How much showing up for your art is enough?
5 Thoughts I'm Having
Welcome to “5 Thoughts I’m Having,” where each week I do one of two things: give you 5 thoughts I’m having on one particular subject or give you 5 random thoughts I’m having on a wide variety of subjects. If you ever wish to know my thoughts on something in particular, feel free to leave me a comment below or send me a message. If I have a thought on the matter, I will answer it in one of these posts. If it’s something I’m super passionate about, I might give you 5 complete thoughts on the subject.
It was not a mistake to come to Florence in the spring. Wisteria is in full bloom, as can be seen in these two photos (above and below) taken on a walk through the garden of Villa Bardini. If you find yourself visiting Florence, don’t miss this beautiful garden next to the more famous Giardino de Boboli (Boboli Gardens), part of the Medici estate. When I see sights like this—beautiful flowers framing historic buildings steeped in culture—I find myself dreaming of a time when great artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo walked the same paths I’d taken that day and gone on to create the magnificent art of their time.
I’m starting to feel whole again. Since I left home on this relatively short adventure to rest, renew, and finish a book, I’ve been asking myself all sorts of questions: Do I deserve a trip like this? Why am I taking this trip? If I say this trip is to “finish a book,” what does success look like? Let’s face it: I might not actually finish the book before the trip is over. If that is the case, will I have failed? Or is simply getting back into the writing and getting some much needed rest for my body, mind, and soul success enough?
(Hint: I’m not looking for answers to the above. It’s more that I’m giving you an honest look at some questions I wrestled with ahead of time. I already know my answers.)
Is showing up for your art enough? I struggle to “show up” for my writing during times of heavy stress, uncertainty, and busyness. I started “5 Thoughts I’m Having” back in November as an attempt to spark my creativity. I posted almost weekly until the beginning of March. The idea was to write weekly to keep those creative muscles working. After that, the day job and other external stresses kept me from writing. This is a subject I will continue to wrestle with as I attempt to incorporate both creating art AND a job that pays additional money while using a different side of my brain. Can I continue to do both? Do I even want to do both? If the day job is forced to compete with the creative job, which one will win out? But back to the original question: Is showing up for your art enough? I feel like we can look at the question in a number of ways. First, is just showing up enough to create something wonderful? To that I say: absolutely. If you show op regularly for your art, even if only in tiny spaces of time, you can create something great. Second, is just showing up enough for me mentally speaking? Again, I say: It is! But only if I can figure out how to show up on a regular, continuous basis. When I’m forced to take breaks from my art that I didn’t choose to take, but were forced upon me, I go a little crazy. Austin Kleon put it this way in a recent article, and it resonated with me in a big way:
If I don’t show up for creative work, I suffer. I’m not a whole person. If I don’t show up to the studio, it’s harder for me to show up for the people in my life.
Ryan Holiday of the Daily Stoic, wrote a guest essay for the New York Times titled, “The Naval Academy Canceled My Lecture on Wisdom.” (NYT link is a free gift copy of the article.) In it he describes how: “Roughly an hour before my talk was to begin, I received a call: Would I refrain from any mention in my remarks of the recent removal of 381 supposedly controversial books from the Nimitz library on campus?” Ryan refused to alter his slides or his talk, and his lecture, as well as another planned for the Naval Academy football team, was canceled.
Further Reading:
The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad is on my list of books to read as soon as I return home from Italy. I became an admirer of Suleika and her writing when I read her first book—a memoir—Between Two Kingdoms. Her Substack, The Isolation Journals, was one of the first Substacks I joined. She’s an inspiring human with incredible insight into living through “moments of great uncertainty.”
Further Reading:
Those are my thoughts for this Sunday as I lie in bed writing and listening to the church bells ring out all over Florence.
Until next time,
Heather
P.S. Make sure you’re subscribed. I’ll probably be writing this newsletter more frequently over the next few weeks as I get back into finishing the fourth book of the Paynes Creek series.
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Thanks for reading. This newsletter is a consistently inconsistent publication of my thoughts, though I’ve vowed to be more consistent in 2025. You can find more of my shorter thoughts and links to things I’m reading in my Notes.
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