The stereotype of the drugged, drinking or skirt chasing artist personality creates a ‘buzz’ and sells tickets, but actually creates formerly creative people that struggle to imagine and create to push out artwork: to “phone it in” and burn out.
Truth be told, it’s hard enough to find time, energy and artistic inspiration and create without also having the albatross of addictive behaviors around your neck.
The creative impulse is impulsive, and the ‘golden hours’ of activity and creative flow can get hijacked in bad habits and drugs, sometimes never to return.
My message to other artists is that success is not all it seems from the outside. To be successful in you have to turn off the phone, be physically healthy, spend time alone to know your mind, be independent of the crowds and fashions of the time.
To know your mind is to accept yourself, warts and all.
To accept yourself, you have to be in your body, to know when you are happy, tired, engaged, on auto pilot, or fully 100% here. And in time, to be grateful of the subtleties and beauty of your life more and more of your day.
Perhaps that will be what matters most: becoming a person that can experience and enjoy the steps of your journey.
Dorothy Perry is a photographer and a smiling happy warrior of awareness. Contact her here.
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