No more imitations

Its hard to figure out which individual parts of my life are imitations - especially since I'm so adept at becoming a chameleon that I tend to unconsciously pick up other's people's speech patterns and mannerisms.  Having a background as an actor is great in some regards, and is sort of terrible in others.

However, the two aspects of my life where I have to really fight imitating others is in my art and in my finances.

Obviously, looking at lots of art and being around other artists is great for inspiration, but making sure that I'm creating what I want to create is very important and is necessary for my true voice to really speak out.  More and more, I'm realizing that while I'd categorize myself as a visual artist, my writing is taking more and more of my time.  I ended up writing a full zine for my last art show, and this writing challenge has been taking more of a priority than my painting sometimes.  I think that my true voice lies not with just writing or visual art, but the blending of the two together.

With my finances, I've never had really strong role models for finance growing up.  My family was definitely not well off growing up, and while weren't poverty stricken, I do remember many discussions about how to save money, and not being able to afford things.  Even then, however, my parents would still spend on new gadgets and stuff, and I think that's where I get my crap financial sense from.  Trying to fight the urge to buy shit I don't need and to start saving for things I do really really want (ie another international vacation, a new wacom tablet, my own screenprinting press with microregistration, etc.), is one of my largest personal challenges.

I guess in terms of a "divine idea" that I might represent, I guess it's maybe as a storyteller who weaves tales with words and images.  I personally feel like both images and words can do things together that they can't do by themselves, and perhaps that's my idea: that images and words belong together.



Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?
(Author: Fabian Kruse)