I effectively walked out on a very secure shadow career on a fearful afternoon around three years ago. I couldn’t do it any more. I knew personally that I could not do my work as long as I was doing their work. I had to completely
walk away into a very insecure future.

Searching for the artist Heart

"My name is Ezra, and I am an artist."
As I write the words above, I picture my self standing in a damp smoke filled room at a podium of the local 12 step recovery hall. I would of course follow that introduction with: "It's been 22 days since my last work of art and by a power greater than myself I have managed to shut out all joy from my existence and whore my creative skills out like a normal fucking person to pay my rent."
An old-timer, scissoring a cigarette between two quivering paint spattered fingers, shouts out, _"how'd you do it?" _
I respond. _ "One dark day at a time." _

What Is An Artist

I don't want to get lost in the mire of dissecting questions of what an artist is.
Wikipedia says: _a person who engages in an activity deemed to be an art. An artist also may be defined unofficially as "a person who expresses him- or herself through a medium". _

Excuse my french accent, but fuck Wikipedia. And fuck all definitions of the word, artist.
Don’t get me wrong, i’m not campaigning for suffering elitist turtleneck (excuse my french once more) Artiste (ärˈtēst) definition. I actually believe, in some sense, we’re all artist as children and that the internet is allowing us more and more to remember that every day.

I’m speaking more of “the Artist,” as she has been defined in our minds over the last hundred years. I’m one of those. The starving artist title might put a mental picture in your head.

My Humble Definition of an Artist

I have no clear cut one-liner definition of who I think of as an artist but when I see someone doing what I do, which is: making incredibly irrational decisions, even dangerous decisions while conscious of the action resulting in possible loss of all security, love and friendship for the sole purpose of expressing themselves through a WORK, and then many times failing miserably to sell even enough to pay for the supplies, and then, doing it again _ ... and again ... and again._
I’ll stop there, but in all honesty “… and again” should fill up the rest of the article.
But you get the point.

The Barely Beating Heart Of an Artist

I can smell an artist heart within minutes of meeting someone. Even if it’s a suppressed, repressed or abandoned artist heart; those are the barely beating ones.

I had one of those barely beating artist hearts just four years ago. I had found some success in quite a few diverse creative career paths. I made a living making ‘art.’ I had good insurance all my working days. I was respected by my peers and won national big shiny awards for my creativity often. I broke through glass wage ceilings every couple of years and was earning above average for that particular creative job.

And I wanted to die.

I can’t blame my misery in life completely on being a professional creative, I was also drinking myself to death at nights, but it’s real blurry as to which demon was feeding the other sometimes.

I had accepted the biggest diversionary lie an artist comes across. That lie is that even if they can't do their own personal expression through their chosen medium, they can get satisfaction from at least being in that field. Or the extended lie, being around that field of creative work. Like a songwriter being around music by working at a studio. A science fiction writer writing travel blogs, or a film maker starting a film review podcast. None of this is bad. It can become harmful though when the songwriter looses focus and starts seeing the studio as the end, as his art, and not the means to the end of his own expression. It happens so often that you can almost tell what a person's original passion was by their Shadow career/Shadow self as the author of War of Art calls it.

I effectively walked out on a very secure shadow career on a fearful afternoon around three years ago. I couldn’t do it any more. I knew personally that I could not do my work as long as I was doing their work. I had to completely walk away into a very insecure future. I was constantly lead to believe that it was possible to have the shadow career for security, and slowly wean off of it as the more personal artistic career took ground. Then one day I'd look up and I'd have enough income to do what I truly expressed myself in full time. God bless you if this works for you. I don't know one person that it has worked for in 26 years. for the artist, the shadow career must be abolished, smashed on the floor to a thousand pieces, because it's a ravenous animal that will never stop consuming until it eats your entire life.

Like two star crossed high school lovers, you and your art must run away in the night to las vegas and get married. Yes those lover's will likely starve in the desert for awhile after. they might not even make it. They might have to run back home to their shadow career momma's house for a few months to save up for a vw bus. But they have bound themselves togather forever in a bond of desperate hope. Hope in a life that is truly uniquely defined by them and them alone.

To those that know me, It made no sense that I left such a promising career. I often heard from self appointed advisors that I was, in so many words, just an ungrateful fuck head. They had to work miserable jobs they hated and I got to do WHAT I LOVE for a living. “You should quit whining and be grateful. People dream of doing what they love for money.”

Before the day begins and the sunflower in your ass has began to itch, you wake in a cold sweat, like you do about three times a month, with a gripping fear that everyone was right.

