains are cool. I can always try to paint a forest again next week, but for now, sitting back and appreciating my mountain range feels much better than beating myself up for not accomplishing what I first set out for.