Why I Love What I Do (1)

I’ve been an artist all my life, but I just didn’t know it.

I felt it, though. I could feel it inside that I was meant to create art. But I didn’t trust it.

Growing up, my family was generally supportive, but completely mystified, by me being an artist. They loved me, but didn’t understand this need to create. They didn’t really know what to do with me, and I didn’t have to words to express it.

I took as many art classes as I could in high school, so they thought it was a phase for me. I tried to tell myself it was a phase… just let me get it out of my system before I have to grow up. Just let me do this first.

But it wasn’t a phase. Not at all.

I started college as a film major, thinking that so long as I could do something creative, I’d be happy. But I wasn’t. Film was not the major for me, and I’d spend my time daydreaming about art classes instead. What were the painting students doing? What were the design students learning?

So, without taking a college-level art class, I switched majors… and didn’t tell anyone, not at first. And I gleefully buried myself in studio work. I was the consummate art major, vigorously learning everything I could, demanding and resistant against things I didn’t agree with or want to do. I took studio classes, and design classes, and art history classes left and right, desperate for knowledge that I felt I didn’t have.

I denied myself for so long, there was no stopping me now. I talked my way into carrying more than the approved course loads, talked my way out of requisite classes, and worked for three art professors and a gallery owner just so I could ask them questions.

But even then, I wasn’t truly acknowledging what was inside. I’d tell people that I was an art major, but that I didn’t want to sell my art. I came off as high-and-mighty, but truly, I was scared.

After graduation, I felt adrift. Now what? I got a corporate job and slowly felt my creative side wither up. Was this what the rest of my life would be like? An industrial gray cube with a desk and company-approved chair? Firm statistics and rules? Waiting to move up to a larger cube with the hope of one day actually having an office with a door? I could feel the walls closing in.

In a moment of pure desperation, and after a horrible performance review, I quit my job. I knew something was off, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. I had no backup plan and only a little money saved. I felt emotionally and mentally drained, and it took months before I came back to something resembling myself.

And then came a spark in the form of a family vacation and an accidental trip into a bead store (literally, I tripped walking in). And that spark turned into a fire, and suddenly I was creating again. Beads and wire and photography and my own business – I was learning again. I was an artist again. I was selling my art, doing what I said I didn’t want to do, what I was scared to do, because I was wrong to ignore it.

And it felt so right.

Even though I’m no longer doing jewelry, the fire remains. I love what I do because I fought for it. Because it’s an undeniable part of me. It’s how I define myself, how I see myself. I love what I do because it was what I was meant to do. It is my gift, what I bring to the table. Creating has connected me back to myself.

And I can finally trust that part of me.