Help, I'm Drowning in Cyber Pool. I Need Time to Smell the Rose Jam

I’ve studied with and have become a friend of my mentor, portrait artist Carol Stone over these past 20 years. She has a favorite quip. “No one can appreciate or benefit from the passion of your creativity if it stacks up under your bed.” Artists have been given a passion for creative expression. Expression requires another to express to. In a Biblical parable, Jesus said no one who has a light should put it under a bushel.

Most artists struggle with how to bring the very personal light of their creative work out into the light of day so others can share in it. The emotional, physical, spiritual and monetary expense sheet tallies a huge risk. With a struggling economy, venues to bring our creative work to others vanish and the artist is left to redirect some of that creative resource to uncharted, inventive ways of getting our creative work out of our work space and into the lives and experience of others.

Artists often spend a lot of time alone. Social media can hold a common modern danger of resistance to real human interaction. Everyone in society has to take inventory of routines and habits, to assess if any one thing is engulfing how we function. If we don’t we can find some innocently disguised “one thing” diminishing the quality and balance of our life.

We are constantly checking voice mail, text communications, email, blog feedback and social networks on top of all the other basic requirements of work that pays the bills and puts food on the table. Every working person has to make a choice to limit some of all this or be consumed. We have to tell ourselves; yes I will miss some real or perceived opportunity and live a reasonable life because life on this earth is too short.

I made a choice, years ago that I would not let my work become more important than my relationship with God, my spouse & children or my personal health. The result is I’m not a mover and shaker in the fine art or computer graphics communities. But my important relationships are in good shape and my creative work also is not stacking up under my bed.