@bacartwork: Over the last few days I wrote about showing up. Then I wrote about the little things. Yesterday I wrote about puzzle pieces. Showing up is important. The little things matter. And every once in a while, the puzzle pieces just fall into place. But then what? I think that's where a lot of us get into trouble. We spend so much time focused on finding the right piece or making it fit, that we forget the puzzle isn't finished just because we found it. The foundation has been laid…The pieces fit… Now comes the process. Now comes the journey (I knew I’d work that in somehow 😉) I was working on my owl this weekend and it got me thinking... Nobody goes to the gallery to see the unfinished piece.. Nobody asks to see the rough sketch (not that I do one anyway haha) Nobody gets excited about the hours spent agonizing over each feather or tree branch.. They want to see the finished piece. But if you're an artist, the process is why we do what we do. It’s a symphony in progress that only we can hear at the moment, but hope to share.. If you're in that big of a hurry, take a photo and call it finished. The masterpiece is the goal... But the brush strokes are where life happens. I've written before about enjoying the journey. I've written recently about enjoying every brush stroke. I don't think I fully appreciated how connected those thoughts were until now. The same thing applies to people. The foundation matters. The process matters. The journey matters. We become so focused on where something is going that sometimes we stop paying attention to where it is. We rush toward the destination and completely miss some of the best parts along the way. The conversations. The laughter…The uncertainty…The little things. The moments that eventually become the memories. Let's face it... we have a finite number of journeys in our life. Some of us who have had a few brushes with mortality probably feel that a little more than others. So why would I want to rush through any of it? Why would I want to skip ahead? I realize I'm mixing metaphors all over the place... Puzzle pieces. Foundations. Brush strokes. Journeys. It's my blog and I can do that. 😉.. if you don’t like it, write your own blog 😝 But I think the point still comes through. Don't just trust the process. Live the process. Don't just trust the journey. Live the journey. Oh.. and there isn't a prescribed path. Don't let other people tell you how you're supposed to travel it. It's your fucking process. It's your journey. Just make sure you're paying attention while you're on it. Because some of the best parts happen long before the masterpiece is finished. --BAC
