If you are blessed with multiple offers at once, it is a difficult decision to decide which one to take...will I make more money doing one job? Will another job be a better creative outlet? Will I have to leave family and friends? You are very lucky if this sounds familiar.
On the other hand, there are many times where the work is limited. There are moments of self doubt, large periods of uncertainty, and moments of huge anxiety. For the artist, it sometimes is not always about the path that you once envisioned, or the one that others have planned for you. It may be a difficult road full of bumps, stumbles, and cutting yourself on a lot of overgrowth along the unbeaten path. However, when you stumble.... remember to get back up, because your artistic voice is too important not to be heard. Those minor cuts from the path become scars that remind you of where you came from and that unbearable hill that you feel like you are climbing up reminds you that there are things always worth achieving and going after.
It is also important to realize that sometimes those cuts need a little healing and those embarrassing stumbles allow you to catch your breath when you don't have the ability to realize it. You are after all human. What you are not a machine that hits that high note or hits your mark on cue?!?!
Realize those moments, and take the time for yourself in order to heal and develop a stronger artistic voice. I know it is very hard especially for me who always needs to be working on the next big thing.
However, right now, I must admit that I am in that artistic healing process at the moment. It was a long process to come to but it is much needed. I am stepping back for a moment in order to heal, breathe, and be a little human instead of letting the industry drive my intentions. In the end, my artistic voice will come back stronger than ever, and my work will have the heart and soul that is currently missing. It is definitely not the path that I envisioned and even had planned. But it is the path I am on and I am grateful for every stumble, embarrassing moment, and cut long the way. It is a path based on honesty, truth, and courage. I think Robert Frost said it best and I will leave you with this.
| TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, | |
| And sorry I could not travel both | |
| And be one traveler, long I stood | |
| And looked down one as far as I could | |
| To where it bent in the undergrowth; | 5 |
| Then took the other, as just as fair, | |
| And having perhaps the better claim, | |
| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | |
| Though as for that the passing there | |
| Had worn them really about the same, | 10 |
| And both that morning equally lay | |
| In leaves no step had trodden black. | |
| Oh, I kept the first for another day! | |
| Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | |
| I doubted if I should ever come back. | 15 |
| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. |
