Sometimes creators get hung up on this: Asking too big a question

I see artists and creators getting hung up on this:

Asking, Is it art?  Or, Is it significant?

If entrepreneurially oriented the dilemma might be this:

Asking, Is it important to the world?

If asking too big of a question is paralyzing you, you can try going intimate.

Instead, ask What wants to be created?

What compels me to create it?


What jazzes me? What piques my interest enough to work at it?

It might be art, it might be of consequence, it might be insightful-delightful, it might be. You can’t really know until you release it into the world. And possibly not even then.

It might be dreadful. It might be puny. When you release it to the world, you’ll know. Maybe.

When Van Gogh painted his first painting and didn’t sell it . . . or his eight hundredth painting that went unsold . . . we today can only thank his blazing spirit he trammeled on. Even when nothing but indifference greeted him. 

Sometimes you just move in the vague direction of a compulsion.

Sometimes you just fiddle with what’s obsessing you, and end up with Google.

Or you end up with a compound full of art (Howard Finster).

Or a new career. Or a hobby. Or a pathway into surprising friendships. Or a project that takes a year of your life. Or you start an art gallery with zero experience in the art world . . . 

Or you end up with not much at all. You don’t know unless you unfold it.

There’s no guarantee.

(Except this one: Every exploration takes you beyond where you’re at.)

(Isn’t that enough?)

For you —

Evan Griffith
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