We are in chaos. Here in the United States, fires (I live in Northern California), hurricanes, COVID, distance learning, politics (Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and the abject ugliness of what is going on in Washington) and on and on and on. Many days I feel like I am in the orange haze of darkness that surrounded me but a week ago in real time; and I know I am very much not alone. Yes, some creative businesses are thriving in this time, but even they are feeling the effects of the other disasters around them. The most depressing, infuriating and frustrating part is that there is no end in sight and no clear path to how we will even get there. Clarity to the myopia of the moment is fleeting at best.
John Lennon was right: “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” However, for this moment, life, for me is when I am busy trying to figure out if there can be a plan at all for my business and that of my clients. If I try to not plan, not think about how to get from point A to point B, I am consumed (not in a good way) by the chaos of the moment. I need to know where I am going even if no one has ever been there before. So, for me, if I did not make plans, it would be hard for me to embrace the life I have. The only way through is to imagine a way through and if that way turns out to not be the way to imagine another and another if required. The challenge to grit — purposeful intention with unbinding faith and conviction without consideration of any certain outcome. Maybe it is not how you get through, but it is how I do and I would suspect for most creative business owners, it is and ought to be too.
My resolution in the midst of this exploding chaos is to continue to plan, have a direction and then let my feet, not my head, do the rest of the work. Evolution is a painful, slow process taken in radical leaps of faith. The expectation that results can be measured through financial success or failure creates a false sense of security for the road taken or not.
Especially today, I would rather focus on whether I can feel joy at where I am and realize the reward from having that joy. Money (especially the lack of it) can blind you to what exists around you. I suffer terribly from the disease and wind up shaking my head when I think of all that I missed while I was thinking only of money. Your creative business is bigger than the financial return you hope to create, especially if your thinking is short term (i.e., 2 years or less). Of course, we all have to eat and that is no easy task today, but if we cannot give ourselves permission to imagine a future, how exactly will we be able to manifest it?
No, I am not recommending that you ignore the necessity to make money. I am recommending that you see the choices you make in a context larger than what you originally intend. And when your choices bring you to a place far from what you intended, you will embrace them as if they were expected all along.
Nature abhors a vacuum and the wreckage around us will compel change. It just will. The scars will remain though and we should remind ourselves of what is the best of us appreciating that we are the sum of all things. Perfection is not only the enemy of great, it is the demise of other. Other is our very humanness capable of unspeakable horror coupled with the ability to learn and say no more.
I find it equally ironic and horrifying that modern communication tools have become the very thing that has divided us, made us more primal, less able to confront challenges together. Broken. And make no mistake, the more it breaks the better it is for those who supply the tools. I suppose it is the underbelly of the long tail. And yet.
Despite the difficulty of real connection, real learning, deep community, we must persist, if only in the idea that your art and your creative business demands it of you. Resilience does not mean you are right, it means you have a compass to guide you and that compass will lift all around you, not because they see the world as you do, only in that they can see the beauty in how you do. Darkness is always available as justification for stagnation and destruction. Light is the opportunity for movement and is fleeting, ephemeral and ever evolving. I loathe the idea of good and evil because we are all things. Art exists to show us our better nature. If this is your business let it also be your responsibility to better, to strive towards the light and revelation, acknowledged for the effort alone.
