(Featuring a whoooole lot of Kiki’s Delivery Service gifs, because I find the movie to be extremely fitting for this post!)
As I sit here and write this, it’s been almost 3 weeks since I graduated and started my job search. I know it’s a bit soon to feel mopey and discouraged, but here I am, at my peak mopeyness. In an effort to push myself and others forward, I decided to sit my butt down and write something on that feeling that all artists and creatives have struggled with ever since the first artists and creatives came into existence: discouragement.
Hold on… Now I’m wondering whether humanity’s very first artists felt the same way about their cave paintings. Maybe they too felt that their finger paints of mammoths and saber-toothed tigers on cave walls weren’t reaching their desired audience. Or maybe the guy in the next cave was doing wayyy better for himself. So all the poor Neanderthal does now is pound on rocks all day and grunt dejectedly as another one of her uber-successful friends from college invents fire. I feel you, girl. I feel you.
Fun fact: According to National Geographic, most ancient cave paintings were made by women. (source)
What do we do when we feel like we’re not moving forward? Like we’re stuck in the same place and our work is amounting to nothing even though we put so much of our energy and spirit into it? I’ll tell you what:
I have no idea.
Anticlimactic, I know. It’s different for everyone, and I’m still young– I definitely don’t have all the answers yet. What I do know, though, is that for me it’s all about staying afloat and keeping those creative muscles working, if only for a little bit each day. I’m not talking writing 2000 words per day like some writers suggest and even *gasp!* succeed at doing. I’m talking a paragraph a day. A sentence a day. Hell, even six words per day! Have a cute notebook with you handy to jot down some key words that pop in your head in unexpected moments. If you’re like me and you forget pretty much everything, use the Notes function on your phone or download helpful note-taking apps like Evernote.
We all have a bit of magic in us. But it won’t feed itself on its own, you know. We have to nurture it, and in turn, nurture ourselves– yep, even in the face of crippling discouragement, whether it be from a job rejection, a rude individual, societal pressures or oppression.
Sometimes you’ll feel like your magic has left you. It hasn’t– it never does! Rest if you need to, and rediscover what inspires you. Take in the world as you live in it. Let yourself be absorbed by your sensations– sight, smell, sound, hearing, touch.
There’s inspiration everywhere. If you’re a visual artist, scribble some interesting concepts and ideas that you would like to explore. Challenge yourself to jot down the first 3 completely random things that come to mind and think about a few ways in which you could turn them into art, or use a fun generator to do that for you. If you’re a singer, let yourself sing a little bit in the shower. Filmmaker, blogger, vlogger? Ask yourself about the issues you’re dealing with at the moment and how you could share them with your audience of one, five, fifty, a thousand people. Don’t be afraid to shoot a text to your friend and ask what they would like to see in an upcoming post. Makeup artist? Compile a few YouTube videos and test out a few favorite swatches and blends on your wrist. If your craft is yoga, weightlifting, martial arts, meditate a little bit and create inspiring boards on Pinterest that can get you moving. (Here’s my own yoga/meditation board, if you’re interested in checking out what inspires me. I also have a writing board and a craft board. Pinterest isn’t only for wedding-planning, despite popular opinion! It’s super inspiring.)
Don’t worry if your product sucks, or if you’re cringing as you write down ideas that might seem mediocre to you at the moment. I’m serious, guys. Just get it down. That way, you’re creating. Creating is enriching to every part of you, and honing your craft– whether it be by doing something tiny every day or every other day– will spark up the magic within you bit by bit. Hold on to that magic. Some people can be cruel, disappointing, or simply unable to see that magic in you. But hey, that’s a reflection of them, not you.
Don’t let your magic grow dusty with the years just because a few discouraging experiences or people made you feel like you you had to lock it in a box and keep it hidden in the attic forever.
Here’s an excerpt from a letter that legendary American writer Kurt Vonnegut sent to a high school class that sums all of this up beautifully:
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
…
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
–Kurt Vonnegut (source)
Listen: you have something beautiful to give to the world.
Your talent, your skill, your voice is needed. Nobody else can do what you do, write what you write, draw what you draw, or speak what you speak the way that you can. The world is filled with enough emptiness. It’s up to us, “the movers and shakers,” to put some light and color into it.
WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
-Arthur O’Shaughnessy, “Ode” (1873)
What are some things you do to keep that magic alive inside of you?
Natalia del Pilar 