What We Do for Love

 

 

We all want to be loved. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s wanting to be popular that gets us into trouble.

Popularity is the lesser cousin to being loved. Sometimes it gets confused with being loved, but it's not the same thing.

Being loved by a whole lot of people doesn't mean you're truly loved. It just means you're popular. It might mean you've become an Influencer. You have a million followers. And now, you can start charging money for just being you (okay, maybe you in a swimsuit or you in a hotdog eating contest or you doing The Pinegrove Shuffle). I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, except that...well, maybe I am. 

Creative Friends--beware of the popularity game. Once we become beholden to the clamoring masses we will begin to shape our work to please the masses (clamoring or not). Eventually, we will step away from the things we like to do because they might seem controversial or strange or complex or unfinished or weird. We might begin to limit our work to what is simple and easily digested. Eventually, this pared down version of ourselves becomes our brand. We’re frozen in time and we become creatively frozen, until, one day, we wake up and say—hey, what happened to that zany, slightly confused girl-genius who was always in the middle of becoming something amazing?

Well, I'll tell you what happened to her. She was bought and sold and shipped off to the marketplace. She's sitting on a shelf with the fifteen other brands of lactose-free yogurt and Skinny Chips.

Creative Friends--your assignment for this week is to take a leap off that market shelf and run down the aisle and out the door, screaming. Okay, you don’t have to scream, but do something unexpected or weird or different. Be a little crazy.

No one has to know you're breaking out of the mold. But you'll know and trust me, it'll make all the difference. 

Be free, my friends!

And as always, have fun.

Love,

Jamie