A Thousand Miles

“The Journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.” ~Lao Tsu

In a recent article, I read people with positive attitudes are more likely to see an opportunity. Opportunity comes in many disguises. It usually looks like failure. It can come clothed as a bad turn of events. It can reveal itself in upheaval. I may have stated this before, that nearly all of the skills I employ to do my current work have been learned in the recent past as the result of an upheaval.

You may not know that I used to work in clay, having been an artist most of my life. I had accepted without question, a definition and career path for my life formed by my parents. It self-perpetuated because I believed them. For decades working in paint, illustration, cartoons, and clay.

I was mostly happy but found art more mechanical. Did I have talent? Maybe. But as a career, it was not entirely fulfilling. I enjoyed many aspects of it, the freedom, the creating of something out of my imagination, talking to other creatives about their work and hanging out with them.

Certainly, art can be therapeutic

Change isn’t always welcome.Life bumped along, and when my daughter and I moved into a new residence in the country, we were informed by our landlord that I could not use the kilns in the basement of the house where I had begun setting up a fully functional, totally outfitted clay studio. The next door neighbor graciously allowed me the use of his shop (a wood shop).

I set up three kilns inside, running along one wall. This interim fix left me feeling a bit uneasy as I never really knew when he would need his shop. Traipsing back and forth with trays of tiles, and vessels (especially in the cold months) and checking to make sure the kiln was firing and then, had shut off, began feeling inconvenient. In all honesty, I worried a lot about the kiln starting a fire in there even with being extra careful.

One day in the middle of a mosaic project, the joy for art left me. While I floundered about wondering what the heck I was going to do, I wrote about it. I grieved the loss. I sold off and donated supplies and equipment.

Evidence pointed to writing as my true calling.

The chances of my exploring it full time would probably not have presented itself had I not let go of the studio. A light went on and because of that, I began learning about social media (such as it was at the time) and aligning my thinking with the people making a living from it at the time. My life has totally changed. The question is, what are you holding onto that prevents you from seeing another, bigger picture?

List all of your talents and abilities and see what other ideas start forming in your mind. What do you do in your free time? Can you turn that into a side hustle?  If you could do anything else, what would it be? How can you start learning about it now? Where would you like to be five years from today? All change is made one step at a time. What’s your next step going to be?

Check out this informative article about mindset by Thomas Oppong.

Have questions? Feel free to comment in the box below. I would love to hear from you!