Category: Discussions/Essays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep2rZTgnJho&ab_channel=OnyxGold

“The amateur tweets, the pro works.” — Steven Pressfield

If you’ve not read Steven Pressfield’s two excellent books on creating, The War of Art and Turning Pro, I highly suggest you do so. Pressfield captures perfectly what it means to go pro. Whenever I feel like I need a little ‘pick up’ I know he’ll deliver the goods to get me going again. Why? Because he and I think the same way; we know we’re always susceptible to giving way to resistance. And when that happens, we stop making art.

For me, going pro is not just about building a career or succeeding in reaching our dreams. It’s about so much more than that — what’s at stake is not merely a job. All too often the word professional means being associated with distinctive groups or high incomes but that’s a very limited interpretation. Going Pro effects our entire lives and how we live; our happiness, health and social interactions all depend on it. When we turn pro we’re no longer the same person we were before our ascension from amateurism and mediocrity.

So today — as it relates to being visual artists — I want to share four simple fundamentals that guide me daily. These four principles are pasted on the wall directly in front of me where I work. This is also how I coach my own students/clients to becoming pros. (I’ll try to refrain from regurgitating what Steven Pressfield has already stated so succinctly in his books).

VISION:

Going Pro means being aligned with something greater than us and our egos. We know the ability to capture a vision is both a privilege and a duty that we must fulfill otherwise we’ll never be happy; life always turns out wrong when we’re not straight with ourselves, when we don’t honour our truth. And the vision — key derivation being it’s a visual — is what we work off from. The only path that’s joyful and meaningful comes from working towards its physical realization. So we never dive into a project unless we know why it matters AND what it might look like. Until then, we don’t risk going all in. A clear vision sets the way for a clear path and more fruitful journey; no energy is spent until a direction is well-defined. Pros know that it’s also a waste of time being preoccupied with whining, complaining or blaming. They’ve got sh*t to do.

PREPARATION:

Going Pro means being prepared. We don’t skip the research. We do thumbnail sketches and layout tests. We explore all avenues. We also have our tools working and ready. We practice hard and regularly to the point of knowing our craft so well, we don’t freeze during the performance. Hence, our preparation is both physical and psychological. And we know we’re ready when we have a solid road map and we’re dying to jump into the water. Pros don’t embarrass themselves; they never go into the pool without their swim trunks.

ORDER:

Going Pro means being organized. Besides the lack of preparation, disorder is probably the single most dominant trait of the amateur. I’ve witnessed this for decades. Amateurs work chaotically, jumping from one thing to another, and change their minds constantly. They love to noodle. Pros, on the other hand, don’t screw around. They have a well-designed and orderly workflow. They stay the course. They also live and approach things the same way — simply and effectively — yet they always respect the uniqueness of the situation. They show up everyday but don’t depend on formulas. And because Pros are ready, they can adapt on the fly and come out looking like geniuses. Working procedurally and with discipline and deep attentiveness throughout the process prevents them from being sidelined by distractions or their own ego.

FINISH:

Finally, Pros finish what they start. This doesn’t mean perfection or necessarily achieving outside recognition but Pros finish things and do so with care. All things end and so, too, must creative endeavors. Amateurs leave many things and most things unfinished. We all know this and we’ve all been there, after all, we’re all amateurs at most things. And there’s nothing wrong with being an amateur, whose root word comes from the same word meaning love. Now, sometimes when we find ourselves not finishing what we’ve started because this ‘thing’ might not be our calling and what is true for us might be still waiting for us to take recognize and take hold of. Other times, it could just mean that we’ve failed on this one particular occasion and that’s okay, too. We end it and move on to the next challenge. Some projects serve only to become lessons — and this is impossible to know beforehand — so don’t let it become a sunk cost that takes up any more of our time and energy.

SUMMARY

It’s clear that it’s neither natural nor easy to become a pro. It takes commitment and a complete changing of our mindset. We can learn it and earn it by simply taking it one step at a time.

“In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” — Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” —  Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher

Fear is shadow, not substance. Unfortunately every man, woman or child out there is commonly living with fear, either consciously or unconsciously. Our consumption-based economy (and its accompanying marketing machine) practically relies on it. Real fear — whose root word is horror/danger — is based on our biological sense of physical fear, a genuine thing to be concerned about. When true danger present itself, such as an onrushing vehicle or a sudden flare up of fire, we act appropriately and immediately. This is healthy and normal. There’s no phobia or anxiety. What we’re talking about rather, is psychological fear, the anticipated attack on our well-being, our ideologies and our sense of security that frightens us, even though none of it may be real or will ever come to fruition. It’s the mind and its thoughts that terrorize us. We must be careful not to let it blanket us in darkness.

