I’m currently sitting at Barnes and Noble reading the new issue of ImageFX. What lovely art they have in this issue.

Something interesting that has caught my eye is the Editors’s Letter. Editor Claire Howlett writes about doing what you love in this issue. She also mentions to readers that might find themselves letting lack of confidence or life get in the way. Of them creating art that they should pick their art tool and start creating, allowing themselves to learn from their mistakes and refers to the old proverb of needing to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

It gave me pause to wonder if I’ve been making an omelette this year or allowing myself to fall back on easy habits because it’s easier than expanding myself.

I look at the art in the issue and see these artists on a totally higher level than I am. I wonder if I didn’t get my children’s book finished this year because I’m scared the art won’t come out as well as I want. Have I expanded my painting? Okay, I can answer this question easily enough! No, I haven’t. I know what I’d like to paint, but I haven’t allowed myself to grow and make the mistakes that I need to in order to take my art in the direction I want to go. I talk and I think and I talk some more about it, but in the end I don’t actually sit down and allow myself to make composition pieces or studies for this direction. It’s easier to sit down and write. After all, I have a book due out next year that I need to get done. Writing is easy. Even when I’m neck deep in getting myself out of a plot issue, the writing is still easier than trying to do something new with my art. Not only have I not broken eggs this year with my art, but they’ve been rotting on the stove.

Am I being too hard on myself? Possibly. But if I don’t push myself to work, no one else will. Trust me. It’s one point the editor forgot to mention — you can let yourself be a victim of life’s circumstances and call it lack of confidence or the trials of life, but in the end if you don’t take 100% responsibility for your life and the time you’ve been given, then you are allowing yourself to live a life that doesn’t matter to you. Is that really what you want? Is that really what I want?

Go break a few eggs.

Sometimes I wonder if this blog is a pep talk for you or if it’s really for me. Hmmm…