Working Thoughts

An older, more experienced colleague and I were talking about growing up artistically the other day, and he talked to me about observing many artists of my generation and how many have a difficult time growing from their “talented twenties” into more mature artists. It is a difficult transition, I conceded. We leave our conservatories; if we are lucky, we launch ourselves into the professional world; we struggle to establish ourselves as professionals; we start to speculate about things like career trajectory. It’s hard not to start feeling as if we have arrived somehow and the sense of expectation that comes along with that. Our dreams get bigger, and our desire to achieve them increases in its intensity. At the same time, it is easy to forget that there is still work to do. With a foot firmly planted in the hypothetical future, we too easily lose our footing in the present and the work that is at hand.

A thought occurred to me: The more we grasp for what we want, that which we already have slips more and more through our fingers.