Dream Day: Doing What You Love For A Living

We sometimes imagine if we were to do what we loved each day and it paid for our desired life also, then we’d wake each morning and have sun flowers popping out of our asses as we skip to our lovely studio each morning.
Actually, I think that is quiet true believe it or not.

With a few additions and disclaimers to the imagined day to day life/ Let’s walk through a morning of the doing-what-you-love-for-a-living-life together shall we?

7am
Before the day begins and the sunflower in your ass has began to itch, you wake in a cold sweat, like you do about three times a month, with a gripping fear that everyone was right.
As you drag your ass out of bed thoughts flood your mind.
“Of god, what the fuck am I doing. My ex-wife was right. I’m just full of pipe dreams. I don’t even know where the money for next month is coming from.”

Sunflowers still in utero, you then wrestle those thoughts away and go to the kitchen to make some coffee but there is no coffee because your artist life means sometimes there is no coffee. But you must have coffee, so you go to the dryer and harvest the dirty quarters and nickels, wash the sticky felt off them over the sink, jump in your bald tire car, drive past the Starbucks to the corner store and buy a cup of “pure satan’s ground dry nut dark roast” flavor coffee from convenient store.

7:45am
You go sit on the porch with your Satan’s nuts coffee and read some positive affirmations, because you might as well die if the universe doesn’t care what your creating, because no one else seems to. You feel better. The sunflower is still shoved way up in your ass but you can feel it’s soft pedals on your lower intestine. So you head to your studio to go and stare at that piece of shit novel you’ve re-written 30 times, or painting, or album that you have been at war with for three weeks, that you're sure everyone will secretly laugh at. The piece you're absolutely sure is the worst monstrosity you’ve ever dreamed up, but you simply must finish it or accept that your last half year was wasted on a rabbit trail .. again.

8:15am
Strangely you feel a little excited as you cross through the valley of dirty dishes towards the studio. You think, “maybe today is the day… maybe I’ll see it fresh today and walk out this night with a finished product.” But then it catches your eye. The red envelope. You stuffed it under the door knob to the studio yesterday because if you don’t deal with it today, well… you’d get another red envelope. And Red envelopes make you feel unsafe. You know your artist life absolutely depends on you not losing your house. In fact, it seems sometimes that is all it depends on.

8:19am
So you remember a friend saying he made some money on Steemit.com just writing stuff. You’ve tried these things in desperation hundreds of times. You know what you should really do is go work on that actual paying commission that you’ve put off all week. But no.. this could work. Even though your dyslexic, dropped out of high school because you could barely read… this could work. Surely people would vote the hell out of you, because you're dangerously honest, to the point that the judicial system has used your own honest posts against you in court… surely you're due for a fucking break from god or at least some fresh coffee beans from the universe.

8:30am
So you start an article.. You title it: An Artist Heart.
You're not going to go off on one of your crazy rants this time. This time you're going to write a very practical, grammatically correct article that is really useful and uplifting to other artist. With a beginning a middle and an end with graphics, bullet points and a killer conclusion.

You sit down to write this genius, yet very internet proper and safe article and the sunflower breaks ground for the first time that day. Shoots from your ass and you start typing like a madman.

2:30pm
You now get to this point. The end of the article. It’s too long. It really has no point at all. But you're tired now. And you really should go do that commission, because you know you’ve just written another one of your crazy articles that you think is pretty clever and funny, but no one else will. You think you should really check the spelling and grammar in that dyslexic helper app you got.. But you say FCUK IT! I’ve spent too much time already. Good lord half the day is gone. Now I’ll be up all night on that job. So you just conclude it and go look for your wife’s hidden coffee beans–usually in the battery drawer.

The heart of the artist is this.

The heart of the artist desires that everything become her canvas. That every moment and expression be capitalized upon to dig further into the unknown that is only inside herself. She is faithful to the end for the idea that there is something worth finding in her chaos, in her uncommon thoughts and ways, not only for her, but for everyone around her; that she was somehow mystically chosen to look through the curtain and tell others what she sees, even though she knows not what it is. She knows perfection must be aimed for and never hit. She knows that it is in her imperfection that the keys to the unknown are found. She knows it's messy. She knows she's not up to the job. She knows in the end she will know even less than when she started. She's desperate, she's hungry, she's sometimes bewildered and confused ...
... but she's got sunflowers shooting out 'er butt most of the time. And that's pretty cool.

The end.

Thanks for reading folow @ezravan

Thanks for reading folow @ezravan