I am currently reading a book called “The Icarus Deception” by Seth Godin. In it, Mr. Godin postulates that we are approaching the end of the industrial age and along with it, the behaviors that ensured our safety and comfort. As I was reading, I experienced a personal revelation, or more accurately, I experienced a shift in perception. I realize that I have been looking at things all wrong.
For years, I have wanted to do something different in my career, something important, something that matters. I have made a nice career for myself conforming to the precepts of industrial thinking. I went to school, got a job and did what the company asked of me. I was well-paid and felt reasonably secure in my position. Even when I left my comfortable job for the “freedom” of running my own consulting business, I was still doing the bidding of the industrial complex. I worked the same hours, sat in office cubicles and adhered to the same deadlines while performing the work that someone else required of me. Granted, I made more money, but at one point, I realized that my business was just another job and that I really didn’t enjoy more freedom or creative license.
This revelation I experienced as I was reading came suddenly. I saw myself struggling to make a change, to find a new career as a writer and to start expressing myself in ways of my own making. While I struggled to change, I never fully committed to making it happen. I had too many fears standing in the way of meaningful progress. I had magnified the stakes, turning my desire to write into a life or death struggle. What if my writing isn’t good? What if nobody likes what I have to say? What if nobody even knows I’ve written something? What will my family and friends think about me? We humans are very good at creating worst-case scenarios and I excelled at it. As a result, I created a lot of writing that sat on my computer for years. Mr. Godin suggests that when someone creates art without making connections or without shipping your art, it really isn’t art. True art requires sharing it with others. By that measure, I never created any art.
I can’t say exactly what passage in the book prompted my revelation, but I vividly remember it happening. Rather than viewing things I want to accomplish as opportunities, I have viewed them as momentous tasks with a high risk of failure. I came to realize that i can choose to write about anything I find interesting. With the technology available to us today, my writing can be viewed by a billion people almost instantly. I also realized that the worst thing that can happen as a result of putting my thoughts into words in a very public way is that nobody will care. If nobody cares, I have learned something. I have learned that either my subject matter was ill-chosen or that my words were not compelling enough or interesting enough. Armed with that knowledge, I can rewrite my words and try again. Maybe, just maybe they will find traction with some audience somewhere in the world, and maybe my words will make a difference to someone.
This may not seem like such a momentous revelation on the surface, but there is enormous power in it. It matters not what your art is. It may be music or literature or furniture or a computer program. It may be a spreadsheet to track sales or a change to an organizational structure. Your art can take any form. All that matters is that you want to make it and you have the ability to try without having it destroy you. True, the market will judge you, but don’t view those judgments as failures if they are not what you had hoped for. Rather, view them as feedback with which you can improve your art. As Mr. Godin says, your art comes from within you. If you make art based on your expectations of the response of the market, you have not truly created your own art, but rather the art that someone else wanted you to make.