“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen, lyrics from the song Anthem

As practicing artists, we have more than our share of psychological fear. Both financial and social insecurity plague nearly everyone of us, almost regularly. Conflicted by the need to survive versus being true to ourselves, we’re always debating how much we must compromise our creativity and ethics in order to maintain security. We take the job/project that’s unappealing or morally questionable. We might also change our art or working methods to accommodate financial gain or even just to satisfy social relationships; going independent, in thought or practice, threatens the security of the being part of a tribe. We all want to belong whether we admit it or not.

Is it any wonder why most of us are so pessimistic? In a world absolutely consumed with materialism and almost fully preoccupied with the “me and the mine” (which entails continual competition with each other) it’s almost impossible to feel secure and confident as we move towards a fast changing and nearly unpredictable future. How will our skills hold up? Will the job or career we have currently be enough to weather the storm we know is coming given the near logarithmic growth in technology? As artificial intelligence, robotics and bio-engineering become a bigger and bigger part of our everyday lives, most of us, including our governments, have no reliable game plan to face what’s coming. This, of course, sits on top of the background of a world population approaching 8 billion people, record levels of global debt and a climate crisis.

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” ― Soren Kierkegaard, Philosopher

So how do we adapt or live? Can we find the right job, skill or trick to overcome our discomfort and to calm our nerves? Most of us just accept or ignore our predicament by being preoccupied with menial tasks, labour and trivia. Others escape via entertainment, drugs/alcohol or any host of vices. Still others find slightly better means, such as religion, meditation, creative hobbies or sports. In truth, none of it has any sort of real sustaining power to overcome our anxieties. Because, to deny our fear is to make them stronger. And since we continue to endorse the existing systems, our fears will continue to exist or even magnify. This partly explains why we are so divisive; the harder we try to escape and build an ideology to deal with our fears, the more defensive we become. Anyone or any group who threatens our ideologies by disagreeing with us or present facts we don’t want to hear, makes us angry and hateful. This is terribly destructive for the creative soul and terrible for humanity.

“Our longing to transcend death inflames violence toward each other.” ― Sheldon Solomon, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

Personally, I suspect the only way to deal with our fears is to stare them down. Just by seeing them, as clearly as we can, observing the reality of it with as little prejudice as possible opens up our minds and frees us. For this to be possible of course, requires absolute humility, the kind of intellectual humility and moral courage that says “I don’t know” or that “I might be wrong.” It’s okay to not know. Since the future is undecided, it means also that there are decisions to be made. And we can’t wait for someone to save us. History has shown the dangers of wishing for the demigod. In fact, wishful thinking, biased towards one’s already conditioned belief system, is at the root of all ideologies. We have to make up our own minds.

“Reality thinking cannot operate without concurrent and supporting fantasies.” — Susan Isaacs, Psychoanalyst

Ultimately the answer to our difficulties comes down to how each one of us thinks and acts individually. We know that hate and fear can spread virally, but so can goodness. Quantum physics is already proving that the world is one gigantic unified field and that local reality is false; in other words, we are all connected and it’s near impossible for us to individually see the complete truth. Therefore its likely too presumptuous to say that man is guaranteed to destroy ourselves and this planet. That very well may happen. The trend doesn’t look good. But trends change. I believe the moment we give up and begin to show hopelessness or indifference to our plight and the plight of others, we increase the odds of failure. Man divided magnifies violence. The history books are filled with tales of oppressors who have exploited fear in the populace. Divide and conquer is an age old war tactic. Hence, we must resist the stickiness of fear’s web of deceit.

There must be faith. We know this when we make our art. As soon as we lose belief in our efforts, the moment we fail to care, then honest effort gives way to lethargy; we fail to plan, don’t bother to practice and execute with no discipline or energy. Everything starts with that first step and every moment is a first step. We know this to be true, and if it’s true with our work, its likely true for everything else we do. Hence we must persist in our resistance to doom and gloom pessimism. Our psychological well-being requires it. A mindset of failure guarantees failure. Never let fearful thoughts weigh on the heart. That’s when it gets to be too hard and too painful to bear. We’re all fragile souls and we need to protect our souls. When the mind is too full of itself with its fears, strategies, and logic — there’s no space for it to operate properly and we lose the ability to see with clarity. In art and animation, we know that it’s the space between shapes, the space between moments of action, that give our work sense and meaning, making it beautiful. Otherwise it’s just a big o’ mess. The mind, too, requires the same kind of well-balanced hospitable environment. Over-rationalizations prevent us from giving our brains a chance to move freely. A mind frozen in its hubris can never see the difference between truth and illusion no matter how hard it looks.

“There is no one more logical than the lunatic, more concerned with the minutia of cause and effect. Mad men are the greatest reasoners we know, and that trait is one of the accompaniments of their doing. All the vital processes are shrunken into the mind.” — Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death