As any flavor of artist, you get to choose your own adventure.
When I was a kid, there were these books called Choose Your Own Adventure. You’d read up to a point – and then you got to choose from a couple of options. Then, you turned to the appropriate page to read the outcome of your choice.
Funny thing is – life is, when all is said and done, a choose your own adventure book. Everyone chooses what their life’s adventure looks like.
Artists choose an adventure where they share themselves to inspire, empower, enlighten, and generally impact the world around them. The forms this takes are wildly variable but familiar.
Writers, painters, actors, chefs, weavers, singers – the list goes on and on.
The truth is – EVERYONE gets to choose your own adventure. But along the way, we tend to lose that.
Why? Because of expectations, definitions of “normal”, and external factors that lessen and play down the adventure of life.
To be fair, some people enjoy working in an office, doing customer service and tech support, teaching, and every other job you can imagine. When that’s your passion and it makes you happy – more power to you.
For some of us, though, our passion is artistic. Because the arts tend to bend, break, and shift outside of expectations, the normal, and so on – they’re automatically more of an adventure.
I believe it’s important to recognize and acknowledge that we get to choose our own adventure. This empowers more than just creativity in artists – it offers direction in life overall.
Recognizing the choices
This may seem hard to believe – and certainly, it’s easier for some people than for others. But the truth is – so long as you are alive you get to make choices.
Every single day that you draw breath you are choosing things. Most are small and appear to be insignificant. Getting out of bed in the morning, what you eat at given meals, how you use and waste time during the day are all among these choices.
Sometimes the choices are indeed between bad and worse. At times, the choices don’t feel like much of a choice at all. And society, with its biases and prejudices, impacts how many choices and the ease or difficulty that goes with them. Yes, I am talking about privilege – and that I recognize as a cisgender middle-aged white male I have more choices in the context of my American life.
That written – there are still always choices. This is why I am writing full-time and putting my energy into sci-fi and fantasy novels – plus daily blogs on related and unrelated topics.
Writer is a hard choice. As a self-published author, I must make a lot of different decisions with how I spend my time between writing, editing, and marketing. Becoming a known quantity to earn a decent living wage in this way takes time, patience, and ongoing choices every single day.
I recognize that. Additionally, I recognize that to succeed I also might need to make some choices I’d rather not regarding taking side-hustles to pay the bills and unblock me and some of my subconscious beliefs I’d like to change.
The recognition of choice is key to finding, taking, and/or having an adventure. Because life is a giant adventure.
Adventure happens every day
This looks like some serious bullshit to many people. Why? Because they have obligations, things to do, places to be, and most days they just exist.
Everybody goes through this. All of us get into routines and live by rote along the way – because sometimes that just feels like the best, easiest choice.
But the reality is that life is an adventure every single day. Some days that’s not so easy to recognize.
I believe that the ideas of success with anything in life are often mislabeled. On further analysis, I believe that more than success – we crave that sense of satisfaction in what we do in life.
I measure success in different ways. All of them tie into the satisfaction I feel. Finishing a novel is deeply satisfying and feels like success. Seeing my book rankings on Amazon drop to lower numbers feels satisfying because I know I am earning money from my work. Comments on Medium of encouragement and gratitude for things I blog are extremely satisfying.
How do success and satisfaction differ? I believe that’s a matter of measurement. Satisfaction, for me, comes from writing and publishing works. There is success in this – but it feels grander, and as such more satisfying when I make money to cover my obligations in this life.
This is part of why choosing artist as your adventure has extra challenges to it. Unlike standard jobs, it takes a different amount of effort and perseverance to pursue this adventure to gain both satisfaction and success.
I love what I do. My life has been a rather awesome adventure. And I can hardly wait to see what may come next.
Your life adventure is up to you
Pursuing the arts as a hobby is easier than trying to make a career of it. But if you, like me, have a compulsion to follow that passion – that’s the adventure you’ve chosen.
All life is an adventure. But like any good adventure, some parts are less satisfying and not as interesting. Sometimes rote and routine are what you do. But that doesn’t take away your power to choose your own adventure.
When all is said and done, your life is what you make it to be. Adventure or struggle. Lack or abundance. Easy or hard. While outside influences can and will impact this – overall, you are in control.
Whoever you are, whatever you do, you get to make the choice. As any flavor of artist, you are choosing an adventure that will have an impact on other people via the work you share. But even if you aren’t an artist, the adventures you decide on are for you to choose.
Don’t let intangible fear overwhelm you or stop you from choosing. Life’s adventure is ongoing for so long as you live. If you dislike your current adventure you are empowered to choose anew.
Choose your own adventure.
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