Friday, September 3, 2010

Find Your Voice

As an artist (I dabble in food, fabric, paint, authorship) I'm told to find my voice.
Expected to have a point of view, something unique to say to the world, artists are a misunderstood breed.
Aren't we all artists in life? We search to find the things that are meaningful to us, then experiment, elaborate, and pursue it. Sometimes a person can't do it full time. The bills must be paid.

I was reading something in an old Oprah magazine I picked up free at the thrift store.

Published in March 2008, just as the real estate bubble was bursting, but before economists and federal officials would admit to the recession that we're now told started in December 2007, an expert wrote that in order to plan for retirement we had to know where we expected, or more importantly, wanted to go.

As I do with all concise and particularly meaningful articles, I clip the best part and tape it in my a notebook for future reference.

It said you should ask yourself these three questions:
1-If you had all the money you'd ever need, how would you spend your time?
2-If you had only five years to live, how would you live your life?
3-If you found out you life was over tomorrow, what would you regret?

The article said most people were disturbed by the inconsistancies they found in their actions compared to the desired outcomes.

It will take me some serious thought to begin to answer even one of those questions. I find my most productive thought occurs in the morning on my daily hike. I take a pocket notebook and pen to jot down these thoughts.

I hope to find the answers, perhaps they will even change over time.

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