Today, most of us live our lives in reaction. Your phone buzzes and you are compelled to check. Infinite tugs at our attention that asks us to chime in or at least to watch the show in front of us. So little time to just sit and think and to actually own uncertainty.
For creative business, it means seeing the shiny penny that always exists, with an eye to getting to the next thing. A series of endorphin rushes if anything else. What we do not do today is sit with the wisdom of the moment.
The wisdom of the moment is the hard truth of all that is. From the wisdom of the moment, of course we can react, but we can also transform what the next moment might be. Yes, you can be proactive to what is to come. However, what you cannot do is choose to be derivative as the way beyond.
All of this may sound cryptic, except it is anything but. For instance, how many of you get non-refundable deposits that is not tied to anything other than your reputation and the value of your willingness to create art for your client? Not many that I know of. Inevitably, the deposit is in relation to what is to come — a retainer against future hours worked, against a creative fee to be earned with design, even against a single fee that is itself undefined. This means the value of your reputation, your willingness to set aside the time necessary to complete the project on your terms — your “get out of bed” fee is zero. So when a client then judges you on your deposit, you find yourself defending what is to come, i.e., not actually being in the moment which is compelling you to say that you, your art and your creative business have earned the right to matter. Inevitably, then you say that you only matter based on the work you do mostly as the client would value that work, not you.
Next, when you business lies to you and your client, you react to the lie instead of own the lie and fix it. I cannot tell you how many interior designers consider themselves immensely capable of presenting an idea and honoring the vision they imagine, yet charge by the hour. These designers do not actually want to spend an endless time with clients, but instead just want to get them to “yes”. In the frustration, there is acquiescence and that just breaks my heart. The moment should teach the disconnect, instead it just forces shame when the relationship sours as it most likely will.
The moment is to teach us humility. Sometimes what we mean is belied by mixed message we send as the art and business pull voraciously, just in the exact opposite direction. You simultaneously go nowhere and are exhausted by the effort. Vulnerability is what is necessary for a better tomorrow, not force of will.
Why does this matter so much? Because good enough used to be, well, good enough. Limited information meant limited choice and a willingness to just go along. Today, we are nearing perfect information and walls surrounding those who withhold information to all but the chosen few are falling faster and faster every day. If you cannot be present to the opportunity to be proactive first and choose instead to react better than the competition, you are going to fade away.
All of which brings me to those who would cheat to secure their place. Whether that is with kickbacks, SEO manipulation, even trolling competition (hey, I have heard it all), the effort is always in reaction to another. The short term might indeed prove fruitful and perhaps you might even be able to sustain. Except that is the thing about cheating, there is always someone to go further. We all then have a choice — we can live in a spammy world and accept that as our reality.
Or we can demand better. To work with those who live in their own integrity, confident that the value of their art is defined by the business foundation upon which it rests. We can expose those unwilling to say why the work matters and the essence of the journey to be undertaken as what they are — at best, amateurs and, at worst, frauds. We can say to those who want to be the easy, digestible kind, they belie the power of transformation and the diligence it takes to get there. Diamonds are not made in a campfire, just charcoal. Dare to be present to the wisdom of the moment, if only that tomorrow will bring you that much closer to the essence of why you and your creative business exist in the first place — to create art, to show us a world we cannot yet see and thereby shape all that might come. Be the hope you are paid to be, nothing more, nothing less.
